What is school relevant EAL (SR-EAL)?

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SR-EAL is  essentially a mindset (I hesitate to use the terms  ‘approach’ or ‘method’ ). Think of it as a 'determined willingness'  to orientate EAL instruction around identifying your students’ particular academic and social needs, coupled with an effort to reinforce and promote  the  cultural values and ethos of your particular school.

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From what concerns did the notion of SR-EAL arise?

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SR-EAL is a reaction against one size fits all coursebooks, generic national curriculums and the unfortunate  'belief'  (so implicit in off-the-shelf resources) that we can legitimately class EAL learners as a  homogenous group  in which all members share the same English language deficits and respond to instruction  in like manner.

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Is there a clash between SR-EAL and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

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 No. SR-EAL lends itself perfectly to CLIL and, quite likely, any other teaching approaches or methods your school might endorse.  You could  reasonably view SR-EAL  as an ‘add on’ or embellishment to your current favored methodology.

 

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How does committing to SR-EAL impact 'day to day' work?

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SR-EAL impacts upon how we plan, deliver lessons, select classroom activities, pace our lessons, and how we  judge our own classroom performance.  It forces us to take a long, hard, look at the match up between students' needs and the teaching we provide and, importantly, act upon what we learn from so doing.  SR-EALers, in short, are those among us who give up the comfort and ease of simply following a commercial syllabus and/or ticking off items covered in national curriculums.  In its place we accept the responsibility -and willingly, at that- to amend, adapt and create original lessons and materials that they feel better sync with student (and school) needs.

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What do you mean by student needs?

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Student needs fall into two categories: social and academic. The social needs include the language skills to assimilate into the school community, communicate with peers and teachers, understand lessons and become an active participant in the rich, variegated, social life that a school has to offer.

Academic needs include all that a student has to learn as mandated by the school or outside agency to which the school must defer –chief among these is invariably the national government.

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But, if the reality is that we must follow a prescribed curriculum, then what scope is there for the type of analysis and personalization that SR-EAL aims to promote?

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It would be professionally gratifying if we could ignore or ‘play down’ aspects of national curriculums that we deem ill-fitted to our students’ needs. Often, however, school policies mean this option is denied us. Even in the worst case “Teach this, because I say so!”  scenario, however, some means of presenting a topic/theme should prove more School Relevant than others. Whether you enjoy more, or less, autonomy in how you go about your teaching, the guiding principle behind SR-EAL always remains the same: 'If an activity/practice has a higher SR rating than another, then it is the preferable of the two.’ SR-EAL is always about maximizing SR in so far as it is in our power to do so.

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