Fred talks about literacy (3:28)

Literacy – I’m teaching at a lower level so Certificate I, Certificate II levels, so you can have permission where you can write answers and they can give oral answers and you write them down, so if they can’t write, there is that option that you can do but you have to make sure that if they can’t write, they probably have troubles speaking English as well and make sure that you understand each other, especially – in my experience I’ve done a lot of training with people who are learning English and in English, there’s a lot of words that can mean different things and a lot of words that can mean the same thing, a lot of different words that can mean the same thing. 

So it can get quite confusing so one thing that I do is if they can read and I think it’s – it’s important that you understand not to go in with an attitude thinking they’re on communities so they won’t know how to read so I won’t give them the option, I think it’s really important that you sit down with a group.  If you’ve allowed yourself time, you will know who can read and who can’t, and you can sit down as a group and start doing your theory, training.  The ones who need assistance, you might be able to use someone within the group.  If they really, really need help, you have to ask the school or wherever you’re training to get an interpreter in.  Usually on the community there are interpreters available and you know it’s just important to get those people in, and again I guess that’s just a networking thing, because they’re not always easy to find, but a good place to find out firstly is the school, then you could try the shire office or if it’s a larger community, they’ll have a job network and they usually have people there who are quite good interpreters.

When it comes to I guess things like word association, you just need to be careful that the words you’re saying they understand it in the right context.  So – because there are a lot of big words in the English language and I’m teaching a work preparation which goes into things like tax and procedures.  In my experience, in a lot of schools, the employees haven’t ever seen the procedures or haven’t had access to them.  So it can be a lengthy process.  You might need to find them or you might write some examples of those, and in doing that, you break each step down to develop their understanding.