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Supporting the learning of the new language is by no means the only aspect of helping a new arrival to feel ‘at home’ in their new country. However, as it can be one of the most stressful aspects of their life change and therefore a carefully tailored plan to accommodate for their language learning needs is essential. There are a wealth of resources available for supporting teachers in helping children in their first steps of learning English.
One notable tool for language learning that is particularly helpful for new arrivals includes a ‘Remember Book’. It is especially useful for 7 years old up who are able to write in their mother tongue.
A Remember Book is a notebook small enough to fit in a pocket (A6 size), but with enough space to write between the lines (depending on age). Throughout the sessions, the pupils should write, update and revise new learning in the Remember Book in order to practise new vocabulary and language structures learnt in both survival language sessions and in other contexts of immediate interest to the learner. The Remember Book has two functions:
The teacher or child should write the new learning for the lesson in the book. In cases where children are very young, it would be helpful to have the new language copied and ready for the children to stick into their Remember Books during the lesson. Unless children are very able, it is better to cut and stick the new language instead of writing. This is because writing can be slow and inaccurate, especially with younger pupils or for those in the early stages of learning, or for those who aren’t familiar with using the Roman script.
Children must take their Remember Book and a pencil with them everywhere and be encouraged to write words or sentences in the back of the book as soon as they learn useful language. If children are literate in a home language, then they should be encouraged to write the translations.
If not, they can draw a visual to remind them or just write the word on its own. It doesn’t matter about spelling at this stage – it’s the speaking, listening and remembering that is important. The attention to detail in the spelling can come later. Children use the back of the book to avoid mixing up their useful, independently learnt words with the lesson work positioned at the front of the book. Each page can be folded into two parts with one column for their mother tongue and the next column for English. This allows children to cover words by folding the page and then self checking their learning.
Children can use the Remember Book independently by:
Children can use the Remember Book with a parent or friend by:
The Remember Book can form a section of the children’s homework and can become part of the daily homework routine. The work they focus on in their Remember Book can ensure that they are surrounded by language in school and at home. This will motivate them, help them to identify what they need to learn and support progression.
Fostering each learner's cultural identity, what can you suggest to parents? There is more awareness now than ever before on fostering an understanding of migration, refugees, general diversity and mother languages. There is rightly a tremendous sense of pride from parents over their own culture, which is often enhanced due to their distance from home.
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.
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.