Over the years that I've been working with schools (many!) I've struggled to define clearly what excellent EAL provision should look like in a generic sense. Taking a context-embedded approach, design for EAL provision has always been innately linked to the school context in terms of location, staffing, students, and other factors that impact language programming. While this bespoke approach works for each indivudual school, it's not helpful in developing a generalisable model that any school could apply and use. I've worked with several schools recently that are developing approaches to supp ..read more

At the ECIS MLIE (Multilingual Learning in Education) conference two weeks ago I gave a keynote on languages in international schools. I'm going to turn that talk into a blog series, to open discussions about what needs to happen in order to make languages the heart of our linguistically diverse schools. Although I use the term 'dark arts' in a light-hearted way, it is in fact the case that there is a lack of consistency and transparency in how we structure, manage, and teach EAL, host country languages, and home languages in our international schools. This lack of transparency means that man ..read more

I don't normally have guest posts on my blogs, but Tim and I recently had a great conversation about why, in an age of AI, we need to rethink the reasons for learning languages. Enjoy! Tim F Nash Guest blog post for Crisfield Educational Consulting   “How can we be so interested in global citizenship and international mindedness and not be interested in languages in schools?”  E. Crisfield.[1]   We normally think of languages as barriers that separate us from others.  If we learn another language, it is so that we can communicate with those who live behind the barrier that ..read more

This post is the fourth in a series of four about EAL schools. The first is on complexity in EAL, the second is on advocacy for multilingual learners and learners with EAL, and the third is on EAL provisions. This post picks up on issues around advocacy and looks at the people, programmes, and places that form strong partnerships for improving our EAL provision. Provision for English as an additional language in schools is always complex, and that complexity requires working well in partnership with all the people involved in the education of students with English as an additional language. E ..read more

This is the third in a series of four blog posts about EAL. The first is 'Why is EAL so complex?' and the second is 'Advocacy: Whose job is it?'. In this third post I am going to explore why EAL provision remains so mysterious to so many. When I go into a school to do a review, my first question is always 'describe your EAL provision to me'. Depending on who I am asking, this question either leads to great consternation, or to an answer that may still be going 15 minutes later... why is it that EAL is so hard to describe? I think the answer is that in many (most?) schools, EAL suffers from a ..read more

This is my second in a series of four posts about the complexity of EAL. If you missed the first post, you can find it here. In this post we will explore advocacy as a core function of provision for multilingual learners in schools, and for effective EAL provision. EAL coordinators and teachers are generally very strong advocates for their students. This may mean being 'just a little bit pushy' (heard from an EAL teacher at the EAL DIPS event at the International School of Delft last March!) in order to get resources, time, or support. While advocacy is a key attribute of EAL specialists, the ..read more

Every once in a while a school contacts me and asks me to do a redesign for their EAL provision, expecting that it will take a couple of days and be focused on schedules and materials (programmes). If only it it could be that easy! While schools are complicated in many ways, creating and delivering good EAL provision remains one of our biggest challenges. This is the first in a series of four blog posts exploring the complexities of EAL, and some pathways forward for EAL specialists and departments to consider. They are based on a closing keynote that I delivered at the DIPS EAL conference at ..read more

I'm absolutely thrilled to be sharing this blog post with you, and with it the culmination of over four years of work. When I began my senior lecturer role at Oxford Brookes University five years ago, it was a temporary position and I did not think I would stay on longer, as juggling a university role and my work in schools can be challenging. Early on, I realised that a (very) part-time role at a university was an amazing opportunity. The courses I teach on (second language acquistion and teaching multilingual learners) keep my head in the research and make it easier to stay current, and the ..read more

From December 2019 to March 2020 I carried out a review of EAL provisions for the Jersey education department (Children, Young People, Education and Skills). Based on the cross-sector data I collected, I made a series of recommendations for their consideration. The first recommendation that I made was to create a whole-sector language policy. Jersey is small system, and as such, it makes sense to create a common language policy and cohesive approach. As much as it made sense, no one was more surprised than I was when Lesley Stagg (Senior Adviser at the time) gave the project the green light ..read more

It seems like a long time has passed since I recorded this episode of the Teaching MLs podcast with Tan Huynh, but I still remember how much fun it was to have this conversation with him We connected about the lived experiences of children who lose or don't develop their home languages, about supporting multilingual learners in schools, and probably on a few more topics that have slipped my mind! The podcast was recorded very shortly after the publication of my second book Bilingual Families: A practical language planning guide (Multilingual Matters, 2021). While my book was written mainly fo ..read more