English as an Additional Language (EAL)

This MESHGuide will introduce readers to a wide range of practical approaches to teaching multilingual learners, but our starting point for any of these is that practitioners work from a place of positive orientation to diversity. Research tells us that where schools attend to the whole child, and not just their language learning needs, this positively impacts their social and academic well-being (Aldridge & McChesney, 2018). Teaching for multilingual learners needs to be both culturally and linguistically responsive.  

There is a substantial body of research on linguistically responsive teaching. It rests on the work of several theorists but might best be summed up as Vygotskyan and Freirean. Vygotsky defines for us the crucial role of social interaction in learning and teaching; that learning takes place through talk and the co-creation of meaning. Freire exhorts us to ensure that classroom dialogue takes place between teacher and pupils as equals, and that it engages critically with the world. In essence, linguistically responsive teaching is intentionally dialogic, and it challenges the status quo.  

We draw on the work of US researchers Tamara Lucas and colleagues to summarise the portrait of this teacher: 

• Knows and cares about the family background and language learning experiences of their children. 

• Actively seeks opportunities to celebrate children’s home languages and identities through a culturally sustaining curriculum. 

• Actively challenges colleagues to infuse their teaching in all lessons with culturally sustaining adaptations that will support language learning. 

(Lucas, 2011) 

• Their classroom environment is safe and welcoming in order to minimise anxiety for learning a new language, new friendships and new ways of being. 

• Classroom activity revolves around meaningful opportunities to talk. 

• Intentionally planned social interaction supports development of both informal and curriculum-oriented language. 

• Home/heritage languages are used as an asset and it is understood that their maintenance is essential to support learning the new language. 

• Language learning involves explicit introduction to how the new language works.  

(Lucas et al., 2008) 

For further reading see work by Tamara Lucas and colleagues regarding linguistically responsive teaching and Gloria Ladson-Billings’ work regarding culturally responsive teaching.  

For further reading related to Naomi Flynn’s work with a culturally and linguistically responsive design for professional learning (The Enduring Principles of Learning, Teemant, 2014) see this free to access article Effective Teachers of Multilingual Learners: A Mixed-Method Study of UK and US Critical Sociocultural Teaching Practices and check in with this website The Talk Rich Teaching Project.