EAL

English as an Additional Language

Context

There are 30 children in the class. A third have spoken English all their lives and speak English at home. Two thirds speak a different language at home and only speak English at school. Most of the latter pupils have limited vocabulary and poor grammatically structured sentences. Five of these pupils have recently arrived in the country, they hardly understand anything the teacher says, they can’t spell their names, and as a result of the language barrier and huge changes in life circumstances, they are very easily distracted from tasks. Through differentiation, the class teacher has the very difficult job of providing the national curriculum for every child in this class

Caroline Scott, (2009:7). Teaching Children English as an Additional Language.

The Challenge

Increasingly multicultural UK

Over 200 languages in London schools

Over 300 languages nationwide

Over half of Inner London schools have a first language other than English

Webster (2011)

The Challenge

One in eight Secondary pupils speak a language other than English at home

One is six in the case of Primary -Washbourne, (2011)

11.1% of Secondary pupils not native English speakers

15.2% primaries – DCFS (2009)

EAL pupils

Essentially, those who speak a language other than English at home

Some relatively fluent, perhaps born in the UK or lived here for a long time

Others have very limited fluency

EAL Learners

EAL Learners

Challenges

Lack of English is a barrier to learning

Learning English while learning through English is difficult

Other issues include feeling isolated - different culture, norms, religion, habits, morality, life view

Difficulties Faced

Confusion

Some EAL learners

Categories of EAL

Pupils born in UK but who speak their own language at home, and English on entry to school

Pupils born in UK who speak their home language but not English on entry to school

Pupils newly arrived in the UK speaking languages other than English

Pupils in a class in which many others speak their home language(s)

Pupils who do not share the language of the teacher

Pupils in a class in which everyone else speaks only English. Webster (2011)

Research findings

Cameron, et al. (2004)

looked at the writing of what they called ‘advanced' Key Stage 2 EAL learners (that is, those that been in the UK for at least five years).

Scripts produced by 264 pupils for the 2003 English National Curriculum Test (Writing) were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively to identify features of writing that EAL pupils handle less confidently than their English as a mother tongue (EMT) peers.

Aims of the research

identify key features of language that EAL pupils appear to handle less confidently than English mother tongue speakers

analyse these features according to level of ability in English (as measured by national tests)

strengthen existing evidence provided by Ofsted research into older pupils' writing by adding to our understanding of writing development

inform the EAL strand of the Ethnic Minority Achievement Strategy by providing information and guidance on the teaching of bilingual primary and secondary students (by pulling together both pieces of work).

Key Findings

the best writers at this age, using EMT or (EAL, were found to employ the resources of English - grammar, vocabulary, direct speech, punctuation, rhetorical features - with flexibility and adaptability to create strong story characters and plots, and effective persuasive writing

However, many EAL learners, even high achieving pupils, handle adaptation to a variety of genres less confidently than their EMT peers

Two features of language show statistically significant differences between EAL and EMT writing: the use of prepositions and the composition of short, fixed phrases. EAL writing contains more errors in  both features, which also caused difficulties in writing at KS4.

Key Findings (cont)

EAL learners write stories that include more metaphors and similes than EMT stories, for pupils achieving both level 4 and level 5. EAL writing at level 5 used most figurative language, with animal metaphors and similes the most popular

Certain features of language are handled less confidently by lower achieving EAL writers. In particular: use of Adverbials, modal verbs, Subject-Verb agreement, verb tenses and endings, and subordinators to link clauses

In many ways, EAL writing at KS2 was more fluent and more accurate than the writing seen at KS4. These differences would seem to be linked to the teaching that the younger children have received through the National Literacy Strategy.

Other findings

Formulaic phrases: EAL learners made a greater number of errors than EMT learners in the use of formulaic phrases (a formulaic phrase is a group of words that are ‘bound' together, in that certain words must, or tend to be, accompanied, by certain other words, e.g. his best friend rather than his best of all friend). The greatest difference was found in writing by learners attaining level 4, where EAL stories contained significantly more errors than EMT stories

Prepositions: Overall, and at level 3, EAL writing omitted significantly more prepositions than EMT writing. Both EAL and EMT groups at level 3 used some prepositions incorrectly. EMT writing improved in terms of incorrect use between levels 3 and 4; EAL writing at level 4 contained significantly more incorrectly used prepositions. For pupils at level 5, there was no significant difference in numbers of preposition errors.

