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Knowledge about the English language proficiency of learners using EAL is important for schools and teachers in informing the most appropriate support.
The Bell Foundation’s award-winning EAL Assessment Framework for Schools provides a set of standards to assist schools in establishing English language proficiency and has been designed to support teaching and learning by enabling practitioners to generate targets to guide individual learner progress.
The following levels of proficiency in English are used both within the EAL Assessment Framework for School and on all teaching resources.
Pupils in the English education system who are New to English will progress at very different rates according to their educational background and the effectiveness of the support they receive. New to English learners can be described as working at band A on The Bell Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework. As a general rule, New to English learners tend to be in their first two years of learning.
Learners working at band A will require considerable support to access curriculum content.
Pupils in the English education system who are in the Early Acquisition stage of learning can be described as working at band B on the Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework. As with New to English learners, those at the Early Acquisition stage tend to be in their first two years of learning.
Learners working at band B will still needs a significant amount of EAL support to access the curriculum.
During the New to English and Early Acquisition stages, the focus for teaching and support should be on effective communication and ‘meaning making’. At these stages fluency and building confidence is more important than accuracy.
Pupils in the English education system who are Developing Competence, have typically been learning English for between two and five years. In the Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework for Schools, these learners can be described as working at band C.
At this stage learners would typically be confident in communicating in English and would be starting to develop more control of functional language. Their spoken English, however, may not be particularly accurate, with surface errors sometimes continuing for a number of years.
Learners working at band C will require on-going EAL support to access the curriculum fully.
At this stage, the focus for teaching and support should be about increasing range and accuracy of language use. EAL learners who are Developing Competence need to be encouraged to notice key features of English and self-correct.
Pupils in the English education system who are Competent users of EAL would be described as working at band D on the Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework for Schools.
Pupils in the English education system who are Fluent users of EAL would be described as working at band E on the Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework for Schools.
At the Competent and Fluent stages, the focus for teaching and support should be about promoting more sophisticated uses of language, exploring how to control of genre and register, and varying style and format to adapt to different requirements and contexts.
Learners working at both the Competent and Fluent stages may still need some/occasional support to access complex curriculum material and tasks.
To find out more about how to support EAL learners who are working in each band of proficiency in English please see the Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework for Schools and accompanying classroom support strategies.