The reader should be warned in advance that second language literacy is a complicated area and, as far as Young Learners are concerned, there is much that remains unknown,’ wrote Lynne Cameron in the introduction to her chapter on literacy in 2001 and, lo and behold, over 20 years later, this still holds true.
In a way, there are no surprises there. Developing literacy skills is challenging as it is, and if L1-English speaking early years learners struggle, with not even half of the kindergarten students reading at their grade level (Bahtia, 2024), what can we say? Our English learners sometimes don’t even speak their home language when they start reading and writing in English, also there is very little contact time, limited to two or three academic hours a week, and there is their first language to take into account, with its own alphabet and grammar. Not to mention that English, objectively speaking, with all the love I have for it, is not the easiest language to learn. The correspondence between the way the words are pronounced and how they are written down is not always straightforward and there are a lot of exceptions to all the phonics rules.
For English language students themselves, this means a real struggle, for the parents – frustration. For the teachers, most frequently, we have mixed ability groups and the requirement to follow a coursebook written for beginners, yes – but beginners who already know how to read and write. Whereas, the beginners in our classrooms really start from scratch with ‘Aa is for apple’.
The coursebooks for primary school learners have shown an amazing improvement over the last twenty years, especially since they started to be aligned with the syllabus for Cambridge YLE tests. We also have a clearer understanding of what exactly is expected of pre-A1, A1 and A2 children in terms of reading and writing. However, based on conversations with teachers from different backgrounds, language schools and state schools (who I meet through my line of work), there is still some room for improvement in this area. Successful phonics instruction alongside vocabulary and grammar development is not enough. ‘How do I go about teaching reading and writing?’ really is one of the most common questions asked.
Following the principle outlined so nicely a few decades ago in the Tesco advertising slogan – that I borrowed for the title of this article – I would like to share a few ideas. These are things I have been using with my students to help them become independent readers and writers, not instead of coursebooks but as supplementary projects and activities.
The adults who remember
I am deeply convinced that the first step to becoming better literacy supporters, we teachers and parents need to try to understand how extremely difficult, unpleasant and frustrating it is to be learning how to read and write.
One of the ways to experience this is through an experiment suggested by Martin et al. (2012) which involves reading a text that has been flipped back to front. This trick slows down the already-fluent readers and lets them notice the details of the reading process as they try to get anything out of the letters that don’t really look that friendly anymore.
This is one of the experiments I do in literally every session devoted to literacy at various events and courses. Another one is a simple writing task: use your non-dominant hand to write your name, write it upside down and write it back to front.
It is quite a thing to see how fast adults, teachers, L1 speakers or near-L1 speakers of the language start sighing and sweating. They are in a completely nonthreatening situation, with very little at stake, but the task is neither easy nor pleasant. It is fascinating to see how they get frustrated looking at their own names scribbled clumsily with the other hand.
This is, pretty much, what our young students deal with in the classroom with their first texts in a foreign language, still being beginners and still only seven years old. Reading and writing is not easy.
Being aware of all the challenges and struggles, even on the emotional level, is absolutely necessary for the teachers to be able to support their students in that process.
The three levels
The concept that can be easily applied in the primary classroom in order to facilitate the literacy journey for EFL/ESL students is: ‘All texts have three levels – text, sentence and word – and in England they form the basis of the learning objective in the Primary National Strategy’ (Martin et al., 2012).
Some of my favourite activities for all three levels include:
The word level: word snakes (a variation of word searches, but easier since all the letters belong to a word, no distractors and the linear format is more young-reader friendly), ‘Secret words’ (letters in familiar words are replaced and represented by symbols, one symbol per letter or sound) and ‘Three letters’ (students try to guess the familiar word based only on the three letters the teacher provides and then, of course, they recreate the whole word).
The sentence level: sentence Pelmanism (with sentences limited to one structure per game only); unscrambling sentences; reading and correcting sentences with mistakes, all usually done within only one, key structure, with the level of challenge easily adjusted.
The text level: ideally based on texts in the coursebook to provide the necessary practice and further exposure to the ‘obligatory’ texts, for example, the ‘Oops’ game (reading the text with mistakes for the students or peers to follow and spot and correct); ‘Missing words’ (predict the content of the text based on a set of ten words taken out of it or, look at the text and try to guess the words that have been erased, based on knowledge of vocabulary, grammar or topic).
These activities are not using any special methodology, rather they are a way of staging and structuring the supplementary activities, which often don’t even require any additional handouts (especially if you have an interactive whiteboard in your classroom or the access to the online platform such as Wordwall). The main aim is to provide a lot of practice with the written language in a controlled environment, focusing on only one grammar structure or only one vocabulary area, so as not to overload the children.
Creating opportunities
Apart from structured instruction, providing lots of opportunities for practice on a daily basis and moving slowly from level to level (from word, to sentence, to text level), what we need is a reason for children to read and write, something that Barton (1994) refers to as ‘a literacy event’. Here are a few.
Dear diary . . .
One of my favourite literacy events is the diary. The inspiration for this project came from reading and research (Nassaji & Cummings, 2007) and, at this point, it has been used successfully with a few generations of students.
‘A dialogue journal’ (Nassaji & Cummings, 2000) is a simple exchange in a notebook between the individual student (or students) and the teacher; it’s in the form of letters and sometimes drawings, too. It is optional and there aren’t many formal rules, wordcount requirements or timing. We normally start in the Year 3 (or at the beginning of A1 level), when students have already mastered basic reading and writing skills. The main aim of this long-term project is to give them a real reason to read and write, at the frequency and amount appropriate for each individual student. It is an opportunity to use, revise and learn vocabulary and structures. The exchange starts with a very simple introduction and then it can take you wherever you may want to go: discussing films; sports; favourite actors; food; and pets. For a few generations of students, this journal has been the push to use English outside the classroom in a structured way.
