Tacoma Community House Training Project

Basic ESL Training

Who is it for?

The training is for volunteers who have made a commitment to a volunteer program working with limited English speaking students throughout the state of Washington.

The training is geared for adults who have no previous teaching or extensive cross-cultural experience, however many participants have either taught or been overseas for many years. These volunteers are also welcome to the training.

What are the goals?

The training is designed to make an inexperienced volunteer tutor feel competent to the task of tutoring adult students. It provides tutors with cultural information and a theoretical overview of language teaching as well as demonstrations of different language teaching techniques and opportunities to practice these techniques. Tutors leave the training with new knowledge, skills, and confidence to teach all aspects of learning a new language -listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

What Happens in the training?

PART ONE is designed to orient volunteers to the world of refugees and immigrants and teaching ESL. It includes a "shock" experience in which volunteers are taught a new language, a unit on the theory of language acquisition, a film showing the experience of resettlement faced by newcomers to this country and a discussion of cultural differences.

PART TWO builds on the cultural sensitivity and ESL theory presented in Part One by
focusing on actual teaching techniques. A primary emphasis is given to "active learning"
methods, such as Total Physical Response, and to other means of contextualizing language for the adult learner. Volunteers are given a chance to practice the techniques after watching the trainer model them.

PART THREE teaches volunteers to take the information presented in the first two parts, both cultural and pedagogical, and put it all together in an effective lesson plan. Through a combination of brainstorming, guided problem solving, and group work, volunteers design lesson plans to meet the specific language needs of students.

Also during Part Three the trainer expands on the information previously given on literacy and acquaints volunteers with the network of support and development available to them as volunteer tutors in a Training Project-supported program.

Basic ESL Training Agenda

PART ONE

• Welcome and introductions
• What is ESL?
• Shock language experience
• Second Language Acquisition Theory
• Film "Becoming American"
• Discussion of refugee / immigrant experience
• Presentation of basic cultural concepts
• Distribution and discussion of handbooks

PART TWO

• Warm-up activity
• Review of Day One
• Total Physical Response (TPR) theory
• TPR demonstration
• TPR task
• Advanced TPR
• Visual Aids
• Problem Posing
• Language Experience Approach

PART THREE

• Warm-up activity
• Problem posing: role of the tutor
• Assessing student needs
• Creating objectives
• Lesson planning
• Practice teaching (when available)
• Literacy
• Resources available to tutors
• Workshop evaluations and closing

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