ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE OR DIALECT LEARNERS (EALD)
At Piara Waters Primary School, we celebrate that over 60% of our students have a Language Background other than English (LBOTE). We are a culturally diverse school, and this makes our learning environment richer for everyone.
For many of our students, English is an additional language.
Our EALD students:
- may have been born in Australia or moved from their home country to Australia
- may be learning English as a new language or already know some English
- are learning at school and in the community through spoken and written English
- may be learning a new culture at school and in the community
- may be starting school for the first time, or may already have attended school in their home country
- have existing language skills in their home language
- may come from traumatic and disrupted backgrounds
- could be managing loss, separation or family upheaval.
Literacy skills that students have in their home language will help them learn Standard Australian English (SAE).
Families are encouraged to use their home language to support their children to:
- develop their mental and language processing skills
- make sense of the world around them and learn new concepts
- speak, read and write
- learn SAE as an additional language, not a replacement language
Australian Curriculum and EALD learners
In Australian schools, learning is accessed and students demonstrate their achievements using the English language. Standard Australian English has two levels of formality, according to audience, purpose and context.
- Social language, which is the language of the playground and informal classroom interactions
- Academic language, which is required for learning-area specific tasks such as investigations, reports and formal oral presentations
Students may take:
- 2-3 years to develop social and conversational SAE
- 5-7 years to develop SAE academic language
Some EAL/D students will appear to have good interpersonal communication skills (social language); however, as academic language demands increase in the curriculum, gaps in their English language skills may become apparent. EAL/D students may require specific support to build the English language skills needed to access and demonstrate their understanding of the Western Australian Curriculum.
Oral Language Development for EAL/D Students
Competency with spoken language is a crucial prerequisite of learning. In most Australian classrooms, this competency is assumed as teachers use oral language to convey instructions, information and explanations for classroom activities. In the early years of schooling, new concepts are taught primarily through teacher talk and student response.
EAL/D students may give the impression of fluency with English; however, their proficiency may be limited to social language. Their academic language acquisition may still be developing to a level required to demonstrate their understanding of the curriculum at their school year level.
EAL/D Progress Maps
The English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D) Progress Map is a Western Australian planning, monitoring and assessment tool which supports students to progress through the phases of becoming proficient in an additional language.
The EAL/D Progress Map recognises:
- EALD students develop SAE along different pathways and at varied rates
- EALD students have varying prior knowledge and skills
- there is not an average Progress Map level for any year group
Progress Map achievement for students in the Beginning, Emerging and Developing levels (Level 1 – 5) is reported to parents on Semester 1 and Semester 2 EALD student reports.
You can download a copy of the Progress Maps here;
