**When teaching reading to ESL students just remember they can already read in another language**

Over the past few years English as a Second Language has really became popular, and many students from kindergarten to retired are trying to learn English. And with the proliferation of the

internet it is becoming easier to find native speakers to talk too, but to read the internet they have to learn to read.

Most ESL students already know international phonics so they can usually sound out the words correctly.

But even if they can say the words correctly it doesn’t mean they can spell them. With ESL reading they need sight words and reading comprehension. The students learn a lot of the words as sight words but they still have to be taught grammar. As with learning to read, practice makes perfect, so the more reading the students do the more they will learn. The same problems arise as in teaching your child to read and that is reading comprehension.

With international phonics they can read nearly fluently but they don’t always understand what they are reading or the student gets the meaning completely wrong.

English is prone to confuse people learning it. That is where experience and a good English plus whatever language dictionary comes in. The internet has made learning English incredibly easy and now there are many free and not so free dictionaries and translators on the internet. You just type in what you want to know, click your language and the answer is right there. Another way is to read a page in English to see if you understand what it is all about, then run a translator through the page and see if you got the meaning correct.

For more information about reading courses I recommend including a Montessori course see our Teach Reading page.