Teaching EAL

Evidence-based Strategies for the Classroom and School

Robert Sharples

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781788924450
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachkunst unterrichten

This book offers an evidence-based guide to EAL for everyone who works with multilingual learners. It provides a concise, helpful introduction to the latest research underpinning three key areas of EAL practice:

• How children acquire additional languages
• How language works across the curriculum
• How you can establish outstanding EAL practice in your school.

Other key features includecase studies from experienced EAL specialists, extensive reading recommendations for teachers who want to build on their knowledge, and a detailed chapter on Ofsted based on interviews with senior inspectors.

This book will prove an invaluable guide and support for everyone working with bilingual learners. In clear, short chapters it gives a thorough grounding in the evidence and principles needed to create outstanding EAL provision.

1Introduction

Welcome

Schools are more richly textured than they used to be. Our collective roots now spread to every corner of the world and draw in young people of widely different experiences and expectations. The sights, sounds and stories of every country are now part of our communities. We haven’t really got to grips with this yet. We’re still thinking through what it means to teach in a world that is increasingly multilingual and connected, in an education system that was designed for another era and that is under intense pressure.

This is a book about EAL, the specialist discipline of teaching pupils for whom English is an additional language – that richly woven tangle of language, curriculum, meaning, movement, culture and learning that has become part of almost every school in the country. More than one in five pupils in our schools now speaks another language at home, and EAL can fairly be called an ‘ordinary’ part of every teacher’s job (Leung, 2016: 158). Yet newly qualified teachers still report that they feel less well prepared for EAL than for any other aspect of their work (DfE, 2018: 27). There are very few teacher education programmes that allow you to specialise in EAL and similarly few master’s programmes dedicated to the discipline. In Scotland, which has perhaps the strongest policy framework for EAL in the UK, changing demographics mean that specialist expertise is greatly in demand. In England, the policy framework is almost entirely absent: there is no real mention of EAL in the Ofsted inspection handbook and no guidance at all from the Department for Education, whose official stance is to maintain only a ‘watching brief’. This disparity between the obvious significance of EAL in schools and the glaring absence of any meaningful guidance for EAL specialists is where this book comes in.

Teaching EAL: Evidence-based Strategies for the Classroom and School has a clear goal: to put before you, as simply as possible but with all essential detail, the evidence and principles you need to make informed decisions about your practice. It is written with three principles in mind: first, that EAL is a rich and important discipline, not an add-on or something that happens in the margins of ‘real’ (meaning subject) teaching. EAL specialists, as we see in Parts 2 and 3, play a vital role in promoting language-rich teaching across the curriculum. Second, that you are a talented and capable educator, able to make good decisions when presented with the evidence … but that you are also busy and would value clarity. This informs both the structure and the style of the book: references are kept to a minimum but there are extensive notes on further reading at the end of each chapter. We will not shy away from complex ideas, but they will always be expressed clearly and with emphasis on the implications for practice. Finally, that EAL is a specialism but not an exclusive one. Every teacher should know something about how language works in their subject; EAL teachers should know a lot about how language works across the curriculum. This is the basis of the book’s contents, of which more below. When read from start to finish, it provides a structured and coherent introduction to the evidence, thinking and principles that underpin EAL provision.

Teaching EAL also makes a series of arguments about what the discipline could (and perhaps should) look like. EAL practice is both diverse and dynamic: the possible combinations of learners, teachers and settings are near infinite, and they change as local communities, school cultures and individuals do. Life never stands still for an EAL teacher and it’s easy to feel buffeted by events and the constantly changing needs of your learners. Having a sense of the bigger picture – the historical scope and the international nature of additional language education – allows us to look beyond the day-to-day. EAL teaching has a rich history and relevance beyond a single country, so we can take the transient diktats of government ministers in our stride. We will begin exploring these arguments in the next chapter as we map the national and international context of EAL, and we will develop them throughout the book.

It goes without saying that these arguments are not definitive and the stances adopted are not absolute. Rather, the book offers a series of positions, rooted in evidence that is clearly presented, on which you can base your own work. I have tried to write it as the starting point for a longer conversation, as a curated selection of ideas, findings and thinking from the rich breadth of this interdisciplinary field. I hope it is useful, but most of all I hope it does just what the name implies: that it offers evidence-based strategies that you can use in your classroom and school.

Is This Book for You?

Yes!

