Teaching Shakespeare to young ESL learners in Hong Kong

Teaching Shakespeare to young ESL learners can be one of the most challenging tasks for English teachers and parents. Because of the difficult vocabulary and unusual language, Shakespeare is often left unread and unexplored both in school and at home. With a view to helping children overcome reading obstacles and learn to appreciate Shakespeare and his plays, the Hong Kong Public Libraries and I co-hosted a weekly Shakespeare teens’ reading club for K12 learners from local grammar schools. Four Shakespearean plays were introduced to about twenty Cantonese child participants who had no or little experience reading or studying Shakespeare’s works. To enhance imagination and interactions among child readers, various learner-centred, interactive, and multimedia pedagogical activities such as the reader’s theatre, movie screenings, creative writing tasks, comics reading and drawing, etc. were used in the reading club. In this paper, I will share teaching ideas and reading activities that make Shakespeare understandable and enjoyable for ESL young readers.