Decoding
In South Florida there are many immigrants for which decoding do not work well. Often times these learners do not have a large vocabulary and therefore are unable to comprehend many concepts. Their rush and need to get an education so that they can earn a living often deters them from adequately preparing for school by attending ESOL classes.
Totally agree, or courses have to be written or translate in their native language.
Sometime all the class or course material isn't available unless using technology .
Even with that ,various micro languages into their main one are confusing them decoding because of the different meaning of the word used at the time especially in spanish .
I also find this if they come from a back ground in which has nothing to do with their career choice.
I have been teaching i the Florida and find the same problem in many of my class. i was so happen when our school started offiering spanish delever of many of our class. So offten students can not decode what we are saying or teaching. often do to the way we group learning. in most latin based education so thoughts are deleved backwards from the way we would do it in english.
I have not had a chance to teach students that had issues communicating yet but that would be hard, the only other thing i would think of trying is breaking the decoding process down to visuals and maps which would be more universal
Hi Petar,
Good strategy. I know you will have success with this approach as it will enable the students to see and experience what they need to learn.
Gary
I also have experienced that students do not even acknowledge they have a deficit in learning due to English as a second language. This makes it even more challenging as an instructor. I find the more concise I am with information and using visuals helps them obtain information more easily. It is hard for them to put it to long term memory and recall for examinations due to vocabulary.
Petar,
My wife speaks English as a second language. Thinking back to some of her course materials when she was in ESOL class, the materials contained plenty of graphic depictions. The challenge of the ESOL class was that you couldn't just translate it into the native language -- the students were from Asia, South America, and Europe. Visual depiction was the only shared means of understanding (other than the limited English) that the student body could comprehend.
