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An EAL teacher is a professional specialising in working with learners for whom English is an additional language, such as refugees, asylum seekers or children of migrant families.
The basic aim of an EAL teacher is to work with EAL learners and support them in accessing the curriculum of the subjects they are studying, in addition to helping them acquire the survival everyday language needed in order to make friends, socialise and converse with peers and adults. To do that, EAL teachers often draw on their specialist knowledge of bilingualism, language learning and acquisition to help them support the development of the language skills EAL learners need in and out of the classroom.
Supporting EAL learners is so important and rewarding because when they start and continue with the right support in school and at home, they will be more likely to achieve and be more successful. Research shows that EAL learners who have had the appropriate support from the beginning of their learning journey often outperform their monolingual peers in exams and tests. Bilingualism encourages creativity and higher order thinking skills (Bialystok, 2010), and the supportive role of an EAL teacher plays an important role here.
Some key EAL strategies which good EAL teachers use are outlined below, but great EAL teachers go the extra mile and support their EAL learners to become multilinguals with a keen interest and respect for their own home language(s), as well as other languages and cultures. Those great EAL teachers are outstanding teaching professionals who promote, stimulate and nurture a multilingual classroom where diversity is both welcomed and valued.
It is important to note that multilingual learners reach language development milestones in a different way to monolingual learners, and their speech needs to be considered in both their languages combined (Hoff et al., 2011).
A great EAL teacher will have a lively and friendly attitude towards all EAL learners. When meeting them they will make them feel welcome, happy and safe in the first instance. Excellent spoken and written communication skills are vital when sharing information with staff members and parents/carers alike. EAL learners need to be listened to and they require time to respond, so patience and positive body language are virtues for any EAL teacher. EAL, as such, is not a subject in the curriculum; therefore it allows flexibility to be creative and develop its own teaching and learning materials. Confidence to plan, deliver and evaluate interesting lessons with which to engage EAL learners is much appreciated.
Great EAL teachers work well under pressure when put in situations where they have to meet deadlines (eg. reports, feedback and creating language profiles), but also when they have to meet new arrivals at the school gate. The ability to work collaboratively in a kind and professional manner with the Admissions team and all teaching staff is not to be underestimated.
‘Flexibility’ should be your middle name.
Some specific EAL strategies which can be applied by both EAL teachers in small groups out of the class, and class teachers in their classrooms are:
References
Bialystok, E. 2010 Cognitive and Linguistic Processing of the Bilingual Mind
Core C., Hoff E., Parra M., Place S., Rumiche R., Senor M., 2011 Dual Language Exposure and Early Bilingual Development, Cambridge University Press
Yigzaw, A. 2021 Impact of L1 Use in L2 English Writing Classes
We all know that there can be resistance to writing in the EAL classroom. To break this barrier, we need to consider the reasons for this, which are often due to a lack of scaffolding and under-confident learners. Working through a process of reading a model text, deconstructing it and then reconstructing your own text by following a scaffold, leads to more satisfactory outcomes.
Learners are often faced with the challenge of carrying out research for their class project work, and often schools invest heavily into non-fiction readers which can be used for such projects. Non-fiction books are a vehicle for learning all sorts of information about life and the way the world works. These books are also invaluable for helping EAL learners to develop a range of literacy skills, which in contrast to fiction books, require a different type of literacy skill because they use a narrative tone (Lines, 2009).
Play is a crucial part of language development and ideas for play and games are an essential part of any teacher’s toolkit. One of the most informal and obvious contexts for language development takes place in the playground for any child (Pinter, 2006). Children will often pick up every day language from their peers and this can be an essential part of their learning. Pinter (2006) explains that when a child moves to a new country, after the initial silent phase, children will then start to pick up phrases, conversation language and so-called playground language fairly fast.