At Oakridge School, we are extremely proud of our children who speak English as an additional language (EAL) - recognising their skill, but also what an additional burden it can place on their learning.  Currently 65% of our students speak another language to English at home, covering a staggering 37 different languages.  

Learners with EAL have a dual task at school: to learn English (language) and to learn through English (the curriculum). For this reason, EAL teaching aims to teach English using the mainstream curriculum as the context.  Specific teaching strategies and resources are therefore necessary to make the language of the curriculum accessible to learners who use EAL.

We believe that: 

Bilingualism and multilingualism are an asset – the ability to use more than one language is a valuable skill that learners who use EAL bring with them, regardless of whether they are New to English or not. Learners actively use the languages they already know to learn English.

Cognitive challenge should be kept appropriately high – high expectations around cognitive challenge should be maintained. Access to the curriculum is needed, but this does not imply the “dumbing down” of the content. For example, a learner from Greece might be highly skilled at Maths but using English as the language of instruction might be preventing them from engaging fully in the Maths lessons in England.

Learners’ proficiency in English is closely linked to academic success – Research has found that proficiency in English is the strongest predictor of academic achievement (Strand and Hessel, 2018)

Across the school, we use the following underlying teaching principles:

Activating prior learning - Activities that enable learners to activate their prior knowledge of the topic of the lesson facilitate greater understanding and engagement. Example strategies include taking advantage of the learner’s first language and finding out what the learner knows through questioning.

Providing a rich context - EAL learners will benefit from being provided with additional contextual support to help them make sense of the information conveyed to them in English. The use of images and graphic organisers (e.g. diagrams, grids, charts, timelines) are very useful for this purpose.

Making the English language explicit in the classroom - Within the context of the curriculum, learners with EAL can be encouraged to notice the language used and understand how it is used. This implies pointing out key forms and structures that allow pupils to meet the language demands of the tasks. Strategies include providing oral and written models and scaffolding speaking and writing through speaking and writing frames.

Developing learners’ independence - The independence of learners who use EAL can be fostered by developing their organisational, thinking and social skills (for instance, working co-operatively with others, taking turns and asking for help). In terms of organisational and thinking skills, teachers can provide learners with opportunities to model and extend what has been taught and support them in developing note taking and summary-writing skills. Social and cultural norms in the classroom will need to be made explicit to the learners. Pupils might be used to different rules and codes of behaviour in school in other countries; for instance, in Japan it is inappropriate to look a teacher in the eye whilst many teachers will expect it in an English school. Teachers can convey information about school social skills by translating simple lists or presenting them pictorially for the learners. Providing a new arrival learner with a buddy speaking the same language, who can explain these different cultural school norms, is another way of doing so.

Supporting learners with EAL to extend their vocabulary - EAL learners at all levels need to be given opportunities to grow their English vocabulary range. This could be done by taking advantage of their first language(s) through translation, the use of flashcards and images. It is important to remember to develop the learner’s academic language skills, for instance by focusing on the differences between formal and informal vocabulary.