Creating a language experience story is a technique that enables beginning-literacy learners to read what they can already say. It reinforces the connection between the spoken word and the written word as learners begin to recognize their own words before reading texts created by someone else. Activities performed in connection with the story can strengthen phonological processing, vocabulary development, syntax, and schema activation skills. The technique can be used in a one-on-one or group setting. Learners dictate a story to an experienced writer (teacher, tutor, classroom volunteer, or proficient student) and then learn to read the story they just told.

1. Elicit a story by asking the students questions about an experience they all have had together and that they have the language to talk about (e.g. a class field trip, coming to the United States, shopping for food). Encourage them to talk in full sentences.
2. Write on the board, a flip chart, or an overhead transparency, in paragraph form, exactly what the students say.
3. Read the story to the students, pointing to each word as you read. Repeat several times.
4. Then read the story one sentence at a time and have the students repeat each sentence.
5. Save the story for follow-up activities in subsequent classes:
   1. Type the story on the computer and make a copy for each student to read.
   2. Match vocabulary flash cards for words in the story.
   3. Create a cloze activity from the typed story where every fifth word, or vocabulary items you wish to highlight, are left out and students fill in the missing items.
   4. Hand out the complete typed story to the learners. Each learner cuts the story into strips so that there is one sentence on each strip of paper. Learners scramble the sentences and rearrange them in the proper sequence.
   5. More advanced learners can cut sentences into words, scramble the words, and rearrange them in order.

(See Language Experience Approach for examples of some of the activities described above.)