76 VIGNETTE 6: NATALINA L’ORFANO BLENDED INSTRUCTION FOR LEARNERS AT EMERGING LEVELS OF LITERACY Précis The Idea Most newcomers to Canada who arrive with a high level of fluency in their own language – and perhaps basic English skills – can expect, with the help of LINC language instruction, to make steady progress toward acquiring functional proficiency in English. The situation is quite different for newcomers who are illiterate or semi-literate in their own language and have had no previous exposure to English. Consequently, ESL literacy learners need an entirely different level of support, instruction, and guided practice. Natalina L’Orfano, a Foundation Level ESL instructor with the Ottawa Catholic School Board since 2017, is constantly looking for better ways to engage literacy learners and accelerate their progress. In recent years, teaching basic computer skills to literacy learners as a precursor to using computer-assisted language learning to augment classroom instruction has become an exciting new focus of her work. The Learners Natalina’s students have limited literacy skills in their own language, and have not yet reached the basic Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB)-1 level for English proficiency. Most arrive in class able to speak only single words in English. In Natalina’s most recent class, the four men and eleven women from Somalia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan ranged in age from their mid-20s to mid-60s. A third of the class had from 0-3 years of schooling, often due to civil strife in their home country when they were children. The remaining class members had from four to twelve years of education. Most of the students were able to use Smartphones for a variety of functions, but none of the students knew how to use laptop or desktop computers, which require a different set of skills. The Approach For foundation-level students, blended learning (i.e., a combination of classroom and online learning) is not possible until they have acquired basic computer and language skills. The importance of acquiring these skills in tandem means that students are introduced to laptop computers as early as possible. In Natalina’s classes, the laptop of choice is the Google Chromebook. At first, Chromebooks are brought to class once a week. Making her instructions and demonstrations as straightforward as she can, Natalina explains how to “navigate” a computer, beginning with how to enter the multi-character password assigned by the school board. For students who don’t yet recognize some of the characters they are being asked to enter, this is not a trivial task. Natalina and support staff walk around the class, helping any student who is having problems. As Natalina tells it, they’ll say, “Teacher, password no good. They’re convinced there’s something wrong with the password or the computer.” She and her assistants patiently demonstrate the skill once more, watching over the student’s shoulder as they try again. It may take a few tries, but once students have figured it out, they are one step closer to taking full advantage of the world of technology-assisted learning. Interested in Learning More? Instructor Profile Context In Natalina’s Own Words Application of Technology Standards CC-BY-NC-SA 2025 New Language Solutions Avenue Instructor Standards for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning, version 1.2
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