English As An Additional Language - Essay Example

English as an Additional Language “All pupils, including newly arrived pupils from overseas, have an en ment to a broad and balanced curriculum”(QCDA, 2009). The world is increasingly becoming a more integrated community, with mobility of people from one country to another becoming more commonplace. This causes some displacement among the young who grew up with one language at home and find that they have to adjust to another once they join school. Added to these are a number of persons with conversational English skills that have attained a level of fluency, but with deficient writing skills because of their unfamiliarity with the English alphabet. In the United Kingdom, a group of London-based Advanced Skills Teachers (AST) formed a network to develop English as an Additional Language, or EAL, as an area of specialism. The project’s objectives are to provide professional development, knowledge and expertise in English as an additional language, and to raise awareness of EAL and encourage dialogue and discussion about the needs of bilingual learners in participating schools across the whole staff (Daly, 2005: 1). English as an Additional Language is actually only one of three categories under the program English Language Teaching (ELT). The ELT is comprised of specific skills that are provided different nomenclatures. The first is English as a Foreign Language, or EFL, which is aimed at foreigners who are on a brief sojourn in Britain, for them to be equipped with basic English communication skills during their visit. The second category is English as a Second Language, or ESL, designed for people who have decided to settle in Britain and make it their home. Finally, there is the EAL, which is specially geared for school pupils who now reside in the UK. As is clearly the intent, EAL is designed to provide students with the necessary English skills to not only get by, but maximize the benefits they may obtain in the regular curriculum. EAL in schools also include and encompass both EFL and ESL – that is, it caters to the needs of both school pupils spending a short time in Britain, as well as those who have permanently decided to settle there (Teachernet, 2007). The City and County of Swansea supports the Ethnic Minority Language and Achievement Service, or EMLAS. This is comprised of a central team of specialist teachers and speakers of 17 languages besides English and Welsh. These languages include Bengali, Arabic, Chinese, Urdu, Czech, Punjabi, Polish and Turkish, among others. The EMLAS team member go into schools to help children learn English, working with them in their lessons, as well as offering advice to the children’s teacher concerning their special requirements (City and County of Swansea, 2010). In 2005, it was estimated that about 10% of the total school population are comprised of pupils classified as having EAL, an increase of 35% since 1997. There even appears to be evidence that some pupils who should have been recognized as having difficulties with English due to EAL, are instead erroneously diagnosed with a language problem. In some such cases inappropriate support and therapy may be given (Department for Education and Skills, 2005:25). Many bilingual pupils achieve very highly compared to other groups. A proportion of bilingual pupils will necessitate targeted intervention to better facilitate the English learning process, although developing proficiency in a second language is a long-term undertaking; in many cases, bilingual pupils still require support in their academic writing though they have long achieved oral fluency (Department for Education and Skills, 2004:5). Preparing the plans and activities for EAL requires special strategies to overcome the communication problem and to bring out the pupils’ language potential. Thus, the teachers should employ as many of the following strategies as are appropriate, some of which are: using culturally relevant resources and learning materials; promoting thinking and talking in first languages to support understanding; grouping EAL learners who share the same home language; using ICT to enable children to develop and edit text (Teachernet, 2007); and employment of the buddy system – collaboration between one EAL student and a regular student preferably familiar with the ethnic background of the other (Training and Development Agency, n.d.). Attached in the appendix to this paper is a table listing a set of skills and strategies for pupils learning EAL, taken from the September 25 Making-the-Grade Interim report. Other than these, there are such subject related skills and strategies in Science, included the ability to teach new scientific language, compare common and scientific meanings of words, employ starter activities to reinforce key terms and concepts, label flow diagrams, and identify unfamiliar language structure (e.g., use of passive for writing up experiments). In the same Making-the-Grade September 2005 report, certain strategies beyond the classroom were identified to prove highly effective. These include detailed feedback and opportunities to discuss written work, curriculum related trips and activities, writing workshops, homework clubs, pupils’ conferences, and after school lessons on grammar. The effectiveness of involving parents and carers was also underscored by the report, and it noted the enthusiastic response to letters and meetings with the parents of students involved in the project. A report commissioned by the National Teacher Research Panel for the Teacher Research Conference, 2004, revealed the results of a study involving 1800 pupils and more than 100 members of staff situated on the outskirts of Burton on Trent. The pupils were EAL learners of Pakistani origin. In the said study, EAL learners expressed the need for (a) specific teaching using key words; and (b) careful scaffolding through any writing process. New vocabulary is an issue. Students felt that there were a lot of new words that were “coming at us too quickly” and that there was not sufficient time to understand. When asked why they did not ask for clarification, one student replied, “I didn’t want the teacher to think I didn’t understand because they might think I’m in the wrong set, but I don’t understand because I’m learning in another language.” The students who were interviewed all expressed confusion as to the specific definition of a word as used in a