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Academic Literacy for Pupils With Low Literacy Skills Including EAL Learners

Academic Literacy for Pupils With Low Literacy Skills Including EAL Learners

Advancing Academic Literacy for English as an Additional Language (EAL) Learners

Many schools will have advanced bilingual learners who have either been speaking English all their lives alongside their home language or who have been in an English-speaking education system for a number of years.

Children and young people are quick to pick up everyday language often referred to as basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS), this means that they have developed conversational fluency and will be able to chat to other pupils and teachers in social situations and generally get by in class.

However in order for these pupils to catch up with their peers in more academic aspects of school language they will need a direct, structured and scaffolded approach in order to build on their language of learning and develop cognitive and academic language proficiency (CALP) which is the key to cognitive development and realising educational potential.

How Can the Equality Diversity Inclusion Team Help?

The Equality Diversity Inclusion Team’s Advisory Teachers provide support to schools to ensure best outcomes for advanced bilingual learners, developing pupils' speaking and listening, reading, and writing skills across different genres and across all subject areas.

This can include:

  • embedding ‘All Teachers are Language Teachers’
  • workshops with subject leaders to identify subject specific academic language
  • individual pupil and group support
  • modelling practical strategies, activities and learning opportunities which will promote the engagement and accelerate the progress of all pupils with low literacy skills
  • bespoke and centralised training through CPD Online. During the session the delegates will:
    • increase awareness of EAL pedagogy and key points around second language acquisition
    • develop an understanding of academic literacies
    • explore strategies to develop academic literacy in different subject areas.

For more details and information on how EDIT can help, please click one of the boxes below.

Contact Us

You can get in touch with us using our designated contact page - contact EDIT here!