English as an Additional Language

Rationale and Aims

Rationale

Australia is a linguistically and culturally diverse country. Many students of varying ages enter school with one or more dominant home languages that are not English. Some of these students may be bilingual or multilingual, but the majority still need to learn peer-equivalent functional Standard Australian English to participate in all aspects of Australian life, including schooling. The development of foundational and functional language and literacy skills forms the core of the English as an Additional Language (EAL) curriculum.

As EAL students develop their English language knowledge and skills, they build their capacity to communicate confidently and effectively in a variety of contexts. This strengthens their understanding of the nature of language and culture in multilingual societies, and the way that language changes according to purpose, form and context. By learning to use and adapt the English language according to specific contexts, EAL learners build relationships with their peers and the wider world around them.

Students develop English language competence through the strands of Listening and Speaking, Reading and Viewing, and Writing across all 3 age-specific and peer-equivalent EAL pathways: A, B and C. Content is arranged within each strand into 3 sub-strands: Communication, Text structures and linguistic features, and Plurilingual and cultural strategies. Students are given opportunities to expand their linguistic repertoires through structured communication in a range of social and academic contexts, supported by EAL-informed explicit teaching of the English language system. The inclusion of Plurilingual and cultural strategies as the third sub-strand in the curriculum acknowledges the value of multilingual and/or multicultural competence. A student who demonstrates cultural understandings and plurilingual strategies can integrate their knowledge of several languages in a way that enriches their communication and learning in all languages. These learning strategies validate the importance of home language(s) and the role of these in a student’s sense of self.

Aims

The EAL curriculum aims to ensure that students:

• develop functional English language and literacy skills to enable effective peer-equivalent communication across all curriculum areas and enable full participation within the school and wider Australian society
• learn to listen to, speak, read, view, write and create spoken, print and digital English language texts, including visual, multimodal and interactive texts. They use these skills to express feelings and communicate information and ideas across a growing range of interpersonal and academic contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose
• understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and print forms, and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication, to create meaning
• develop their cultural understandings and plurilingual awareness of the ways they can and do use different languages and of the roles of these languages in influencing their learning and identities.