Page 11 - ELG1903 Mar-Apr Issue 464

NEWS
EAL strategies Teacher‛s Pet

to go Dutch?

What do we want? More English language teachers. Where do
we want them? Harvard University!
That’s a message we like to hear, and that was the message
A Dutch and British research project aims sent last December by international students to Professor Emma
to help primary teachers with EAL students Dench, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at
Harvard University.
practice of L2 medium education, A petition signed by seventy graduate students from around
By Matt Salusbury
both in EAL and CLIL contexts, is the world called for the graduate school’s Centre for Writing and
The results of an innovative still “in its early stages”. Communicating Ideas, which offers individual consultations on
research project to be published The project is also looking at essay writing, to hire English as Second Language tutors.
this November aims to help “theorisation” – the theoretical As the petition noted, in perfect English, “we are required to
answer a critical question: how underpinning of teaching articulate our ideas in a confident and sophisticated way in a
can we best help young, non- strategies, and whether there are language that is not our native tongue.”
native speakers acquire language any gaps in the theory which might
in an English medium class? explain differences. PIXABAY
The British Council-funded In the Netherlands, primary
project led by Dr Dieuwerke CLIL is generally limited to
(‘Dee’) Rutgers of the University pilot “bilingual models” in
of Cambridge’s Faculty of select primary schools. In these
Education, involves both Dutch bilingual model classes, around
CLIL teachers and British primary 30 per cent of any given lesson
teachers whose classes include will be in English. This contrasts
children for whom English is with UK classes, which typically
additional language (EAL). contain native-speaker children,
The research compares as well those children from many
multilingual primary school classes different language backgrounds. The spires of Harvard University,
in the UK with primary school In these classes, there are wide Cambridge, Massachusetts.
CLIL teaching in the Netherlands, variations in the literacy and
and focuses on teaching theory English language levels and how
and classroom strategies used by closely their first language is to
teachers working with nine-to- English. Differentiated material, Naughty Corner
twelve year-olds in both countries. used to meet the varied needs of
The two groups of teachers were students, is key in EAL teaching
made up of mainstream teachers, in both settings.
not language specialists, who had According to Dr Rutgers, Meanwhile, on another august US campus, another graduate
received some training in either in teaching in the Netherlands has school leader has been forced to resign after advising students
CLIL, in the case of the Dutch, or not really considered the benefits to stop speaking Chinese on campus.
EAL methodology used in British of multilingualism in foreign Megan Neely, who remains an assistant professor of
schools. language acquisition. She hopes biostatistics and bioinformatics at Duke University North
Dr Rutgers told the Gazette the research will help primary Carolina, wrote in an e-mail to students that she had been
that the project aims to school CLIL teachers learn from approached by two faculty members complaining about two
produce self-assessment tools EAL practice, and go beyond “the first year student talking Chinese ‘very loudly’.
for multilingual EAL and CLIL odd lesson” in English, to develop “Both faculty members … wanted to write down the names
teachers to help them identify implementation of CLIL in their so they could remember them if the students ever interviewed
gaps in their classroom practice. everyday teaching. For more for an internship or asked to work with them for a master’s
According Dr Rutgers, the information, see: www.educ.cam. project,” she wrote.
development of theory and ac.uk/research/projects/clil/. A screenshot of the e-mail went viral on social media and
hit the headlines across Asia with the China Daily condemning
the e-mail as racist, while some local students called for
PIXABAY Americans studying at Chinese universities to be forced to
speak Mandarin on campus.
PIXABAY

Buildings at Duke University,
North Carolina.

editorial@elgazette.com 11