Increasingly Diverse Schools Require Language-Aware Teachers and Language-Rich Classrooms
It's not unusual now to have a number of students learning English as they follow the curriculum. So Catherine Doherty and Sally Zacharias offer some key ideas as to how you can best teach in a multicultural classroom
As part of English Language Day, Catherine Doherty and Sally Zacharias from the School of Education at the University of Glasgow and educators on the upcoming online course on FutureLearn: ‘TESOL Strategies: Enriching Classrooms’, highlight the importance for every teacher to be language-aware in today’s classrooms.
School classrooms in the 21st century contain a lot more diversity than they used to. ‘Superdiversity’ is becoming the new normal.
For teachers, the most obvious change will be the new faces in your classrooms with unfamiliar names and different accents, who are learning English at the same time as they are learning the curriculum.
These students come with variety of needs from a variety of life circumstances and language backgrounds, so there will be no simple or uniform fix.
Nor can we wait for overstretched specialist services and experts to provide what’s necessary. These learners rely on their mainstream teachers above all else.
This means every teacher has to become language aware. We suggest that being language aware entails new attitudes, new skills and new knowledge.
The language learner is someone with more language, not less
In terms of new attitudes, teachers need to understand that the language learner is someone with more language, not less. Having another language is a remarkable resource, and children should be encouraged to draw on that resource for their learning.
Teachers can also aspire to more than hoping that these students will just ‘pick it up’ as they go along. We can do better than that. Teachers can value opportunities to revise and recycle texts and topics in ways that allow the language learner to take and make more meaning.
In terms of new skills, teachers’ talk will become a major source of input for language learners. Teachers can learn to monitor, pace and choose their language carefully.
They can also learn to focus on the language learner’s meanings, and help them find new ways of expressing and sharing these meanings in English.
Teachers can devise visual aids or use gesture to help them express and share meanings, and can learn to use feedback moments as opportunities for language learning.
Teachers can plan for a variety of interactions to encourage and support language learners to use their new language resources.
They can also learn to pause and highlight particular language points as a part of their classroom routines.
Language is so much more than spelling, pronunciation and grammar
In terms of knowledge, teachers can learn how language entails much more than spelling, pronunciation and grammar. Though necessary, these familiar aspects are not the whole story.
Every subject in the school curriculum creates its own particular language demands in terms of how ideas are expressed through technical vocabularies, specific text types, and particular language conventions.
Teachers can learn what demands their discipline makes, and let learners in on these secrets. Lastly, teachers can learn how the language of the playground differs from the language of school subjects, so one is not mistaken for the other.
Education is a language-saturated activity. We use language to teach, learn, express, assess and apply knowledge. Becoming a language aware teacher, and planning for language learning in your mainstream classroom will assist everyone.
A language aware teacher can make a lot of difference, and every classroom can become a rich language learning environment if we ask more of what we already do.
Professor Catherine Doherty is Professor of Pedagogy and Social Justice, and Sally Zacharias is an Associate Teaching Fellow in the School of Education, both at the University of Glasgow. Browse our resources for European Day Of Languages.
