This blog captures the experiences of an instructor in a pre-service ELL course carrying out a collaborative project with her university students and a small school district around questions and answers.
My question is How can we help ELLs increase their comfort level with using resources (dictionaries, questioning, computer resources) to increase vocabulary or cultural references without looking 'dumb' in front of peers?
I have found a couple of sites that have information on dictionaries and computer resources, but i haven't found much on how to make the students not look 'dumb' in front of peers. I think that maybe the teacher is responsible for this aspect in that the classroom should always feel like a safe and comfortable environment for all the students. Maybe the teacher could explain to the other students that certain students need to use them or have the other students explore the world of the ELL's dictionary to see what the meaning or how to say a word in English to the language of the owner of the dictionary. Just thoughts on this subject.
My question is How can we help ELLs increase their comfort level with using resources (dictionaries, questioning, computer resources) to increase vocabulary or cultural references without looking 'dumb' in front of peers?
ReplyDeleteI have found a couple of sites that have information on dictionaries and computer resources, but i haven't found much on how to make the students not look 'dumb' in front of peers. I think that maybe the teacher is responsible for this aspect in that the classroom should always feel like a safe and comfortable environment for all the students. Maybe the teacher could explain to the other students that certain students need to use them or have the other students explore the world of the ELL's dictionary to see what the meaning or how to say a word in English to the language of the owner of the dictionary. Just thoughts on this subject.
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/
http://esl.about.com/od/engilshvocabulary/tp/tp_dict.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_foreign_or_second_language#Difficulties_for_learners
http://www.cambridge.org/gb/elt/catalogue/subject/project/item405015/Cambridge-Advanced-Learner's-Dictionary-Product-home/?site_locale=en_GB