What is EAL in education

 

Teaching English as an Additional Language involves supporting learners to access a mainstream curriculum taught in English. For those learners, English is not their first language – they are acquiring proficiency in the language while also learning subjects through English (Sharples, 2021).

 

Who might be an EAL learner

 

There are various contexts in which EAL provisions are offered. At Captain Webb we may provide such provision for learners arriving from abroad (such as children of migrants, refugees, etc), or perhaps to learners who speak a language or languages other than English at home and therefore need some support to acquire this additional language.

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What is “EAL provision” in practice

 

Accessing the curriculum

EAL learners need support to access curriculum content that is delivered in English. Typically, they are learning the same content as other learners. Gaps in language knowledge may be barriers to accessing content due to their current level of English.

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The role of an EAL specialist teacher is to identify those gaps and to support learners in overcoming them.

Those gaps could relate to any skill (reading, listening, speaking…), or system (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation), and are not mutually exclusive.

 

The EAL teacher works alongside the class teachers. They help learners to access subject content “in the moment” during class. In practice, that might mean clarifying instructions, supporting with a reading text, teaching and concept checking keywords for the topic, or providing sentence stems or ‘process language’ to help learners articulate their thoughts…

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At a planning level, the EAL teacher may adapt content to make it more accessible. For example, they might grade a text or use text enhancement techniques to draw attention to important features of the language, bring accompanying visuals to build context, create scaffolded tasks to help learners process the content, create consolidation tasks, provide graphic organisers to help record learning, plan tasks to help develop learners’ knowledge of word formation, and so much more.

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Developing general communication skills

EAL support is not just about accessing the academic aspects of a curriculum. EAL learners may also need to develop their general level of communication in English, which can help them on a day-to-day basis. School is a place for building friendships, expressing oneself, developing interests, and much more besides just acquiring academic skills and qualifications. In order to better integrate into a school community, EAL learners need to feel confident to communicate in and out of the classroom.

The role of an EAL teacher is also to facilitate learners in developing such skills.

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