specialized subject, like science. One student said, “When I look in a dictionary for a word I see lots of explanations but I don’t know which is the science one.” The all expressed a desire to be provided dictionaries for the specific scientific definition of a word. The groups had particular difficulty in writing in the passive (vs active) voice in science, and to decide what really needed to be included. One student commented that “I wrote down Method, Result and Conclusion for lots of experiments and never understood and still don’t know what to write in each heading.” Some students felt that they copied work from the board which they did not really understand, and which therefore did not provide any help when they came to revision. The reason is that while they were copying from the board, the teacher was explaining the work. They could not concentrate on the explanation because they were concentrating on the accuracy of what they were copying. All the students found the practical lessons the best method by which they learned the most. However, they found it difficult to transfer this understanding or information to their written work. As classroom teaching progresses, the students tend to rely on one another for assistance, and in that manner greater social interaction is fostered and becomes the tool for learning. Hart observes that the resort to dual language education has significantly reduced the drop-out rate for the Spanish-first students, and in some cases yielded surprising results. Students who used to attend bilingual classes felt they had begun to lose their facility in speaking the language other than English – that is, they gained English proficiency at the expense of their first language. In the dual language approach, however, not only did they retain their fluency in speaking the first language, but some felt confident enough to even study a third (foreign) language such as Japanese (Hart, 2006, p. 110). As to the importance of proficiency in the first language, Cummins (2000, in Giacchino-Baker et al., 2006) emphasized that to succeed in a bilingual academic program, it was important to develop children’s native language in order to provide the foundation for cognitive academic language proficiency in their second language. Computerized methods of teaching English as a second language increases accuracy, fluency, comprehension and confidence. Royal (2007) describes a software called Soliloquy Reading Assistant software, which makes use of a microphone headset through which students listen to the audio renditions of their own speech, with the software acting as a personalized reading coach, prompting the student with correct pronunciation. Desoff (2005) reports on a novel approach wherein the school uses iPods to teach English as a second language. Children are thereby interacting with the language much more intensely and quickly than traditional means. The children find it fun to engage in activities that employ such devices, and this element acts as catalyst to faster learning (Lopez, 2009). The method has also been used in the kindergarten level, and the teacher in this program reported that her students are learning sounds up to two months faster than they previously did (p. 10). Eun and Heining-Boynton (2007) stated that the quality of teachers is the pivotal element in EAL. The cultural and linguistic diversity of the studentry provides an ever-intensifying challenge to teachers already competent in a monolingual setting. Professional development afforded teachers actually provided real and positive impact in the classroom level. Cheng and Myles (2003) explored the implications and intricacies of teaching ESL (TESL) and its challenges to the teacher. Online training programs for teachers have been developed in order to aid the more effective and farther-reaching TESL courses across Canada and other parts of the world. Parental motivation, attitudes, support and commitment are important in EAL (Giacchino-Baker and Piller, 2006; Beckman Anthony, 2008). It was found that parents provided strong positive support for adherence to content standards in both the English and Spanish. Teale (2009) and Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti (2004) confirm the strong impact family and parental involvement in their children’s ESL education, particularly in the elementary level due to family members sharing their “funds of knowledge.” Children’s literacy achievement have benefited when family members and others living in the home work together with the school in reading aloud to their preschool and kindergarten children, listen to their primary school children reading books aloud which they take out of the library or bring home from school, and by discussing children’s literature and current events with them. The foregoing cursory discussion has highlighted some of the problems encountered in the teaching of English as an additional language, in the elementary level. The discussion began with a backgrounder on EAL as a program and its basic principles. This was followed by a discussion of the strategies and processes, and the concerns expressed by pupils in EAL. Thereafter are presented a scan of teaching methods as used in other countries, initially the traditional, classroom teaching style, and thereafter the novel and more technical approach to teaching children. Also, the roles of teachers and parents impact upon the effectiveness of ELL/ESL/EAL education. There is a general consensus among educators and school administrators that the use of practical methods, games, worksheets and tables, and computerized interactive methods provide the students a more structured and interesting means of instruction, and is more effective in a shorter amount of time, particularly for computerized methods because of the immediate feedback it provides (Worthington, 2009). The role of teachers and parents could not be discounted. Children learn from inputs provided by their adults, and a contextual, content-based approach helps them absorb the functional use of language rather than the structural, rules-based approach. Methods of teacher training for ESL are not lacking, and are available throughout the world through online programs. On the other hand, parents and family members will help greatly by supporting the ELL child through activities at home such as reading aloud, writing, and conversing. 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