Beginner reading in English as a Second Language (ESL)

It is extremely difficult to learn to read in a language that we don’t speak. Imagine how frustrating it would be for an Australian child, living in Sydney, to decipher their very first learn-to-read book if it was about nomadic life in Mongolian language. Or perhaps a little close to home, learning to read in Aboriginal English, about digging for honey ants… to eat!!! These examples may seem extreme, absurd even, but that’s the reality facing so many Indigenous children and adults around Australia: they are learning to read in Standard Australian English, a language they often don’t speak, using books with stories and characters that they simply can’t relate to.

Using familiar language in beginning literacy is vital for facilitating sound-symbol and meaning-symbol correspondence. Beginner-readers need to employ psycholinguistic guessing strategies based on knowledge of the context in order to make these connections. Once these strategies have been developed, they can be transferred to another language.

Rosemary Swayo, a pre-school teacher in the NT shared her personal experience learning to read, “I support your theory since I also first learnt to read and write basic words in my language leading to reading and writing in English and that was so enjoyable!”

The development of the HARs was motivated by the paucity of appropriate and relevant reading material for Indigenous learners in Australia. We believe that until beginner-readers, have the opportunity to learn in their first language, as Rosemary did, they will continue to be significantly disadvantaged and probably also unmotivated in the learning processes.