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Recognising what language problems learners will have by acknowledging the
language demands of lessons.
Helping learners to deal with language problems by providing support for language
and learning.
If a subject teacher can get these two things right, they can teach securely in L2
a) The language demands of lessons
Lessons make language demands of learners, in any language: to learn successfully
you have to use a set of academic language skills. To establish what they are, the
following categories are useful.
Skills
Word
Sentence
Text
Listening
Speaking
Reading
Writing
Learners have to be able to:
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listen to and understand teachers talking about subjects
talk about subjects themselves – to each other in groups and to the teacher in the
plenary classroom
read subject textbooks, and write about subjects.
When they are working in L2, they will have at least some problems in doing these
things in most lessons. So when teachers plan lessons, they have to ask themselves
when and where in the lesson the problems will occur, and what the nature of the
problems will be. Doing this is a very practical task: the teacher has to ask simple
questions and the table above will help:
At what points in the lesson will I ask the class to listen carefully to me and
will they be able to do so?
If the answer is: it may be difficult (at least for some), they have to ask what it is
which makes the listening difficult. It is likely to be an issue at either the word or text
level (grammar is less of an obstacle to listening or reading). At the word level there
may be a lot of new vocabulary which is specific to the topic. At the text level,
learners may find it difficult to follow the logical organisation of teacher’s presentation
of a fairly complex set of ideas.