The language experience approach focuses on children’s experience and enables them to read about their own lives, in their own words. Skills for reading are based on their knowledge of the language they are using and on their home and community backgrounds, the people they know and the experiences they have. Children work with whole words and sentences rather than letters and parts of words. It allows children to speak before they read and write.
The approach consists of the following four steps:
Read Case Study 4.3 and answer the questions which follow.
Mrs Tekiso is teaching Grade 1 in a school situated in a rural area. The language spoken by her children is Setswana. It is the second half of the school year.
One morning, in the ‘News’ slot of the timetable, Mrs Tekiso asks her children to talk about what they did the day before. Each child is given a chance to talk. She then asks them to draw a picture of what they have told the class and to write a sentence under the picture.
When they have finished, each child shows their picture to their partner and reads the sentence they have written. Then two pairs exchange pictures. Each pair ‘reads’ the two pictures in front of them and the words written on the two pages.
Mrs Tekiso then asks the children to return the pictures to their owners. Each child comes to the front, shows their picture and ‘reads’ their pictures and sentences to the class. The class applauds each child’s work. Without criticising any child’s picture or writing, Mrs Tekiso writes correctly, on the board, the key words that the children have written. She and the class read the words on the board together.
After the lesson, Mrs Tekiso pins the drawings up on the classroom wall. She also puts some of the new words they have used on the word wall.
(We recommend you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Having read Case Study 4.3, talk to a colleague or a friend about the following questions. If you have no partner, write your ideas in your study notebook.
Here are some ideas we have about ways to help young children to read about their own experiences.
The language experience approach ensures that each child is actively involved by letting them write and read about their own experience. This also means that they are interested in what they are doing and understand what they have written and read.
Instead of letting them try to write their own words, Mrs Tekiso could have gone round the class asking them which word they wanted to write. She could then have written it herself at the bottom of the page. The children would then have read the word to their partner and to the whole class.
If Mrs Tekiso had wanted to use a storybook in the language experience approach, she could have read the story to the children and asked them what they thought of it, or whether they had ever experienced something similar. For example:
How would you use the language experience approach? You will have a chance to think about this in Activity 4.5.
(We recommend you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Plan a lesson like Mrs Tekiso’s in your study notebook. If you have the chance, try it out in your class, or with a group of neighbours’ children, colleagues or friends. You might want to use one of the approaches in the discussion section of Activity 4.4 instead of following Mrs Tekiso’s plan exactly.
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