Category EAL
Formal or Informal?
Cut-ups and Kaboom! Students often struggle to distinguish between formal and informal language, and also to produce appropriately formal language when appropriate. Given that academic language is generally formal, and that my students need to be able to write texts of varying registers for their IGCSE E2L, it’s worth some time focusing on the features […]
EAL Conversations
“The first rule of EAL is to talk about EAL” As Head of the EAL department, one of my responsibilities was to deliver a short session on teaching EAL pupils at a summer-time meeting of NQTs held annually at our school. Instead of standing at the front and lecturing people on something they definitely had […]
Improve writing with confidence (using a model and the mark scheme)
In this activity, students “marked” a ChatGPT-generated text in order to become familiar with the mark scheme. As they had already tried the task, they noticed differences between this text and their own. (Spoiler: the text was grammatically sound and fairly well organised, but not amazing in terms of the organisation required by this particular […]
Features of Academic English: a poster.
As I see it, one of the most important aspects of my role is to teach academic English. Of course, all subject teachers are teachers of academic English too, but I’m aware that they are sometimes unsure about this part of their role. To make a neat little list of structural (pink) and lexical (blue) […]
Text type analysis
This activity could work for any course where students need to be able to identify and write a variety of text types. This year the IGCSE E2L got a bit more challenging: students had to be prepared to write two of the following text types: informal email/letter, formal letter, article, report, review, with the report […]
Modelling teacher-student communications
I often think that our students must so overwhelmed when they first start at school here. Not only is the language a different one, but the whole culture of the school is likely to be quite different from what they know. They are thrown into an entirely new environment, with new rules and expectations, far […]
UCAS Personal statement writing resources
In the autumn term, I offer Y13s help with writing their personal statements in an after-school session. It can be hard to sell yourself in your own language, let alone a second, so I put together this list of useful sites that students can use to find a suitable alternative to knowledge or an appropriate […]
Am I a subject teacher or a support teacher?
The role of an EAL teacher in independent schools can be confusing for both the teacher themselves and their colleagues throughout the school. Although it seems obvious now, it took me quite a while to figure out that actually my fellow EAL teachers and I have 3 distinct roles. a support teacher, helping those learning […]
Academic texts – “Explain” tasks
This lesson came about because a Y10 student had asked me how best to write their ideas for a 6-mark extended response question in Chemistry. This sort of task presents a challenge for EAL students who may know the content well, but can lose marks due to their language. Students should be aware that they […]
16 things I learnt from the BAISIS Conference 2018
Since starting my job as Head of EAL at my school, I have been lucky enough to attend a couple of BAISIS conferences. BAISIS is the British Association of Independent Schools with International Students. It was reassuring to meet people doing the same thing as me, partly because a lot of the information and resources […]
A Hive of Activities 