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Learners having difficulty with receptive language or following directions may need support with learning propositions.
Tip or Idea: Ask your learner to draw or make an imaginary scene by following instructions e.g. Draw a house at the bottom of your page/Draw a sunshine above the house/Draw a tree next to the house. Extend this further: Can your learner tell you what to draw? Can they make a crazy or funny picture? Can they make a scene with physical objects?
Learning Village resource: Preposition of place flashcards - matching for meaning - read the description and see if the learner can match to the correct picture.
We are all faced with very different learning situations at the moment and home learning has become the current norm. The challenges it poses are significant. Parents often have limited time available to support learners, limited understanding of where to start, sometimes a lack of technological know-how in accessing online classrooms - or even a lack of access to an online environment altogether. These issues are exacerbated amongst parents with limited understanding of the school language.
The popularity of bilingual schools is increasing. This can be seen, for example, in the growing number of French schools in London, where the students follow a bilingual programme.
In many countries there is an emphasis on learning two languages (The Linguist, 2017). In Scotland in 2011 the government pledged to follow the European model of 1+2 languages. Every child would learn two languages in addition to their mother tongue, to celebrate linguistic and cultural diversity and thus facilitate the inclusion of other languages within the school.
English is a language which has developed over 15 hundred years and has adopted words from over 350 languages. As a result, English has a rich tapestry of vocabulary and spelling patterns which can confuse learners. Having a brief background knowledge of the historical influences on the English language can support our teaching to both first language learners and EAL learners, especially around decoding words when reading.