When working with EAL learners it is worth remembering these three words:

• Eyes
• Speech
• Body

They provide a simple way to think about the experience of EAL learners in your classroom.

By keeping them in mind, you can continually check whether what is happening is helping learners or hindering them.

• Ask yourself whether what the EAL learner can see will help them access and understand what is going on.
• Ask whether what they can hear is helping them understand what is going on and what is expected of them.
• Ask if you are using your body to support your spoken communication. Are you mirroring or supplementing the meaning of the words you are using? Are you remaining open? Are you physically modelling ideas? And are you modelling what it is that you want learners to do?

Referring to these key words – using them as lenses – also helps us sympathise with the position of the EAL learner.

It encourages us to view what is going on in the classroom from the perspective of someone for who the main mode of expression is not fully accessible.

This may sound obvious, yet it is easy to lose sight of such an important point amid the clamour for attention made by learners, colleagues and parents.

Praise, Emotion and Individual Differences

Learners who have English as an additional language (EAL) are, in many ways, no different from the rest of your learners.

They are still young people, they still have feelings, they still desire to do well, and they still have family or carers who they go home to every night.

As such, like everyone else, they will respond well to empathy and praise.

Empathy should be used to indicate your understanding of the game – the knowledge of what is at issue for the learner and how they and you are working together to try and overcome it: empathy as shared understanding rather than tea and biscuits.

You should give praise with care and thought.

Never scrimp on it; do not treat it as a limited resource.

Do be mindful, however, of the potential that exists for diluting its impact.

There can be a temptation to praise a learner who has English as an additional language for myriad minor things.

The hope is that this will dissipate any anxiety or frustration they might be feeling due to their difficulties with communication. The learner may view this as patronising though, or they may dislike the extra attention they are receiving.

Be Specific with Your Praise

Identify specific things for which to give praise and make it clear to the learner (with gestures and modelling if necessary) precisely what it is you are praising.

Such an approach smacks of honesty.

It is difficult to see it as being anything other because it shows a clear thought process on behalf of the teacher. The approbation is directly tied to something the learner has done, with an explanation as to why it is good. An argument is being advanced, with evidence to support it.

Managing Emotion

Emotion can play a role in any classroom.

Managing it is a key part of ensuring good progress among learners and an atmosphere in which all feel safe and secure.

There are two things to say about emotion and EAL learners.

The first is that you ought to expect periods of frustration, annoyance or irritation from learners. Anybody who finds themselves in a situation where the expectations are unclear or it is not apparent what you are supposed to be doing can feel awkward and ill at ease.

If the situation continues, these feelings can grow.

I recall losing my cool when someone who I was interviewing continually evaded the questions: it was frustrating to feel my own language being disempowered.

While this situation is not identical to that of an EAL learner, it still points to how disruption or dissonance in communication can draw out negative feelings.

In addition to this, it is important to remember that learning an additional language is, for most people, hard.

Consider that an EAL learner is doing it ‘on-the-go’ and may have few (if any) native speakers around them, and you can see a hard task getting harder.

Learners’ difficulties in communicating their feelings to peers or to the teacher can compound things.

One of the fundamental facets of language is that it allows us to make others aware of our internal states.

Knowing how to do this in one’s first language yet not being able to do it in an additional language can be deeply frustrating.

It is as if a barrier has been erected and one’s own self has had to withdraw from the surroundings.

Sharing our internal states helps us say who we are and signal our existence to others, as well as our independence. So, after all that is temporarily taken away, do not be surprised if EAL learners display some negative emotions at times!

The second point regarding emotion concerns the teacher.

We are all used to communicating at will with our classes.

We modify our language to ensure everyone follows what is being taught, but we work from a premise that simple alterations are all that is required to guarantee understanding.

This comes from the fact that we know our learners are versed in the English language.

We know as well that a major part of our job is to continually develop and refine that understanding, but that this begins from a vast shared pool of vocabulary, syntax and grammar.

Working with EAL learners can be frustrating for the teacher.

It can cause us to feel inept or powerless in the face of what sometimes appear to be insurmountable barriers.

If you are used to providing help and support for learners, the loss of this ability can be difficult to deal with. It is easy to feel disoriented or helpless when all the tools we usually use to assist a child are no longer any good (or, at least, not as good as they would usually be).

If you find yourself in such a situation, I advise taking a three-pronged approach.

First, do not despair. The decreased efficacy of your usual tools and techniques is neither a reflection on you, nor on the learner.

Second, use this knowledge to imaginatively draw yourself and the learner together.

Acknowledge that the issue (not the problem) is for both of you, and that it exists separately to the pair of you. By doing this, you avoid tying emotions to the issue. Also, you will create an external focal point which you and the learner can bond over. It is akin to saying: ‘At present we cannot communicate that well with each other. Let’s work as a team to overcome this.’

Such a mindset may be impossible to express explicitly to the learner, but holding on to it and letting it inform your behaviour ought to be enough.

The third point is to build EAL supporting activities and strategies into your teaching. And you’ll find dozens of these in my EAL Toolkit, and across my EAL Knowledge Base.

Doing this means you are being positive and proactive.

