EAL:
MORE THAN
SURVIVAL
English as an additional language:
a survey of effective practice in
Key Stages 1–3
Graham Frater
Foreword
Many children, young people and adults face real challenges in
learning to understand and communicate in English because English
is not their first language or the language of their home. Some are
isolated in areas of England and Wales where few others from their
language community live; others live in areas of the country where
their first language is often used more frequently in daily life than
English. As Graham Frater reveals, all need more than to ‘get by’
in English.
I live in a two-language family and both of my children are fluent in
English and Catalan. I understand the importance of language in
passing on culture and values and the importance of a person’s
mother tongue. But recognising this doesn’t mean that I don’t realise
how important it is for everyone living in this country to be fluent in
understanding and communicating in English. That some people who
have lived here for decades have had few opportunities to learn and
become fluent in English is a national disgrace and shames us all.
Fortunately things are changing, particularly in schools, and better
opportunities are now available. Yet not every school knows how best
to provide teaching in English as an Additional Language and this is
where Graham Frater’s book comes in. It is rich with examples of
schools where EAL is about much more than survival; schools where
language is developed through effective support and first-class
teaching. I hope you find it as useful as I have.
Alan Wells OBE
Director
The Basic Skills Agency
1
Acknowledgements
The evidence for this survey was gathered from visits to 14 schools
(primary and secondary) in the summer term 2002. The schools
were identified by their local education authorities. The Agency is
most grateful for the help of those authorities, and that of the officers
listed below.
The City of Birmingham
Bob Warren
Bradford Metropolitan Council
Peter Newman
The City of Cardiff
Mark Sims
Lancashire County Council
Carol McNulty
The City of Leicester
Chris Corps
The London Borough of Hounslow
Davis Meaden, Roz Carter
Welsh Assembly: Schools and Statistics Team
Cath Pomeroy
It is especially grateful for the co-operation and help given by the
head teachers, staff and children of the participating schools; the
schools are listed in Annex 1.
The Agency is also grateful to the Nelson Mandela Primary School,
Birmingham, and to Rushy Mead School, Leicester, for their
assistance with the photographs used in this report.
© The Basic Skills Agency, Commonwealth House, 1–19 New Oxford Street,
London, WC1A 1NU
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, recorded
or otherwise reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means without the prior permission of
the copyright owner.
ISBN 1 85990 321 5
Design: Studio 21
Published October 2004
2
Contents
Context
4
Achieving buoyancy
13
Supporting literacy
30
Enrichment, extension and support
39
Conclusions
48
Summary and main findings
49
References
52
Annex 1: Participating schools
53
Annex 2: Some sources of additional information and support
54
Annex 3: LEA language support services
56
Annex 4: Guided talk
58
3
Context
AIM
The focus of this study is the acquisition of English in
school, and particularly of literacy in English, by the
children of the linguistic minority communities living
in England and Wales. Its aim has been to gather
evidence about effective practice, to identify some of
the common underlying trends, and, in particular, to
share examples.
LANGUAGE LEARNING
EAL
Currently, some 9.3% of all pupils in maintained
primary schools in England, and 8.0% of all students
in maintained secondary schools, are speakers of
English as an additional language (EAL).1 The national
curricula for England and Wales make no distinctions
between the final outcomes expected of native
speakers of English, and of students who will have
acquired English as an additional language. If equal
opportunities are truly to obtain, academic fluency in
English will be required of both.2
The ‘additional’ in EAL signals that there is no sense in which
English may be regarded as displacing the child’s first language.3
1. Source: DfES statistical table 48, January 2001; the figures are for pupils of
compulsory school age in maintained schools in England.
2. Based on observations of the differing speeds with which bilingual students often
reach an effective command of their newly acquired language in social situations,
and a commonly slower pace in academic work, Cummins (1979) developed the
concepts of ‘basic interpersonal communicative skills’ (BICS), and ‘cognitive
academic language proficiency’ (CALP). He estimates that whereas conversational
fluency is often acquired in two years, academic fluency may require at least five
(J. Cummins, Bilingual Education Web, www.iteachilearn.com). See also Ofsted,
2001, p.5.
3. For the purposes of this report, first, home and community language are
interchangeable terms. Ofsted notes that ‘for most pupils English will quickly
become their main language for education, career and life chances, but their first or
community language will remain a crucial dimension for their social and cultural
identity’. (Ofsted, 2001, p.5).
4
For the children, being bilingual may often mean being more
proficient in English than one or both parents.4
Immersion
For many children in the fourteen survey schools, a language other
than English is used extensively, or exclusively, at home. They need
to acquire English:
• rapidly, so that they may access and benefit from the National
Curriculum
• often with little modelling of English having occurred at home.
In the survey schools, becoming bilingual through schooling is
largely accomplished by immersion. In most respects, bilingual
children in England and Wales share the same curriculum, teaching
and experiences as the English-speaking peers in whose company
they are usually educated. Unsupported immersion, however, is
unlikely to be effective. Much of this report will be concerned with
the wide range of measures by which, during their immersion,
pupils in the survey schools were skilfully supported and helped to
achieve independent buoyancy in English.
More than survival: the challenge
Survival level: people can cope with reading simple textual and
graphical material, complete simple forms and communicate in
writing at the level of simple notes and messages. They can also
cope with spoken information provided in English . . . At this
level it becomes possible to work in an English speaking
environment, but not if extensive verbal and listening
communication is required (BSA, 1996, p.8).
Being bilingual entails much more than surviving in
English. There is a profound difference between getting
by socially in a new language (along with the basic
literacy needed to read notes, notices and directions),
and what is required to learn and study through the
medium of English. Moreover, just as with native English
speakers, what may be effective in playground and
corridor, or the classroom during the primary years –
4. In some cases, it may also involve becoming multi-lingual; to avoid
an excess of repetitive qualifying clauses, the term bilingual will be
used throughout.
5
even perhaps in early writing – is placed under growing pressure as
the demands of the school curriculum expand and deepen,
especially in secondary school. In particular, reading complex texts
for the purposes of study significantly raises the demands.
Requirements for the dispassionate, concise, accurate and formal
use of the written word increases them further.
Communicative competence is also involved: drawn from
sociolinguistics, this concept suggests that there are two broad
dimensions to language acquisition and learning. At one level lie
those issues that may seem most plain (though they are no less
complex for that): they include such categories as vocabulary,
syntax, semantics, word formation, phonology and the writing
system. At another level is a knowledge of how language is used and
understood in real-life situations. Not only does this entail the
production and comprehension of speech and writing, it also
involves a wide range of contextual and cultural understandings,
matters of tone and nuance, the use of formality, informality, terms
of address, turn-taking, intergenerational talk, the use of silence, eye
contact and much else. These are also factors that can vary widely
between cultures; indeed, the differing gestural customs of one
culture may cause misunderstanding and even offence, to another.
The extent of the challenge that achieving bilingualism poses may be
gauged by the Agency’s finding of 1996 when, in a representative
sample of adults from the linguistic minority communities of
England and Wales, more than one in five of those who had received
full-time education in the UK for five or more years had not reached
‘survival’ level in a test of their English language skills (BSA, 1996,
p.12). We also know that ‘both literacy and numeracy [in English]
have a profound effect on earnings’ (DfEE, 1999, p.23), and on
access to jobs. It is vital that the children of those adults, and of
more recently arriving families, should not, in their turn,
underachieve in English.
THE SURVEY SAMPLE
Locations
The schools in this survey were selected by their local education
authorities (LEAs) as places where the teaching of EAL is working
well, and where significant numbers of learners of EAL are on the
school roll. The authorities all have districts with high
concentrations of linguistic minorities. The schools are located in
the north of England on either side of the Pennines (Bradford and
6
Burnley), in the east and west Midlands (Leicester and
Birmingham), in outer London (Hounslow) and in Wales (Cardiff).
In all, 14 schools were visited: one primary and one secondary in
each LEA except Bradford, where two of each were visited. All the
school catchments were in urban areas; most were in inner-city
locations or large satellite housing estates.
Evidence base
All the visits took place during the summer term of 2002. Each
usually lasted for a day. Teaching was observed in two classes in
each school and sometimes three. In the primary schools the classes
chosen were in both Key Stages (1 and 2); in the secondary schools
they were confined to Key Stage 3. The primary school lessons that
were observed were usually English or literacy; those in secondary
schools included one English and one or more lessons in another
subject. The range of other subjects included history, geography,
science and maths, among others. In addition to direct observation,
school data were gathered and additional documents were often
provided. A third source of evidence lay in the discussions that took
place with head teachers, the leaders and members of ethnic
minority achievement teams, teachers, assistants and other staff –
and with pupils, usually during lessons. In Birmingham, Bradford
and Hounslow, it was also possible to hold discussions with the LEA
staff who carry responsibility for the central teams that support
schools with the language achievements of ethnic minority children.
Home languages
In the event, in most of the survey schools (13 of 14),
pupils acquiring EAL were in the majority. The highest
proportion of such learners in a school was 98.5%, the
lowest – the only school below half – was 49.6%. Across
the sample, the average proportion of speakers of EAL on a
school roll was 82.2%. By far, most children who were
acquiring English in school drew upon a cultural and
linguistic heritage in and around the Indian sub-continent
(Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan). Some pupils
were new arrivals to the UK; they included the children of
refugees and asylum seekers from a further range of
countries, and often extended the linguistic and cultural
profiles of their schools significantly.
Many of the schools had carried out detailed language
audits showing the range and distribution of different home
languages among their pupils. While languages from the
7
Indian sub-continent predominated, the selections and weightings
of different Indian languages varied widely, and the overall range was
striking. Case Studies 1 and 2 illustrate something of the variety of
home languages spoken: one is from a northern secondary school,
the other was supplied by the Hounslow Schools Language Service
and shows the distribution of home languages in schools
throughout a linguistically diverse LEA.
CASE STUDY 1
Hounslow language service 2001 language survey.
Total bilingual pupils = 43% (14110)
Punjabi
5251
Urdu
2202
Gujarati
1514
Arabic
644
Somali
634
Hindi
561
Bengali
290
Farsi
277
Portuguese
223
Tamil
201
Other
2313
Arabic
0.12%
Bengali
10.48%
CASE STUDY 2
Home language June 2002
Cantonese
0.12%
Czech
0.12%
English
45.25%
Hindi
0.12%
Kutchi
0.12%
Malay
0.12%
Punjabi
31.20%
Pushto
4.81%
Russian
0.12%
Serbo-Croat 0.25%
Urdu
8
7.15%
Three social factors
Special educational needs
A high incidence of pupils with special needs presents schools with a
variety of added challenges – organisational, pedagogical, curricular
and in terms of resources. Across the sample, pupils on all stages of
the SEN register (‘school action’, to ‘school action plus’) ranged from
as high as 40% of the school roll to 10.2%. The average for the sample
was 20.7%; this is close to the national average for England,5 but in
nine of the 14 schools the proportion was 20% or above.
