Has this happened to you?

• You invite a guest speaker to your ESOL class, but students find the native English speaker  incomprehensible. 
• Your program hired non-instructional staff without experience interacting with English learners. Although well intentioned, they are having trouble communicating with students.
• You teach high school equivalency and wish to better communicate with the English Language Learners in your class.

To address these common challenges, we created a handy one-page cheat sheet with simple, concrete ways native speakers can adapt their communication. The document is separated into four imperatives: 

• scaffold new content
• adjust what you say
• adjust how you say it
• incorporate comprehension checks

I now send this tip sheet to all guest speakers before they visit our class. I still ask them before they are in front of students if I may politely interrupt to quickly explain something important. As much as tip cheat can help, we are still the experts at anticipating what might be confusing for our students!

Explore the tip sheet during meetings with new support staff or HSE teachers who need to communicate with English learners.  For example, one tip is to try to avoid the use of phrasal verbs, since they are often confusing for English learners. What are phrasal verbs? It’s helpful to provide a list such as this so that staff understand how often we use them.

Let us know how you use the tip sheet! We welcome feedback!