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Teaching Beginner ELLs with Picture Books 

By Ana Lado 
Marymount University 

Arlington, Virginia 
ana.lado@marymount.edu 

 
 

Tellability is applied to selecting pictures books with features that mirror the 
types of adaptations used by language teachers. These books provide 
students with scaffolds for comprehension, expression, language-focused 
study, and fluency. The report features a Language Experience Approach 
lesson using a picture book with tellability. 
 
Keywords:  ELLs; ESOL; TESOL; Communicative Language Teaching; Picture 
Books; Tellability; Instructional Conversation; Language Experience 
Approach (LEA); Beginner ELLs 

 

Picture books communicate meaning through direct experiences with text 

and visual media (Galda, Sipe, Liang, & Cullinan, 2013; Sipe, 1998; 

Wolfenbarger & Sipe, 2000). Authors and illustrators embed their texts, 

graphics, and formats with features that purposely prompt interaction. 

Typical features include large fonts for readers to shout, flaps to lift, and 

questions to answer by examining an illustration. Texts and visuals are static; 

they do not change. In comparison, the socially mediated means of 

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mailto:ana.lado@marymount.edu


communication by the teacher and the students’ responses are on-the-spot 

language that is fluid communication. Taken as a whole, picture books are a 

multidimensional medium that is a rich resource for a broad range of 

instructional situations.   

Some picture books are ideal for teaching beginner English Language 

Learners (ELLs) because they have embedded features that direct students’ 

experience with English that is accessible. The book’s features scaffold oral 

instructional conversations which prompt the type of language needed for 

successful communicative language teaching (Lado, 2012).  These types of 

books save teachers from having to plan mediation activities between the 

language in a book and the language abilities of the ELLs.  

Finding the right book for teaching beginner ELLs requires going 

beyond a readability or leveled book formula. These formulas focus on text 

and not the difficulty of the overall language presented through the combined 

experience of the text, graphics, format, and oral experience. Most annotated 

lists of picture books do not have enough information about levels of difficulty 

for oral instruction because they address readability. Teachers of beginner 

ELLs need information about a book’s tellability. They need information about 

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features that prompt successful participation of ELLs during communicative 

language teaching.   

I have developed a list of picture books for ELLs by applying the concept 

of ‘tellability.’ Although the study of tellability covers many types of narratives 

including instructional conversations (Baroni, 2014), few studies have applied 

it to teaching ELLs.  Tellability was coined by sociolinguist, William Labov in 

1972. He coined the term while analyzing solicited narratives of African-

American youths about specific personal experiences. Labov’s analysis began 

with asking the question “why this narrative…is felt to be tellable; in other 

words, why the events of the narrative are reportable” (p. 370).  The study of 

an oral story’s tellability is dependent on a specific context and includes 

examination of the discourse features used by storytellers to keep the 

audience’s interest. We know that an insignificant incident can be made 

noteworthy at the hands of a good storyteller and a noteworthy incident can 

be ruined by a poor storyteller. We also know that a good story teller will tell 

the same story differently to different types of listeners. For example, a story 

that is told with a lot of detail to a native English speaker will be told with less 

detail to beginner ELLs.  

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Picture Books with Tellability  

Teachers use picture books with beginner ELLs to support and prompt 

interactions. These interactions combine the communication mediums of the 

picture book and the teacher’s oral communication. Teachers engage ELLs in 

accessing the English in the book’s text and the English in the real life 

instructional conversation about it. Meaning is accessed through the interplay 

of text, image, and the experience (Sipe, 1998). The tellability of a book lies in 

the interplay of the static features of the book and the fluid features of a 

teacher’s oral language presentation of the book.  

Just as some teachers are better storytellers for beginner ELLs than 

others, some picture books contain better scaffolds for English 

comprehension and language learning than others. The best books for 

beginner ELLs contain particular types of features in their text, illustrations, 

and formats. These books will free a teacher from having to develop extra 

mediation between the English in the book and that of the ELLs. These books 

also free ELLs from depending on the teacher for help with recall of newly 

learned English because they can refer to the book for help.   

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Teachers scaffold conversation in order to avoid the typical breakdowns 

inherent in interactions with beginners. Typical linguistic scaffolds include 

limiting the amount of language that the ELL must process by providing 

repetition, pauses, and nonlinguistic scaffolds, such as gestures, pictures, and 

objects.  Let me describe some of the ways picture books prompt language 

learning in beginner ELs. 