Free school meals
Having a high proportion of pupils taking free school meals provides a
clear but conservative indicator of socio-economic disadvantage:
eligible families may choose not to claim. In the sample, the highest
proportion of pupils registered for free meals was 53%, the lowest
15% and the average 35.6%.
The sample’s average was substantially higher than the average figure
for free school meals in either England (17.6% for 2001) or Wales
(19.1%, also for 2001); indeed, it was nearly twice as high as the
combined average for both (18.3%).6 Plainly, the survey schools that
supported pupils learning EAL often served substantially more
disadvantaged catchments than those of the country at large.
Turbulence and discontinuity
Staying at one school for a short period of time and then moving on to
another is what administrators describe as turbulence; it is
often associated with a student’s unheralded arrival, and with
enrolment at any age or time of year. Turbulence is frequently
unhelpful to child and school alike. It is not exclusive to
schools with a high proportion of bilingual learners, but
presents an additional challenge that they and their pupils
often face. It was a significant factor for five of the 14 schools,
and was experienced, to lesser degrees, by most of the others.
Broken continuity is likely to be especially unhelpful both to
the acquisition and consolidation of EAL, particularly if the
school is the principal source of the pupil’s models and
experience of English. It is probably least helpful during
secondary schooling, when the curriculum accelerates and
5. 20.4% provisional DfES figure for pupils with statements (2.9%) and
without, for January 2002.
6. Sources: for England, the Dorset CC website; for Wales, Schools in
Wales, General Statistics 2001, p.65.
9
when adolescence sets in. The critical period hypothesis suggests that,
if delayed until puberty, some aspects of first language acquisition are
likely to become harder, and might possibly not occur; this may have
implications for EAL too (Fromkin et al, 2003, p.52ff; Crystal, 1997,
p.265).
CASE STUDY 3
One primary school supplied a statistical picture of the disturbing
extent of such movements: between YR and Y2, the current Y3
group had experienced a 27% turnover of pupils; a further 20%
change occurred during Y3.
Schools inevitably find it difficult to plan for, to resource and to
integrate unpredicted arrivals. Accountability too, is largely
invalidated by discontinuity: the school where children are eventually
tested, but were not previously taught, is commonly held responsible
for their achievements.
A particular form of discontinuity is specific to schools with pupils
who are acquiring EAL: the widespread custom of making lengthy
visits to the children’s extended families, chiefly in India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh. The survey schools reported prolonged absences of
from a month or so, to five years; one primary school found that, for
some children, such visits occurred up to three times during Key
Stages 1 and 2.
10
Manifestly, what is an important and enriching experience can also
pose problems for the development of the children’s English,
especially when they are acquiring it chiefly in school. The more term
time that is taken, the greater this problem element becomes. The
resourcefulness of some of the schools in helping pupils to cope
with this aspect of lengthy overseas visits is shown in Enrichment,
extension and support, p.39.
The achievements recorded in this report were frequently
accomplished against the odds. All the survey schools are achieving
well in relation to their contextual and linguistic challenges, as their
last inspection reports noted. Across the 14 schools, such successes
led to the award of beacon status (three schools), the Basic Skills
Agency’s Quality Mark (four schools) and to several DfES
Achievement Awards; one school had recently gained all three. Some
are also doing well in comparison to schools in localities with more
advantaged intakes.
Achievements in English: national assessments
Test and examination data cannot readily give credit for all the
achievements of schools that are doing well in challenging contexts.
Nonetheless, statistics for English assessments provide a set of widely
understandable measures, and the schools did well. Across the
sample of 14 schools, there were ten cases where schools exceeded
national averages in various aspects of their work in English: these
were remarkable achievements.
Above average achievements in English in the survey schools: 2001
Key Stage 2 Key Stage 3 GCSE English GCSE English Literature
3 schools
3 schools
1 school
3 schools
At Key Stage 2, a further three primary schools were within one to ten
points of their national averages for English. One of these matched
the national average for Level 4, but missed on Level 5; 80.3% of its
pupils are learners of EAL, 38% take free meals (with underclaiming
reported) and 40% are on the SEN register. This school also provided
the example of high turbulence given in Case Study 3; plainly, its
achievements too are remarkable.
Of the remaining two primary schools, one is a beacon school, and
both were commended in their last inspection reports for successful
work with EAL. Of one, Ofsted noted that, though ‘many families live
11
in overcrowded houses and have very low incomes’
the support offered to ‘pupils who are learning
English as an additional language [98.5%] is very
good’. Of the beacon school, an inspection team
commented that ‘although many pupils start school
speaking little or no English, they achieve well. . . and
all receive very good support’.
At Key Stage 3, a further three schools were within six
points of their relevant national average. The
proportions of pupils learning EAL were 85%, 98%,
and 55% respectively. Further below were the schools
where turbulence is often high, where significant
numbers of pupils who are new to English arrive as
late as Y11, and where disadvantage is plain. Recent
inspection reports warmly commended their EAL
teaching.
At Key Stage 4, the requirements of formal examinations and
academic writing seemed to bring further pressures to bear. One
school exceeded the national average for grades A–C in English (61%
in England) by seven percentage points. No others matched or
exceeded the average for England, or for Wales (58.5%). However, in
English Literature the picture was more favourable, and not always
with a selective entry. Literature examinations require similarly
formal, analytical writing and challenging reading.
12
Achieving buoyancy
During immersion, it is largely in the processes of:
• mediation
• preparation
• and support
that, along with those of their mainstream colleagues, the specialist
skills of EAL teachers and assistants lie. It is this vital work, and the
policies which drove it, that is the subject of this section of the report.
NEW TO ENGLISH
Starting or changing school can be a jolt for any child. It is likely to be
more of a shock if the school’s language is not one’s own. Such
disjunctions can be readily multiplied if the child is new to the
country, if in his/her background there is little experience either of
schooling or of literacy, if they arrive following recent trauma (as in the
case of some refugees);
from the examples that
were shared with me, it
would be easy to go on.
Learning seldom thrives in
company with stress. The
survey schools were skilled
and sympathetic in helping
their charges to settle and
to orientate themselves.
They
succeeded
in
imparting confidence, selfesteem and a vivid sense
that operating in English is
purposeful and pleasurable.
These are vital parts of the
challenge to all schools that
receive pupils who need to
acquire English through
schooling.
13
Settling in
‘Everything we do is underpinned by recognition and self-esteem.’
Pupils, teachers, assistants and caretaker are ‘all part of a family’.
(Quotations from field notes: primary school)
From the school foyer onwards, welcome was often plain in the
exhibits, pictures and examples of pupils’ work that were on display;
they were bright, colourful and inviting, as this report clearly
illustrates. In the primary schools especially, these displays could be
of high quality; they often reflected something of the pupils’ cultural
heritages too. In two schools (one primary and one secondary), the
head teachers had visited the home districts – in Mirpur and Gujarat
– where many of their pupils’ relatives still live; their visits were
known to the families, and the photo albums were often to hand in
school.
Particularly in primary schools, new children are often linked with a
slightly older pupil who speaks their home language, to be shown the
ropes. In some primary schools, they are paired or grouped by their
home languages in class. In the much larger secondary schools, the
EAL or ethnic minority achievement team often makes a special point
of providing a home base where new pupils may retreat at break or
lunch hour, as they settle in. There is often another pupil or a
bilingual assistant available to speak with them in own their language,
and always a sympathetic adult and purposeful things to do.
14
CASE STUDY 4
There is a strongly pastoral and interpersonal thrust to the work of the EAL
team. It regards helping with settling in and the boosting of self-esteem as
vital parts of its work. ‘Before I start to teach them anything I need them to
trust me.’
(Quotation from field notes: secondary school)
• One secondary school receives up to 40 new pupils per year,
who are either new to English or have just returned from lengthy
overseas visits; they can arrive at any time of the year and in any
year group.
• New arrivals usually come on their first day with a relative or
friend who can interpret for them at an initial meeting. If they do
not, the school can usually provide an interpreter from the
teaching staff.
• In addition to the usual details, the school’s admissions form
gathers information that will help with placement. The new
pupil is usually paired with another in the same class who
speaks the same language and who follows the same timetable.
• All new pupils are helped with their timetables and organisation
by an older pupil, who speaks their own language.
• There is a large element of informal moral and pastoral support
to the team’s work.
• The EAL team visits all primary schools that send Asian heritage
pupils to the school.
• All pupils have logbooks containing policies, individual action
plans, notes for home and homework; these are translated as
necessary.
• There is a strong home-school liaison policy led by a senior
member of staff who lives locally, and is a prominent member of
one of the chief minority communities contributing pupils to the
school.
• The EAL base room is staffed and available as a drop-in centre
before and after school, and during all breaks. It is well used.
• The EAL team holds weekly meetings to review pupils’ progress
– in settling in and academically; this guides their subsequent
work with new students.
15
Assessing and placing
Assessing how much help a pupil acquiring EAL might need,
and determining the kind of help that might be most
appropriate – bilingual and otherwise – was one of the key
skills of school EAL teams in both phases of education.
Practices varied widely, from informal internally devised
assessments of achievement in English, assessments of pupils’
literacy in their home languages, to published schemes (criteria
matched to levels of progress), which were sometimes mapped
on to the National Curriculum levels too. When handled with
conviction and consistency, each appeared to have worked
well.
One primary school added a suite of baseline tests that
extended beyond proficiency in English alone. The scores
revealed that significant numbers of pupils learning EAL had
high potentials for overall achievement and these findings were
important contributors to the school’s alertness in planning for
progress. The benefits of these combined approaches (EAL and
baseline), were strongly commended in the school’s most
recent inspection report.
In secondary schools, close informal liaison with subject teams, and
with English departments in particular, proved to be particularly
helpful.
Using home languages
A major source of reassurance in the strange surroundings of a new
school, and a vital bridge for learning, lies in the provision of
supportive adults who can speak one’s own language, mediating
between it and English. This was well understood by all the schools
visited, and a wide range of provision was observed.
Bilingual support was especially strong in primary school reception
classes. In one case, the reception teacher, a member of the same
linguistic community as many of the children, was assisted by two
bilingual classroom assistants (one, a volunteer on work experience).
