Happy Friday everyone! We hope that you enjoyed our post on Monday which debuted our new series “What’s Your Story?”, where ESL volunteers and educators get to share their experiences with students.

Today, I actually won’t be writing much. Instead I will be letting one of Literacy Connexus’ TEX Trainers and Linguistics Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, Dr. Cynthia Kilpatrick, do all the talking, literally.

First, what is rhythm? And what on Earth does that have to do with ESL?

Rhythm is the sense of movement in your speech. In English this is characterized by the predictable way that we stress our words based on time, the number of syllables, and even importance. This is especially important when teaching English, because as we all know, it’s often not only what we say, but how we say it. The nuance of rhythm can easily be lost among English Language Learners between all of the new vocabulary and grammar they are trying to acquire, but it is still incredibly important for their fluency and communication.

So, where do you start? How do you teach rhythm to our students? Well, you could start here with us today. Here is a short video from Dr. Kilpatrick where gives us a little teacher talk. She defines rhythm, discusses why it’s important in English, and demonstrates an activity that can be used to teach rhythm to ESL students. You can watch the video by clicking on the picture below, or use this link. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Did you enjoy this video? Would you like to see more content like this? Leave a comment below or let us know at info@literacyconnexus.org. As always Happy Teaching!