Other findings (cont)

Use of Genres: Expertise in writing requires learners to develop knowledge of a range of genres and how language is used to create the format, style, voice, purpose and stance that characterise a particular genre, combined with skills to select from and adapt language resources as required for the genre. In some ways, EAL learners handled the genres less confidently than their EMT peers, and this seems to become more obvious in the writing of higher achieving pupils, perhaps because they use word and phrase level features more accurately: -Story endings: For the group of pupils attaining level 5, more stories written by EAL learners had endings that were rated as ‘incomplete', and fewer had endings rated as ‘original' or ‘creative' in some way

Narrative components: For the group of pupils attaining level 5,writing by EAL learners developed the story components of Characters, Problem and Resolution less than stories by EMT pupils. Stories by EAL learners did more development of the setting

Radio advertisements: Adverts written by EAL learners attaining both level 3 and level 5 were less likely to open with a catchy ‘hook' to attract the attention of listeners. Instead, a full sentence was often used. Adverts by EAL learners attaining level 5 contained less variety in sentence types and vocabulary than those by their EMT peers.

Other findings (cont)

Length and paragraphing: Both EAL and EMT learners wrote stories that were usually long enough and, at levels 4 and 5, were making good use of paragraphing

Sentence grammar: The amount of subordination was not significantly different between groups, other than between EAL writing at levels 3 and 4, where the mean for level 4 was significantly higher. However, type of subordination varied, with ‘advanced' subordinators (while, until, after etc) being used more in EMT writing and by pupils attaining higher levels

Clause structure: EAL learners attaining level 4 overall showed statistically significant differences with EMT peers in their use of clause slots. They used more Subjects that were single nouns  x more and shorter Verb phrases x more and longer Objects / Complements x fewer words in Adverbial slots.  Put together, these suggest EAL writing at this level uses more short clauses, in which information is concentrated towards the end.

Other findings (cont)

Adverbials: In writing by pupils attaining level 3 overall, the mean number of words used in the Adverbial slot in EAL writing was significantly lower than EMT, as with level 4 (above).  At both levels 3 and 4, therefore, writing by EAL learners is likely to be including less information about time, place, manner and purpose

Verbs: EAL learners attaining level 5 made some errors with advanced verb tenses that show the relative timing of two events, such as the past perfect tense e.g. he had queued.

Other findings (cont)

Figurative language: Use of figurative language was limited to a subset of pupils in each group, with more use by higher level groups. EAL stories used more metaphors and similes than EMT stories, for pupils achieving both level 4 and level 5. EAL writing at level 5 used most figurative language

Spelling and punctuation: EAL learners attaining level 4 made significantly fewer spelling errors than their EMT peers. At the other levels, there was no significant difference in spelling or punctuation errors.

Comparison KS2 and 4

At both KS2 and KS4, the strongest differences (quantitatively) between EAL and EMT writing were found at word and phrase level, in formulaic phrase errors and the use of prepositions

In many ways, KS2 writing was more fluent and more accurate than the writing seen at KS4. Length and paragraphing were better; there were fewer errors with agreements and articles; commas were used more accurately by KS2 EAL writers attaining level 5 than by sixteen year olds predicted A or B in their GCSE English. These improvements would seem to be linked to the teaching that the younger children have received through the National Literacy Strategy.

Comparison, KS2and 4

At discourse level, the lower achieving EAL writers at KS4 had more difficulties with handling genre than EMT peers. The narrative genre at KS2 was handled quite confidently, probably because it is the earliest acquired genre for children and in many ways the most basic. However, some EAL writers at KS2 did not adapt their language to the demands of the radio advertisement genre as readily as their EMT peers

Subordination: At KS2 and KS4, lower achieving EAL learners and their EMT peers

Made less use of advanced subordinators than higher achieving EAL and EMT learners. In addition, higher achieving EAL learners at KS2 used fewer advanced subordinators than EMT learners.

Key Recommendations

Schools need to ensure that EAL learners have extensive opportunities to encounter and work with a range of genres of written English

EAL learners might be helped with handling formulaic phrases through a focus, across the curriculum, on phrases as whole units rather than only on words

Higher achieving EAL learners could benefit from exposure to, and direct teaching about, more advanced tenses that show the relative times of events, and more advanced subordinators to create more varied sentences.

Recommendations

EAL learners, even those attaining level 5, could benefit from noticing different ways in which well-written stories are brought to an end, and from trying out various story ending techniques

Level 3 story writing is characterised by lack of development of narrative components, and both EAL and EMT writers could be helped to increase the amount of development of story setting, characters, and plot, by thinking about the imagined readers of their stories, what they might want to know and how this could be made interesting for them to read

Explicit attention to certain features of language such as modal verbs, Adverbials and prepositional phrases seems especially important for lower achieving EAL writers, who seem less likely to discover the grammatical patterns by themselves than higher achieving EAL learners.

