In this episode, Claire meets Beth Southern, an experienced EAL Consultant and a Specialist Leader of Education for EAL. Beth has taught extensively in both primary and secondary schools, and she is the creator of EAL HUB which provides a range of resources to support EAL learners in the mainstream classroom. Many teachers also use her resources for non-EAL children with limited vocabulary.Since a significant number of schools in the UK have a high number of EAL pupils, Beth believes that training teachers to support them should play a much larger part of PGCE courses and teacher training programmes. Courses often provide only one training session for trainees, which can often be just 2.5 hours long, so it is extremely difficult to condense the necessary skills into such a short period of time.
During her discussion with Claire, Beth shares a huge range of practical advice and tips to support EAL children and their parents. She stresses the importance of ensuring that EAL pupils are given the opportunity to work with ‘more able’ children in the class who can model good vocabulary and grammar. It is important to steer away from the assumption that they need to work in lower ability groups as this can drastically hinder their progress.
Every EAL child is unique along with their circumstances and background, so there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Beth created the EAL HUB for this very reason – to offer a versatile and holistic EAL hub that is a go-to place for teachers in need of support, resources and training for students learning English.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

TESOLIf you’re interested in teaching English as a foreign language, Beth recommends taking a TESOL course. It is extremely intensive and this approach gave her the opportunity to vastly improve her grammatical skills and knowledge. Beth feels this course is useful for all teachers of English in primary and secondary schools, as it has such a strong grammatical focus.
Do not discourage use of the child’s first languageEAL children should be encouraged to continue using their first language, especially at home, though it should not be discouraged at school either. Children and parents should be encouraged to read together in their first language. Being aware of some of the conventions and patterns of the child’s first language is extremely useful in supporting them to learn English. For example, articles are not used in Russian so a child might say, “I put on table” because “the” isn’t used in their first language. Arabic learners may mix up lower case and capital letters because this is not part of their first language. It is strongly advised to have an idea of what their first language looks like and the reasons that certain misconceptions may arise. Even languages which appear to be vastly different from English share many words with common roots.
EAL is not the same as SENBeth urges teachers to avoid immediately putting EAL children into lower ability sets. Her first suggestion is to find children who can support them. They should be sitting with the ‘more able’ children as they can offer sentence scaffolding and the children can see a good model of where they need to be and they will be exposed to the language they need to hear.
Create speaking and listening opportunities in the classroomMany Key Stage 2 classrooms no longer make use of role play areas, but Beth thinks these are an incredible resource for all children and especially for EAL pupils. They allow the children to practise valuable, every-day conversations and develop vocabulary fundamental to a secure understanding of the English language.
Use picture books for reading and writingHigh-quality picture books offer fantastic support for pupils to read, write and build comprehension. They allow the children to understand what is happening through images. They can see how the character develops, they can follow the emotions and tension, and most importantly they can experience a whole, complete story in a sho