M10: Language Experience Approach

The Language Experience Approach is a great way to teach language and literacy with multilingual students for a few reasons.

  1. It can be a challenge to find texts without an abundance of unknown vocabulary and unfamiliar language structures WHILE ALSO BEING

  2. personally and culturally relevant for students

The Language Experience Approach (LEA) helps resolve this challenge.  How does it work?

  • Either the group has an experience together (best scenario) or a student tells a story from his or her personal experience (ok, but not as good)
  • Teacher writes down the story, sometimes with the student(s)
  • Text is then used for reading instruction with the student(s)
  • “What I say I can write” and “ What I write I can read”--note some people want teachers to write EXACTLY what a student said, even if there are errors.  Another option is that teachers can provide corrective feedback on errors in students’ oral language before writing it down and then write it correctly.  The latter is my preference.  This ensures the text reinforces correct forms while maintaining the authenticity of the student’s own words.

Students are reading, writing, listening and speaking in the LEA.

VIDEO:

There are some DEFICIT perspectives at the beginning of this video on the Language Experience Approach. Can you spot those negative views of ELs?  But...there are also some good points here in this video and an explanation of the LEA.  Can you identify important components of LEA?