ESOL Students Learn Phonics
It is exciting to me that with an Internet connection and programs such as Jim’s, becoming educated is a possibility opened up to people all over the world who would have had no chance at one otherwise.
I work in a resource center in Freetown, Transformation Education, run by a Christian missionary. I discovered Jim Williams’ phonics program for adults while searching online for a way to help Sul learn to read. (His education was interrupted by the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone – he was only 14 when it started and spent years hiding out in the jungle.) When I came across it, I saw the clarity with which Jim teaches, and his obvious dedication to teaching adults who have missed the important phonics component.
It is exciting to me that with an Internet connection, and programs such as Jim’s, becoming educated is a possibility opened up to people all over the world who would have had no chance at one otherwise. Thanks for doing such great work.
Christine Hogue / Freeport, Sierra Leone, Africa
Volunteer Instructor
Many of my students who I thought had dyslexia, turned to be only in need of explicit phonetic instruction that is provided in your program.
I teach the program here in Iraq where students of different grade levels have very poor reading and spelling skills. Their difficulties go back to poor phonetic instruction in early school years. The We All Can Read Program was the most comprehensive program I found, and it teaches the basics that my students need. I like the way it is organized and easy to use. For younger students I use it along with Secret Stories Pictures because young students enjoy Visuals and Colors that are not present in the book. In general, I highly recommend the program for students of special needs and those who lack the basics of English phonetics.
I strongly believe in your approach. Many of my students who I thought had dyslexia, turned to be only in need of explicit phonetic instruction that is provided in your program. Unfortunately, many of the well known publishers in the market don’t offer such instruction. I had to search a lot to find your program.
Feel free to share.
Rihab Ali Atwi / Basra, Iraq
Read Other Letters Received from ESOL Students
English is a phonetic language – letters represent sounds.
It is critical for English Language Learners (ELL) or students who are English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to learn the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent. Our program starts at the most fundamental level by teaching the sounds represented by the individual letters of the English alphabet.
Gradually additional information is introduced – short vowel sounds, consonant blends, consonant teams, rules governing syllable division, and rules that identify the basic syllable patterns of English. Students learn to read and spell and pronounce one-syllable words and then two, three, four, five and six syllable words are introduced.
Our online program is designed to allow students to work independently at a computer whether at work, school, or in the home. A subscription provides unlimited access to all 720 of our online lessons which combine video, audio and text. Our first ten lessons are free for anyone to access; no registration of any kind is required.
Our online license provides access to a complete ESL phonics program – no additional purchase of any kind is necessary. Our online license includes the following elements. And you don’t even need a computer! Access our lessons on your smartphone or tablet.
- 720 lessons that combine audio, video, and text – all lessons are printable!
- All 141 lessons from our Supplemental Fluency Reader – all lessons are printable!
- Over 400 consumable worksheets
- One hundred plus hours of video content
- 203 quizzes are embedded in our online program
- Our first 10 online phonics lessons are free.
Students hear every word in our online program pronounced clearly and repeatedly. Students after hearing the words pronounced, then spell those same words. This process of first reading words accurately, then reading the words fluently, and finally spelling the words is a systematic, structured and proven method to teach the underlying foundation skills of English phonics. By mastering English phonics, students will quickly be able to learn to read, write and comprehend in English. English phonics is the core, foundation skill necessary for ESOL students to master in order to be able to achieve success in learning English as a Second Language!
Most ESL programs do not teach English phonics in a thorough and comprehensive manner and instead teach English phonics in an arbitrary, hit-and-miss fashion. Our program is effective because we present our phonics instruction in a tightly-sequenced, systematic manner, and we teach English phonics in its entirety. Students need to start at the beginning and learn the entire English phonics code or else they will have critical gaps in their understanding of the relationship between letters and sounds in English.
Phonics is a skill and requires a great deal of practice to master. Our online program makes it possible for students to work as long as is necessary in any given lesson to gain mastery before proceeding to more advanced lessons. Many ESL classes are crowded; sometimes classes are not even available. Students find it difficult and/or expensive to receive the one-to-one, intensive instruction necessary to gain mastery. Our online program solves this dilemma by making it possible for an individual to learn and practice English reading and spelling skills at home with our online program. Subscribing to our online program is like hiring a full-time reading specialist available to work with you individually at school or at home twenty-four hours a day/seven days a week. Our online reading and phonics program really does work by providing a critical foundation in phonics for individuals who are learning English as a Second Language!