Instructional Conversations Based on Picture Books 

The following examples illustrate ways that picture books mirror 

teacher adaptations. In each case, assume that comprehension was aided by 

transparent illustrations of the content.  In these text examples, the forward 

slash indicates a new page. 

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Example #1 Text with Sentence Patterns 

This is the sugar / that makes the pie filling. / 
This is the bowl / that holds sugar that makes the pie filling.  / 
This is the flour / that makes the pie crust. / 
This is the pan / that holds the flour that makes the pie crust. /  

Explanation 

This type of text helps beginners in two ways. First, the page breaks create a pause 

between sentences. This allows the student to process the input and mirrors the frequent 

pauses teachers make when interacting with beginners. Second, this text has a 

grammatical pattern in its sentences. When texts have patterned sentences, it lends itself 

to explicitly directing students’ attention to the grammar. I provide it by showing the 

sentence with blanks and having students substitute words in the same class in the 

blank. This is the _sugar/bowl/flour____ that _____makes/holds__ the _pie filling/pie crust___.  

Once mastered, students can substitute other objects in the environment into the 

sentence pattern.  

A number of the books provided at the end of this article have patterned 

sentences. Some examples are The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred 

(Vamos, 2011), The Apple Pie that Papa Baked (Thompson, 2007), The 

Breakfast We Made for Mother (Neitzel,1997) and The House I’ll Build for the 

Wrens(Neitzel,1997). In the next example, the text and format differ from this 

patterned text example in that it is a picture dictionary and does not have 

sentences but labeled illustrations.  

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Example #2 Picture Dictionary 

FRUITS  Apple    Banana    Orange    Grapes / 
 
BAKING  Sugar    Flour    Butter    Baking Soda   /  

Explanation 

Teachers of beginners can use this second text in two ways. First, it provides students 

with opportunities to engage in processing vocabulary by asking them the same question 

of each of the examples on the page, “Is this a fruit?” or “Is an apple a fruit?”  But this 

picture dictionary does not include a question and answer example explicitly in the text.   

Second, this format lends itself to explicit teaching of semantic categories. I would have 

students make word cards to mix and sort and in this way learn vocabulary through 

association with semantic categories.  Once students have mastered the vocabulary for 

each semantic category, they can add words for other fruits and baking ingredients to 

their stacks of cards.  

Some examples of books that have labeled pictures are Feast for 10 

(Falwell, 2008), Bembo’s Zoo: An Animal ABC Book (de Vicq de Cumptich, 

2000) and) One Potato: A Counting Book of Potato Prints (Pomeroy, 1996. 

These are listed in the booklist provided at the end of the article. In the next 

example, the text and format differs in amount of features as well as the type 

of features that are compatible with communicative language teaching 

activities.  

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Example #3 Sentence Patterns, Repetitions, and Active Verbs 

This is how a snake slithers.  Can you slither like a snake?  /   
Yes, I can. Watch me slither. / 
This is how a kangaroo hops. Can you hop like a kangaroo? / 
Yes, I can. Watch me hop.  / 
This is how a bird flies. Can you fly like a bird? / 
Yes, I can. Watch me fly. / 

Explanation  

Teachers of beginners can use this text for several reasons.  First, students can chant the 

repetitive phrase, “Yes I can.”  Second, it lends itself to making word cards for animals 

and actions. Like in the example above, these can be used for matching and sorting. Once 

mastered, students can expand by adding words for familiar animals, such as bats for 

flying. Third, it contains a model to use in teaching a question and answer routine. This 

question and answer discourse pattern lends itself to teaching students to ask yes/no 

oral questions about actions.  Once mastered, students can expand the question to ask 

about other actions, such as asking them to imitate other animal actions or student’s 

actions.  Finally, the meaning of the active verbs in this text can be demonstrated through 

gestures showing slithering, hopping and flying.   

Examples of books that have similar text features compatible with 

communicative language teaching that are found on the booklist include 

Piñata (Emberley, 2004), What’s Cookin’? (Coffelt, 2003) and Perfect Square 

(Hall, 2011). An example of a lesson using Hall’s book is included in another 

section of this article.   

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These three examples of text are illustrations of picture books’ texts and 

formats that prompt highly contextualized and successful conversations. They 

scaffold instructional conversations and accelerate language learning. Each 

example prompted different instructional activities. The first text had 

patterned sentences that prompted substitution of words in the same word 

class (nouns for nouns). The second text was a picture dictionary that lent 

itself to making words cards to sort by the semantic categories. The third text 

provided scaffolds for more instructional interactions. Students could easily 

learn to chant the repetitive phrase, copy and match word cards, engage in 

question and answer routines, and to learn the active verbs using physical 

gestures, such as Total Physical Response (TPR). In TPR the language learner 

responds to a teacher who gives verbal commands and by imitating the 

teacher’s actions.  