Recommendations

Pupils' individual vocabularies offer a rich resource for classroom activities, since many of the less common words used by individual pupils may not be known or used by others

Figurative language allows some children opportunities to create vivid images in their stories. Some level 4 and 5 EAL writing makes interesting use of figurative language that could be used as a resource for teaching all pupils

Mistry and Sood (2010)

Mistry and Sood (2010) used surveys and interviews with teachers and para-professionals (teaching assistants and bilingual assistants) "to  obtain a range of perspectives, experiences and perceptions of provision for EAL children of primary school age" (112). The sample consisted of 48 adults -  20 teachers, 20 teaching assistants, 7 SENCOs and one an Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant Coordinator. An interpretivist approach was used.

Research focus

The focus was on schools which supported  EAL children directly or indirectly, together with schools that had little or no direct experience of EAL, to provide a comparison between the extremes.  The study investigated the way that schools were addressing the needs of EAL primary pupils in a number of counties in England, focusing on the challenges faced by teachers.

Findings

Early indications suggested huge differential practice for EAL provision, support and training Many staff indicating that they were 'culturally unaware' and had little experience of supporting EAL children

The authors highlight the key challenge for leaders, being how best to cater for EAL children, using a diverse workforce creatively, and operating within tight financial constraints and competing school priorities.

Findings (cont)

The authors highlighted the importance of being sensitive to cultural attitudes and languages, taking into account the importance of building effective bridges between the home and school environment so that the home culture can be effectively understood

They highlighting  the importance of nurturing interrelationships and the need to be sensitive in all activities and actions in situations where there is a high level of ethnic diversity.

They emphasised the need for clear learning goals, guided practice leading to independent practice, engaging tasks, opportunities for interaction and encouragement from the teacher

They made a case for much greater emphasis being placed on encouraging, facilitating and engaging the wider workforce to collaborate on pedagogical, cultural and linguistic debates to ensure that the potential of all pupils is enhanced.

Finally, they highlighted the importance of schools taking into account the need of EAL children to feel ‘accepted' for who they are, regardless of race, religion or cultural back-ground, as highlighted by the DfES (2006: 7).

Recommendations

The need for good staff recruitment and retention, availability of high-quality continuous professional development programmes and the development of leadership at all levels.

 If the needs of EAL children are to be effectively met,  schools need to be more inclusive.

Increased efforts to ensure an adequate level of funding to train leaders in managing for and with diversity, to re-evaluate the needs of the teachers and para-professionals and adequately support their training to better serve the needs of EAL children.

Kajee (2011)Multimodal representations of identity in the English-as-

additional language classroom in South Africa

Interesting research by Kajee (2011) in an undergraduate classroom in Johannesburg looked at the multimodal engagement of ‘previously disadvantaged’ students as they examined their identities as citizens in a new, democratic South Africa

The students reported on used a range of actions to “negotiate meaning through multiple modes and materialities, using digital texts and performance as mediating tools”

The author argues that a pedagogy of multiliteracies and multimodality (in this case, traditional dress, traditional performance, presentation technology) enables students to cross (social and cultural) borders and broaden their scope for meaning-making.

Multimodal Engagement

Through their presentations, the redesigned meaning-making of the students enabled them to reconstruct, remake and reshape their own social identities as subjective agents of change through acts of language: written, image, gesture, digital and performed.

Variability and agency are two significant aspects of design that distinguish it from more traditional approaches to literacy pedagogy...  traditional, rule-governed grammar teaching tends to propose a pedagogy of transmission, ignoring agency and subjectivity. The notion of design is the opposite: agency and subjectivity are crucial in shaping social worlds.

As teachers of English we need to acknowledge that different communities value skills others than writing alone, and that our students bring with them a repertoire of social histories which shape them. A multimodal approach gives freer reign to students by providing them with the space to engage and interact through their creativity and agency" (Kajee, L. 2011:250).

Multimodal Engagement

The important aspects of this study include: The way in which the teacher demonstrated respect for

the cultural background of the students, valuing their contributions in terms of celebrating the use of traditional dress and (in the case of the second student) the 'performance' of a self-written African 'Praise' style poem about himself.

