The Language Experience Approach at Home
Developing Early Reading and Writing Skills in Preschool Children
Jan 31, 2009 Barbara Abromitis
The Language Experience Approach (LEA) is a proven technique used by teachers to develop beginning reading and writing skills in preschool and primary classrooms, and more recently, with English Language Learners (ELL). It is based on the belief that thought, speech, and written language are interconnected; anything that a child can think, he can say, anything he can say can be written down, and anything written down from his dictation can be read by him and used for multiple learning tasks.
Language Experience Approach Procedures
The Language Experience Approach has three primary components:
- an experience, such as baking cookies, visiting the zoo, or walking to the park, through which the child’s thought and oral language is mediated by an adult
- dictation, during which the child tells about the experience in his or her own language and the adult writes it down
- language learning, which occurs as the child’s own written language is read, practiced, and used to teach other literacy skills
Language Experience Approach Learning Activities
Dictated language is meaningful because it is generated by children and reflects experiences that are significant to them. Because children have an inherent interest in seeing their words in print and the words themselves are meaningful to them, LEA text is especially appropriate for practicing early reading skills and behaviors that prepare children for formal reading instruction once they enter school. Parents can use LEA text to model, practice, or discuss
- one-to-one correspondence by reading the words and pointing to each as they are said
- left-to-right movement and the return sweep as the reader moves to the next line
- the difference between capital and lower-case letters
- letter-sound relationships
- the uses of punctuation
Language Experience Approach Example
A mother and son find an interesting bug in the backyard. They watch it together and talk about what it is doing and why. Later, the mother asks her son tell about the bug as she writes down his words, in sentences using correct spelling and punctuation. She reads it back to him and they try reading it together a few times.
The boy draws a picture to go with his writing and hangs both up. That evening, the boy reads his story with his parents again, and then reads it himself. In the coming days, he practices reading it with a parent, using his finger to point to the words as he says them, and occasionally his parents point out aspects of written language, such as capital letters and punctuation.
The mother takes the boy to the library to find more books on bugs and they continue to learn about them together. The following week he decides to write/dictate his own book of bug facts, and the process continues.
Making Language Experience Approach Books
Once children have experience with books, they often want to write their own. Parents can bind a child's writing in a variety of ways to make books that everyone will enjoy reading again and again. Try paper plate books bound with rings, accordion books, construction paper bound with yarn, and pop-up books. Children will also enjoy using a variety of medium such as crayons, markers, paints, chalk, and collage to make their illustrations.
Parents can use LEA to teach and reinforce the beginning literacy skills appropriate for preschool through the primary grades, but in a non-threatening, non-academic way. Children will love learning about their own written language and becoming real authors, too!
Further Reading
Dorr, Roberta. "Something Old is New Again: Revisiting Language Experience". The Reading Teacher, October, 2006, p. 138-146.
Schiller, Pam & others. Creating Readers. Beltsville, MD: Gryphon House, 2001.
Mother and Daughter Writing Together
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