Whenever I’ve left class with the feeling that it was an enjoyable experience for everyone, it’s always involved one thing: the students sharing stories or opinions about themselves, their lives, their countries or their likes and dislikes. To put it succinctly, the lesson was personalised. While the Read and Write every day Student’s Book involves tasks where the learners are encouraged to speak and write about themselves, there is a great approach where this can be achieved with minimal material or preparation: the Language Experience Approach (LEA).
This approach exploits a shared experience / common knowledge / the opinions among a group of ESOL Literacy (pre-entry) students. Typically, after an experience such as a class trip, the occasion is discussed in the next class before a text is worked on collaboratively. This involves the teacher working with the learners to build a text, which is written up on the board. In addition to a class trip, other shared contexts could include a class discussion, a survey among the group or something about the learners’ city / college / class. The value of the LEA is that the learners’ own words are used for the text. Not only is the context clear but also, when it comes to literacy work, it is the students’ own language which is used to focus on phonics, reading aloud and writing tasks, making this far more meaningful and impactful. Personalised language learning is so powerful and there are few approaches in ESOL which tick as many boxes in this regard as this one!
The attached PDF details instructions for my favourite LEA lesson, the one after a class trip. I am adding lesson suggestions such as this to the updated version of the Read and Write every day Teacher’s Book. That will be released over the next month or so.
Add your opinion regarding the LEA in the comments. Are you a fan? What’s your favourite LEA lesson?
language experience approachDownload