Much of the literature on effective EAL teaching (e.g. Webster, 2011:14, Mistry & Sood, 2010) highlights the importance of schools celebrating diversity and going out of their way to demonstrate that the cultures and values of EAL pupils are appreciated and valued.

What the Teachers Say

Webster (2011) – Four levels of capability

1 - Survival language

2 - Basic sentences, grammar may not be correct, general coms about things of interest

3 - Able to express some abstract thought

4 Able to communicate as well or better than EMT of same age

Survival language

Where is the toilet?

Pass the ball/pen/cup/salt

Please / thank you

Can I have

Swear words

What is that?

Basic communication

Discussion about football, music, etc,

Answering simple questions in class

Some basic ability to justify their opinion about mathematical or scientific findings

Correct use of some technical vocabulary

Ability to describe family and friends and events

Can copy-writing and write basic sentences.

Express abstract thought

Answering complex questions in class that require a justification of an explanation

Writing a persuasive argument and taking part in a debate

Understanding the task in the lesson without it having to have it explained again by the teacher

Describing something that they might not have had much (if any) experience of, such as a tube/train ride or the path of a river from its source to its mouth.

Coping with Jokes

Joke can be quite difficult for a person learning a language because jokes are often related to a shared culture and requires an understanding of nuanced language.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wallHumpty Dumpty had a great fallAnd his winter wasn’t bad either!

Approaches to Teaching EAL

Immersion

Bilingualism Cummins (2000:34) suggests that children acquire fluency in

English when totally immersed and exposed to it Others favour bilingualism, where both languages are taught

sequentially, because it celebrates both languages equally. Ofsted analysed both approaches in England and concluded

that good quality teaching and learning happened because of good-quality joint working between EAL staff in mainstream schools. Withdrawal of pupils, which is a customary method with the bilingual approach, was less successful than provision in class.

Speed of development

Depends on how efficient children are in their mother tongue

(Cummins, in Webster).  This is known as developmental independence, where the development of the second language is dependent on the on efficacy of first language. For example, if the child does not know the names of colours or numbers in the home language, he or she could have difficulty learning them in English. Likewise, if children are able to read and write fluently in in their home language, it should not take long to become fluent in English. High expectations from teachers also has a positive effect on children’s learning.

Speed of Development

Baker (2001) rate of learning affected by social factors and social interaction

rather than proficiency in the mother tongue. Thus, children can be fluent in English if they are proficient in all

areas of oracy and literacy – Listening, speaking, reading and writing. listening and reading are

regarded as receptive, and speaking and writing as productive. All areas need to be taught and learnt in the new language. Fluency is achieved when people are proficient in all areas. To become fluent, learners need opportunities for social

interaction and some linguistic input in the language. Without such opportunities to interact with the language, the rate of fluency development is likely to be slower.

Rates of Learning

Routes to Fluency

Baker:

Simultaneous and Sequential.

Simultaneous routes involve learning two languages together while sequential involves learning one after another.

Cummins says either method, but that children need guidance, especially if the strategy is immersion.

Children need experience of particular skills, namely Basic Interpersonal Communication (BIC), and Cognitive/Active Language Proficiency (CALP), to become fluent multilingual speakers.

Bic and Calp skills

Cummins’ Framework

Cummins’Framework

Webster (2011)

Higher order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are considered to be CALP skills because they use subtle language skills.

However, because they can be fairly abstract, we need the teaching and learning to be context embedded to support the child to develop the skills.

Thus, the  learning and teaching needs to be embedded in quadrant B. Scaffolding is important to move children from learning with support (CE,CD) to learning without support (CR,CD)

BIC and CALP

BIC involves activities such as chatting about things learners have in in common (TV and sport) and organizational language such as instructions.

CALP is where the learner uses language for reflection, evaluation and analysis. CALP involves the higher order thinking that we are trying to encourage in the classroom.

References

Cameron, L. & Besser, S. (2004) Writing in English as an Additional Language at Key Stage 2. Department for Education and Skills (Research Report RR586).

Kajee, L. (2011)  Multimodal representations of identity in the English-as-an-additional-language classroom in South Africa. Management in Education 24(3) 111-114.

Mistry, M. & Sood, K. (2010) English as an Additional Language: Assumptions and Challenges Management in Education 24(3) 111-114.

Washbourne, A. (2011) EAL Pocketbook. Teachers’ Pocketbooks.

Webster, M. (2011) Creative Activities and Ideas for Pupils with English as an Additional Language. Longman, London.

Drawings from Washbourne

Diagrams from Webster