[Trainer-talk] Teaching students with limited English Skills

[nancy coffman]

We have used local ESL classes with some success. Google Translate into her language might make some resources available for her to study from.
nancy coffman

-----Original Message-----
From: Terrence Vanettinger <Tvanettinger at alaskabvi.org>
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 5:55 PM
To: List for teachers and trainers of adaptive technology <trainer-talk at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Trainer-talk] Teaching students with limited English Skills

She is a DVR client, supposedly she wants to go into some sort of employment.  There are English courses available in town; I had not noticed that Hadley has courses in learning English; thanks for pointing that out.  I will look into that.  She was able to speak a simple sentence back to me that I typed in Word using JAWS.  For large print, it has to be at least 6x, and she needs to be barely 1-2 inches away from the screen in order to read it.

Terrence van Ettinger, Braille and Assistive Technology Instructor
Equipping Alaskans for success 
Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired
3903 Taft Drive
Anchorage, Alaska  99517-3069
907.771.7303fax 907.248.7517
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-----Original Message-----
From: trainer-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:trainer-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of John Rempel
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 2:45 PM
To: List for teachers and trainers of adaptive technology
Subject: Re: [Trainer-talk] Teaching students with limited English Skills

Hey Terrence, I have some questions that might help to better determine how to help this woman.
1. What are her goals with the computer? Is she using it primarily for personal use, or is she seeking employment down the road with the skills she's acquiring?
2. Is she able to access large print?
3. Is she in the process of improving her English skills (i.e., Hadley's free courses on learning English)?
4. Are there any other resources in the community that would help her to improve her English skills?

Many of the language barrier issues will move way beyond simply learning the keyboard. If her language barrier is getting in the way of her learning the keyboard, how will computer related terminology and concepts be taught? If she is low vision,. can she benefit from words or sentences that have been increased in size, both on the pages she's typing from, as well as on the computer? If she will be a speech user, how well can she understand the speech synthesizer? You may be dealing with literacy issues, keyboard skills and the inability to understand accents and speech synthesizers all rolled into one. If you have unlimited time, dealing with all three may work.
Otherwise, the language barrier may need to seriously be addressed first before she can consider being a competent computer user. Is there anyone available to provide a reading and spelling comprehension test? I realize that I probably provided more questions than answers, but with the little bit of information that was provided it's hard to come up with a meaningful action plan for this woman.

John



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