A teacher might decide to use TPR with a picture book about baking a 

pie. The active verbs might be implied in the text and shown in illustrations of 

people mixing sugar, rolling crust, and pouring filling. However, when active 

verbs are not in the text or in a labeled illustration, it requires the teacher to 

produce them. When the teacher adds the verbs on-the-spot, the transient 

nature of this oral input might make it difficult for beginner ELLs to later 

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recall them without the teacher present. The key to finding books for ELLs is 

to examine them for features that match teacher instructional adaptations.     

Teacher adaptations are based on instructional strategies and 

approaches. I like using those that integrate oral and written language 

instruction. One that works well with using picture books is the Language 

Experience Approach (LEA).     

The Language Experience Approach and Beginners ELLs 

LEA integrates and reinforces oral and written language using a 

recursive process (Nelson, & Linek, 1998).  The written material is derived 

from the students’ telling the teacher about an experience and the teacher 

taking it down in a dictation. Then the students learn to read this dictated 

material. In its purest form it does not depend on having a prewritten text. 

However, I found that using picture books increased participation of beginner 

ELLs.   

LEA provides students with integrated oral and written language and 

covers the four strands of balanced communicative language teaching (Nation, 

1996).  The four strands are independent of any particular methodology. 

Comprehension activities provide students essential opportunities to 

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understand the message. Without comprehension no language learning takes 

place. Expression activities provide deeper processing of English as students 

engage in saying or writing a message to someone. Language learners benefit 

from opportunities to explicitly attend to language items, for example 

studying spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and discourse patterns.  Finally, 

students need to develop speed and accuracy of the four skills of listening, 

speaking, reading, and writing. Books with tellability features address oral 

and written comprehension, expression, language-focused study and fluency 

strands.  

LEA lessons lend themselves to accomplishing each strand.  

Comprehension is supported with the real objects and when accompanied by 

a picture book. Expression is supported when students engage with each 

other, such as asking “Can you pass me a potato?” “What did you make?” 

Teachers conduct language-focused learning by explicitly directing ELLs' 

attention to writing conventions, such as difference between the writing in the 

book and which appears as a list (What you will need: potatoes, paint brush…) 

and other types of text (The teacher said that we needed a potato, a paint 

brush…). Finally, LEA creates many opportunities for building fluency through 

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repeated rereading of the book and the dictated chart. The figure below 

replicates an LEA chart I used after making potato prints.  

 

Fig. 1:  LEA Chart 

 

Lesson Plan using LEA and a Picture Book 

Let me give an example of a LEA lesson used with one book. Perfect 

Square (Hall, 2011) is essentially a poetic narrative about resilience. The text 

follows a pattern. Each day of the week something is done to the square, for 

example ripping or shattering. Each day of the week this is followed by the 

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square making itself into something new. For example, after being cut into 

pieces and poked full of holes on a Monday, the square makes itself into a 

fountain.  

The First Step: Sharing An Experience  

Using this book as a prompt, the lesson begins with ensuring 

comprehension of the language sample, i.e. the text. Hall has transparently 

illustrated the meaning of each patterned verse. For example, students see 

examples of the actions (cut, poked, torn, shredded…) and of the things the 

square becomes (fountain, garden, bridge…). You can reinforce oral 

comprehension by asking ELLs to mimic the actions of verbs or point to 

objects on the page. You can reinforce written comprehension by having them 

copy words and phrases from the text onto separate cards for matching 

activities. Finally, they can listen to the teacher’s intonation and imitate the 

ways this can further their understanding of the text.  

Second Step: Creating a Student Generated Text  

There are plenty of opportunities during the next phase of the lesson to 

imitate the teacher’s reading.  The essence of LEA is an experience. So ELLs 

would continue by imitating the book by ripping, poking, shattering… paper 

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squares and rebuilding them into fountains, mountains, windows… As they 

engage in this, students can describe their actions to each other.  This 

experience becomes the basis for their story. The students are placed in small 

groups and individuals dictate their experience to the teacher. The teacher 

writes what the students say on a large chart. If a student is silent, the teacher 

prompts him or her to consult the picture book or to ask a buddy. Once the 

dictation is complete, everyone reads it.  