Between them, they encompassed the home languages of the class. In
the plenary stages of the literacy lesson, the teacher chiefly used
English, but switched as necessary. The class’s permanent assistant
also shared parts of the opening session, using her different home
language to ensure that all pupils were on board. During group work,
the teacher and assistants used English and home languages as
appropriate. It was a highly interactive lesson, in which reinforcement
was multi-layered.
16
CASE STUDY 5
In a skilfully conducted big book session in one primary school (YR),
the bilingual assistant led the reading:
• first she told the story in her home language, bringing out a few
key words in English as part of the telling, and discussing the
pictures with the class
• next she read it expressively in English
• then she translated the text, also performing expressively
• finally, she conducted a question and answer session, mainly
using English, but switching into Punjabi and Urdu as necessary.
Pupils responded with engagement, and manifestly enjoyed the
humour of the text, both in their home languages and in English.
In addition to the enthusiastic and alert manner with which all this
was done, good learning principles were at work. In particular, the
pre-reading activity (the oral telling and the use of the pictures), and
the apparently incidental – but entirely deliberate – highlighting of
some of the key English words, established a clear context of
interest, understanding and expectation before the children
experienced the text in English. The translation reinforced that
understanding, and this was carried further forward by the lively
question and answer work that followed.
Connections were locking into place as I watched; yet, such was the
pleasure of the occasion, the children were entirely unaware that
they were doing anything difficult.
17
In addition to Case Study 5’s sound learning principles, a further
principle underlay much of the home language practice of primary
and secondary schools alike: it was an understanding that, for a while
during immersion, a pupil’s conceptual grasp of a topic may be
swifter and more secure in his/her home language than in English.
However, it is also important that this should not become a
permanent route: part of the challenge is to provide enough bilingual
help to reinforce the concept, but not so much as to render pupils
dependent for the long term. Achieving such balance and progression
requires a blend of cool professional judgment on the one hand, and
warmly supportive personal qualities on the other. Fortunately, these
strengths were common among the staff involved.
An earlier Agency report (Frater, 2001), found a primary school where
pupils were grouped in class in home language clusters (Gujarati,
Pushto, Mirpuri, and so on) rather than by ability or progress. The
intention was to promote conceptual consolidation in the home
language during the group phase of a lesson. It was one of several
highly effective strands of policy in an inner-city school where 87% of
children were EAL learners, where 90% achieved Level 4 or above in
reading in the Key Stage 2 tests, and 81% in writing; these
achievements are well above national averages, and the writing level,
in the most challenging mode, is specially striking.
Structures of provision
In primary schools, assessments sometimes led to the provision of
intensive, short-term bilingual teaching, to get the child’s English
going, athough this was not common. More often, they led to
bilingual plenary teaching (as in Case Study 5), and targeted in-class
support, something that was readily accommodated in most primary
classrooms, especially in the group phase of a lesson. A school with
few bilingual staff, or none with a matching language, could often call
on LEA resources for some of these kinds of help, though the survey
found that such central services are no longer provided by all
authorities with significant linguistic minority communities.
The picture in secondary schools was more complex and varied. Two
schools followed contrasting approaches; both were found to be
effective. In one (75% of all pupils were learning EAL), a whole school
approach is adopted from the start (Y7). All staff are provided with
accurate assessment information on individual pupils’ English
language needs, including the specific skills that need boosting. All
department objectives include language across the curriculum, and
the school’s EAL team has provided in-service training and materials
18
to boost the literacy teaching skills of all staff. In addition, all pupils
are assigned to one of three categories:
• targeted
pupils, those with the most pressing EAL needs, are
offered workshops and small-group programmes; all have an EAL
equivalent of the individual education programme given to
special needs pupils, and all receive targeted help in class from
learning support assistants, who may also be bilingual
•
scaffolded pupils are provided with targeted in-class support
• monitored pupils (the bulk of students) are kept under review, and
receive teaching that takes explicit account of literacy in all
subjects in a school that has actively welcomed the cross-curricular
elements introduced into Key Stage 3 by the National Strategy.
The second school, with fewer learners of EAL overall, but with
significant numbers of new arrivals, adopts a more staged approach.
Placement, similarly scrupulous, is accomplished in a co-operative
exercise between the relevant head of year, the EAL team leader, and
the head of English. Informal testing is also used, and students are
assigned to one of the city’s EAL progress categories. Students with
little or no English, and often too with little family experience of
literacy, are assigned to the first of two mixed age classes. As they
progress, they join the second class from which, as they progress
further, they move on to the mainstream.
In both of these discrete classes, the pupils experience the National
Curriculum in slightly modified form; it is taught by subject
specialists in liaison with the EAL team, always with the help in the
classroom of an EAL teacher, and/or bilingual assistants. The National
Curriculum is modified in relation to modern foreign languages in
particular (omitted in the first class), but the pupils still learn Welsh –
frequently making rapid progress. Extra English classes are offered,
and personal and social education, though not separately timetabled,
provides a context for much of the work that is done. European
languages are introduced in the second class, though with less time
than normal.
Pupils’ progress is closely monitored, and is reviewed fortnightly.
When the team sees that a pupil is ready, he/she is moved up to the
second class, or re-assigned to the mainstream. Supplementary
teaching and in-class support in the mainstream are also available.
The school has found this approach especially supportive for the
children of refugees and asylum-seekers, which it receives with some
frequency.
19
CASE STUDY 6
New to English (NtE): one secondary school’s approach
An intensive programme is offered, in small groups, to
approximately 40 pupils at a time.
• English is taught full-time for up to two weeks.
• Thereafter, pupils are gradually fed into mainstream teaching,
still with elements of withdrawal English teaching for up to 12
lessons per week, but more commonly six. The withdrawal
element is from subjects where the curriculum is least linear.
• NtE pupils are also supported in class, on programmes of
partnership teaching with subject staff (joint planning, and
sometimes an extra teacher from the EAL team).
• A bilingual assistant may also continue to work in class with
individual pupils, for variable amounts of time on work that is
jointly planned with subject staff.
• NtE pupils also have lunchtime and break time access to the EAL
drop-in centre, i.e. the EMAG team office/classroom, where
many take their lunches, use computers, obtain extra tuition,
receive informal pastoral support, and use their home language
with peers in what is plainly a welcoming and safe haven.
• Progress continues to be closely monitored by the EAL team.
• Its skilled and comprehensive care of its children who are
acquiring English is one of the key reasons why large numbers
of parents choose this school.
Matching language and experience
A dimension of second language acquisition and consolidation that is
apt to pass unnoticed is that no amount of explanation or theory can
replace experience – especially sight, sound, smell, touch and the
associations they imprint upon our words and usages. Seen only in a
picture book, an English robin might be as large as a pheasant, an
elephant as small as a pony. Just such mismatches were recorded
among pupils who were learning EAL by teachers in some of the
survey schools. And one bilingual teacher noted that it had taken him
quite a while as an adult to reconcile his own concept of river with
what he encountered in the UK; for all his longstanding fluency in
English, previous experience told him that rivers are commonly half a
mile or more wide – anything much less is a stream.
20
The survey schools took pains to address this vital dimension both
through the curriculum and by providing a wide range of extracurricular activities. It was a theme that primary schools emphasised
specially strongly.
Curricular experiences
Primary schools were vividly aware that rich experiences, discussed in
English, contribute powerfully to the development of EAL; they
readily saw it as an obligation to provide them. Some suggested that
these were especially important for the children of their particular
catchments. More than one school found the value of prolonging
nursery and similar activities well into Key Stage 1. Their ways
forward included:
•
vivid classroom displays
•
structured play activities
•
the planned use of role play corners
•
‘small world play’ (this is the provision of trays loaded with
figures and objects: scenarios may be constructed, and pairs of
children, working together, are encouraged to build up oral
stories; prompt cards are provided too)
•
the close linking of writing and doing (when the infant class
wrote a letter to their mums, they all went to the post office, had
it weighed, and sent it)
•
links and activities with other schools (one school, with 90+%
ethnic minority children, has established an informal twinning
arrangement with a primary school in a predominantly white
suburb)
•
whole school or year group events, when the staff dress up and
act in role
•
visits to the school by theatre companies and others.
In particular, several primary schools had rediscovered the value of
placing an inclusive theme, and related practical activities – especially
outings – at the heart of their literacy planning. In turn, this led on to
lively talk, to highly relevant text level work – carefully linked reading
and writing activities – and to word and sentence work that then
served inescapably well-established text level purposes.
21
The following were some of the recent outings that contributed
directly to language development and to lively literacy activities in one
primary school:
•
an aquarium, circus and beach (reported to be the first
experience of each kind for most pupils)
•
the local stately home
•
an ice rink
•
events for the local Arts Week
•
a factory visit (local chemical industry)
•
a pantomime at a local college
•
the local library
•
the professional football club, and its after-school study club
•
the post office
•
the local park and its rowing boats
•
the nearby high school’s arts education day.
22
Though some of these might, at first, seem frivolous or
trivial, their value was plain in the high levels of
engagement, lively talk and the thoroughly engaged reading
and writing that they prompted. For some pupils, these
were introductions to aspects of British culture, and their
associated frames of reference, which they had not
experienced before. From observed classroom evidence, it
was clear that they had contributed directly both to the
children’s range of language resources and to their
communicative competence.
This was a school that made a point of granting teachers
non-contact planning time for outings, to squeeze every last
benefit from the visit. That such experiences were far from trivial was
equally plain in the work of another school with a very similar
philosophy (Case Study 7). Both schools had also organised
stimulating events for their pupils, often involving their families,
including:
•
a Jubilee ‘street party’ in the playground, with a large turnout of
parents
•
a World Cup breakfast
•
artists in residence
•
arts week
•
story tellers and dancers working in school
•
community organised cultural events
•
a fete, with lots of family support
•
a tutor who worked with children and staff on Singaporean
drama and dance
•
Asian music and instruments (demonstration and practical
music making)
•
a visit from the fire service
•
poets who worked with the children.
Short residential visits (e.g. to outdoor centres) were offered by other
schools (primary and secondary); they were immensely productive,
especially when schools had taken special care to liaise with parents
beforehand (home visits, phone calls and meetings).
