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Is it important for young English language learners to read dual language text?
It can be helpful for learners to read texts in both languages. It can provide a quick reference to aid comprehension and fosters an appreciation of the languages. It can be used creatively as a shared reading teaching tool in a bilingual setting. However, it is not a necessary part of learning the language. Often young learners will read one language and ignore the other. Additionally, if the majority language is English, this tends to reduce the desire to read in a minority language. Controversially, English quite frequently becomes the favoured language of choice due to its dominance/status in environments where English is widely used.
Encouraging learners to engage in the language classroom is a persistent challenge faced by many English language teachers. Despite careful planning and engaging activities, learners often remain silent or disengaged during speaking tasks, or make persistent errors. This can stem from a variety of factors, all of which are important for ESOL teachers to consider.
I have been teaching English for over 20 years and in that time I have held various teaching titles; I had a different acronym depending on which country or school I was teaching in. Over the past 20 years, I have been an ESL, an EFL, an ESP, an ESOL and an EAL teacher. As you can see, ELT - English Language Teaching - comes with a whole host of acronyms. I will identify and describe them below.
*All terms below refer to students whose mother tongue is not English and who are learning English.
Graphic organisers can be a powerful tool for learners with dyslexia. They enable learners to plan and structure their ideas in a visual and accessible way. Focusing on getting ideas organised before navigating challenges with grammar and spelling can be a positive approach. The visual scaffold reduces working memory strain by keeping ideas clearly organised and structured. This allows more cognitive space for sentence construction and spelling, which might be challenging.