How Read Naturally Matches
Recommendations for
ELL
How does the Read Naturally strategy fit with Krashen's recommendations for ELL
students? Robert Ruth, a teacher at Everett Middle School in San Francisco,
California, wondered about this question. The tutoring staff at Robert's
school uses Read Naturally
with many of their ELL students, and he was curious to find out how
our strategy fit with Krashen's precepts. So Robert began by looking
up the details of the research of Stephen Krashen, one of the foremost
experts in second language acquisition.
Krashen wrote that the best methods for successful second language acquisition
are "those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations,
containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods
do not force early production in the second language, but allow students
to produce when they are ready." Following is how Robert found
the Read Naturally strategy
to fit with Krashen's research:
- Comprehensible Input - The recorded voice and pictures accompanying the story, along with translation provided by the tutors, allow the student to understand the story.
- Low Anxiety - Because the student does not have to perform in front of others, she doesn't risk embarrassment. And before reading aloud to a tutor, the student may listen to the recorded voice saying the words she is reading as many times as necessary.
- Messages Students Want to Hear - The nonfiction stories in Read Naturally are about real things that are in most students' schema (dogs, farms, horses, etc.) and include interesting facts to pique their interest.
- Allow Students to Produce When Ready - The student does not read aloud until he is ready, and then it is one-on-one with a teacher or tutor.
Many thanks to Robert Ruth for sending us his findings