23
CASE STUDY 7
Y2 Class: English lesson based on yesterday’s visit to Southern
Down Beach
• Classroom display: windbreak, deckchair, beach balls, costumes,
shells, fishing net, a sunshade, a frieze of enlarged art work by the
children (‘Under the Sea’), etc. A suspended line of children’s art
work is also prominent, stretched across the classroom, with related
sentences composed by the children, and word-processed in a large
font: ‘I am playing with my friend’ (Ibrahim); ‘When I am in the sea
I like to play by the sand’ (Jabeda); ‘I am playing catch in the water’
(Gurjeet); ‘I am standing on the rocks!’ (Keisha); ‘First I went
swimming and now I am sunbathing’ (Jake), etc.
• Today’s core task is to write one of the following: a postcard home;
a label; a poem; a message for a bottle. Likely to carry over to a
second lesson. (Differentiation is in play.)
•
Allied tasks, which contribute directly to the writing, include:
building castles in a sand tray; floating and sinking activities;
trialling a ‘boat’ powered by an elastic band stern paddle;
studying, describing and drawing different kinds of shells; painting
pebbles to take home. (Differentiated again.)
• Three adults are present: the class teacher, an EAL teacher and a
classroom assistant. Together, they support the differentiated groups
and activities, and ensure that plenty of purposeful talk takes place,
prompting where necessary, maintaining pace, and moving the
children on with their drafting. In particular, they support the
drafting activities; skilled questioning and prompting observed.
• As reported, for most pupils in the class, this was the first traditional
seaside visit and play on a beach that they had experienced. The
vocabulary that emerged was intriguing and often sensory: drying
salt water on the skin, sand between the toes, the smell of the
seashells that had been kept overnight, wet hair, clammy costumes
and so on.
• Purpose, pace and engagement are manifest; lively talk and
effective writing both emerge in the lesson.
With the intensifying pace of the academic curriculum, secondary
schools found it rather harder to place such vividly formative
occasions close to the heart of their day-to-day work. Nonetheless,
secondary and primary schools alike made a point of providing a
wide range of enriching extra-curricular activities, clubs and out-ofhours study support.
24
Extra-curricular experiences
One primary school, the winner of an award for its extra-curricular
provision, was notably clear that an aim ‘to improve children’s
attitudes to lifelong leaning’ and ‘provide opportunities’ for them to
‘fulfil their potential and aspirations’ drove its after-hours provision. It
is also plain that such a range of activities, and the informality with
which they are carried out, provides many opportunities for the
purposeful and pleasurable use and development of English. The
pupils of the school have 15 home languages that are neither English
nor Welsh. The extra-curricular programme is one of the chief ways in
which the school has responded to its rising intake of pupils who are
acquiring EAL.
Every day begins with a breakfast club; after school clubs include IT,
football, hockey, guitar, recorder, Welsh dance, cricket, Indo-Cymry
percussion, bookworms, netball, baseball, Story Sacks, tennis and
gardening. Study skills at the nearby high school are also offered, and
parents are ‘beginning to offer time and skills’. Newsletters and the
weekly class assemblies to which they are invited keep parents
informed, and pupil participation in the clubs is high (e.g. 78% of Y4).
In secondary schools, the range of activities included a wide variety of
sports, musical activities, clubs and societies (some schools listed as
many as 50 clubs).
Talking and listening
All the survey schools agreed that together, talking and listening carry
the highest priority for learners of EAL, especially those in the early
stages of becoming bilingual.
A clear benefit of the vivid
experiences that so many of
the schools provided was
that, without artifice, they
led to plenty of closely
engaged talk. Because this
was purposeful and the
activities were absorbing, it
was not difficult to lead
children on to literacy –
reading
about
similar
experiences,
recording,
shaping and reflecting on
their
own
experience,
imagining others and so on.
25
Several schools, acutely conscious of the importance of talk for their
pupils, explored additional ways to give speech emphasis and ensure
that pupils continued to be engaged. These included:
•
the extensive use of circle time throughout the school
•
a school council in which consultation and participation were
lively and meaningful (children’s views counted)
•
‘philosophy for children’
•
explicit work on thinking and study skills, often using graphical
approaches to note-taking and to structuring ideas
•
IT programmes that support the visual approaches noted above
•
several too had adopted the active classroom approaches that
take account of recent research into learning and the brain, as
advocated by The University of the First Age, and the
accelerated learning movement, among others (see also Frater,
2002).
Primary schools in Bradford, when concerned with the slow progress
in speaking English of some of their pupils, use a locally devised
programme ‘Talking Partners’ which is designed to encourage
participation, and to add to the children’s stock of language, schemas
and strategies (see more fully in Annex 4). As observed, the
programme is carefully structured and equally applicable to
monolingual English speakers in need of similar help.
26
CASE STUDY 8
Talking partners: observed session
• Context
Three pupils are present, drawn from Years 3 and 4. The pupils
meet in this group with their teacher three times a week for 10
weeks. One child is described as having a good vocabulary, but
underdeveloped grammatical resources, the other two as lacking
self-esteem and confidence (reluctant talkers). All are at an early
stage of learning EAL.
• Teaching
• 1. The lesson begins with extensive discussion and the pupils
recall with their teacher a recent story that they have read
together (Amazing Grace). The discussion is accompanied by
plenty of prompts to use lips, raise voice and so on. Vocabulary
growth is prompted: bigger words and more formal usages are
encouraged (why for how come). There is lots of praise and
reinforcement.
• 2. The group moves on to plan the questions that they might
want to ask of Grace. Role play and hot-seating follows: one
child acts as Grace, the others ask the questions.
• 3. A barrier game follows. From behind a screen, one pupil gives
instructions to the other two on how to construct a specific
building in plastic bricks. The others follow instructions and ask
questions but cannot see ‘the instructor’. Before starting, all
three are reminded of the ‘rules’ of the game. The instructor has
a task sheet; each pupil is also provided with cue cards
(vocabulary, connectives and idioms that match this kind of
activity – the schema). As the activity goes on the emerging
vocabulary includes: rectangular, left, right and so on. The
evaluation phase of the session is especially valuable, with lots
of language building, and skilled reinforcement by the teacher
(‘I liked the way you did...’).
• 4. Tomorrow’s work is outlined to the group.
• Achievement
• Levels are variable across the group, but in all cases the growth of
fluency and confidence is plain during the course of the session.
27
Parents
The series to which this survey belongs has consistently found that
when schools take pains to ensure that parents support their work,
the children’s achievements benefit. The schools in this survey
seldom had to battle with parental indifference. However, they had
often to establish confidence and trust, take account of cultural
customs and to build language bridges between home and school.
The following were among the measures they took that helped to
establish co-operation:
•
ensuring that letters and documents which go home are
translated into the appropriate languages
•
having bilingual administrative staff to answer the phone
•
providing interpreters (preferably from the school staff) at all
the school’s public occasions, especially parents’ evenings
•
offering hospitality on public occasions
•
encouraging community members, especially parents, to become
school governors
•
appointing liaison teachers, often from the relevant linguistic
minority community
•
home visiting
•
encouraging parents to attend school assemblies
•
inviting parents to assist with school trips
•
providing family literacy and numeracy projects
•
offering computer classes for parents
•
establishing English classes for parents on school premises
(sometimes on a single-sex basis)
•
building links with local religious leaders and communities
•
taking explicit account of religious festivals when planning mock
examination timetables
•
hosting a health clinic on school premises
•
taking special pains to discuss
primary–secondary school transfer.
and
28
assist
with
The advantages of having a community liaison teacher were plain to
one secondary school, especially when the teacher was also bilingual
and a respected member of the relevant minority community. In
addition to a wide range of meeting and interpretation duties, the
teacher finds that it is helpful if he is involved when behaviour and
attendance problems arise, sometimes accompanying the LEA’s
education welfare officer (EWO) on a home visit. In addition to those
which he or the EWO initiates, he is also used for targeted home visits
by the school’s senior management. Helping staff become more
familiar with Islamic culture is an important informal aspect of his
work, and he runs an Islamic studies class for pupils after school. He
defines his role as establishing a bond between the home and school
communities; on occasions this has involved assisting parents find
ways to help their children cope with school. It clearly helps that he is
also a well-known member of the congregation at the nearby mosque,
and closely involved as a volunteer in the locality’s range of wider
ethnic minority initiatives.
29
Supporting literacy
Reading
If talking and listening are of prime importance for pupils new to
English, books offer the key to the next step: their progress with
literacy. And texts were seldom far away, even for pupils whose
speech needed boosting. The Talking Partners scheme, for example,
makes extensive use of stories and texts as a support for speech
development.
But speech and writing are significantly different. At an obvious level,
speech uses sound, intonation, eye-contact, gesture and so on.
Writing uses symbolic black marks. Linguistic scholars, such as
Michael Halliday (1994, p.70), have suggested that they differ in less
apparent ways too. The grammar of spontaneous speech, in English
at least, is more circuitous and complex; that of the written word
more linear. And writing, typically, has a higher ratio of content and
concept words (e.g. nouns) to grammatical ones (words like am,
could, should, of and so on) than the spoken word; in technical terms,
writing is lexically more dense.
By reading books to children, we induct them into these different
ways of using language, preparing them both for reading and for
writing in English. By reading books with pleasure for themselves,
children deepen this familiarity, entering the worlds that books can
open for them. Through this engagement with texts, often
unknowingly, they prepare themselves to imitate, to borrow and
eventually to write in their own ways too.
Reading materials: a shared heritage
There is an unmistakable historical connection among the
traditional narratives of all the peoples extending from Ireland
to India and of their descendants in newer lands...
(Thompson, 1977, p.14).
A few primary schools used the traditional tales that contain the
threads of a common Indo-European heritage, which Stith
Thompson’s research has uncovered: Mossy Coat (north of England),
Cap O’ Rushes (East Anglia), Ashputtel (Germany), Cinderella
(France), and Juleidah and her coat of leather (Egypt) are variations of
30
one of many shared types of tale. Those where the traditions are
closest are more down-to-earth than the courtly French version. They
lack the pumpkin coach, fairy godmother and rodent footmen, but
gain in humour, ingenuity and humanity.
There are many other tales, parts of tales, repeated patterns and motifs
that can have a familiar ring for children from a wide range of cultural
traditions. One school had a lively collection of bilingual texts of
exactly this kind. As Jack Zipes (1995) and Teresa Grainger (1999)
have both shown, folk tales offer rich opportunities for language and
personal development. Their potential for building cultural and
linguistic bridges has yet to be fully realised, but many of the survey
schools offered a good range of bilingual texts, and had bilingual
teachers and assistants to read them.
