Lack of ESOL Materials - any recommendations?

[bramvdveen]

Hi

Ive been teaching ESOL to refugees for a while now. In Britain they provide the 'Skills for Life' materials which I mainly use to teach Somalian students.

I believe there isn't enough material available for these students. I believe these students need very basic/plain worksheets, without any difficult language being used.

However most resources use to many pictures/graphics or language which makes it too complicated for these students to understands. (Often these students cant read/speak/write English at all!)

Are there any other teachers who come across the same problems? If not, what materials would you recommend? (For now Ive been making my own materials which has been very time consuming!)

Besides that I think many materials are not photocopiable, which is quite frustrating as well!

Thanks

[Shelley]

Hi there

If you have internet access and a printer you can access loads of free flash cards and with these using games you can run entire lessons - particularly with beginners to lower intermediate.

I have taught mostly with no course book (although I'm not against them at all), exclusively using games just with a few picture cards. I'm not a big fan of making zillions of photocopies anyway!

Even if you don't have picture cards you can have your students make some as long as you at least have pencil and paper.

Check out some of my games, free, if you like on the site mentioned below.

To make your life easy it's good if you follow a course book anyway, to save you worrying about which language to teach, but you teach the language in that course book with games, and not using the book itself - it's just your guide.

Kind regards
Susan

Fun English Games
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com