ESL Young Learners – The Beatles Page
http://younglearners.eslreading.org/beatles/beatles/speaking.html
These speaking and listening activities are definitely not for the age group in my context (2nd – 3rd graders), but when I came across this page I just couldn’t resist putting it on my blog. I’m a big fan of The Beatles so if I were teaching ESL to middle or high school students, I’d introduce a unit on The Beatles with their music and would play it throughout the unit as well. We’d enter into these activities with a good amount of background knowledge on this group – how many/which people made up the band, where they’re from, the songs that made them popular, how their popularity skyrocketed exponentially, etc. As one of the activities deals with the topic of immigration and the paperwork that comes along with this, I’d discuss this topic with my students and ask them for their own experiences with immigration. They could thus enter into this activity with their previous experiences in mind, making it more personal and meaningful.
eslflow.com
http://www.eslflow.com/speakingandcommunicativeicebreakeractivities.html
This site is full of activity ideas that ESL teachers can integrate into her/his classroom. From icebreakers to interviews to paired speaking exercises, this page has it all! The ideas are a great way to get instructors thinking about how to get their students orally engaged in the classroom. Speaking can be one of the toughest things for a language learner as they are very much putting all of who they are on the line for others. This can be very anxiety-ridden process. If the instructor modifies these activities for her/his context and has the students participate in them once s/he has established a sense of trust, the students have the potential of not only developing their speaking proficiency, but of really enjoying it as well!
eslgold.com
http://www.eslgold.com/speaking/low_beginning.html
This page has a variety of dialogues that provide students with opportunities to practice basic skills – from answering the phone to describing people. What I like the most about this site is that it divides up the activities into beginning, intermediate and high – and then breaks them up even within those groups. It’s a wonderful page for instructors to move their students along in English language learning with a good framework.
Easy Conversations for ESL/EFL Beginners
This site offers a variety of conversations that an adult might encounter in their daily life. While some of the conversations are more appropriate for an older student population (e.g. applying for a driver’s license), there are some that are appropriate for young beginners (applying for a library card/checking out a book). Inclusively, it might behoove the ESL instructor of a young beginner ESL population to go over some of the more mature conversations as s/he might have students who language broker for their parents. As language and cultural brokers these students constantly find themselves in the thick of mature situations at a very young age.
Children’s Lit and ESL instruction – Academic Paper
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Wu-TeachingFolktales.html
I decided to include this paper as it contains information on the value of using children’s literature in ESL instruction. The researcher reports that the repetitive features of these stories, along with a variety of techniques (from presenting the pictures, using sentence strips and puppets, reading aloud, etc.) can aid in the development of students’ English language skills – especially listening and speaking. This variety helps them remain interested in the story as well as develop a deeper understanding of the content.
Ruby,
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful and important job you do! It makes me really happy to know that there are people like you giving a voice to bilingual/bicultural students. As a mother of two young American-Brazilian austinites (when they are here no one suspects that they are also Brazilians, when they are in Brazil, no one has any idea that they were born and live in the U.S.!) I know first hand that we can truly belong to two (or more!) cultures. I believe we don’t need to make a choice, we can (and should) embrace both. Unfortunately, not too many people believe this is possible, that’s why your job is so important.
I am also a huge fan of the Beatles and, truth be told, their songs really help me to learn English. Prepositions were (are!) always my weak point, and songs like “From me to you”, for example, really helped me to remember what prepositions to use in different cases. So I totally agree that the Beatles website could be very interesting to young students. The website has an interesting activity on immigration, but fails to mention a real fact: John Lennon faced deportation from the U.S. in the mid seventies because his visa had expired. It was a big commotion and a lot was written about it. I would definitely ask students to do research on this fact and create a speaking activity based on that important real fact. Maybe students could enact a trial of Lennon, having arguments pro and against his deportation. Lennon is a native speaker of English, but his working-class British upbringing is definitely very different from the New York intellectual/artistic life-style he chose to embrace later in life. Because your context is bicultural/bilingual students, I would definitely include a cultural discussion about John Lennon’s personal and professional trajectory between those two worlds.
I would complement these activities, of course, with the Beatles songs!
I would love to have had an activity like that when I was growing up. Too bad I learned English way before the Internet era…
Good luck!
Ruby,
ReplyDeleteI also really liked the Beatles site. It's a great way to introduce students to American pop culture as well as a great way to introduce the topic of immigration so that students may express their own experiences. I also really liked the site on using children's lit for ESL instruction. I used children's books myself to learn spanish and I still enjoy browsing the children's section whenever I go to the bookstore. I liked all the ideas on different activities that can be used in conjunction with these stories to help the students better understand what they read. Thanks for sharing these sites with us Ruby!
Crystal