ESOL Resources

This is a comprehensive 35 week Scheme of Work for Level 2 ESOL learners covering speaking and listening, reading and writing. Fully referenced to the adult ESOL curriculum. Each session could cover 2 hours or be adapted for shorter or longer sessions.

This resource uses a flow chart to help guide learners to the correct use of apostrophes.

Editor’s note
Updated Aug 2016. now includes irregular plurals such as ‘children’.

Intro to using a thesaurus to find synonyms and antonyms.

This worksheet was created to encourage students to recognize the features of written instructions (numbered lists to show the chronological order of the steps – use of imperative verbs) and explanations (headings written as questions which the text answers).

Editor’s note
Functional English mapping has been added.

Some games to play with literacy or Functional English groups for revision.
Ideal for Entry 3-Level 2

Editor’s note
The students make the games, play them and then discuss them. A great combination!

Students fill in the blanks using the words given, and then they can use them in their own sentences. Very common words that I notice my students have trouble with.

This is great as a warm-up activity or a bit of end-of-term fun. It is suitable for a mixed ability group of numeracy learners, or indeed literacy or ESOL learners. This quiz tests learners’ knowledge of how old someone has to be in order to do certain things legally, e.g. be a blood donor. It can be used in small group or pair work (which worked well for me) as well as individually.

A 12-question test, designed for an Adult Numeracy class consisting largely of ESOL speakers.
Covers the terms “import” and “export”, since these often crop up in exams. Also mean, mode, median and range, and the meanings of “discount”, “under”, “approximately”, “difference” and “enlarged”. A little fraction revision, too: students have to identify 1/3 as “one-third”.

This is a reading exercise I will be using with my L1-2 readers here in the U.S.

My students all speak Spanish as their first language and there are many Spanish cognates in the text. We have also been working on “who/what/when/where/why” questions in class, so that is the focus of the questions.

Editor’s note Also suitable for Functional English.

Students design a board game to demonstrate their learning. This can incorporate IT skills (Word template provided below) or can be done with paper, card and pens.

I originally did this with an E2E group and it proved popular. It’s an alternative to the “design a poster” task to review learning. The instructions are set out as a board game. it can be used for literacy, numeracy, ICT or ESOL.