Reading materials: quality and kinds
Most of the primary schools in this survey had reached similar
conclusions to earlier schools in this series (e.g. Frater, 2001; see also
Barrs and Cork, 2001): they found special value in using literary texts
of quality, including poetry. They used extracts, but they emphasised
and found time for the sustained reading of whole texts. Some also
suggested that there is room for more children’s literature of quality
that features characters who share the backgrounds and experiences
of their pupils.
School libraries
Good libraries actively used were also
important supports for bilingual learners.
The primary school where children’s
achievements were highest overall had the
best library too. It was staffed all day;
children played an important part in its
administration;
its
selections
were
judicious,
extensive
and
included
substantial numbers of texts that reflected
the children’s predominantly Asian cultural
heritage. In particular, it was not used for
private borrowing alone, active though that
was: it was widely used to support learning
in
class.
An
enthusiastic
and
knowledgeable librarian was a constant
source of encouragement, advice and
prompts for further reading. New
purchases and regularly changed themes
were the subject of lively publicity and
31
displays. Yet it was packed tightly in a corridor, not housed in spacious
purpose-built premises.
Reading practice
Practice is as vital for effective reading as it is for safe driving or
tuneful piano playing. How much practice may be necessary? It looks
prodigious: to achieve no more than average fluency may require, for
example, the reading of around a million words a year in the middle
primary years (Sylva and Hurry, 1995, p.5). Plainly, this cannot be
accomplished in the literacy hour alone. If children are behind with
literacy in English in the secondary school, for whatever reason,
practice is equally vital.
Primary schools
In those cases where families do not regularly use English at home,
parents may be less well placed to read bedtime stories in English to
their pre-school children, or to help with the early reading books in
English that most schools send home daily for further practice. It may
be especially important, therefore, for schools to support children
who are acquiring English by providing additional reading practice.
One beacon primary school
was well aware of this
contextual
issue,
and
addressed it with great
ingenuity. It formed a ‘young
teachers’ club’ that trains and
supports older students (Key
Stage 2) in paired reading
approaches, including simple
record-keeping.
However,
instead of using them in
school – the usual pattern –
they read stories to younger
siblings at home. When those
siblings reach school age, the
‘young teachers’ listen to and
help them with the home
reading books that come
back from school every day.
The school reports that the
older siblings often carry on
when they have transferred to
secondary school.
32
Other primary schools also used a range of further measures to
support reading practice, including:
•
after school and lunch hour reading clubs
•
reading logs and diaries (collected and discussed every two
weeks)
•
opportunities, regularly provided, to use differentiated taperecorded books, which the children follow with the text
•
home book boxes
•
reading practice for at least 75 minutes per week in school
•
individual reading support from bilingual assistants before
school every morning
•
reading partners in class (pairs or groups)
•
adult reading partners
•
a visiting librarian and book bus
•
rewards for voluntary reading
•
extra reading classes for pupils new to English
•
at 2.30pm every day, all support staff work with targeted
children on reading for 30 minutes. Each assistant provides two
15 minute sessions; this means 70 children are helped daily.
Those targeted have special needs, are underachieving, or have
no adult or older sibling who shares reading with them at home.
Related opportunities for help with language development in English
included:
•
a Reading RecoveryTM programme, with an appropriately trained
teacher (who also acts as a literacy staff tutor for colleagues)
•
extra provision of small-group teaching, with a strong emphasis
on talk and reading, for children who have recently returned
from extended holidays.
One school with a high proportion of bilingual learners lays a special
emphasis on the rehearsal and building of an extensive sight vocabulary
for all infants. It seeks to exceed the National Literacy Strategy’s targets
33
for all pupils, frequently assesses vocabulary growth,
which it sees as vital for early self-esteem, and liberally
rewards progress with stick-on badges (e.g. ‘I can read
seven words’). Other schools included the provision of
carefully differentiated texts, and a strong emphasis on
closely related pre-reading activities for new-to-English
pupils before a text is tackled in class.
Secondary schools
Most of the survey secondary schools had also
appreciated the special importance of reading practice.
They often adopted school-wide approaches designed
to help all their Key Stage 3 students, but schemes
planned specifically for pupils learning EAL were also
prominent. The schools’ approaches to boosting
reading included:
•
an annual Readathon
•
paired reading offered to 10% of Key Stage 3 students
•
specifically for learners of EAL: a paired reading programme
that makes use of sixth form students and occurs three times a
week. Reading record cards are integral to the scheme and stages
carefully recorded. The reading materials are carefully pitched
and appropriately differentiated. (Key principles well observed:
frequency, individual encouragement, progression and match.)
•
Better Reading Partnerships
•
trained adult volunteers (e.g. from the national charity Reading
Matters for Life, based in Bradford)
•
group reading activities
•
book boxes
•
homework clubs
•
non-fiction selections to support boys’ voluntary reading
•
all students carrying reading books with them at all times, which
they are expected to read during registration periods
•
well-planned library lessons retained as part of whole-school
policy
34
•
as part of its approach to addressing cross-curricular themes,
one school offers a whole-school reading programme in Y7;
supervised by the English team, it takes explicit account of
reading development and reading for pleasure and offers
instruction in a wide range of text types and associated reading
techniques.
Writing
There is little doubt that writing is the most challenging language
mode, for children and adults alike. Writing always requires a long
apprenticeship. Irrespective of what may be accomplished by explicit
instruction, effective writing inevitably requires an intimate
experience of the ways of texts too. In addition to the manual
dexterity that must be established for early writing, plentiful reading
and writing are needed for an apprentice to build up and internalise a
repertoire of forms, vocabulary, sentence patterns, idioms,
collocations and so on, for each writing genre.
Getting writing right, without a conversation’s immediate feedback, is
not a matter of surface correctness alone – though many apprentices
find that quite tough enough. Nuance, tone, precision and overall
coherence are all involved, and much more. To ‘make your language
come clear all by itself, with no existential context’, requires, as
Walter Ong suggests, ‘exquisite circumspection’; it is this sustained
attention to detail that ‘makes writing the agonising work it
commonly is’ (my emphasis, Ong, 1982, p.104).
Combining early reading and
writing: the ‘I am’ books
A clear sense of purpose and
relevance are essential to make
writing’s
finicky
agonising
tolerable. Most of the survey
schools understood this, and
one primary school, acutely
aware of the needs of pupils
who are acquiring EAL (over
90%), had devised a striking
initiative of its own. This brings
early reading and writing
together, combining them with a
powerful purpose, and the rapid
build up of a repertoire.
35
The school does not at first use conventional early reading books in
reception classes; its scheme, evolved over the years, aims to:
• instil
the delight and pleasure of reading from the very first
lesson
• create
a perception of the self as reader from the start,
capitalising on the egocentric nature of the four and five-year-old
• match writing progress with reading immediately
• develop phonic skills alongside sight vocabulary
• raise expectations throughout the school
• provide parents with a specific set of instructions in supporting
their children’s learning at home, increasing family/school
interactions.
In practice, all children have personalised books with their names
and self-portraits on the front (their ‘I am’ books). They take them
home to share. Arising from discussion and their own experiences,
shared sentence starters (I am- ; I can- ; I can see- ; I like- ; I have got-,
and so on) are subtly introduced and discussed. These are written
with personalised endings during guided group work; they are then
attached as speech bubbles to pictures of the child. It is an approach
that is both structured and flexible, permitting considerable
differentiation of vocabulary, syntax, content and pace. The sentence
bubbles are repeated on matching sentence strips which, as in
Reading Recovery™, are cut up, discussed and reassembled, with
attention to sounds, whole words, spelling patterns and
syntax – all arising from something highly meaningful that
the children have said, or been prompted to say, for
themselves. As the scheme progresses, the children take
over more of the writing, extending and elaborating their ‘I
am’ books with increasing independence.
Extending the repertoire: commonplace books
In Key Stage 2 in the same school, as a means of extending
the children’s range of words and idioms, the smart starter
principle was used in another innovative way. What the
Elizabethans called a ‘commonplace book’ (a notebook in
which someone copies remarkable phrases and or sayings –
Hamlet had one) is maintained by each pupil, and
communal class versions are kept as well.
36
The books are not concerned with the bons mots with which a
sixteenth-century gallant hoped to gain a reputation for wit, but with
extending children’s writing repertoires, chiefly in relation to stories.
Each class holds 10 such books:
• opening sentences
• character
• appearances
• senses and settings
• settings – sound
• settings – action
• adjectives
• similes, twin words and conjunctions
• synonyms
• cliff hangers and endings.
The class collections are drawn from examples of literature that the
children have liked, but chiefly from class members’ own writing. The
pupils maintain similar headings in their own phrase books, entering
their own contributions, and others from the class collections and
elsewhere, as pertinent examples emerge, or as the teacher prompts.
Having one’s own phrase added to the class book is an occasion for
celebration and reward. And it is a two-fold process: the purposeful
copying – from class book to personal collection and incorporation
into the pupil’s own drafts – amounts to a painless process of
internalising items from the repertoire; it also provides opportunities
for discussing apt language use. Plainly too, it is a form of scaffolding
upon which children can build and may adapt, carrying the prompts
forward and using them in their own way. The school now publishes
its phrase books for others to share (one of its beacon activities);
however, the principle of constantly adding to the collections and
keeping the shared enterprise alive is equally vital.
Key Stage 3: supporting varied attainments
The challenges that secondary schools pose for EAL teaching are
substantial: they are generally more complex and bigger than primary
schools. The teaching of new concepts and their accompanying
37
vocabulary gather pace sharply in all subjects. And pupils who need
to learn EAL arrive with widely varying attainments in English; they
can include beginners. Unsurprisingly, these difficulties generally
affected writing most.
EAL teams in particular, paid special attention to the challenge of
writing. Among their approaches for students new to English they
used:
• sequencing activities
• word building games
• writing frames
• word walls and literacy walls
• word storming techniques
• sequencing
charts (props for structure issued during subject
teaching)
• spelling packs related to the task in hand.
In addition, bilingual teachers or assistants often accompanied new
students to their subject teaching classes, mediating in a wider range
of ways, including interpreting and translating when necessary. In this
regard, the best practice emerged when lessons had been planned
consultatively between subject and EAL staff. They were least effective
when supply staff were used who were not bilingual, and/or had not
been adequately briefed for their supporting roles.
In one school, the benefits of joint planning were readily observable in
the effective differentiation consistently practised across the
curriculum for students of widely varying achievements in English.
Though hardly the sole cause, it can be no coincidence that the
school (51% of whose pupils are speakers of EAL) exceeded the
national averages in both GCSE English language and literature.