You are working from the premise that the issue is transitory and that it can and will be overcome. You are doing your duty as a professional and as a person. You are helping your learner(s) and need not accept any feelings of frustration, powerlessness or anxiety which may creep up on you.

Language Acquisition Takes Time

It is worth remembering that learning a new language can take a while.

Do not expect dramatic changes or overnight successes.

In rare cases these may come, but in general the learner’s development will be gradual.

They will be feeling their way into the language, testing out its possibilities, trialling the meanings of words and identifying how far they can be pushed and in what circumstances.

If, at some point in your life, you have learned a new language, reflect on that experience. Ask yourself how you made progress and what sort of timescales accorded with your increasing mastery.

It may be that you too found the process difficult. If this is the case, do not remember it and then stop. It may be useful for empathising with an EAL learner, but what would be better would be for you to analyse why you found it difficult and to learn from this.

You may find that your own experience provides you with pointers on how to adapt your classroom or your teaching.

Every EAL Learner is Different

Individual differences will play a part as well.

As we said before, EAL learners are just like the rest of your class in most respects. This includes the varying cognitive abilities, prior schooling and life experiences they bring with them.

While the inability to communicate in a given language tends to initially mask the true cognitive capabilities of a learner, it can still be assumed that any population of EAL learners will include a range of abilities.

This has consequences for the speed at which learners pick up English.

So too does the degree of motivation learners possess.

It is worth speaking to pastoral leaders (or, if your school has one, an EAL coordinator) to find out a little about the backgrounds of your EAL learners. There are many reasons why a family, or in some cases an individual child, may move to live in another country.

These could range from the highly desirous – a parent is promoted to a prestigious head office position in an English-speaking city – to the truly awful – a family are forced to flee their country of origin to escape persecution during a civil war.

Even within these two situations there is room for variation. A child in the first case may have no interest in their parent’s good fortune and wish only to stay with their friends.

A child in the second case might be relieved to be living in a safe country, even if the uprooting was beyond their control.

Each EAL learner who you encounter will be different.

Try to find out a little about their backgrounds so you can understand where they are coming from (literally and metaphorically). This will help you to help them.

Be sure to assimilate the information they provide during lessons: how they interact with others, the personality they project, the way they respond to you, how they appear to apply themselves in an unfamiliar environment.

Build up a picture of them and use it to aid your teaching.

Do be prepared for it to alter though.

As learners become more confident in the language of the classroom, so their personalities might change.

Your assumptions, whether made unwittingly or not, may well be challenged.

Where do EAL learners start their language journey?

Much of what I have said so far has presumed that EAL learners are homogenous in their relationship to English, if not in other areas.

They come to learn it as an additional language, their development progresses and, finally, they master it.

This is true in a general sense.

It is logically sound to assume the following: First, a person comes into contact with something they did not previously know. Second, they spend a period of time engaging with and experiencing that thing. Third, providing they persist in the process, they eventually become capable of using the thing on their own terms. This is a rough, overarching model for learning.

Yet, when we are teaching, we will not by necessity encounter EAL learners in this way.

They will arrive in our classrooms already at a point in the process.

Consider the following shape: a long thin, double-ended arrow; a continuum. At one end are learners who are encountering English for the first time, at the other end are learners who are highly skilled in every aspect of the language.

We could place all of our learners, whether they are EAL learners or not, on this continuum.

In fact, we could place everyone we know on it. We could stretch it further and include a whole range of criteria by which to determine where precisely different individuals fit.

Its use for us though, is simpler.

Think of your EAL learners as being on the continuum.

Once you have spent some time teaching them, look to place them in your mind roughly where you think they are at.

The more experience you have, the more accurate these judgements will become.

Most schools will assess EAL learners and decide to which of the EAL stages/levels their present abilities correlate.

There are agreed criteria schools use as the basis of such judgements, each of which tallies with certain skills and abilities.

It will be useful for you to get hold of this information, but I would counsel against using it in place of your own judgements. See it as a supplement instead.

The advantage of the continuum approach is that it provides you with a mental model that is continuous rather than discrete.

The EAL stages/levels are discrete because a continuum would be unwieldy at a national or international level.

It would also rely on subjective judgements and therefore lose its standardising capacity.

So, take note of the EAL stages/levels and familiarise yourself with what each one refers to, but do not write off your own judgement in favour of them.

Remember that you spend five days a week with learners and are constantly assessing their abilities, including the extent to which they can manipulate language. Call on these skills when working with your EAL learners.

Assume that when they first arrive in your lesson they will be at some point on the continuum.

Find out what EAL stage/level they are at and any extra information which is available and may be of help.

Make a judgement.

Be prepared to alter this judgement as you spend more time with them.

Your interactions will alter accordingly.

Initially, you may judge learner A to be further along the continuum then learner B.

As such, you will use more developed language when speaking to learner A.

Given a couple of months, learner B might have caught up while learner A has plateaued.

You will refine your judgements and adjust your use of language accordingly.

Thinking with the continuum model is also helpful because it allows you to see EAL learners in relation to native speakers. It encompasses all learners in the class and so avoids putting EAL learners to one side as a separate and distinct group. It promotes equality while recognising that learners have different needs.

It also signals the potential for using native speakers to help new language learners develop their communication skills.