Third Step: Reading and Assimilating the Language  

This dictated story is used for explicit teaching of English. For example, 

as can be seen in the example of a dictated LEA story, the teacher directed 

students’ attention to the use of direct quotes.  Other follow-up activities with 

the LEA story chart help students assimilate English by continuing the gradual 

move from controlled to independent activities, such as having students   copy 

a favorite page and then create a new one of their own. 

 

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Fig. 2:   Example of Student Created Page. 

It is also very important to conduct some language-focused study of the 

text. First, I wrote the sentence for each day of the week on the board making 

sure that these lined up one after another so that the sentence pattern is 

obvious. This made it easier for students to substitute and rewrite them. 

Students transposed and substituted the days of the week 

(Wednesday/Thursday), the action verbs (shattered/shredded), or the nouns 

(park/bridge).  For example: 

 

 

On ____________ (day of the week), 
the square was __________ (action 

verb).  So it made itself into a 
_________________ (object).   

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Second, with Perfect Square, I wrote the text onto sentence strips for each day 

of the week, placed these randomly on a table, and had students order them. I 

taught them the ordinal numbers, first, second… and made a list of the ordinal 

numbers on the board. Students learned to list the days by number, “Monday 

is the first day of the week.” 

Fourth Step: Extending Language Learning  

LEA leads to independent work. I had students brainstorm new verbs 

and objects to generate new sentences. We wrote a new book about another 

shape, such as a perfect rectangle, triangle, or circle. Once we completed this 

class book, students wrote one of their own.  Finally, they engaged in 

repetitive fluency activities. They chose to either reread or recite Hall’s Perfect 

Square, the class book, or the one they generated.  

The steps to using a picture book to generate successful instructional 

conversations with LEA are summarized below.  

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LEA Dictation Using a Picture Book with Beginner ELLs 

Step 1: Shared Experience 
Begin with a class experience, such as a field trip or hands-on 
activity with a picture book about the experience. The book 
should provide scaffolds for comprehension and expression of 
the language used with this experience.  

Step 2: Create the Text 
Have students take turns dictating their experience as you 
transcribe it onto a chart. For example, Linea said, “I made a 
perfect green square.”  Lee said, “I poked my square.” 

Step 3: Read the Text 
Read the chart story aloud together in a variety of ways. Then 
conduct oral and written activities to gradually release them 
into being able to use the newly acquired English on their own.    

Step 4: Extension 
Engage in a variety of instructional conversations and written 
activities utilizing the language learned. 

Fig. 3:  Steps to an LEA Dictation 
 

Reflections 

Hall’s book Perfect Square was used to illustrate the way picture books with 

particular features provide ideal support for beginner ELLs. This book had 

tellability for implementing LEA.  It enriched their experience with 

comprehensible English, supported their engagement in oral conversation, and 

provided scaffolds for their production of their own written material.  

This book was not selected based on readability criteria but its tellability 

features. Specific features in all three mediums of communication, text, graphic, 

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and format, made it a perfect match for teaching beginner ELLs with the LEA. The 

following is a list of other books that are compatible with LEA for beginner ELLs.  

A list of other picture books with features that are compatible with other 

communicative language teaching strategies can be found in my book and in its 

accompanying online annotated list.  

  

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References 

Baroni, R.  “Tellability.” In P. Hühn, et al. (Eds.), The living handbook on  

narratology. Hamburg:  Hamburg University. Retrieved from 

http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/tellability  

Galda, L., Sipe, L., Liang, L., & Cullinan, B. (2013). Literature and the child. (8th  

ed.). Boston, MA:  Cengage Learning.  

Hall, M. (2011). Perfect square. New York, NY: Greenwillow.  

Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English  

vernacular (Vol. 3).  Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Lado, A. (2012). Teaching beginner ELLs with picture books: Tellability.  

Thousand Oaks, CA:  Corwin/Sage.  

Nation, P. (1996). The four strands of a language course. TESOL in Context,  

6(2), 7-12. Retrieved from 

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-

nation/1996-Four-strands.pdf 

Nelson, O., & Linek, W. (1998). Practical classroom applications of language  

experience: Looking back, looking forward. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.  

Wolfenbarger, C., & Sipe, L. (2007).  A unique visual and literary art form:  

Recent research on picturebooks. Language Arts, 83(3), 273-280. 

19                                                                      GATESOL in Action, Vol. 2, Fall 2014 

http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/tellability
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-nation/1996-Four-strands.pdf
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-nation/1996-Four-strands.pdf