38
Enrichment, extension and
support
A major part of the challenge, for learners of EAL and for their
schools, is how to make up for the years of intimate acquisition of
English in infancy that mother tongue speakers – hence the term –
have been able to build upon.
In broad terms, the survey schools addressed this, and its related
challenges, in three ways: first, with specific experiences, strategies
and approaches, some of which have been seen in Achieving buoyancy,
p.13, and Supporting literacy, p.30. The intensity and coherence with
which English continues to be handled within the curriculum by all
staff, no matter how specialist their roles, formed another. The third
strand lay in the range of additional forms of support that many of the
survey schools arranged for pupils who are learning EAL.
A ‘language rich curriculum’: primary schools
One primary school (98.5% learning EAL), serving a notably deprived
catchment7 was acutely aware of its role as the chief initial source of
English for most of its pupils. In addition to its emphasis on visits and
extra-curricular activities of the kinds noted previously, it strove
consciously to provide what it called a ‘language rich curriculum’. In
specific terms, something of what this meant can be seen in Case
Study 9.
7. 33.3% of adults in the chief electoral ward of the school’s catchment lack the
literacy skills expected of an average 11-year-old (BSA, 2001).
39
The school’s approach was driven by a strong emphasis on talk, and
by lesson planning in all subject areas that took explicit account of:
• assessments
of children’s language backgrounds and English
language skills
• the
English language requirements of particular subjects and
specific tasks (leading to planned differentiation)
• opportunities
for providing vivid experiences that will help to
embed new concepts and new words alike.
Other effective primary schools, though with less explicit strategies
than this, achieved many of the same objects by means of:
• consistently high standards of classroom displays
• the use of drama
• using the children’s own stories in science (e.g. a Somali child’s
recollections of lions walking through the heart of his home
village)
• modelling writing tasks in subjects other than English
• building synonym collections and displays
• consultancy meetings – bilingual teachers and mainstream staff
meet for an hour a week to identify and highlight the language
issues that have arisen from their teaching and monitoring; they
develop answering strategies to enrich and support the needs of
individual learners of EAL in mainstream classes.
40
CASE STUDY 9
A ‘language enriched’ art lesson for Y2.
• Classroom context: a strong emphasis on extensive display of
high quality exhibits, including: a lively literacy wall; children’s
work (art and writing) arising from a recent outing to a stately
home; work on the Celts; an RE theme on Buddha; mathematics,
and much else, such as a play corner and a book corner with
word matching games.
•• Plenary session: the theme ’my favourite place’ will eventually
lead to art work by the class that will be based on the
approaches and techniques of Andy Goldsworthy (he works with
found natural objects – twigs, leaves, driftwood, pebbles, snow,
shards of ice and so on – which he arranges and photographs in
the environment where he finds them). They will be asked to
represent one feature of their favourite place using his
techniques.•
• The teacher uses photographs of a Scottish fishing village as
initial stimulus – her favourite place. There is extensive
discussion, lots of noticing, identifying and naming. This is
followed by a strong appeal to the senses as the children are
invited to recall their favourite places (silence, eyes shut, ‘What
can you see in your head, hear, smell, touch?’) and to share them
with the class.
• Group activities which take place in the classroom and the
adjoining ‘resources room’ include: small world play reflecting the
fishing village theme (with prompt cards), sand play, water play,
sketching and painting. Throughout this phase of the lesson the
teacher takes every opportunity to stimulate discussion, and the
acting out of scenarios (table-top and small world activities).
Literacy across the curriculum (LAC): secondary schools
When literacy across the curriculum is more than a mere label, it
entails helping all teachers to attend to what is subject-specific in the
reading and writing requirements of their own disciplines. Having a
high proportion of speakers of EAL in a school lends an added
urgency to the importance of a school’s LAC policy and practice. This
lies in the pressures that the concept-laden secondary school
curriculum brings to bear on the variable experience in English of the
school’s learners of EAL. The survey school where good practice with
41
LAC had been secure for longest, was also the one where the highest
achievements (as measured by GCSE results in English language and
literature) were obtained.
Cross-curricular approaches that seemed particularly helpful
included:
• clear
support by subject teams for accurate spelling and
grammar
• word walls
• the
use of flow charts to scaffold the sequence of points in a
writing task
• the
use of cloze tasks as a basis for discussion, and guide to
subsequent note-writing (without the discussion element, they
revert to being a form of test)
• writing frames
• text
handling techniques to support the reading and
interrogation of non-chronological texts
• graphical
approaches to note-making (some schools now use
computer programmes to generate graphics and text together:
concept maps, flow charts, grids, Venn diagrams and so on)
• modelling writing tasks together in class.
In practice too, several secondary
schools made explicit links between
their support for students learning EAL
and their cross-curricular literacy
policies.
Ancillary forms of support
Mentoring
Both primary and secondary schools
offer a range of forms of targeted help for
their learners of EAL that are more
organisational than curricular. Mentoring
is one of the most widespread. It takes a
variety of forms, but the duties have
much in common. They include:
42
• induction and support for newly arrived pupils
• target-setting,
monitoring and the discussion of academic
progress on a one-to-one basis
• individual and group counselling
• curricular help
• interpretation.
One secondary school uses peer mentors to help new pupils to settle
in. Another appoints prefects with similar duties: these are older
students from minority communities who, for the first few weeks after
arrival, meet their charges before school each morning, help them
with the day’s timetable, with sorting the books and papers they will
need, with finding classrooms, and befriend them and continue to
help as they settle in. The prefects often speak the same home
language as the new student who is a learner of EAL, and these
contacts often last longer than the settling in phase.
Several schools, both primary and secondary, used salaried mentors,
usually financed by grant schemes. Some make extensive use of them,
others use them selectively. For example, for a potentially isolated
minority of Somali refugee children, one secondary school appoints
Somali adults as mentors. Another secondary school, having specifically
targeted the theme of disaffection with schooling, found that the
mentoring team’s client base was dominated more by disadvantaged
white students than by its ethnic and linguistic minorities.
43
CASE STUDY 10
REMA: Raising ethnic minority achievement scheme
One secondary school, with grant aid, has sought to address the
underachievement in public examinations it had encountered among
ethnic minority students of average ability and above (all speakers of
EAL). During Y9 it selects 20 pupils with the potential to gain five or
more A–C grades at GCSE, but whose present achievements are offtarget. It offers them a range of mentoring and other forms of
support, including:•
• instruction in study skills
• a summer school
• a revision course
• a regular homework club
• supplementary lunchtime teaching, including for coursework
• individual mentors who are guided by training and handbook,
and are co-ordinated by a senior member of staff.
Primary schools made far less use of salaried mentors, or of the
formal structures that their more complex secondary neighbours
found necessary. However, one had obtained ‘Excellence in Cities’
funding to employ learning mentors on an approximate ratio of one
to seventeen for a substantial group of children. The work of these
paid mentors, managed by a teacher, comprised:
• one-to-one support for the children assigned to them
• work with parents
• improving attendance
• organising clubs (before and after school) both for their targeted
children, and others who choose to join.
The school suggests that the scheme is one of a number of initiatives
that is contributing to its children’s improving achievements in EAL,
and more widely. Most of the primary schools also found that they
had created cultures where other children protected and supported
new arrivals, even when they did not speak the same languages. Both
formal and informal buddying emerged quite widely, and other pupils
44
readily acted as interpreters. Computer mentoring also emerged in
more than one primary school; older pupils inducted younger ones in
computer use. And one school, taking its pupils (80% learning EAL)
on a residential outdoor course held at an independent secondary
school, found the mentoring offered by the host school’s older pupils
especially helpful – it was probably formative for them too.
Study support
In addition to the homework clubs and individual coaching activities
that have been noted so far, two secondary schools offered additional
structures of support. In one, the inclusion unit that deals largely with
behavioural crises, and with students in danger of exclusion, also
offers additional tuition, on an individual or group basis, to pupils
who are consolidating their EAL.
The second school provides a permanently staffed (one teacher and
two assistants) study support centre for all pupils. It offers
opportunities for the supervised private study of work set by other
staff, for individual and group tuition – often catching up and
reinforcement, and out-of-hours study. The NLS’s literacy progress
units are taught there, and pupils attend the centre when they are
disapplied from aspects of the school timetable. Students learning
EAL, in liaison with the school’s ethnic minority achievement team,
may bring the team’s extra assignments there, and can also be offered
supplementary EAL tuition. The centre is also equipped with
computers for student use.
Addressing extended absence
Schools and local authorities adopted a range of approaches to lessen
the educational impact of extended family visits overseas. Some
authorities de-register children from school after absences of a month
or so. This is not always persuasive; and discontinuity is actually
increased if a returning child must re-start at a new school. Within
such a regime, an oversubscribed beacon primary school was able to
persuade parents to plan their holidays in co-operation with the head
teacher. Other schools were less well placed, and there are real
contingencies – the serious illnesses of grandparents, funerals and
family events – that cannot be readily anticipated. Flight costs too rise
sharply with the longer school holidays.
There is no substitute for close links and consultation. One secondary
school, where parents regularly come to meetings, now shares some of
its statistics with them: these show convincingly that extended
45
absences and low achievements in national tests and GCSEs are closely
matched. A primary school has found and shared similar patterns.
Such shared data has helped to increase consultation, to reduce the
long absences, and to adjust the timings of overseas holidays.
A primary head who has visited the district in Pakistan where most of
her pupils have relatives has made links with the local head teachers.
She encourages them to register her pupils in their schools when they
visit, and she supplies teaching materials to assist them. Several other
schools supply holiday packs for pupils to work on while they are
away. Some of these are particularly ingenious and enticing.
One secondary school pack – in addition to its suggested assignments
– includes pens, airmail paper and envelopes; these encourage the
students to write letters to their EAL teachers at home in England.
The letters are read out in class, displayed and answered. Photographs
are often sent too. Because the pupils know that their letters are real
events for their classmates – they have seen how others are warmly
received – they usually do write, keeping up their English, and sharing
their experiences, their news and greetings from their parents and
extended families.
The EAL teams and study support centres of some secondary schools
offer short booster courses for returnees from long visits. These
provide opportunities for re-orientation, and the chance to catch up
both with English and with missed curricular work. Similar classes are
provided in primary schools. One of these was observed: it was a
small group session in a dedicated group room where display was well
used. It was an intensive session that included:
• a well-focused discussion using soft toys
•a
comparison between the local market, and markets in
Bangladesh
• pre-reading
activities (discussion of pictures, rehearsal of
key words, the use of flashcards)
• reading
round the group, with prompts and support as
needed
• a true/false discussion when the reading was completed
• a range of differentiated activities, with teacher intervention
(word and picture games, board games, sentence
completion, programmed computer support).
