Teacher Read-Alouds in an ESL Context

L1 and L2 practitioners and researchers advocate teacher read-alouds in the English language classroom as they can bring about numerous language learning benefits. Read-alouds not only motivate students to read but also develop a variety of skills that makes them proficient readers. However, there are limited studies describing how read-alouds are carried out for the purpose of achieving specific objectives. In view of this, this paper showcases a teacher read-aloud session in an English as a second language (ESL) context designed with three objectives in mind, namely to promote comprehension and therefore language acquisition, to convey reading as a joyous activity and to demonstrate how to engage with a book effectively. The session is deemed to be worthy of showcasing as the read-aloud has been designed on the basis of principles of good reading instruction and focuses on objectives that are valued in ESL classrooms.