Thank you to everyone who has bought the paperback version of A Practical Guide to Supporting EAL and SEN Learners.
Sadly we are sold out ………. However there are lots of digital versions available for £15.00.
Just pay via paypal and it will be sent by return.
Estyn highlights the good work at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman and their belief in improving their pupils bilingual experience.
Good Practice – Bilingual Education
To read more of this report visit http://www.estyn.gov.uk/english/docViewer/265765.5/improving-welsh-language-provision/?navmap=33,53,159,
If you have any good ideas or see good practice in progress let us know.
Brilliant post that explains some of the benefits of bilingualism. They include;
1. A conscious approach can help you clean up your writing and your speech and help you communicate more clearly.
2. Bilingual individuals can pick out a speaker’s voice easier
3. Develop creativity because learning a second language improved speakers’ planning, cognitive flexibility, and working memory, three pillars on which creativity is built.
4. Patients who spoke more than one language had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years after their monolingual counterparts.
and finally
5. Make smarter decisions as people thinking in a foreign language were more likely to consider a question more slowly and analytically than in their native language
Really interesting thanks to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-roitman/why-it-makes-more-sense-t_b_3435076.html for this story.
Recent research suggests that learning a new language, at any age, not only will enhance your next vacation or better prepare you for an upcoming business trip, it can also make you a better listener, boost your creativity, spur brain growth, and for some people, even delay Alzheimer’s.
Each of these benefits stems from the various ways that language learning improves your brain’s ability to focus. Learning a language physically changes your mind, ultimately making you a stronger, more creative thinker. Here are five reasons why you should start learning a foreign language right now:
1. To improve your communication skills. The key here is consciousness. While most of us rarely think about the grammatical structures of our native tongue, learning a second language brings them into stark relief. When attempting to write or speak in a second language, you suddenly have to focus more on the order of words, your verb tenses, and parts of speech. And in recognizing how sentences are constructed in a second language, you can become more aware of how they’re arranged in your first language. That more conscious approach can help you clean up your writing and your speech and help you communicate more clearly.
2. To become a better listener. A study at Northwestern University showed that bilingual individuals could better pick out a speaker’s voice amidst distracting noises. This superior “attention, inhibition, and encoding of sound,” as the researchers put it, can help you better focus on what a client, boss, or employee is saying. The ability to listen closely is a valuable skill that can translate into a real dollar value. Look at IKEA, which attributes its record 2012 revenues and growing appeal in part to its ability to listen to customers and then respond accordingly.
3. To boost your creativity. Every time you speak a second language is an exercise in creativity. While words in your native language might string themselves together naturally, requiring little effort on your part, constructing sentences and meaning in a second language often requires more conscious thought. A study published last year found that learning a foreign language enhanced people’s fluency, elaboration, originality, and flexibility, the four scales measured by the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. Researchers concluded that learning a second language improved speakers’ planning, cognitive flexibility, and working memory, three pillars on which creativity is built.
4. To sharpen your mind. Learning a second language can beef up your brain’s executive control center — the hub that helps manage your cognitive processes. A second language offers a strong exercise regimen for the executive control center, ultimately making it more efficient. Bilingualism can keep this center strong even as you age. In a study of 24 million dementia patients worldwide, many of whom also had Alzheimer’s, researchers found that the patients who spoke more than one language had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years after their monolingual counterparts.
5. To make smarter decisions. A study completed last year showed that people thinking in a foreign language were more likely to consider a question more slowly and analytically than in their native language. It seems that thinking in your native tongue is often associated with breezy, emotional decision-making that reveals natural biases. But when considering the same problem in a non-native tongue, subjects in the study demonstrated “enhanced deliberation” based more on cold hard logic. So the next time you have to make a big decision, you might get a better outcome if you consider it in a language other than your own.
As a language learner, you’ll not only become a more conscious thinker and listener who can communicate clearly and think creatively, but you’ll also gain the most significant benefit of multilingualism: a broader, more global perspective. Each of the five benefits outlined above show that learning another language really does reshape the way we think, helping us better empathize and communicate with customers, partners, and employees by adopting, through language, a new way to see the world.
Lessons to be learnt How much trust do we give EAL TAs?
After observing some planning and teacher training in London last week the following occurred to me not as way of criticism but more as reflective practice and moving learning in the classroom along.
Clearly we should not give any teacher or TA (Teaching Assistant) 100% trust until we have assured ourselves that they are giving 100% correct instruction. As no teacher is a super teacher i.e. never needing support, mentoring or guidance then why should we give EAL TAs (English as a second language Teaching Assistants) this trust and change policies to suit them?
Don’t get me wrong I think TA’s and EAL TA’s in particular are great but we should not implicitly trust them to guide our youngsters in the ETHOS of the school, the teaching of academic concepts and language and assessment without having an overview of their abilities and skills ourselves as senior managers and governors.
I watched a situation recently where a group of excellent teachers were planning and talking about the use of technology available to support maths teaching. They were thinking really creatively about how they could teach in their classrooms (and not looking at a withdrawal group) a mathematical concept that the rest of the year were learning. For me it was brilliant they were marrying their skills with technology to save time for them when planning and delivering, but increasing the children’s learning ability whilst making it interesting.
