Improved pronunciation. Increased vocabulary. Strengthened reading comprehension. Greater self-confidence. Broadened grammar skills. Enhanced writing. Do these learning goals look familiar to you as Project Read tutor? However, you do you ever wonder, as I often do, if there are more enjoyable and effective means available that we can employ to reach these goals?
In an ESL literacy class I am currently taking at BYU, we recently had a discussion of the difference between "bottom-up" and "top-down" comprehension. These concepts greatly affected my perspective on the strategies I should employ as tutor.
We can compare these two types of comprehension to the skills involved in doing a puzzle. Bottom-up comprehension is focusing on the individual pieces of the puzzle – their shapes, individual components, and how they fit together with the pieces around them to ultimately form the big picture of the puzzle. These are the individual skills that we work on with our students to help them comprehend large concepts like reading passages or lifestyle skills. In our tutoring, examples of bottom-up skills could include:
· Sounding out words
· Pronunciation skills
· Understanding punctuation marks
· Word recognition
· Spelling
· Basic math skills
Top-down comprehension, on the other hand, is focusing on the "big picture" of the puzzle and then using that background knowledge about the overall concept to fit together the individual puzzle pieces. This means implementing what a student already knows, or understand the overall goal of a task, before attempting to employ the individual skills necessary to comprehend the activity or complete the task. Examples of top-down skills in tutoring could include:
· Sharing background knowledge on a topic
· Making predictions about a topic based on past experience
· Sharing life stories and opinions related to a given topic
· Making connections between different cultures and their customs
As tutors, it is important to find a balance between these two types of processing. Both are important to help our learners become successful and reach their desired goals. However, I believe that the more we use top-down oriented activities, the easier it will be for us to identify the specific bottom-up skills that our learners need practice with, and the more we will be able to foster an atmosphere of fun and self-expression in our tutoring sessions.
The following are three top-down oriented activities that can enable you to simultaneously access the background knowledge and interests of your student while enabling you to identify bottom-up skills they need more in-depth help with.
1. The Conversation Can
Using a resource I found on the Internet entitled "Conversation Questions for the ESL/EFL Classroom" (http://iteslj.org/questions/), I developed a collection of cards with question prompts on them, each card based on a particular topic. I keep these cards together in a can that my student can choose from. The cards cover a wide range of topics - colors, personality, music, science and technology, favorites, and many others. We go through the questions on the cards and discuss our answers, taking turns asking and responding to the questions. The questions associated with each topic go into surprising depth and provide many opportunities to learn about one another's varying opinions and background experiences.
Through the conversation can, I have learned a great deal about my student and her background experiences and interests. In fact, many of the conversations we have had have led to other learning activities based more explicitly around my student's interests. The conversation can has also given me the opportunity to really listen to my student and evaluate her language use. Listening to her tell stories about which she has great energy and interest has proved a far easier medium for recognizing her grammar and pronunciation trouble spots than simply focusing on book-based activities.
(I keep my conversation can in the supply closet in the Project Read office. All are welcome to use it.)
2. Opinion Paragraphs
Another activity that provides great access to top-down processing is the writing of paragraphs of opinion with your student. I usually do this activity by writing a simple statement on the white board that lends itself to different reactions based on different points of view. Examples of these statements include:
"Going to the movies is too expensive and is a waste of time."
"All people should go to college."
"It is important to read the newspaper every day."
After providing the day's prompt, I then use a timer and my student and I each write for ten minutes in response to the statement, explaining our viewpoint on the matter. It is a fun way for us each to share our beliefs, values, and background experiences, while enabling us great practice for things like spelling, grammar, and use of appropriate voice. These paragraphs are always helpful in allowing me to really understand my student and her experiences better while also enabling me to identify her weak spots in the technical aspects of writing.
One other fun twist on this activity is to occasionally have the student, instead of the tutor, provide the opinion prompt statement. It is an excellent means of identifying the interests of the student and the issues they believe are important. For example, one time I had my student do this, and she provided the prompt "It is important to know the president of your country." I didn't know that she had such an interest in politics, but following that opinion paragraph writing we went on to do some great activities where we learned about and discussed the similarities and differences between the American president, Barack Obama, and the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón. This was a fun way to exercise her background knowledge and interests to practice skills related to English expression.
3. Picture Prompts
One final top-down activity involves the use of pictures prompts to encourage creative writing and thinking from students. I have developed a collection of cards, each with a picture on it that I have cut out of a magazine. I tried to create the collection with a large variety of colors, subject matter, and size, and tried to avoid pictures with written text in them.
The cards are useful for a wide variety of activities, but are especially fun to use for creative writing purposes. Similar to the opinion paragraphs, I will often select (or have my student select) a picture, and then we each write a story in response to the picture for a set amount of time. By having an overall idea of what we want to convey in our writing there is excellent access to top-down comprehension, while the struggle to convey our thoughts and ideas provides great practice for our bottom-up skills.
The picture prompts can also be used for oral storytelling and a wide variety of grammar structure practice activities. For example, recently my student and I were reviewing the irregular past tense forms of verbs in English (for example, 'spend' in the past tense is 'spent,' not 'spended.') To practice this, we made up sentences using these past tense forms to describe what we saw in one of the picture prompts.
(I also keep my collection of picture prompt cards in the supply closet in the Project Read office. All are welcome to use them. They are in a Ziploc bag and the pictures are mounted on dark purple cards).
I definitely believe that the more we get to know our students and seek to access their interests and background experiences, the more enabled we will be to tailor our tutoring to their individual needs and circumstances. I hope that by seeking to employ some elements of top-down activities in your tutoring that you will be able to foster greater friendships with your students, achieve more of your literacy goals, and find even more satisfaction in the service you offer.
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