46
CASE STUDY 11
Extended holiday packs: Key Stage 3
Titles include ‘I am going to Pakistan’; ‘I am going to Bangladesh’.
The booklets contain note-making frames, questionnaires and
plentiful prompts for further writing.
• The printed cover sheet includes an outline map of the country,
marked with major towns and cities, attractive and relevant clipart, and the student’s name.
• Contents include:
– key information about the visit for the student to complete
– graphic prompts for a packing list
– spaces to list the injections that will be needed
– prompts for the presents that will be taken, and for whom
– a note-writing frame for recording the journey: airport, flight
number, interim stops, activities on the flight, after landing,
duration of flight, description of landing, arrival and greetings,
etc.
– word square games to while away the flight
– a larger map to plot the course of the flight
– a map of the country to mark in the final destination
– where I am staying: a small note-making frame, plus spaces to
collect the autographs of relatives and friends
– a section on money: coin rubbings, pictures of currency,
exchange rates, counting systems compared
– my family: numbers, names, block graph to plot ages
– the weather: a frame for taking meteorological readings for one
week
– household tasks: who does what, what did you do?
– food
– buying things: lists of activities, a table to plot comparative costs
– a space for making notes on a visit to another town or village
– out and about: key experiences and events while away; notes
on clothes and activities observed
– hobbies and leisure
– diary: a writing frame.
47
Conclusions
Helping their pupils to achieve fluency in spoken and written English
meant that the survey schools were faced with kinds and degrees of
challenge that some schools never encounter. As their assessment
results and inspection reports make plain, they were remarkably
successful; some were outstanding in national terms.
If establishing literacy is a commonplace miracle that they share with
their peers, these schools, within the constraints of schooling – its
staffing, hours, resources and timetables – performed greater wonders.
For many of their pupils, they also laid those foundations for English
as an additional language, which monolingual families achieve for
English over five years in the intimate setting of the home.
And the survey schools carried their children’s achievements well
beyond simple ‘survival’. They enabled their pupils to access and
benefit from the National Curriculum. They accomplished this
objective by a skilfully managed blend of immersion, intensive early
support (often with a strong bilingual element), continued
enrichment, watchfulness, well-planned interventions and the
effectively enlisted support of the parents.
48
Summary and main findings
AIMS
The aim of this survey was to gather evidence about effective practice
in teaching English as an additional language (EAL), to identify some
of the common underlying trends and to share examples. The trends,
but not the examples, are summarised below.
SAMPLE
The survey took place in the summer term 2002. Visits were paid to
14 schools (seven primary and seven secondary) in authorities that
have high concentrations of linguistic minorities in England and
South Wales (Bradford, Burnley, Leicester, Birmingham, Hounslow,
and Cardiff). The average proportion of pupils acquiring EAL on the
rolls of the sample schools was 82%.
The schools were often located in disadvantaged localities: their
average proportion of pupils taking free meals was 35%; for those
having special needs it was 20%; and turbulence (a high turnover of
pupils), often combined with unpredictable new enrolments, was
experienced by most of the sample schools; for four it was highly
significant.
In each case, teaching was observed, interview evidence gathered and
documents examined.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Adults
In national terms, the Agency’s research of 1996 indicates that more
than one in five of the adults from minority linguistic communities,
who were educated for five or more years in England or Wales, had
not achieved survival level in English.
The schools
By contrast, the survey schools were identified by their local
authorities as being highly effective with teaching EAL. In each case,
their recent inspection reports had commended their teaching of
English to speakers of other languages. In their assessment and
examination data for English at Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 (GCSE) all did
well in relation to the challenges they face; across the sample of 14
49
schools, there were ten examples where, with their untypical profiles,
these schools had exceeded in 2001 the national averages for the
achievement of the target grades at Key Stages 2 or 3, or grade C and
above in GCSE English language or literature.
THE CHALLENGE
The challenges of EAL teaching are formidable; they include enabling
children who are speakers of other languages to:
• reach a level of proficiency in English that enables them to live, be
educated and work alongside their monolingual peers on equal
terms
• accomplish,
within the constraints of schooling, much of the
English that is acquired by monolingual children in the intimate
setting of the home before they are enrolled in school, and which
continues to be reinforced at home
• acquire their proficiency at a pace that enables them, without
hindrance, to experience and benefit from the National
Curriculum
• overcome, in many cases, disruptions to their education.
50
TRENDS AND PATTERNS
In broad terms, all the schools taught English by immersion; their
achievements lay in the skills by which they mediated between
English and the language of the home, inducted their children into
English, and supported and sustained them as they progressed. They:
• made pupils welcome, secure and confident
• assessed their needs with scrupulous care and skill
• bridged
between home languages and English by offering
bilingual teaching and support
• provided intensive tuition when required
• rooted their pupils’ encounters with English in rich, purposeful –
often cultural – experiences, both curricular and extracurricular
• gave priority to talking and listening
• actively and effectively engaged parents
• secured and developed children’s literacy upon a foundation of
extensive, well-chosen experiences of reading
• met
the challenges of writing by emphasising purpose and
supporting pupils to acquire wide-ranging repertoires (through
reading, structured support and explicit instruction)
• paid
close attention to language and literacy throughout the
curriculum, in primary and secondary schools alike
• provided a range of forms of supplementary support
• engaged
parents in addressing the problem of lost schooling
associated with extended holidays abroad
• provided support packs for those holidays.
In turn, where they existed, the schools were significantly supported
and sustained by local authority language services.
51
References
Barrs, M. and Hester, H. (1992), ‘Bilingualism in recession’, in
Language Matters, No. 3, London: Centre for Language in Primary
Education.
Barrs, M. and Cork, V. (2001), The Reader in the Writer: the Links
between the Study of Literature and Writing Development at Key Stage 2,
London: Centre for Language in Primary Education.
BSA (1996), Lost Opportunities, London: The Basic Skills Agency.
BSA (2001), Adults’ Basic Skills: benchmark information on the scale of
need in different areas of England, London: The Basic Skills Agency.
(CD ROM database, also available on the Agency’s website).
Crystal, D. (1997), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (second
edition), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DfEE (1999), Improving Literacy and Numeracy: A fresh start, London:
Department for Education and Employment.
Frater, G. (2001), Effective Practice in Writing at Key Stage 2: Essential
Extras, London: The Basic Skills Agency.
Frater, G. (2002), Bridges for Literacy: A Survey of Emerging Practice at
Key Stages 2 and 3, London: The Basic Skills Agency.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., and Hyams, N. (2003), An Introduction to
Language, Boston MA: Heinle/Thomson
Grainger, T. (1999), Traditional Storytelling in the Primary Classroom,
Leamington Spa: Scholastic.
Halliday, M., ‘Spoken and Written Modes of Meaning’ in Graddol, D.,
and Boyd-Barrett, O. eds. (1994), Media Texts: Authors and Readers,
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Ofsted (2001), Inspecting English as an Additional Language, London:
Office for Standards in Education.
Ong, W. (1982), Orality and Literacy, London: Routledge.
Sylva, K. and Hurry, J. (1995), The Effectiveness of Reading Recovery and
Phonological Training for Children with Reading Problems, London: The
School Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
Thompson, S. (1977), The Folktale, Berkley: University of California
Press (reprint, 1946 copyright).
Zipes, J. (1995), Creative Story Telling, London: Routledge.
52
Annex 1
Participating schools
City of Birmingham
The Nelson Mandela Primary School
Small Heath Comprehensive School
Bradford Metropolitan Council
Brackenhill Primary School
Girlington Primary School
Belle Vue Girls School
Challenge College
City of Cardiff
Kitchener Community Primary School
Fitzalan High School
Lancashire County Council
Stoneyholme Community Primary School
Walshaw Girls High School
City of Leicester
Rushy Mead Primary School
Rushy Mead Comprehensive School
The London Borough of Hounslow
Norwood Green Junior School
The Heathland School
53
Annex 2
Some sources of additional
information and support
SOME HELPFUL TEXTS
Bhattacharyya, G., Ison, L., and Blair, M. (2003), Minority Ethnic
Attainment and Participation in Education and Training,
University of Birmingham and Department for Education and Skills.
Blair, M. and Bourne, J. with Coffin, C., Creese, A. and Kenner, C.
(1998), Making the difference: teaching and learning strategies in
successful multi-ethnic schools, The Open University.
Brent Language Service (1999), Enriching Literacy: Talk and Tales in
Today’s Classroom, A Practical Handbook for Multilingual Schools,
Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books.
Cline, T., Abreu, G., Fihosy, C., Lambert, H., and Neale, J., Minority
Ethnic Pupils in Mainly White Schools, (Research Brief no. 365),
London: DfES Publications.
Corran, B., Graham, B.,
Hester, H., Kelly, C., and
McGregor, P. (eds), Our
Languages Matter – Supporting
Bilingual Pupils’ Language and
Literacy Development, London:
Centre for Language in
Primary Education/Southwark
Council.
Language Matters (1996–7)
no.1, ‘Language Diversity’,
London: Centre for Language
in Primary Education.
DfES
(2002),
Educating
Asylum Seeking and Refugee
Children: Guidance on the
education of asylum seeking
and refugee children, London:
DfES Publications.
54
DfES (2002), Removing the barriers: Raising Achievement Levels for
Minority Ethnic Pupils, London: DfES Publications.
English as an Additional Language Association of Wales (2003), The
achievement of ethnic minority pupils in Wales: An EALAW Research
Report for the Welsh Assembly Government, available from:
www.wales.gov.uk/subieducationtraining/content/PDF/ealaw-e.pdf.
Hyder, T. and Rutter, J. (2001), In Safe Hands: A resource and training
pack to support work with young refugee children, Save the Children
and Refugee Council.
McWilliam, N. (2000), What’s in a Word? Vocabulary Development in
Multilingual Classrooms, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.
NUT (2002), Relearning to Learn: Advice to teachers new to teaching
children from refugee and asylum-seeking families, London:
NUT/DfES.
Ofsted (2002), Support for minority ethnic achievement: continuing
professional development, Ofsted.
Ofsted (2001), Managing Support for the Attainment of Pupils from
Ethnic Minority Groups, Ofsted.
QCA (2000), A Language In Common: Assessing English as an
Additional Language, London: QCA.
