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Is it important for young English language learners to read dual language text?
It can be helpful for learners to read texts in both languages. It can provide a quick reference to aid comprehension and fosters an appreciation of the languages. It can be used creatively as a shared reading teaching tool in a bilingual setting. However, it is not a necessary part of learning the language. Often young learners will read one language and ignore the other. Additionally, if the majority language is English, this tends to reduce the desire to read in a minority language. Controversially, English quite frequently becomes the favoured language of choice due to its dominance/status in environments where English is widely used.
Schools often have a number of students who are not yet literate in English. Whilst this includes English-speaking children who are only just learning to read and write, it also covers other groups of learners, including:
'pre-literate' learners who come from an oral language tradition where there is no written form of the language. This can make the concepts of reading and writing very difficult to grasp.
Whilst reading a book on reclaiming childhood ('Their name is today' by Johann Christoph Arnold) the chapter on 'learning differences and how to cater for them' triggered thoughts on teaching differences. At the end of the October article it was mentioned that EAL teaching should be evaluated in a different way due to the very nature of the subject and I shall try to clarify why.
When striving to engage parents of EAL learners in an Early Years setting, we must be mindful to provide extra sensitivity and inclusivity. As well as potentially struggling with the language barrier, this may also be their own and their child’s first experience of a UK-style school, which may be very different to what they grew up with in their home country.