Five Ways to Bring Phonics into High School ESL Without Making Teens Feel Like They're in Kindergarten

Purposeful phonics instruction in high school can be a game changer in for multilingual learners, but it's not easy to find great phonics resources for high school ESL. Here are a few strategies that have worked in my high school ESL classroom.

1. Don't Treat Students Who Can Already Read Like Beginners

It might seem like a distinction without a difference, but I get more engagement and participation when I say we are practicing pronunciation rather than just practicing reading, and the truth is, they definitely overlap.

Students, especially students who already read well in another language, don't want to be treated like beginners, and they shouldn't be. So rather than saying that I'm teaching them how to read again, I emphasize that I'm adding new sounds and rules to the reading schema they already have.

This is why I'm not a big fan of buying reading programs and software that aren't made specifically for ML students for a school. These programs often have great material for teaching a student who hasn't learned to read in any language yet, but they ignore everything students already know.

If a student is learning English in high school, they most likely already have reading down as a cognitive process. Our job as ESL teachers is to add new rules and sounds to what they already know.

2. Bring On the Choral Reading

When a student is nervous, their language abilities drop, so if you want to assess students' reading aloud abilities, asking one student to read in front of the class isn't going to give you a very good idea of their reading abilities, and it's not going to give them great practice. They will probably tune out until it's their turn, read without really taking in what they're reading, and then go back to tuning out.

Asking the whole class to read together at the same time gives students the opportunity to practice without feeling on the spot, and to stop and listen if they are struggling or getting lost. It also gives me a chance to catch and teach the most common errors the group is making right away.

3. Practice Tongue Twisters as a Class

There are great tongue twisters and tongue twister videos online. I like this series quite a bit, but you can also use AI to generate tongue twisters for specific phonics principles.

If you're thinking, "but will teens really enjoy tongue twisters?" They will. Especially if you make it a competition. Maybe a prize for the student who can say the tongue twister the fastest without making pronunciation mistakes.

4. Encourage Students to Think Like Linguists

Assignments and projects that ask students to compare the phonetics of their own language and English get students thinking like researchers , and helps them see that they aren't starting over. They are adding to an entire constellation of language they've been building over their entire lives.

5. Try Microsoft Reading Coach

This is one tool I really like. Students can use the program for free, or if you create a class in Microsoft Teams, you can assign reading passages for students to read aloud , and you'll receive a detailed report on their fluency, accuracy, and expression.

I'm still trying to get my students to like this tool as much as I do (it requires them to record themselves and some of my students treat having to record themselves speaking English like they are being asked to walk on igneous rock), but I've collected valuable reading data using this program, and my students do seem interested to see their results as well.