Rutter, J. (2003), Supporting Refugee Children in 21st Century Britain:
a compendium of essential information, revised edition, Stoke on Trent:
Trentham Books.
55
SOME HELPFUL WEBSITES
www.basic-skills.co.uk
The Basic Skills Agency
www.bgfl.org/bgfl_portal
Birmingham Grid for Learning
www.cre.gov.uk
The Commission for Racial Equality
www.dfes.gov.uk
Department for Education and Skills
http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz
Literacy Links
www.literacytrust.org.uk
National Literacy Trust
www.naldic.org.uk
National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum
www.ngfl.gov.uk
National Grid for Learning
www.ofsted.gov.uk
Office for Standards in Education
www.qca.org.uk
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
www.refugeecouncil.org.uk
Refugee Council
www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/ethnicminorities
Ethnic Minority Achievement
www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/literacy
National Literacy Strategy
www.wales.gov.uk
Welsh Assembley Government
56
Annex 3
LEA language support
services
VITAL SERVICES
In addition to the school visits, where possible the LEAs’ central
ethnic minority achievement teams were visited as a part of this
survey. The teams vary in size, but all support schools with EAL,
and with a wider range of related issues. Three interviews took
place; they demonstrated that a wide range of valuable services is
offered, including:
• peripatetic teams of bilingual teachers and assistants supporting
pupils who are new to English (in primary and secondary schools
alike)
• translation and interpretation duties
• advisory support for schools
• in-service training for
– head teachers
– EAL staff (teachers and assistants)
– classroom teachers
– subject specialist teachers and leaders
• family liaison activities
• support for curricular policy and planning
• an extensive suite of nationally published, and of locally made,
teaching materials
• exhibition collections
• loan services
• telephone helplines (for pupils, families and staff)
• action research (e.g. the Talking Partners scheme).
57
SOME EXAMPLES
One service records that its family liaison activities this year have
included 600 requests to mediate between home and school, and
these have often involved home visiting. It also provides advice
booklets in home languages for parents. In another service the
peripatetic team alone has made 407 school visits this year. All three
services noted that they had recently extended the range of their
help to include a detailed response to the EAL dimensions of the
NLS’s initiative to introduce literacy across the curriculum in Key
Stage 3.
VULNERABLE PROVISION
Yet, increasingly, the activities of these central teams are being
financed, less by an LEA’s central funds than by their schools’
annual subscriptions, and by national grants. This structure of
essentially contingent budgeting ensures that:
• long-term planning is hindered
• there is little security for their expert staff
• little professional training is available
• there are few long-term careers
• the
resources of expertise, experience and materials that the
services have accumulated are liable to closure, and irretrievable
dispersal, at short notice.
58
Annex 4
Guided talk
The following is a reprint of Angie Kotler’s article about Bradford’s
Talking Partners scheme; it appeared in the October 2001 issue of
Basic Skills.
The terms guided reading and guided writing are now familiar in all
primary schools, but guided talk? This became the label attached to a
programme, developed in Bradford with support from the Basic Skills
Agency, in order to address the additional needs of EAL pupils within
the National Literacy Strategy.
It has always been emphasised by the NLS that speaking and listening
are important and that methods used in the strategy involve much
interactive teaching in order to enhance this. QCA (1999) also state
that,
‘the links between oral and written language can be encouraged
and built on.’
However, research has shown that many pupils learning English as an
additional language learn the rudiments of literacy well enough, but
lack the solid foundations of oral language competence required in
order to help them fully access the curriculum. It may not be
sufficient just to make links; learning a new language requires massive
exposure, explicit instruction and frequent opportunities to practise.
In Bradford we found that while many EAL pupils seemed to be on
track at the end of Key Stage 1, a large gap in attainment occurred
between EAL pupils and English first language pupils by the end of
Key Stage 2. This gap is often hard to close and may cause disaffection
and other difficulties in secondary school. It was imperative to
address this need.
Guided Talk was based on the following principles:
•
early intervention is crucial in order to prevent problems arising
and gaps in attainment widening;
•
intervention must be intensive and focused;
•
it must be supported by whole school teams;
•
attainment must be measurable;
59
•
training for staff must involve reflection, raise awareness and
lead to improved practice.
The aims and objectives of Guided Talk
1. To identify, evaluate and disseminate effective teaching strategies,
which support the development of oral language skills for EAL
pupils, particularly those skills linked to literacy
2. To deliver and evaluate a structured oral language programme for
primary pupils
3. To provide accredited training to class teachers and support
teachers to deliver this programme
4. To develop a curriculum framework for all teachers working with
EAL pupils
5. To establish school-based expertise in support for ‘newly-arrived’
pupils
6. To produce materials required to support the main aims of this
programme
Developing the programme
Work on Guided Talk began in October 1998. The National Literacy
Strategy framework for teaching was used as a basis, not only for the
main content and focus of the programme, but also as a structure for
it’s delivery. Hence the name Guided Talk. We decided that if every
pupil who needed the programme was to receive it in a systematic
way, the best place to situate it was within a strategy that was already
delivering regular, structured language teaching. Guided talk is not
something different for EAL pupils; it ensures that pupils who have
additional needs receive what they require in order to access the NLS.
The major language objectives were identified from the NLS
framework for teaching and were grouped into half-term blocks as a
focus for oral language development. These were:
•
narrating, working with story structure;
•
describing, comparing, analysing;
•
giving instructions, describing;
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•
describing, classifying, reporting;
•
asking questions, enquiring;
•
reporting back;
•
explaining processes;
•
extracting information, summarising.
Teachers would decide which would be the most useful and
appropriate theme to focus on to support literacy objectives in any
half-term.
A set of ‘frameworks’ was provided, to support work under each
objective. These frameworks comprised a set of A4 laminated cards,
with prompts to ensure that firstly the adults and later the pupils
would always remember the kind of language required for each
objective. For example, in reporting back, one of the frameworks has
the prompts:
•
Who did you work with?
•
What were you making?
•
What does it look like?
•
What is it made of?
•
How did you make it?
•
First of all…
•
After that…
•
Next…
•
Finally…
•
What did you like about making it?
The frameworks reflect the different stages of development expected
at various points in the NLS framework, so for each objective there
are at least two levels and sometimes three. The aim is for the
prompts to become internalised in the speakers’ mind so that the
appropriate type of language is easily summoned in future for the task
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in hand. Oral frameworks serve a similar function in speaking and
listening to writing frames in writing.
While the frameworks illuminated the range of language to develop,
activities were found and collated to support this development. Some
of these activities were already in a booklet, which had been produced
for an earlier project called Talking Partners. We called
the booklet Progression of Activities, because the notion of progression
in language proficiency was paramount. It was not enough to do an
activity and try out the frameworks; we wanted to see clear evidence
of increasing control in the pupils. Many other activities are to be
found in First Steps materials and these reference books were supplied
to the teachers in the pilot project. Subsequently, all schools receiving
training are advised to purchase the First Steps Oral Language Resource
Book and Pauline Gibbons’ Learning to Learn in a Second Language,
which is a very practical teachers’ guide to integrating oral language
development across the curriculum.
Other materials produced to support the programme include planning
formats, planning guidance and pupil record sheets. During training,
participants have opportunities to try out activities and to go through
the process of identifying a key objective for their class, finding all the
helpful activities which support development of that objective,
planning together and preparing for establishing the programme back
in school. The aim of training is that everyone feels ready to start the
next day! Although we had only teachers in the pilot project, we have
now extended training to class teachers plus teaching assistants or
nursery nurses.
Trialling the programme
Twenty schools participated in a pilot programme, which included the
additional strand called Guided Talk in the implementation of the
NLS. Teachers attended a total of four additional training days over
the course of the year. They attended in pairs; one class teacher and
one EMAG teacher. The training included methodology, content and
evaluation. Teachers tried out materials and methods, brought pupils
to teach behind the viewing mirror and discussed their evaluations of
these, plus pupil progress with colleagues and trainers. In addition,
trainers visited all of the schools during the year, observed sessions of
Guided Talk in progress and discussed issues with staff.
Evaluating Guided Talk
A random sample of pupils from participating classes and from
schools where no Guided Talk was going on were assessed at the
beginning and end of year, using two oral language measures, the
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BPVS II (receptive vocabulary) and Renfrew Action Picture test
(productive speech). Writing samples were also collected to see if
increased oral language support would have an effect on writing.
Teachers involved in the programme were also asked to complete
questionnaires about the training and the effects of Guided Talk in
their class.
Results
It can be clearly seen that while Guided Talk seemed to have no effect
on the increase in receptive vocabulary, as both groups made roughly
expected progress over the time scale, Guided Talk did have a very
large effect on the pupils’ productive oral language skills. Pupils with
access to Guided Talk made one and a half times the progress of the
comparison group in the amount of information they were able to give
to describe a set of pictures. Most startlingly the Guided Talk pupils
made over twice the progress of the comparison group in their control
over grammatical structures, i.e. in the accuracy of their responses.
The comparison group made significantly less than expected progress
over a school year in this area. We were able to show quite
conclusively that our programme was having the desired effect.
Participating Number of BPVS II
or Comparison Pupils
Participating
Comparison
Renfrew
Information
Renfrew
Grammar
10.8 months 15.0 months 15.5 months
14.6 months 10.0 months 6.9 months
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To reinforce this, the teachers’ questionnaires showed overwhelmingly positive responses, both to the training they had received
and about the effects of Guided Talk in their classrooms. Not only had
Guided Talk provided a clear programme of work for EAL pupils, to
support their developing literacy skills, it had also raised teachers’
awareness of how to maximise opportunities for oral language
development across the curriculum.
Finally, the evidence from writing samples from both participating and
comparison pupils reflected the same pattern as the BPVS II and the
Renfrew tests. Both groups of pupils had made expected progress in
word level work. But the samples from the Guided Talk pupils showed
clearly that they were able to use longer sentences, more complex
grammatical structure and their overall text organisation was more
advanced.
Conclusions
We still have a long way to go before we can say that we have closed
the gap in attainment between EAL pupils and their English first
language peers, but Guided Talk is one positive and easily
implemented strategy that goes some way to addressing the issue. We
also discovered that teachers found Guided Talk very useful for many
English speaking pupils. The structured sessions have much to offer
in a range of contexts.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the Basic Skills Agency for their support in
developing this work, which we hope to be able to extend to all who
need it. We would also like to thank all the staff in the pilot schools
for their enthusiasm and commitment.
For further information visit Bradford LEA’s website at:
www.educationbradford.com/Useful+Resources/Talking_Partners/whats_next.htm
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