ENGLISH AS AN
ADDITIONAL
LANGUAGE
Welcome to today’s
professional workshop
WHAT IS EAL
EAL- English as an Additional Language
The Australian Curriculum provides a large insight and helpful advice concerning EAL
learners and what actions and procedures need to be in place when you are the teacher
of EAL learners. This includes:

advise about areas of the curriculum that EAL students may find challenging and why

assist classroom teachers to identify where their EAL students are broadly positioned on
a progression of English language learning

help teachers understand students’ cultural and linguistic diversity, and the ways this
understanding can be used in the classroom

provide examples of teaching strategies supportive of EAL students

direct teachers to additional relevant and useful support for teaching EAL Students
( ACARA, 2014)
EAL

Punctuation

Text structures

Phrase verbs

Gestures and body language

Colour in text

phonemes (sounds)

Morphemic

Different languages

logographic languages e.g.- Chinese

Syllabic languages- Korean

Different alphabetic scripts- Russian
These are all issues that EAL students struggle with and you as teachers
need to be aware of these particularly within the English Content
Descriptors
(ACARA, 2014)
SOCIO-CULTURAL
KNOWLEDGE
As teachers it is critical that when we have EAL students in our classroom we
research and understand their culture, respecting this culture and understanding
that this child’s home life and upbringing can be different from our Australian culture.
In other cultures there are different ways in which they live. For example:
•Vietnam-
the males particularly the oldest male is the head of the house and
the most important member
•They
are superstitious particularly with funerals, marriages and moving to a
new house
•the
mother takes care of the children, cooking and cleaning.
•Parents
choose who their child will marry
Does anyone have or have had a EAL student in their class and faced some
implications with socio-culture that they would like to share with us?
L1 AND L2
L1 is known as Language 1, the dominate language
spoken by an individual person.
This is the most used language spoken therefore it is
used and understood the most.
L2 is the non-dominate language spoken by an
individual.
This is the language least spoken, for some students
this may be English. These students are known as our
EAL students
ACTIVITYCOMMUNICATIVE
The Communicative Activity:
Children are to work in pairs on the carpet.
Every student is to have a clipboard with a ‘tent’ picture (landscape)
on it with coloured pencils for each pair.
Students are not to show each other their pictures until the end.
Teacher to explain to student’s that to draw the picture they need to
listen to what each other say.
Each pair get a set of instructions on what to draw, students take it in
turn to say instruction.
Student A- Draw a tree behind the tent.
Draw an esky near the entrance of the tent.
Draw a fire in the bottom right hand corner.
Student B- Draw a picnic bench on the right side of the tent.
Draw two people sitting at the picnic bench.
Draw a car on the left of the tent.
Continue through instructions until picture is finished.
To see how well this activity actually works, you as
teachers are now going to partner up and see how you
go. Think about how this might help EAL students or
what might need to be changed to make it more
suitable.
THEORISTS
Vygotsky emphasised the importance of relationships and interactions between children
and more knowledgeable peers and adults
 Cognitive understanding grows when influenced by teacher/ parent
 Students not seen as learning on their own, learn through social interactions
through communication.
 Language is a major influence in the development of a students thinking process
 when students are actively involved in their own learning, their ability to
communicate with others strengthens.
Cognitive development therefore grows when language is developed through
learning and teaching
Piaget Explains the importance of an interactive environment that students are able to
explore through their active learning
Chomsky Shows that when students begin to hear the language around them, they are
then able to understand after a time the structure of that language.
 With more influence, hearing the language spoken more and more students are
able to learn the language within the environment
(Centre for Learning Innovation, 2006)
STRATEGIES
When teaching EAL students strategies need to be in place that benefit the
student. Every student will have different needs and different ways of learning
so your resources as a teacher to help with their learning of English needs to be
individual so that the best outcome occurs.
There are specialist EAL teachers that are available for EAL students. These
support teachers work with the classroom teacher to assist EAL students
transitioning to a new culture and language (Queensland Government, 2014).
As a teacher it is important when teaching EAL students to:
o Use gestures and facial expressions
o Provide lots of hands on materials during learning
o Speak clearly and pause
o Write down key ideas so they are visible
o Repeat key phrases in different ways
o Ask if there are any questions or what they understand so far
(Williams, n.d)
INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM
ENVIRONMENT
Generally other students in the class are amazing with helping out the EAL
learners, however as teachers these following ideas will make for a wonderful
inclusive environment:
 Teach the whole class about your EAL students country and culture and even
some of the basic language
 An environment where the learner feels secure and are prepared to take risks
 Support and value learners’ languages and cultures
 Build on knowledge, skills and understandings that students bring to the learning
context
 Use themes and topics that interest the EAL learner
 Expose EAL students to Australia culture and society
 Have communicative activities that can be understood by EAL student
 Teach the skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing
 Have activities that require pair and group work
 provide meaningful learning contexts
 Use visual aide whenever possible
 Have a word wall with meanings
 Adapt assessment tasks to EAL students language abilities
(Edublogs, 2014)
CLASSROOM SETUP
For EAL students who are just beginning to learn
English, a classroom that is set up with many visual
clues will only enhance their learning. A classroom that:

Everything is clearly labelled with the word and picture- able
to develop what the word is from the picture (e.g.- blocks,
paper, glue etc)

Posters with numbers, shapes, alphabet and objects
displayed all around the room

Quiet corner where EAL (or all students) can go to have
some quiet, thinking time or to work individually
without distraction
LITERACY ASPECTS

One on one- explicit teaching taking place where the EAL student is provided with
teacher understanding and guidance on meaning of story

Predictable books- encourage children responses, able to see the events of the story
taking place and join in

Shared Reading- provides scaffolding to develop knowledge on how each page works to
represent story

Small groups- able to ask questions, predict events and personal contributions without
the whole class fear

Whole class reading- read books that rhyme, so students can see the sequencing of the
rhyming and join in with the rest of class

Nursery Rhymes/ songs- so that EAL students learn a song/ nursery rhyme and with
the rest of the class are able to join in and participate with these activities
(Neuman & Roskos, Ch 3, 1993)
FOUR PHASES OF EAL
As teachers with an EAL student it is crucial for them to
acknowledge what level their English language is. These
phases are not age defined, rather the students knowledge of
language. These four language learning phases include:

Beginning English- of students 1st language they have limited
literacy knowledge.




Limited Literacy Background (subsection)- behaviors
of reading, writing and viewing to understand students
that have little or no literacy knowledge in any language.
Emerging English- students with growing English competency
of oral language and print literacy.
Developing English- English print literacy and oral language is
developing
Consolidating English- academic language is growing and
written and spoken English language is of a sound level
(ACARA, 2011)
USEFUL
ACTIVITIES
What makes activities useful for EAL students and how can we as teachers be sure that
the students are benefitting from them.
o
Colourful
o
Pictures
o
Not too many words
o
Able to be clarified with a teacher
o
Can work on their own, partners, small groups or whole class
o
At the individual child's level
Useful activities can include:
•Word/
picture bingo
•
Matching game- word to picture
•
Provided sentence to then draw- e.g. The black cat sat under the big tree.
•
Fill in the gaps story- have the characters and setting etc blanked out for the EAL student to then
fill in
•
Flash cards
•
Rhyming words activity
•
Multiple choice activities
•
(communicative) Layout of a shopping centre- students ask each other questions to work out
ACTIVITY
Alphabetic Bingo- teacher can say a word and
students put counter on the first letter of that
word. This activity can be used for EAL
students early on in their English learning,
however it could also be used in prep/ grade 1
with the whole class. This activity helps EAL
students with sound to letter recognition.
Alphabetic Flashcards- teacher can use
these as letter/ picture to word knowledge.
Show students card and ask what the
picture is and what letter that is. Can
modify flash cards to just letter, then ask
students what letter it is and a word that
then starts with this letter.
ONLINE ACTIVITIES
For online activities make sure you EAL student has
knowledge on how to word computers to be able to do the
activities or teach them the skills necessary to work the
programs.
These following programs are great for EAL students:
 ESL Games Plus
 ESL Kid Stuff
And programs that Teachers need to register for:
 Skwirk
 Letterland
Although these websites are great resources and teaching
tools for EAL students, each teacher needs to thoroughly go
through the website and choose what activities they want
their EAL students to complete. Some activities may or
may not be relevant for the unit of work in which your class
is studying or some activities might not be beneficial for the
individual student.
LETTERLAND PROGRAM
Letterland ESL Program
This program in an Internationally used program specific for ESL or
EAL students. This program teaches EAL students knowledge of
shapes and sounds of the English language. It also teaches basic
English vocabulary, listening and speaking skills. This program is
designed to teach specifically English as a additional language.
This program contains the following resources:
• ELT Teacher's Guide- It supports an activity and/or a book and
CD approach to teaching, and useful activities that reinforce and
extend vocabulary.
• ELT Student Book and CD- brightly coloured pages to invite
interactivity, with pronunciation models on CD.
• ELT Handwriting Book - useful aid to handwriting practice as
children progress from tracing to independent writing using this
pictogram approach to letter formation.
• ELT Workbook- includes pair work activities and games to make
teaching more effective.
(EdSource, 2014)
IMPORTANT THINGS TO
REMEMBER

Keep records and know how your EAL child’s learning
is developing and what extra measures can be done

Introduce new activities that are engaging and help
the individual student- find out what this child is
interested in and base some activities around this

Try to know what is going on at home, keep the
parents up to date (if their English ability permits
this).