It is the perfect solution for mixed ability groups because everyone writes (and reads) as much as they can. Some of my less capable students can only contribute a line or two and add pictures, whereas my more talented students use it as an opportunity to express themselves in the way that definitely exceeds the curriculum requirements. But the most important thing is they all improve their reading and writing skills throughout the year.
Storytelling and shared reading
An online blog referred to shared reading as ‘the bridge to independence’ (Fountas & Pinnell Literacy, 2023); for that and many more reasons, it definitely has its place in the EFL primary classroom.
The main objective is to build the English language environment and to create exposure to natural language, vocabulary, grammar, narrative and dialogue, as well as provide an opportunity to develop all language skills. These lessons are done regularly and in combination, as an extension of the curriculum and coursebooks.
A typical lesson of that type is structured as a mini-project lesson, with some input, vocabulary practice, a shared reading or listening stage and a small writing task, designed by the teacher and adjusted to the skills of the students at the time. Over the course of the year, they can range across colouring a picture at the beginning of the academic year (when there is no or limited writing), to taking notes and expressing views in a simple way (I like / I don’t like) and ending the year with more complex sentences where children have to correct mistakes or write a simple summary of a story.
In my current context, with five academic hours a week of English, there is a lot of time for devoting a lesson to storytelling practically every week but, naturally, the frequency needs to be adapted to different environments and contexts, as well as to what is appropriate and feasible.
In addition, this is a perfect opportunity to introduce the kids to some of my beloved storybook characters: Pete the Cat, Norman, Barry, the Fish with Fingers and Elmer.
The walls matter!
One of the key issues – and key hindrances – in the case of ESL or EFL children is the fact of limited exposure and access to English language outside the classroom. Nowadays, the classroom is not necessarily the only source of language, not in the way it used to be a few decades ago. However, naturally, it is still far away from what L1 English young readers and writers get in their first language. That is why the classroom environment is so important, especially at the age when children become progressively more aware users of the resources around them, using them to support their production.
That is why my classroom is filled with these important things for the kids to use as a point of reference: a huge poster of the alphabet with capital letters and lower-case letters and visual indicators (P is for panda); the key verbs (past tense to talk about last weekend and the future to talk about things to come); rules; 20 different ways of saying how we feel; and, last but not least, a list for noting down and keeping track of emergent language, drawing learners’ attention to the language we use.
I have not come up with any clever ideas for keeping a long-term list of all the beautiful items that keep popping up. At this point this process is limited to only writing down the words my students ask for, simply to make a connection between the word they need in their L1, the word I use in English and its written form. However, after a few months this results in a long list of items we have learnt on the go, including such gems for the past month as: soon; respect, enough; nightmare; sparrows; chickadees; chaffinches; and anyway.
Classroom walls are not made of rubber and space is limited, regardless of how big the room is; but if properly organised and targeted, this can be one little thing that makes a huge difference, especially when children get used to it and become more and more proficient users of the language that, literally, surrounds them.
Our school newspaper
This year, we introduced two new projects. First of all, very unexpectedly, I became the editor-in-chief! Ours is a very low-key periodical, with only one copy that currently lives at the reception of the school and is available to the students, parents or visitors to the school, much like the coffee table books or magazines lying around the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists.
Jokes aside, in the beginning, this was just a task like many in our coursebook Global English 2 (Schottman, & Linse, 2021): write an article. It was not an easy task, considering the ages and levels of English of my students, but with careful staging it was not impossible. After working on the vocabulary and grammar, looking at beautiful buildings around the world and then researching our special place, we wrote a short article each. We had done similar things before, writing stories mostly, but this time I wanted my students to feel the thrill of having your text printed and being able to hold it in your hands.
The other reason for doing this was to accentuate everything relevant to the genre. After all, articles are written to be shared and to provide information. This aim was achieved, even more so because, as I found out later, our magazine got a life of its own. Every Friday, at our weekly school assembly, the teacher reads one or two articles to the rest of the students, filling their heads with knowledge and filling my students with pride that their efforts matter and their texts are read.The second issue of our New(s)ton magazine is coming out in January and it will cover our Christmas adventures.
Pen pal project
The other project we started this year is, at the same time, the newest and the oldest of them all. I myself put my first foreign language (Russian) on the fast track thanks to a pen pal, Alla; we corresponded for two years about an eternity ago. I knew how much I personally gained from this experience and I was looking for opportunities like that for my students. Luckily, we found a partner school in Turkey and we have already taken the first steps to start this kind of an adventure.
As Cameron (2001:156) says ‘writing done by children should have a clear audience, purpose and topic’ and I could not stop thinking about this quote while looking at my kids last week, poring over their first letters to their new friends, sharing ideas and making a real effort to do a good job, because there was a real reason for all these letters, words and sentences to be written.
They lived happily ever after?
Sure, they did! They always do, eventually.
My current group are Year 2 students. We started a year and a half ago, in a rather demanding programme, with an extremely mixed ability group, some of whom had not spoken any English, some of whom had never written anything in English – nor in their L1. It is only now – after a lot of hard work; after stumbling over words; after long hours of shaping and copying your ‘A’s, ‘G’s and ‘R’s; after many attempts at taming phonics and sight words; after a year of storybook reading – something finally clicked. We still have a lot of work to do, my students are still at A2 level at best, but now I can see progress. I think they can see it, too. After all, it’s been a long while since somebody loudly complained in class ‘Miss Anka, I cannot read in English!’
Now they can.
