The Language Experience Approach – An Outline of Its Use at Koonibba

Abstract

From a child’s point of view, some of the main concepts of the language-experience approach to the teaching of reading are:

What I think about, I can talk about.

What I talk about can be expressed in other ways.

Anything I write can be read.

I can read what I write and what other people write.

What I say and write is as important to me as what other people have written for me to read.

This approach was adopted at Koonibba school at the beginning of last year in an endeavour to try to make reading more meaningful and interesting for the children. Excursions became a vital part of the language program. Each week the “classroom” was found somewhere within a hundred mile radius of the reserve. Places were visited along the coast as well as areas beyond the dingo-proof fence. Transport varied from trucks, land rovers, boats, canoes, buses, station wagons, on foot, utilities and a tugboat. The premises that reading should come from the child’s experiences and that all children want to read and write were adopted here. The child’s wish to communicate with others about the excursion was also capitalized upon.