Dear librarians,

We so appreciate your non-stop efforts to make libraries accessible for ALL readers! Hooray for libraries.

We’d also like to share a little knowledge that not all library staff may currently have: that there are two kinds of ‘ESOL’ reading books, that meet rather different reading needs:

‘International’ graded readers, like the Penguin Readers series. These may be ‘the book of the movie, adaptations of classics, or original genre fiction. They are designed for international students who usually have high levels of education and are learning ‘international’ English. These learners are often studying at private language colleges or in IELTS classes.

Australian readers, published locally, often produced by educational providers, or by teachers who write and self-publish – simply because this is too small a niche to interest commercial publishers. These reading books have ‘everyday life’ themes, to help new migrant students from AMEP and SEE classes to understand Aussie culture and language. They may also have a more spacious layout, to meet the needs of learners new to literacy in our script and to our left-to-right reading direction.

Now of course, there is overlap. Many new migrants have high levels of English and world knowledge and are absolutely ready to read an adaptation of Great Expectations, if not the original. Some international students would love to read more about Aussie language and culture.

Our point is simply that if you have library visitors from AMEP classes or SEE classes, we recommend that they have access to Australian reading books. This may sound like self-interest, but that’s actually WHY we are all doing this work – because we could see a need that wasn’t being met!

Thanks for reading! Please get in touch if you have queries.

The ESL-SPIN team