With one in five pupils across primary schools in England having English as an additional language (EAL) and a similar ratio in secondary education, language skills of teachers have never been more important. LITE Fellows Helen Sadig and Professor Cecile De Cat introduce their project on the subject here and explore how language pedagogy training can help boost learning across the curriculum for all pupils.
A civic need
There
were over 1.5 million pupils with EAL in state schools recorded in the school
census last year. This doesn’t include those in academies. EALs make up a
rising and unevenly distributed population, which is especially dense in West
Yorkshire. In many Leeds schools, the proportion is between 50% and 90%.
In
addition, the main schools grant was frozen in 2010 and the Department for
Education (DfE) had its capital funding budget cut by about a third between
2010-15. This has left many schools lacking the resources to provide additional
support for EAL pupils.
The
Students into Schools (SiS) programme
here at Leeds University is a well-established, successful scheme which
attracts approximately 400 students each year, placing them in local schools to
provide subject-specific support, raise pupil aspirations and respond to this
growing civic need.
An opportunity
Although
there is an introductory EAL training session for students, it is voluntary,
and the vast majority of students do not attend. Many are unaware of its
importance and the prevalence of EAL pupils in local schools, as acknowledged
by a student on the scheme last year:
“In the school I worked in 89% of the students were EAL students.
Because of where I’m from at home I’d never met anyone who’s first language
wasn’t English. And a previous school I went to all of the children were born
and raised in England.”
This
LITE project has given us an incredible opportunity to address the needs of
both our students on SiS and local schools. Our main aims are to develop
language pedagogy training for students and CPD workshops for teachers. This
training is being informed by feedback from both students and teachers
collected through participant interviews and online questionnaires.
Diversity and inclusion
One
of the most rewarding aspects of the project so far has been the opportunity to
visit local schools and experience first-hand the sheer diversity among EAL
pupils in terms of their linguistic and socio-cultural background, level of
English and previous schooling, if any.
Just
as every child is unique, EAL pupils represent a hugely heterogeneous group of
learners. And the support they receive should be equally targeted and informed.
Perhaps one of the most interesting findings is that those traditionally
‘disadvantaged’ groups of monolingual English speakers, such as white
working-class boys, benefit equally from the same directed language support as
EAL pupils.
Schools
have similarly diverse challenges and needs, from those which have an almost
exclusively EAL population, to those with perhaps only one or two EAL pupils in
each class. And everything in between. We have been inspired by the way in
which schools genuinely celebrate diversity and are truly inclusive.
Language for learning
We
have been designing and trialling workshop materials to increase students’
understanding of how language works and raise their awareness of both the
language needs of EAL pupils and importance of language for learning.
“The importance of language for learning cannot be overstated. Language
underpins all school-based learning. Specifically, language allows pupils to
participate in class, access the curriculum, negotiate academic literacies and
succeed in examinations.”
As
bilingual and multilingual learners, EALs also have a rich linguistic capital
which should be valued and exploited in the classroom. To that end, we have
been promoting strategies to develop metalinguistic awareness and learner
independence. These strategies support the learning of all pupils.
A civic curriculum
Feedback
from teachers on effective pedagogical approaches includes strategies to
facilitate communicative pair and group work activities; allow learners thinking,
planning and rehearsal time; make use of visual and contextual support, pre-teach,
extend and recycle vocabulary; and crucially, integrate – rather than separate – EAL and non-EAL pupils within
schools.
In
addition to the regional impact achieved through this engagement with the
community, our project seeks to enhance the curriculum for SiS modules, develop
students’ communication and employability skills and raise their awareness of
their role as global citizens.
This project has the generous support and guidance of an Advisory Board, which contributes to invited EAL sessions, and includes the following partners:
• Prof Victoria Murphy (University of Oxford)
• Dr Dea Nilsen (Research Fellow for the Better Start Bradford Innovation Hub in Bradford)
• Dr Jean Conteh (EAL specialist)
• Dr James Simpson (University of Leeds)
• Dianne Excell (Regional Groups Co-ordinator for the National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum)
• Therese O’Sullivan (EAL consultant at Leeds City Council and Learning Improvement consultant)
• Beth Mitchell (EAL Area Team Leader, Leeds City Academy)
• Anne McCaffrey (SLT specialising in EAL children)
• Anastasia Karanika (Senior Officer for Students into Schools)
• Owen Radford-Lloyd (Officer for Students into Schools)
• Dr Claudine Bowyer-Crane (University of York)
• Dr Naomi Flynn (University of Reading)
• Dr Holly Joseph (University of Reading)
• Louise Wood (EAL researcher)
• Saiqa Raiquat (Bilingual Learning and Teaching Association Co-ordinator)