All went well until the TA that supports them became part of the discussion and within no time suddenly the TA had convinced them the group needed to be withdrawn and that it could take time for the children to learn it. What struck me most as an observer was that I had been in that situation many times but could see now that the TA was steering our teaching. Today seeing it this way made me wonder what made these excellent practitioners take another persons word and run with it?
Why didn’t they question or try out their theory and review it if it didn’t work? They had built a translation requirement in, their practice was excellent, their topic was interesting, their own personal understanding of the concept was excellent and yet they let someone without the same or better credentials influence them and their decisions.
Something worth pondering on.
This character/symbol actually looks a little like what it represents – field or farmland
來學正體字 Learn Traditional Chinese Characters
The character 田（ㄊㄧㄢˊ） means field or farmland. Here is the stroke order animation and pronunciation. Here are the individual strokes for writing the character. Here is the definition in Taiwanese Mandarin. Here is the evolution of 田.
田（ㄊㄧㄢˊ）園（ㄩㄢˊ） – countryside
田（ㄊㄧㄢˊ）地（ㄉㄧˋ） – farmland, field
田（ㄊㄧㄢˊ）徑（ㄐㄧㄥˋ） – the sport track and field, literally field and track
Visit this blog for a range of activities to support language acquisition.
http://frenchteachernet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/50-writing-activities-for-mfl-classroom.html or see summary below. Thanks Steve.
Below is a list of common writing activities in the target language which can be carried out in a classroom or in some cases online. Most of these would be done within a sequence of activities, often following oral activities to improve comprehension, embed vocabulary or syntactic rules, and improve accuracy of speech and writing.
Much writing will be done at home so as to maximise classroom time for listening and oral activity. Writing should nearly always be in the target language, although there will be times when using English makes more sense e.g. when taking notes on a harder spoken or written passage. The teacher will always need to adapt to the needs of the particular class.
What a brilliant observation and just why bilingualism and being able to speak languages can be really important to children and young people. There are those that believe the later you leave it to learn a language the better whereas in reality the younger the better and using it in context is the best way to go.
Over the weekend, I spent many hours running the canteen at an Irish dance “Feis”. My daughter is a dancer, and every year they host a competition, attracting dancers from various parts of Europe. Over the weekend, I spoke to people from Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Finland, England, Ireland, the US and Canada. The most satisfying part of the experience was being able to help people in their own language. People say that English is the global language, and that if you speak English you don’t need anything else. I disagree, and this weekend was a good example of why. When people approached my canteen counter, I could often tell they were hesitant to order – worried about which language to use, and not wanting to get it wrong. I quickly figured out that the best way to put them at ease was to offer “English, francais or nederlands?”. I…
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I just came across this Lithuanian ABC which I was saving in my files…not much use there… not sure where it came from but it may be useful as many Lithuanians are now arriving in European and American countries.
The alphabet has 32 letters made up of 12 vowels and 20 consonants – no wonder the children get confused. I just manage the five vowels in English!
The AlphabetAa Ąą Bb Cc Čč Dd Ee Ęę Ėė Ff Gg Hh Ii Įį Yy Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Rr Ss Šš Tt Uu Ųų Ūū Vv Zz Žž
Balsės (Vowels) 12 vowels
Aa Ąą Ee Ęę Ėė Ii Įį Yy Oo Uu Ųų Ūū
Priebalsės (Consonants) 20 consonants
Bb Cc Čč Dd Ff Gg Hh Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Pp Rr Ss Šš Tt Vv Zz Žž
Aa – agurkas
Ąą – ąsotis
Bb – baltas
Cc- cukrus
Čč – čiuožikla
Dd – dangus
Ee – erelis
Ęę – ęsame
Ėė – ėriukas, eglė
Ff – fėja, futbolas
Gg – gintaras
Hh – herbas
Ii – Inkaras
Įį – įdomus
Yy – yla
Jj – juokas
Kk – katinas
Ll – liūtas
Mm – mama
Nn – namas
Oo – oras
Pp – pagalba
Rr – ranka
Ss – saulė
Šš – širdis
Tt – teta
Uu – ugnis
Ųų – metų
Ūū – ūsai
Vv – vaikas
Zz – zebra
Žž – žolė
An interesting report about bilingualism in South Africa. Here are the highlights.
However, “multilingualism as a pervasive feature of the South African identity is something yet to be realised and, although learners are expected to be able to use English as the official language of learning, many are excluded from it”,
“According to the Caps [new curriculum] document, the first additional language is used for certain communicative functions in a society, meaning it is merely a medium of learning and teaching in education,” he said. The home language, on the other hand, is a tool of cultural preservation and articulation.
Ultimately, South Africa should transform through encouraging bilingualism in all levels and spheres of society, Dampier said. “If we are to proclaim a truly multilingual South African identity, we must stop viewing English as a tool for communication in the global village, business and education,” he said. It should rather be seen as an essential part of South African identity.
The Gauteng strategy aims to improve reading and writing and to change teacher practice. But, said Botha, “we have had a plethora of policies and curricula, and yet reading and writing remain a problem”.
She identified three factors that impede progress: the morale of teachers; the lack of teaching and learning programmes for them; and the new curriculum
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-03-22-tongue-tied-on-language-policy
Interesting insight into bilingualism and young children.
Educationsupportuk 
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