Try to learn a few words from your EAL student’s 1st
language (L1), just to show that you care about them
and are interested in them
CONCLUSION
As a teacher, every lesson needs to be accommodated for all
your students- the highflyers, those struggling and also your
EAL students.
Our country is rapidly changing and people are coming to live
in Australia from all over the world, there is bound to be an
EAL student come through your classroom at one time or
another, it is critical to know and understand how to teach
these students so they are able to learn.
Thank you so much for listening and I hope you gained
some knowledge on EAL learners today.
REFERENCE LIST

ACARA (2011). English as an Additional Language or Dialect: Teacher Resource. Retrieved from http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/EALD_Resource__EALD_Learning_Progression.pdf

Briggs, F., & Potter, G. (1999). The Early Years of School: Teaching and Learning(3rd ed.). Addison Wesley Longman.

Edublogs (2014). Learning & Teaching in an ESL Inclusive Classroom. Retrieved from eslintheclassroom.edublogs.org/
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English as an Additional Language or Dialect Teacher Resource. Annotated Content Descriptions English Foundation to Year 10. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/EALD_Learning_Area_Annotations_English_Revised_February_2014.pdf
ACARAEnglish as an Additional Language or Dialect Teacher Resource. (2014). Retrieved from
http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/EALD_Overview_and_Advice_revised_February_2014.pdf
EdSource (2014). Letterland - Letterland ESL Programme Resources. Retrieved from http://www.letterland.com.au/Teachers/ESLEFL-Teaching/Letterland-ESLProgramme-Resources
English as an Additional Language or Dialect: Teacher Resource (EAL/D) | ACARA. (2013). Retrieved from
http://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/eald_teacher_resource/eald_teacher_resource.html
ESL Games + (n.d.). ESL Spelling Games, ESL Hangman Games, Drag and Drop Spelling Activities, Online, Interactive, English, Spelling Exercises. Retrieved from
http://www.eslgamesplus.com/spelling-games/

ESL Kid Stuff (n.d.). ESL Kids Online Learning Games. Retrieved from http://www.eslkidstuff.com/OnlineGamesMain.htm#.U0dJTYaQacw
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Groundwater, S., Cusworth, R., & Dobbins, R. (1998). Teaching Challenges and Dilemmas. Harcourt Brace & Company.
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Neuman, S. B., & Roskos, K. (1993). Language and literacy learning in the early years: An integrated approach. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
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New Foundland Labrador, Education (2009). Classroom Accommodations for ESL and ELD Students. Retrieved from
http://www.ed.gov.nl.ca/edu/k12/curriculum/guides/esl/classroom_accommodations.pdf
Promoting Cultural Sensitivity: Vietnamese Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/guidestoolkits/ethnographicguides/vietnam/chapters/chapter2.pdf
Queensland Government, Education Queensland (2014). Supporting students with additional education needs. Retrieved from
http://education.qld.gov.au/schools/about/support.html#english
Ramsay, N. (2014). ESL-Kids - Flashcards, Worksheets, Games and Songs. Retrieved from http://esl-kids.com/
SIL International (n.d.). First Language-based education for non-dominant language speakers: Issues and challengers. Retrieved from
http://www.rnld.org/sites/default/files/K_Kosonen_Oct_09_Presentation_AUSIL.pdf
Skwirk Online Education (2013). Retrieved from
http://www.skwirk.com.au/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=teaching&Network=Search&kw=teaching%20activities&SiteTarget=&utm_noove
rride=1
State of New South Wales, Department of Education and Training, Centre for Learning Innovation (2006). A basic introduction to child development theories.
Retrieved from http://lrrpublic.cli.det.nsw.edu.au/lrrSecure/Sites/LRRView/7401/documents/theories_outline.pdf
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Vietnamese Customs. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.vietnam-culture.com/zones-3-1/Vietnamese-Customs.aspx
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Williams, M., (n.d.). Supporting ESL Students in Inclusive Classrooms. Retrieved from https://suite.io/margaret-m-williams/22v32at