Teaching absolute-beginner adult English
How do you teach English to adultswho speak almost none?
I teach Level 1A in Los Angeles. Some students arrive knowing only a few words of English. How do you begin a lesson when they cannot yet understand an explanation—or answer in a sentence?
I begin with a picture, a word they can understand from what they see, and a question they can answer with “yes” or “no.” I return that small answer as complete English, then ask the next question. The lesson begins as a real conversation.
“Is Ben short?” “No.”
“No, he isn’t short. Ben is tall.”
The first problem
What do you do before students have enough English for a lesson?
You can show a picture, name the noun, and ask students to memorize it or write it down. That may have a place.
But what if the teaching could begin as natural conversation?
Students who know very little still know something. A face, a gesture, and a picture can make the first words clear. A yes-or-no question gives them a genuine way to answer. I take that small answer and return it as a complete, understandable sentence.
The student says, “No.” I answer, “No, he isn’t short. Ben is tall.”
We are already communicating. We are also hearing the language again—with meaning attached.
The conversation begins
Watch the meaning build, one picture at a time.
These are the actual lesson slides. Play the sequence straight through. Students first recognize the people. Then they use what they can see to understand tall and short, answer questions, reject wrong answers, and hear each complete English sentence.
First, establish Ben
This is Ben.
Students look and listen. Nothing needs translating.
The picture and the name give everyone the same starting point.
Watch what changes. The pictures carry the meaning. The teacher keeps asking, listening, and returning each small response as complete English.
What the sequence is doing
- Meaning comes firstThe size difference is visible. Students do not need a grammar explanation to understand what the conversation is about.
- The first answer can be tiny“Is Ben short?” asks for only yes or no. A beginner can participate before being able to build a sentence.
- I give the answer back as EnglishA student says “No.” I restate it: “No, he isn’t short. Ben is tall.” The conversation continues and the student hears the complete thought.
- Liz changes the comparisonStudents see short Liz, then a tall version of Liz. “Is Liz tall?” has an obvious answer. The picture changes, so the same words now do new work.
- Repetition has a reasonLiz becomes short again. The question returns, the answer changes, and students have to keep following the meaning. They are participating in a conversation, not reciting a vocabulary list.
They learn new English from English they already understand.
The basic idea
New English grows from English they already understand.
I do not begin with an explanation and then ask students to perform. I begin with words they know and use them while we are actually communicating. A picture, gesture, contrast, or story helps the next word become understandable.
That distinction changed almost everything about the way I teach.
The theoretical foundation comes largely from Stephen Krashen's work on comprehensible input and the affective filter, and from TPRS — Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. But in practice, it is much simpler:
- Start with words students already understand.
- Give them a reason to care about it.
- Keep using the language.
- Ask questions they can actually answer.
The classroom itself becomes the lesson.
“Good morning.” “Are you tired?” “Does Maria like coffee?” “Does Tim want water or tequila?”
Every exchange is potentially comprehensible input. And if people laugh, disagree with me, correct me, or tell me I'm crazy — even better.
A worked example
A story can begin with almost nothing.
Tim is thirsty.
Tim wants water.
There is no water.
That's enough. Each sentence gets a clear picture. Then we stop. We talk about it.
Is Tim thirsty? Is Tim hungry? Does Tim want water or coffee? Does Tim want 100 bottles of water? Maria, what do you drink in the morning?
The story creates the need for the repetition.
The same language keeps returning, but it does not feel like repeating a sentence twenty times.
Adjusting the question
One Ben. Five possible questions.
These are not five levels or a claim about multilevel instruction. They are ways I can lower or raise the amount of English a question asks for in my Level 1A class.
Is Ben tall?
Is Ben tall or short?
Who is taller, Ben or Liz?
Are you taller or shorter than Ben?
Would being very tall make your life easier or harder? Why?
The lesson can stay the same
while the question becomes easier or more open.
The curriculum
The curriculum still matters.
I teach with BurlingtonEnglish Core Basics. It remains the spine of the course. I follow the modules and required language in sequence.
The storytelling doesn't replace the curriculum. It gives students another way into it.
If Burlington is teaching food vocabulary, present-tense verbs, or questions with do, those become the raw materials for that day's story and conversation. Students meet the same language repeatedly, in different forms — rather than once in a textbook exercise, and then never again.
The reinforcement cycle
The language keeps coming back.
The same day's language reaches each student from several directions — not four unrelated lessons, but one lesson arriving four ways.
The story
Pictures, questions, conversation
Burlington
The corresponding in-class lesson
Homework
The student Burlington lesson
TeacherMurray.com
Video, reading, vocabulary and games
The medium
The classroom is a small screen.
My students aren't in a room with me. They're on Zoom — often watching on a phone, alone, at the end of a long day.
That changes what teaching is. In a classroom, the thing that lowers a beginner's anxiety is the room itself. On a small screen, there is no room. There is only the picture.
