The Language Experience approach

Teaching English for Secondary EducationUniversidad Santo TomásProfessor Cecilia Maller A

(Based on Christy Ann Lacuesta´s PPP)

What is a Language Experience ?

• A strategy to develop and reinforce reading and writing using personal experiences and student´s own repertoire of language.

• The students themselves initiate with their own experiences; through projects and other resulting interactive activities. • Ex. Going on a trip, seeing a movie, Looking at a picture, etc.

Language Experience : A Method• Language experience approach is a method actually uses

students own words to help them read.Your student may draw a picture of Dad in a car. In

that case you would write underneath the drawing; Dad is in the car.

You continue to collect drawings your students makes and write a short sentence underneath each drawing. A picture of a playground would read. We went to the playground.

When you’ve collected enough pictures you make them into a book for your students to read again and again. Write underneath the drawing a description your student gives for drawing. This way your student will remember much better what is written.

First you will write every word and sentence. Slowly your student will begin to trace over the words you have written and finally the student will write the words and sentences alone.

• Some people use this method as a first approach to reading in order to help their student understand that what they’ve drawn and what you have written is a form of communication between the student and yourself.

• The Language experience approach supports learner’s concept development and vocabulary growth while offering many opportunities for meaningful reading and writing activities through the use of personal experiences and oral language.

Language Experience: A Teaching Approach

Personal Experience ( Dewey,1938)

Literacy Instruction( Huey,1908)

Community Literacy(Higgins,1995)

Service Learning( Herzberg,1994)

Introduction

Language Experience Approach

1

How it works: 5 steps

1. Teacher and student discuss the topic to be the focus on the dictation. Observations and opinions are exchanged.

Oral Language skills are developed and reinforced.

2. The Students dictates an account or story to the T, who records the statements to construct the

basic reading materials

3. The SS read the story several times until the story has become quite familiar. Reading comprehension is made easier

by the fact that the student is reading material that is self generated

4. Individual story words are learned, the other reading skills are reinforced through teacher-designed activities related to the

story

5. Students move from reading their own dictation to reading other-author materials as they develop

confidence and skill with reading process

Theoretical Support

• Based on several key language learning principles

1. Learning occurs from the known

to unknown

2.Learning occurs most effectively in general to specific

direction

3.Struggling adult readers usually have a low self-concept as readers and need to be assured of

some immediate success

4. Everyone reads at every

LEA session

Four Skills

LANGUAGE

HOW C AN WE MOST EFFECTIVELY ADAPT THE LEA?

• Providing all the input for sometime and taking the heat off the student ( Wales,1994,p.203)

• Advocates the use of picture or word cues to initiate and contextualize topics of conversation (Ringel,1989)

• Cooperative Learning

LEA follow-up lessons on:

•Grammar•Lexicon

•Pronunciation • spelling

The LEA

Although there is no one “super method” for language teaching, LEA offers a:

useful and effective method for beginning literacy instruction .

How?by linking the students’ language and

experience in learning

• Language experience encourages students to: explore, think and talk.

This talk, during and after the language experience provides: *many opportunities to expand students’ vocabulary, *extend their knowledge of grammar, and *scaffold their interactions.

• Language experience activities also help to provide a bank of experiences that students have in common. • These can be recalled and referred to in

subsequent learning.

• Language experience activities are often related to current topics or to students’ own lives. They can be particularly effective when linked to a specific text.

Examples:

●visiting the supermarket after reading Finding Mum to find the items in the storyand making a meal out of the ingredients.

●using skype to talk to students in another school before or after reading Talking to Nanny.

The role of the TEACHER • to model the writing and the thinking aloud process;

• to develop writing skills and introduce different writing genres through mini-lessons;

• to promote rereading as a strategy for students to remember what they are writing about;

• to develop purpose of writing and writing for an audience;

• to demonstrate appropriate writing conventions.

Observers will see:• students and teacher thinking aloud about their experience

while writing about it;

• the teacher modeling the translation of students’ signs into an appropriate written version;

• students rereading what they have dictated

• Students documenting their language experience through pictures and written compositions

How to record language experience:

• Ask students to sign what they are learning.

• Act as a scribe and write in English what is signed.

• Sign back to the students to make sure they agree with the story that was written down.

• “Think aloud” to demonstrate processes to students.

• Relate the complexity of the text to the language level of the students.

• Let the students contribute drawings or other art to enhance the writings.

• Use mini lessons to focus on specific language or reading skills.

Hope you enjoyed today´s class

REFERENCES

Bruffee, K. A. (1993). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of

knowledge. London: John Hopkins UP. Bruner, J. S. (1983). In search of mind: Essays in autobiography. NY: Harper. Caplan, M. (1989). Making it meaningful: A whole language guide for literacy tutors. Saint John,

N.B.: Laubach Literacy of Canada. Dewey, J. (1938).Experience and education: The Kappa Delta Pi lecture. New York: Macmillan. Dixon, C. N., & Nessel, D. D. (1983). Language experience approach to reading and writing: Language experience

reading for second language learners. Hayward, CA: Alemany Press

Herzberg, B. (1994). Community service and critical teaching. College composition and communication, 45, 307-319. Huey, E. B. (1908). The psychology and pedagogy of reading. New York: Macmillan. [Republished (1968) by M.I.T. Press in Cambridge: MA] Jones, E. V. (1986). Teaching reading through experience. Life Learning, 9(7), Lamoreaux, L., & Lee, D. M. (1943). Learning to read through experiences. NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Morris, R. (1979). Success and failure in learning to read.

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Spinner, J. (1997, March 13) Columnist’s criticism of composition courses inaccurate, wrongheaded. Arizona Daily Wildcat, p. 4

Stauffer, R. G. (1980). The language experience approach to the teaching of reading. NY: Harper & Row.

Wales, M. L. (1994). A language experience approach (LEA) in adult immigrant literacy programs in Australia. Journal of Reading, 38, 200-208.

Wurr, A. J. & Rutkin, T. J. (1998). The language experience approach: Linking experience and education for adult L2 learners. Shimonoseki Municipal University