The book is written for anyone who works with EAL pupils: teachers, teaching assistants, school leaders, governors and advisors – anyone, in fact, who wants to understand how young bilinguals learn and how they can be supported to achieve highly. If you are interested in EAL but don’t see yourself primarily as an EAL specialist (or if you are reading this while you train and haven’t decided yet), then Parts 1 and 2 will give you a strong grounding in language acquisition and language in the curriculum. Both of these are essential to the success of bilingual pupils and are well worth knowing about in any role. If you want to develop further, Part 3 focuses on being (or becoming) an ‘EAL specialist’. It tackles material that will also be of wide interest (such as how to succeed with Ofsted and how to distinguish between bilingualism and language impairment), but from the perspective of someone who is responsible for EAL provision across the school.

You will notice that the book often uses the term ‘EAL specialist’ rather than ‘teacher’, ‘coordinator’ or similar. Your job title or status in the school isn’t particularly important here. What matters is that you want to build up your expertise in EAL. If that’s you, welcome.

How Is the Book Organised?

The book is organised in three parts:

Part 1, How Additional Languages Are Learned, gives a concise introduction to second language acquisition. The seven chapters each focus on a key theme, such as whether age makes a difference (Chapter 6) or the importance of first languages (Chapter 8). The discussion is tailored to the needs of EAL specialists, taking into account the diversity of our learners and the specific context of learning English alongside and through the curriculum. Each chapter is written to be short, accessible and grounded in the evidence – just the thing when you need a concise answer or a confident riposte about how bilingual children learn languages.

Part 2, Language Across the Curriculum, examines the shared and subject-specific ways in which language is used in subject learning. It begins by introducing five principles for developing language across the curriculum (Chapter 10). It then distinguishes academic and general English, noting that subject learning is inextricable from subject language, and explores the role of talk and reading in the development of subject knowledge (Chapters 11–13). It introduces the functional approach to language, which allows us to look at how meaning is made in academic text, and discusses some strategies that EAL and subject specialists can use to help learners communicate those meanings (Chapters 14–15). Finally, we look at how what counts as proficiency for EAL learners (Chapter 16).

Part 3, The EAL Specialist, focuses on the ideas and understanding you need to make the role a success. It is organised into two sections, the first for those new in post (or considering the role) and the second for more experienced practitioners who want to reflect on their work so far and how they might develop further. They echo each other: for new EAL specialists we look at how to get to grips with the role, how to establish effective assessments and organise provision and how to connect with other EAL practitioners (Chapters 17–20). We revisit these themes for more experienced specialists – how to influence school policy, how to critique the monolingual ideology of the education system, how to address Ofsted and how to develop a CPD plan for yourself and your colleagues (Chapters 21–23). Part 3 closes with the key messages (Chapter 24).

Each chapter gives suggestions for further reading and at the end of the book you will find two helpful appendices as well as a full list of the references cited.

Case studies

Teaching EAL also includes seven case studies. They are written by experienced practitioners with real, recent experience of EAL. They are drawn from across the UK, from Primary and Secondary contexts, and show how the research evidence can be brought to bear on real-life teaching and learning.

In Part 2, the case studies focus on working across the curriculum. Manny Vazquez follows Chapter 13 on ‘Reading in a New Language’ by unpacking metaphor in a Year 11 English literature classroom. He shows how EAL knowledge can contribute to subject teaching, enriching reading for all learners. Sarah Fowkes, who follows Chapter 15 on ‘Disciplinary Language, Disciplinary Knowledge’, writes about her work developing language awareness in Maths. She shows that a ‘Word Aware’ approach can help Year 4/5 learners with mathematical reasoning. Pam Cole takes a broader focus, linking Parts 2 and 3 of the book by discussing her work embedding EAL across the curriculum. She argues that EAL is a mainstream responsibility, rooted in partnership between EAL and subject teachers, and shows how this ethos can be used to build capacity across schools and regions.

In Part 3, the case studies open out to include other aspects of the EAL specialist’s role. Erica Field explains her approach to supporting families in and beyond school, and follows Chapter 17 on ‘Getting to Grips with the Role’. She argues that spending time with families, especially over a brew, is a great foundation for EAL practice. Christine McCormack follows Chapter 19 on ‘Welcoming Students’ and describes how she created a city-wide resource pack and CPD programme about new arrivals. Her work draws in colleagues from across the school, making the EAL specialist a key figure in the support provided for new pupils. The two final case studies are slightly different: Anne Margaret Smith gives a concise guide to distinguishing EAL from SEN, and a double-length chapter (based on extensive interviews with senior inspectors) discusses how to work with Ofsted’s new inspec...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures, Tables and Case Studies
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• 1. Introduction
• 2. EAL in the National and International Context
• Part 1: How Additional Languages Are Learned
• Part 2: Language Across the Curriculum
• Part 3: The EAL Specialist
• Appendix I: Checklist and Activities for the New EAL Specialist
• Appendix II: Networks and Groups
• References
• Index