Read Alouds to Young ESL children
How to Teach Vocabulary through Dramatic Read Alouds
Young children like stories read to them especially by their parents. Bring some life into the reading of the book and a child's ESL vocabulary will grow rapidly.
Starting Out
First things first, parents should choose books that they enjoyed as children. This element of enjoyment must be felt by the child in order for any magic to happen.
For toddlers, stories should be much shorter. Their brains aren’t sophisticated and developed enough for the more developed story plots. They need the twist of the story early on without too much ambiguity.
Here are some ESL reading techniques to make those read-alouds more dramatic and exciting.
Use your voice. Toddlers love dramatic plots and funny characters. If the story has a toad in it as in the children’s classic Frog and Toad series, try lowering your voice to create the sound impression of a frog.
This has important implications for vocabulary learning regarding both ESL and reading in general. Gradually, the conceptual image of the toad as represented by the written word, will enter the child’s mind.
The young child will remember the instance when she or he heard the low voice of the toad, will associate it with the conceptual image and see its green picture. It all adds up. And that word will soon become another word in the child’s extensive and growing vocabulary.
Allow for Playful Interaction
The child will often stop and point to the picture and say something about it like, ‘he’s sad’, ‘it’s closed’. The child is already taking the story experience up to the next level. His or her linguistic experience is shaped by the picture or learning context. So not only does the child see the toad but there is an embedded context that has meaningful implications for ESL vocabulary acquisition.
Use books that have a repeating words and phrases in them. Dr. Suess books are a great example in the undulating rhyme and rhythm for young ESL vocabulary acquisition. Besides the zany characters, young ESL learners tend to recreate words from what they hear . Rhyming schemes are perfect for consolidating this linguistic experience.
Put some music into it - Use chants
Use the sing-song approach incorporating both melody and rhythm. Young children love chants. They are short and segemented. A child will quickly catch on. It is a nice way to start the morning with a quick chant from the prevous night's reading and a fun way to recycle vocabulary.
And finally, get into the characters
Act as if you are on stage. Be dramatic. Have a ball. The great part about read alouds is that nobody needs to see how quirky or zany your interpretation really is. But this is exactly, what young language learners need and a lot of it.
So, experiment with a variety of read-alouds by the books your child chose. If reading is done in a playful and dramatic way, the child will quickly catch on and it will motivate your child to read when literary skills start kicking in. And that is the gift of reading.
