Is it reasonable to expect vocational lecturers or tutors to be able to
embed basic skills? I am not sure that it is. I had a few opportunities to
speak to the first of my colleagues who was volunteered to embed Functional
English in a childcare course, and she was really struggling, despite being
a skilled and experienced teacher in her field. She had not been offered
sufficient training or support, so as well as asking her about Functional
English I wound up offering some informal support. Now, I think this mutual
support is an important part of teaching, but relying on the chances of
tutors happening to be in the staff room at the same time is appalling. The
assumption that anyone who speaks a language or who is numerate can
automatically teach language or numeracy is unwarranted.
I should say that I encourage my students to join numeracy courses not
because most of them have numeracy problems but for the language benefits,
to help them support their children who are likely to be learning through
different approaches, and because quite a few of my students need L2 maths
to gain the qualifications they are pursuing.
The adult education service I work for has been putting L1 and L2 ESOL
students into L1 and L2 literacy classes simply to keep charges to students
down and to make our very limited funding go as far as possible, so I can
see the point of using numeracy in a similar way. I ask all my second
language literacy students to tick the 'need language support' box on their
forms and take care that the ILPs reflect this so that I can justify
continuing their ESOL support within literacy.
Cheryl Thornett
ESOL & Adult Literacy Tutor
BAES
Birmingham
--------------------------------------------------
From: "starfish information" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 12:11 PM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: ESOL-RESEARCH Digest - 16 Feb 2011 to 17 Feb 2011 (#2011-40)
> The road is only as narrow as lecturers make it. Surely we do not just
> teach
> to an exam? Isn't it up to the lecturers to make courses relevant to their
> learners? Even learners with higher Maths skills need to be able to
> articulate what they know - and if they don't understand the language of a
> Maths problem they may well calculate incorrectly. Mathematical language
> is
> part of the numeracy core curriculum and is a valid topic for teaching. I
> personally think it should be given due value; it is an important life
> skill
> and valued highly by employers.
>
> Wrt to ESOL lecturers having the skills to teach Numeracy/Maths they
> should
> have no problem at Entry level at least; requirements for ESOL lecturers
> include a minimum of Level 2 Numeracy to start on a teaching qual; and the
> ESOL subject specialisms include the importance of numeracy and the
> teaching
> of it. Surely if we as ESOL lecturers cannot embed Numeracy into ESOL then
> how do we expect vocational lecturers to embed language, literacy or
> numeracy into their courses?
>
***********************************
ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds.
To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html
A quick guide to using Jiscmail lists can be found at:
http://jiscmail.ac.uk/help/using/quickuser.htm
To contact the list owner, send an email to
[log in to unmask]
|