English as an Additional Language

A significant percentage of students for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL) are enrolled in Catholic schools in Victoria. Students come from an increasingly diverse range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds and enrol in our schools as both migrants and refugees. All members of the learning community embrace difference and diversity, seeing it as the context for dialogue, engagement and a deeper understanding of self, others and God.

Students with English as an Additional Language (EAL students) are those born in Australia and overseas who come from a language background other than English and do not speak English as the main language at home.

EAL students may:

• already speak one or more languages or dialects other than English
• have good academic English language skills, but limited knowledge of the social registers of English
• have a level of English language proficiency which does not match their cognitive development.

The length of time that students may need to acquire English proficiency varies depending on a range of factors.

While EAL students may demonstrate basic social competence in English within six months to two years, research indicates that they may take five years or more to demonstrate academic competence, both orally and in writing, at a level commensurate with their native-speaking peers (Collier 1995).

Refugee students may take between seven to ten years to develop the academic English language skills required in a classroom to the level of their English-speaking-background peers, as indicated by Collier and Thomas’s study (2009, as cited in Miller & Windle 2010).

The length of time that students may need to acquire English proficiency varies depending on a range of factors including:

• previous educational experience and whether the student has developed literacy in the first language
• the degree of competency and whether there has been continued development of the student’s first language
• the degree of exposure to and use of English
• the similarities or differences between the student’s first language(s) or dialects to Standard English • the student’s age, stage of development and point at which they began to learn English
• the student’s personality and disposition, feeling of self-esteem and attitude towards learning English
• the gender, socio-economic status and general ability of the student and expectations of family
• the level of support for English language development that parents, caregivers or family members are able to provide
• the level of support provided by the school/teachers.

Prior to any formal assessment, it is important to consider the child’s socio-linguistic background as English may be an additional language (EAL).

Formal assessments regularly use normative data for Western cultures and populations (usually USA, UK and/or Australia), thus using them to assess students with an EAL background may incorrectly identify them as ‘underperforming’ or presenting with a learning disability when they are in fact developing appropriately considering their phase of English language learning.

In light of these facts, MACS has adopted the Dynamic Assessment Process (DAP) approach to evaluating oral language. The DAP involves clarification of a language area of concern and then designing and implementing targeted teaching, monitoring and documenting the progress.