Language Experience Approach

What is a Language Experience ?
 Language experience is a strategy to develop and reinforce
reading and writing by using personal experiences and
natural language. In this approach, the students
themselves initiate experiences through projects and other
resulting interactive activities. In their authentic language
students dictate their experiences to the teacher who
translates their story into written English. With this
documentation as a basic material for reading and writing
instruction, the teacher helps the students see the
connection between what they signed and what was
written. The teacher uses this language experience to
develop new vocabulary, comprehension and basics of
English grammar.

Language Experience : A Method
 Language experience approach is a method actually
uses students own words to help them read.
Your student may draw a picture of Dad in a car.
In that case you would write underneath the drawing;
Dad is in the car.
You continue to collect drawings your students
makes and write a short sentence underneath each
drawing. A picture of a playground would read. We
went to the playground.

When you’ve collected enough pictures you
make them into a book for your students to read
again and again. Write underneath the drawing a
description your student gives for drawing. This
way your student will remember much better
what is written.
First you will write every word and sentence.
Slowly your student will begin to trace over the
words you have written and finally the student
will write the words and sentences alone.

 Some people use this method as a first
approach to reading in order to help their
student understand that what they’ve drawn
and what you have written is a form of
communication between the student and
yourself.
 The Language experience approach supports
children’s concept development and vocabulary
growth while offering many opportunities for
meaningful reading and writing activities
through the use of personal experiences and
oral language.

Language Experience: A Teaching Approach
Personal Experience
( Dewey,1938)
Literacy Instruction
( Huey,1908)
Introduction
Language Experience Approach
Community Literacy
(Higgins,1995)
Service Learning
( Herzberg,1994)

Five-Step Process
1. Teacher and student discuss the topic to be the
focused on the dictation. Observations and
1
opinions are exchanged. Oral Language skills are
developed and reinforced.
2. The Students dictates an account or story to
the teacher, who records the statements to
construct the basic reading materials

3. The students read the story several times until the story
has become quite familiar. Reading comprehension is made
easier by the fact that the student is reading material that is
self generated
4. Individual story words are learned, the
other reading skills are reinforced through
teacher-designed activities related to the
story

5. Students move from reading their own
dictation to reading other-author materials as
they develop confidence and skill with reading
process

Theoretical Support
 As Jones( 1986) notes, the basic approach to LEA as
outlined in the five-step process above draws on several
key language learning principles

1. Learning occurs from
the known to unknown
2.Learning occurs most
effectively in general to
specific direction
3.Struggling adult
readers usually have a low
self-concept as readers
and need to be assured of
some immediate success
4. Everyone reads at every
LEA session

Speaking
Four
Skills
writing
Grammatical
skills
WHOLE LANGUAGE
reading

HOW DO WE MOST EFFECTIVELY ADAPT
THE LEA?
 Providing all the input for sometime and taking the
heat off the student ( Wales,1994,p.203)
 Advocates the use of picture or word cues to initiate
and contextualize topics of conversation (Ringel,1989)
 Cooperative Learning

LEA follow-up lessons on:
•Grammar
•Lexicon
•Pronunciation
•spelling

The LEA
Although there is no one “super method” for
language teaching, LEA offers a useful and effective
method for beginning literacy instruction by linking
the students’ language and experience in learning

 Language experience encourages students to explore,
think and talk. This talk, during and after the language
experience, provides many opportunities to expand
students’ vocabulary, extend their knowledge of
grammar, and scaffold their interactions.
 Language experience activities also help to provide a
bank of experiences that students have in common.
These can be recalled and referred to in subsequent
learning.

 Language experience activities are often
related to current topics or to students’
own lives. They can be particularly
effective when linked to a specific text.
Examples:
●viewing a DVD about native New
Zealand birds before or after reading Did
You Shake Your Tail Feathers?
●visiting the supermarket after
reading Finding Mum to find the items in
the story
and making a meal out of the ingredients.
●using skype to talk to students in
another school before or after reading
Talking to Nanny.

The role of the educator
 to model the writing and the thinking aloud process;
 to develop writing skills and introduce different writing
genres through mini-lessons;
 to promote rereading as a strategy for students to
remember what they are writing about;
 to develop purpose of writing and writing for an
audience;
 to demonstrate appropriate writing conventions.

Observers will see:
 students and teacher thinking aloud about their
experience while writing about it;
 the teacher modeling the translation of students’
signs into an appropriate written version;
 students rereading what they have dictated
 Students documenting their language experience
through pictures and written compositions

How to record language experience:
 Ask students to sign what they are learning.
 Act as a scribe and write in English what is signed.
 Sign back to the students to make sure they agree with the
story that was written down.
 “Think aloud” to demonstrate processes to students.
 Relate the complexity of the text to the language level of
the students.
 Let the students contribute drawings or other art to
enhance the writings.
 Use mini lessons to focus on specific language or reading
skills.

REFERENCES
Bruffee, K. A. (1993).
Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of
knowledge. London: John Hopkins UP.
Bruner, J. S. (1983).
In search of mind: Essays in autobiography. NY: Harper.
Caplan, M. (1989).
Making it meaningful: A whole language guide for literacy tutors. Saint John, N.B.:
Laubach Literacy of Canada.
Dewey, J. (1938).
Experience and education: The Kappa Delta Pi lecture. New York: Macmillan.
Dixon, C. N., & Nessel, D. D. (1983).
Language experience approach to reading and writing: Language experience
reading for second language learners. Hayward, CA: Alemany Press

Herzberg, B. (1994). Community service and critical teaching. College
composition and communication, 45, 307-319.
Huey, E. B. (1908). The psychology and pedagogy of reading. New York:
Macmillan. [Republished (1968) by M.I.T. Press in Cambridge: MA]
Jones, E. V. (1986). Teaching reading through experience. Life Learning, 9(7),
Lamoreaux, L., & Lee, D. M. (1943). Learning to read through experiences. NY:
Appleton-Century-Crofts. Morris, R. (1979). Success and failure in learning to read.
Hammondsworth: Penguin.
Nessel, D. D., & Jones, M. B. (1981). The language-experience approach to reading: A
handbook for teachers. NY: Teachers College Press.
Peck, W., Flower, L., & Higgins, L. (1995). Community literacy. College composition and
communication, 46, 199-222.
Ringel, H. (1989). English as a second language: Language experience approach-instructional
guide and ESL reader. Philadelphia: National Service Center. Educational
Resources Information Clearinghouse Document No. 318 275.
Spinner, J. (1997, March 13) Columnist’s criticism of composition courses inaccurate,
wrongheaded. Arizona Daily Wildcat, p. 4

Stauffer, R. G. (1980). The language experience approach to the teaching
of reading. NY: Harper & Row.
Wales, M. L. (1994). A language experience approach (LEA) in adult
immigrant literacy programs in Australia. Journal of Reading, 38, 200-
208.
Wurr, A. J. & Rutkin, T. J. (1998). The language experience approach:
Linking experience and education for adult L2 learners. Shimonoseki
Municipal University

Language Experience Approach

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