ENGLISH AS AN ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE OR DIALECT (EALD)

English as an Additional Language or Dialect: Teacher Resource (EAL/D)

The Shape of the Australian Curriculum describes ACARA’s commitment to supporting equity of access to the Australian Curriculum for all students. As part of this commitment, ACARA has developed the English as an Additional Language or Dialect Teacher Resource to support teachers as they develop teaching and learning programs in the Australian Curriculum: Foundation to Year 10 with students for whom English is an additional language or dialect (EAL/D).

The English as an Additional Language or Dialect Teacher Resource is available as several related publications:

• EAL/D Overview and Advice

Comprises an overview of EAL/D learning, advice for teachers of EAL/D students, a glossary, references and acknowledgments.

• EAL/D Learning Progression

The EAL/D learning progression is a broad synthesis of existing state and territory documents for EAL/D students and has been developed as support material especially for the mainstream teacher who is not an EAL/D specialist. The specialist EAL/D documents in the states and territories remain important resources. The EAL/D learning progression and the accompanying advice is designed to work in conjunction with these state and territory documents.

• EAL/D annotated content descriptions: English Foundation to Year 10

• EAL/D annotated content descriptions: Mathematics Foundation to Year 10

• EAL/D annotated content descriptions: Science Foundation to Year 10

• EAL/D annotated content descriptions: History Foundation to Year 10

These annotations describe linguistic and cultural considerations implied by some curriculum content descriptions and suggest teaching strategies to better enable EAL/D students to access the learning described in the content descriptions.

• Student Illustrations of the EAL/D Learning Progression

This comprises a range of annotated examples of student work that illustrate aspects of the EAL/D learning progression. These examples will be added to over time.

The English as an Additional Language or Dialect Teacher Resource has been developed to:

• advise teachers about areas of the Australian Curriculum that EAL/D students may find challenging and why

• assist classroom teachers to identify where their EAL/D students are broadly positioned on a progression of English language learning

• help teachers understand students’ cultural and linguistic diversity, and the ways this understanding can be used in the classroom

• provide examples of teaching strategies supportive of EAL/D students

• direct teachers to additional relevant and useful support for teaching EAL/D students.

As other learning areas/subjects in the Australian Curriculum are developed additional components of the resource will be published.