Teaching English

June 5, 2008 5:08 AM

How to teach a disadvantaged, left-behind student English?

There's a freshman at my high school with whom I had a conversation in which I learned that he was never properly taught English and didn't have a strong command of vocabulary. He could read, but stumbled over words such as "romance" and "renown" in a reading sample he showed me. I'm leaving school this year, and I don't want him to be left behind. What can I give him and tell him so that he can become the learner that he wants to be?

posted by LSK to education (4 comments total)

I'm a little unclear about the details of the situation (are you a teacher or fellow student? Has this kid requested help, or are you foisting it upon him? How much time will you have with him after this, and to what degree is he motivated to work on his own?), but at the risk of sounding painfully obvious, one of the best ways to learn to read is from, well, reading.

If you could find out what type of books he might be interested in (his taste in movies might be a good clue), and then walk him through the process of finding, acquiring and reading those books, that'd probably give him an excellent start towards building his comprehension and vocabulary. It's a lot easier and more pleasant to learn what hard words mean by osmosis, as it were-- coming across them several times in context, maybe skipping over the first few times, eventually getting curious because their meaning is important to the story, looking them up and having those satisfying "aha!" moment, etc.-- than by memorizing some SAT vocab list. Bonus points if his tastes would allow him to work up through "classics" or older literature with exotic language (Bunyan, Dickens and Defoe are great easy-reading choices) , but even reading disposable detective or romance novels is going to strengthen his mastery of English considerably if he keeps at it.
posted by Bardolph at 6:16 AM on June 5

There might be some relevant advice on this question of mine from a few years ago.
posted by danb at 6:28 AM on June 5

It is super awesome that you want to help this person.
I don't want to discourage you from being helpful to him. However, there may be some resources at your school/in your community that may help him as well. Number one, is there an ESL program at your school? Is s/he enrolled in it?
posted by k8t at 7:05 AM on June 5

Oh, clarification: I'm graduating, not teaching.
posted by LSK at 7:59 AM on June 5