So I treat the feed as part of the method, not as decoration:
- a professional microphone, so the voice is close and clear — never tinny, never far away
- real lighting, so I'm a warm face and not a dark shape
- strong, legible imagery, sized for a phone, so every word has something to hold onto
On a small screen, the affective filter is set by the picture.
A beginner who can hear every word and read every image — who feels a person on the other end — is a beginner whose anxiety drops enough to stay.
But that's not the whole reason they come back. Since I started teaching this way, I'm sometimes shocked by how many show up nearly every day. I don't think it's discipline. I think it's fear of missing out — not on a lesson they could watch later, but on the group experience. The live story. The laughing. Being called on. The thing that only happens once, and only if you're there.
Most online learning is something you do alone. This is the opposite.
It stops being me and them. It becomes them and each other.
I treat my students like customers, because they are. Attendance is voluntary — they vote with their feet. When someone apologizes for being late, I tell them the same thing every time: better late than never. You've got kids, jobs, real lives. Come whenever you can — I'll be here. Nobody shows up because I require it. They show up because the hour is worth it.
So that's the whole job, really: make the hour worth it — as easy, as clear, and as good as I can make it. I'm trying to start a habit.
For absolute beginners online — where quietly disappearing is the norm — that second number still surprises me. I don't have a controlled study, and I wish someone did; the effect of presence on persistence in online adult ed is basically unmeasured. But the students vote every day, and they keep showing up.
The evidence
Don't take my word for it.
Watch an actual Level 1A lesson.
Don't watch it for polished presentation. Watch what happens to one extremely simple piece of English.
Watch:
- how often the same language returns
- how repetition avoids becoming a conventional drill
- how yes/no questions let the newest students participate
- how choice and open questions invite different amounts of language
The class library
It isn't just Tim.
Every story becomes a video the day I teach it — each one built from a single Burlington lesson and the language it targets. Same characters, same style, made to the same standard, one after another.
Tim Is ThirstyA very easy story
Marco Wants to ReadTeacher talk
Her Name Is RosaNice to meet you
Buying CoffeeOpen & closed
Emma Likes PizzaA very easy story
What's Your Phone Number?A lost-dog story
Rosa Is from GuatemalaWhere are you from?
Sofia's FamilyMom, dad, sister, brother
New stories go up as I teach them. Students meet them again at TeacherMurray.com — with readings and games built on the same language.
The production problem
A teacher can imagine all of this. A teacher cannot make all of it by hand every day.
This kind of teaching creates a ridiculous production problem. A short story may require dozens of consistent illustrations. Then I need:
- a teaching deck
- story text
- a video version
- vocabulary activities
- games
- a web page
- homework reinforcement
And tomorrow I need another one. And I'm teaching multiple sections.
Before AI, the honest response was:
You can't possibly do this every day.
And that was correct. Now I can.
AI does the production.
The teacher does the teaching.
Two kinds of work.
The system can handle
- illustrations and visual continuity
- PowerPoint assembly
- video rendering
- game generation
- publishing
- recording and transcription
- coverage tracking
I still decide
- what language to teach
- the story
- the pacing
- the questions
- the circling
- when students are lost
- when something is funny
- when something isn't working
- every pedagogical decision
The production loop
The classroom edits tomorrow's lesson.
Suppose students are confused by short. I notice. I decide what they need. AI helps generate alternate visual contrasts. I build the best one into the next lesson, then watch what happens.
Students hesitate at “short.”
They need a clearer contrast.
Make alternate visuals.
Use the clearest version.
Check understanding live.
Keep, change, or try again.
A teacher can notice something at
8:45
and fix it for the 10:15 class.
For most of my career, I would notice a problem with a lesson and think, “I should really fix that someday.” But completely rebuilding a lesson could take hours. So the imperfect version survived year after year.
Under conventional production economics, teachers can notice problems for years without fixing them, because each correction costs too much.
Now the correction may cost a conversation.
For most of my career, the question was: what can I afford the time to make? Now the question is becoming: what would be best for these students tomorrow?
What didn't change
AI didn't replace the part of teaching I love.
I still tell the story.
I still decide when students need another repetition.
I still notice the woman who has stopped following.
I still tease somebody about drinking twelve cups of coffee.
I still decide that the lesson I made yesterday was terrible.
I still change direction because something funny happened in class.
Those are teaching decisions. What changed is that an idea I have tonight can actually become tomorrow morning's lesson. For me, that has been transformative.
About this work
This is a teaching project, not an AI demo.
I'm Murray Cohen, an adult ESL teacher in Los Angeles. This site documents what I am trying in real Level 1A classes.
I do not have data showing that this works in formally multilevel classes. The claims here stay with the classroom I actually teach.
The materials evolve because real students use them. Some work. Some fail. Some get rebuilt four times. That's part of the project.
I'm publishing what I learn because I think other teachers may be facing the same problem:
How far can we take comprehensible input
when the cost of creating the materials around it collapses?
What becomes possible when one teacher can finally produce almost as quickly as students can show him what they need?
Resources
Take whatever is useful.
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