The Adult Learning Experience from the eye of a rookie tutor : Post 3 Language Experience Technique

This is an exciting technique that I came across during my tutor training. It works for any level beginners.All this requires is a stimulus or a cue that gets your group talking freely and emotively. For instance my first Language Experience cue was to read aloud an article from the Coumbia Spectator about Diwali celebrations in the Columbia University campus. On another ocassion the stimulus was reading aloud a news article titled "Walks to Remember", about a holiday fashion show at the Kids Center; a Pediatric treatement center for special kids.

The first article was a random seasonal pick. Or rather the talk of the town at that time. It worked fine as the Nepali lady in my group was some what familiar with Diwali and was able to talk about the festival and describe it to the rest of the group.

The rest of the group then fed of what they learnt from her and the article; and then reflected on their new learning.

The second article was more of an informed pick. This was during my fourth or fifth session with the group. I had known by now that while one already works with kids as a nanny the other one aspires to be a trainer at a school for special kids.

"In the Language Experience technique students dicatate a story to the tutor. The text that is created provides familiar and immediate reading material in the students' own language."

The text generated can be used for a variety of other excercises.

• Reading aloud.
• Generating sight word cards
• Ask the group to decide upon an appropriate title for the story they have come up with.
• The group then copy the story in their notebooks making for a great writing session.
• The story when typed out neatly can be handed out to the group on the next session for more working and refining.

All this while the group feels self validated for having worked their own material and refined it over and over to a fine product at the end of a few sessions.

As you can see the language experience is a very powerful and versatile tool in the hand of a tutor. But just this one tool does not make a complete session of two hours. In the next post in this series I will look at the components of an entire lesson plan for a session.

Peace,

Ajay