EAL and Mother Tongue. Supporting children's language development

1. An information morning for
parents at Panaga School
developing an understanding of
EAL and MT

2. Some Languages at Panaga - can you spot
yours?
Arabic, Indonesian,Bahasa Melayu,Tamil,
Bengali, Spanish,Hindi,Urdu,Telugu,German,
Dutch, English, Mandarin, Russian, French,
Chinese, Marathi, Assamese, Visayan,
Tagalog,Thai, Malayalam,Turkish,Konrani,
Swahili, Yoruba,Norwegian,Polish,Kannada

3. Panaga School Nationalities
PANAGA SCHOOL NATIONALITY
NO. OF CHILDREN
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
AMERICAN
ARGENTINA
AUSTRALIAN
BRAZILIAN
BRITISH
BELGIAN
BELGIUM
CANADIAN
CHINESE
COLOMBIAN
DUTCH
EGYPTIAN
FILIPINO
FRENCH
INDIAN
NATIONALITIES
INDONESIAN
IRANIAN
IRISH
JAMAICAN
MALAYSIAN
MEXICAN
N. ZEALANDER
NIGERIAN
GERMAN
OMANI
PAKISTANI
PERUVIAN
POLISH
SCOTTISH
Series1
SINGAPOREAN
SWEDEN
SYRIAN
TURKISH
TRINIDAD
VENEZUELAN
ITALIAN
RUSSIAN
THAILAND
NORWEGIAN
PORTUGUESE

4. Support your child’s mother tongue!
• What does ‘mother tongue’ mean to
you?

5. Importance of Mother Tongue
• Part of the roots of
your children; cultural
identity
• Link to family, friends
and country
• Necessary for children
to reintegrate into their
home country, national
school or university

6. Role mother tongue plays in educational
development?
There are 4 steps according to Prof. Jim
Cummins, leading researcher in second
language acquisition, Ontario University

7. 1.Bilingual learners are the best learners!
• By learning two or more languages children gain
a greater understanding of how language works
• Knowledge and skills transfer across two
languages (review weekly learning targets)
• Develop greater flexibility in thinking skills across
subjects, due to processing of information
through 2 different languages.

8. 2. A strong supported mother tongue
does not hurt children learning English
• Parents worry that being bilingual will
hinder their child’s progress but these
fears are ungrounded.
• Sometimes they mix languages, but this
gets sorted out later.

9. 3.Developing literacy in your MT is an
efficient means of developing literacy in
second language
• accelerates the development of
reading ability in second language
• literacy in MT transfers into the
second language, even when writing
signs are different
• provides knowledge of the world and
helps with school

10. How parents can support?
Mother Tongue at home:
– Decide on a family language policy
– Reading (have a diverse library), videos, games,
friends…aim to be biliterate not just bilingual
– Visit home country for extended holidays
– Have lots of visitors from home!
– Use technology readily available to children such as:
Skype, Face time or Phone budget cards to practice
having conversations in their MT not to practice their
English skills
– Support IPC in MT with research and discussion

11. 4.Mother tongue is fragile and easily lost
in early years of school
• Children pick up ‘playground English’ really
quickly
BUT
• Children can lose their mother tongue just as
quickly
• Extent and rapidity of language loss will vary
according to how much it is used
• Can lose within 2-3 years of starting school-retain
receptive skills but respond in English
to peers and parents

12. EAL at Panaga School
• Withdrawal and in-class support
• Develop survival language!
• Support with developing vocabulary linked to
other school subjects
• Speaking and listening skills
• Development of literacy skills (reading and
writing)

13. Early Language Development
• “Silent” period – up to a year
• Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS)
2 years - used in a context which provides clues to
meaning.
• Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
5-7years - context reduced, abstract, related to literacy,
using vocabulary and structures which are not common
in spoken language.
• When the first language is lost or fails to develop
acquiring academic English may take 10 to 11 years.

14. Developing speaking and
listening
with newer to English
pupils.

15. Use of visual clues
visual timetables fans gestures props
objects artefacts photos video clips
practical experiences thinking maps

16. Opportunities to join in or echo language
and play games with repetitive language
Greetings Answering the register
Closed questions with simple responses (yes/no)
Basic requests Circle games
Stories with repetitive phrases (Pie Corbett)
Lotto Track games Matching pairs games

17. Developing speaking and
listening
with more advanced
learners of English.

18. Scaffolding Talk
Provide scaffolding by:
• Using open questions to encourage more
extended responses
• Questioning to clarify meaning
• Giving time for children to respond - “wait time”
• Giving the child opportunities to explain before
rewording/recasting.

19. Developing reading for pupils who
are newer to English

20. PUNJABI PHONICS
Match the sound to the picture
What are the problems?

21. Developing Phonic Knowledge
• Don’t teach in isolation
• Link to known objects
• Link to a known object and known word
Remember :
• Pupils may not be used to hearing and
articulating certain sounds

22. Choose books that:
• Provide good models of language
• Are related to the child’s experience
• Have pictures to support the text
• Have repetitive text
• Can be used to develop their writing
• Children literate in L1 can read books in L1

23. Differences between
monolingual and EAL pupils
English speaker EAL Learner
• Uses picture cues • May not know the names of
items in picture
• May read without pictures • Needs visual clues to
understand
• Predicts based on semantic
and syntactic information
• Insufficient language or
cultural knowledge. Relies on
grapho-phonic cues
• Can self correct if the text
does not make sense
• Can’t tell if it makes sense.
• Can’t self correct-May not
recognise a miscue or know
how to correct

24. Developing writing for pupils who
are newer to English

25. •Integrate Speaking and Listening, reading
and writing
•Oral rehearsal before writing is essential
play vocabulary games, use speaking
frames and sentence starters
•Model the writing
•Sequence pictures

26. • Use repeated sentence structures –
either sentence starters and picture
word banks, bilingual dictionary
• Use cut up sentences – match words to
model sentences, practise reordering with
support and eventually reorder
independently

27. see I wolf. can a big
see I wolf. said can’t a Dad big
big I said Mum can’t a wolf. see

28. Key Word Recognition
• Build up sight words from children’s own
writing/reading
• Use a familiar sentence as a prompt
• Don’t teach in isolation

29. Literate in L1

30. How can you help
your child at home
to develop their
English skills?

31. Bilingual Dictionaries

32. Helping with EAL at home.
• Have a family rule of when to speak
English (car, restaurant, shop, beach?)
• Radio, television, films, books, music and
family games, online English games.
• Label everyday objects in both languages
around home.
• Play dates – organise through parent
representatives.

33. Talk for Writing
• Ensure your child understands and learns
the story
• Translate the story
• Identify unfamiliar vocabulary and practice
using these words in other contexts
• Use visuals from the internet or story
books to reinforce understanding.

34. Useful Websites
• www.collaborativelearning.org
• http://www.Communication4all.co.uk/
• http://www.sparklebox.co.uk
• www.britishcouncil.org/kids

35. Conclusion
Let’s work together to develop your
child’s language learning.
We need you to support your child’s
mother tongue and EAL!

36. References
• Bilingual Children’s Mother Tongue: Why is it important
for Education
Children's Mother Tongue: Why Is It Important
http://www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/mother.htm
• Krashen Stephen-http://www.sdkrashen.com/main.php3
• Website with a large number of books on bilingualism
www.multilingual-matters
• Pollock and Van Reken, (2001) Third Culture Kids
• Cunningham-Andersson, (2008) Growing up with two
languages, a practical guide
• Colin Baker, (2004)A parents’ and teachers’ guide to
bilingualism