Innovative Ideas for Educating English Language Learners (Part 1)

Tuesday, October 6th 2009 by Lisa NielsencloseAuthor: Lisa Nielsen Name: Lisa Nielsen
Email: lnielsen.professional@gmail.com
Site: http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com
About: Lisa Nielsen serves as a Technology Innovation Manager for the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) overseeing the creation and implementation of innovative technology and instruction. She has spent more than a decade working in various capacities in educational innovation at the NYC DOE and Teachers College, Columbia University including as manager of instructional technology professional development, literacy and instructional technology coach, teacher, librarian, and staff developer. Ms. Nielsen is a Google Certified Teacher, International Edublogger, and creator of The Innovative Educator social network, blog, and wiki all of which can be found at http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com.See Authors Posts (3)

I was a bit intimated about providing a keynote presentation at the NYS Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) conference this month because of my own rather unpleasant memories of being made fun of for my “white” accent in high school, and later in college, Spanish classes. I always envied those who could roll their tongues and speak with a proper accent. I can not. I speak with one accent. It is very Caucasian and often laughed at.

I remember when I took Spanish in high school how uncomfortable I was when we had to speak out loud. The other kids seriously laughed out loud at me. I laughed too, because I really did sound ridiculous. Because of this experience, I hated speaking Spanish. Years later, my experience speaking the second language of Spanish gave me a little insight into what English Language Learner (ELL) students may feel. The fear of embarrassment and the trepidation about sounding wrong or different kept me, a normally outspoken kid, pretty quiet. Even though I wanted to learn another language, my discomfort, combined with less than effective instruction, were not a recipe for success. When I went to school to get my master’s degree in education, again I was told I’d have to have completed 2 years of language study. Gulp. I couldn’t handle the idea of my embarrassing accent so instead I came up with a solution to all that…I took sign language.

I have broken the strategies I believe innovative educators will find useful into two categories:

1. Innovative ways for speakers of languages other than English to CONSUME content.
2. Innovative ways for speakers of languages other than English to PRODUCE content.

As you read about these strategies, please reflect on ways you can use what I am sharing in your work and consider publishing your feedback, experience, and ideas in comments to this post.

To set the tone for those wondering if I can really speak multiple languages with an accent that is not laughable, please allow me greet you in a few different languages at Global Welcome from The Innovative Educator. If you speak any of the languages in my greetings, you’ll notice that while not perfect, the accent is respectable and you can understand the intent of my message. I’ve come a long way! There’s much more available to provide affordable and innovative resources to students to enable them to break the language barrier and become effective consumers and producers of information. To follow are ideas I find particularly promising.

SUPPORTING ELL STUDENTS IN BECOMING INFORMATION CONSUMERS
One of the best ways to help students get excited about learning anything is by helping them discover and explore areas of deep personal interest and passion.
(To learn more read these articles from ISTE Connect – Engage Me or Enrage Me! (Pt.1) / Engage Me or Enrage Me! (Pt.2).

• Technorati
  • Help students by showing them how they can use technorati to find people who are blogging about topics of interest.

• Convert Text to Speech
  • We all know that student’s listening level is higher than their reading level. How about enabling them to access more difficult material by suggesting they find websites that read passages with tools like Odigo. While the voice is rather robotic, it does provide students with the ability to access the content. Here are some useful text to speech (tts) tools to help students consume information.
  • Odigo for Websites and Blogs
  • iSpeech – For any text
  • Online Translator – for performing real-time translation for various languages
  • TTS Voice presented by animated speaking characters will read the text in the most realistic, human-sounding way in a variety of languages: English U.S., Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and European Spanish.
  • Why: Educational Value of Text to Speech (TTS)

• Google Translation Tools
  • Google Webpage Translation Gadget: Since your students are ELLs recommend they find blogs that use translation tools such as The Google Translation Gadget or BabbleFish. These tools let you take any blog and translate it into more than a dozen languages. If the blog does not have a tool for a blog or site that may be valuable, a student can write to the author asking them to install this tool.
  • Google Translate: If your student is reading content that does not have a translation tool, use Google Translate to translate the entire page.
  • Google Translated Search: Enter a search phrase in your own language to find information in other languages.
  • Google Toolbar: Or your student can use the translate tool in the Google toolbar to translate specific words by hoovering over them.
  • Google Reader: Show them how to subscribe to these blogs using Google Reader.

• KidsClick
  • Sort materials by reading level.

• dotSub
  • Some say video is the new text, but if you don’t know the language very well, it may be hard to access that information.
  • Watch videos with subtitles in your language, upload your videos, create your own subtitles!
  • Click here to learn more and view tutorials on “how to dotSUB”

• ESL LISTENING COMPREHENSION EXERCISES: Movie Clips
  Learning through media (movies, music, etc.) is one of the best ways to learn a new language. The clips below will improve your listening comprehension skills, helping you to learn and practice English as spoken by normal people every day! These particular clips are from recent movies. Good luck!

Ideas for ELLs on the go.
Note: If your school or district has policies banning personal learning devices, you can still empower students to harness the power of technology away from school i.e. as part of their toolbox for life as well as homework.

• G-O-O-G-L-E Text (466453)
  • Define
  • Translate
  • Currency Converter
  • Calculator to Convert Metric System

• Polleverywhere Text (99503)
  • Give students a voice with survey and open response polls

(This post is to be continued in part two where readers will discover Innovative Ideas for Supporting ELLs in Becoming Information “Producers” and Ideas for Funding and Planning for Innovation.)

Similar Posts:

• Engage Me or Enrage Me! (Pt.2)
• Engage Me or Enrage Me! (Pt.1)