ENGLISH AS AN ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE (EAL).

The National Association of Language Development, 2012, in the Curriculum is the national subject association for English as an Additional Language which defines it like;

Children who speak English as an Additional Language (EAL) come from home environments where the dominant language is not English but who are nonetheless educated in English, the majority language.

Children who speak English as an Additional Language (EAL) come from home environments where the dominant language is not English but who are nonetheless educated in English, the majority language. The percentage of pupils in English schools aged 5-16 who are recorded as EAL has more than doubled from 7.6% in 1997 to 16.2% in 2013. Just over a million of pupils in England are classified as speaking English as an additional language (NALDIC, 2013).

there are different policy about EAL in the Umited Kingdom:

The rich diversity of England´s culture, society and language has involved over centuries. This has reflected schools; over 25% of pupils are from an ethnic minority background and almost one in six pupils speaks english as an Additional Language. National data is gathered via the school census. (The Bell Foundation, 2017).

The Coalition Government’s priority for children learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) is to promote rapid language acquisition and include them in mainstream education as quickly as possible. (Unkwnown, 2012).

Most schools will have a number of policies which have relevance to the teaching, learning and wellbeing of English as an Additional Language learners. Most of these will be the Equality and diversity policy. Schools in the United Kingdom have a statutory obligation under the Equality Act (2010) to promote equality of opportunity for pupils whatever their race, religión or belief as well as other protected characteristics.(S. Bray, 2015).

I have been looking for some information about which are the parts of the United Kingdom where is the most and the least of pupils with English as an Additional Language. The first bit says that there is a huge change between now and a few years ago with children coming to the United Kingdom from other countries and that they do not have English as a first language. 

-      The percentage of pupils in English schools aged 5-18 who are recorded as EAL in the UK, has more than doubled from 7.6% in 1997 to 16.2% in 2013 that means there are more than a million children who speak in excess of 360 languages between them. In 2013 the local authority areas with the highest proportion of EAL learners in primary schools are Tower Hamlets (76 percent) and Newham (75 percent).

-      The local authority with the highest number of EAL pupils is Birmingham where 63,216 (or 40 percent).

-      The local authority areas with the smallest proportion of primary aged bilingual pupils are Redcar and Cleveland (0.9 percent), Halton (1.1), and Derbyshire (1.6). Rutland is the local authorority with the fewest EAL pupils - only 92 pupils in this local authority are bilingual.

-      The local authorities with the largest numbers of schools where bilingual pupils are in the majority within the north of England are Bradford (59), Manchester (35), Lancashire (30) and Kirklees (27). In the Midlands it is Birmingham (117) and Leicester (40). In the South it is Luton (22), Slough (19). London's highest figures are in Newham (79), Tower Hamlets (70), Brent (57) and Ealing (55).

STRATEGIES

“All subject teachers need to be more aware of the linguistic demande their specializations make on pupils” (DES 1975: 291).

There are types of strategies that we are going to see in this blog, this are the main ones:

Strategies in speaking and listening:

·         Games and drama. Games and drama are brilliant for developing speaking and listening skills and engaging those reluctant pupils. They are also useful for developing the skills of concepts and vocabulary you have recently taught.

·         Language prompts. Language prompts support pupils in using a variety of increasingly complex sentence structures, this enabling them to engage in dialogue in a variety of academic and social contexts.

·         Oral rehearsal. Oral rehearsal enables children to practise ordering their thoughts and formulating responses. Also, collaborative group activities provide opportunities for pupils to develop the language of problem-solving and informal interaction.

·         Whiteboards. Whiteboards, fans and similar resources support pupils in committing to an answer or idea and when used for reporting back enables the teacher to quickly scan the class or group to determine who has understood the concept.

Strategies in writing:

·         Scaffold pupils´writing. Scaffolding support for teaching writing can be in the form of writing frames, conversation frames, sentence initiators or notes on sentence structure. This scaffold can be combined with practical support such as vocabulary lists, visuals, mind maps, idea writing boards, peer and teacher support.

·         Home language is a benefit in teaching writing. Home language usage aids fluency in English. Providing opportunities for pupils to write in their home language, if they have the skills, ensures that skills learnt in one language transfer over to the other language. It also sends the message that understanding other languages is a skill not a problem.

·         Assess children´s writing thoroughly. Assessment for Learning strategies are very useful in developing advanced EAl learners' skills in writing.

·         Process of writing made explicit. Making the writing process explicit is vital for these learners because it provides a model for the thinking stages that they will go through as they write.

·         Explore pupils´experiences. Real and meaningful learning experiences are vital for deep learning to take place and memory recall to be most effective. The key aspects of teaching writing such as learning new vocabulary, grammatical sentence structures and conversational language are all best learnt in meaningful contexts. Explore pupils' interests to see what excites and motivates them. 

REFERENCE LIST.

Ealresources.bell-foundation.org.uk. (2017). Key EAL Research | EAL Nexus. Available at: https://ealresources.bell-foundation.org.uk/eal-specialists/key-eal-research (Accessed 14 March. 2019).

Edwards, M. (2015). The challenges of English as an additional language | The Key. The Key. Available at: https://thekeysupport.com/insights/2015/01/08/the-challenges-of-english-as-an-additional-language/ (Accessed 3 April. 2019).

NALDIC (2013). English and EAL. Available at: http://www.naldic.org.uk/eal-teaching-and-learning/eal-resources/english_eal/ (Accessed: 3 April 2019).

Strand, S. (2015). English as an Additional Language (EAL) and educational achivement in England: An analysis of the National Pupil Database. V1.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk. Available at: https://v1.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/uploads/pdf/EAL_and_educational_achievement2.pdf (Accessed 2 April. 2019).

Webcache.googleusercontent.com. (2012). English as an Additional Language. Available at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LiRWD95YtMMJ:www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/116003-a-brief-summary-of-government-policy-in-relation-to-eal-learners.pdf+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk (Accessed 3 April. 2019).