Theme: New Approaches to Oracy
Convenor/s: EAL Coordinators SIG
Guest Speaker: Stuart Scott
Biography provided by Stuart: My interest in EAL was kindled by studying medieval languages
and teaching EFL during my university vacations including time at the Bell School of Languages. I went on to postgraduate study of pure and applied linguistics and teaching in higher education in four very different countries setting up language programmes for English and other languages. After ten years I decided to return to the UK and start teaching in schools. I kept my toe in research water by teaching the Language Development course of the Open University Reading Diploma. I took a year off teaching to plan and test out with Susan Hart interactive dialogic approaches to teaching subjects and subsequently persuaded the Inner London Education Authority to launch and fund the Collaborative Learning project. We later attracted Department of Education support to disseminate in the UK and EU funding to work with colleagues abroad.
I am coming to the end of my work on developing and supporting interactive pedagogies, but the resources developed to support collaborative learning will remain on the website for the time being.
Details of the talk: I want to draw your attention to other sources of inspiration since I believe very strongly that talk plays a very important part in the progress and development of EAL learners and ensures a smooth and confident progression into mainstream subjects. First a quote from Neill Mercer who coordinates Oracy Cambridge: “Talk is cheap but groupwork is priceless.” And from Mary Myatt who supports an imaginative and informative website.
Overrated: The obsession with written evidence.
Underrated: Pupils expressing ideas through talk.
Talk isn’t the warm-up to learning. It is learning. But in a system that values evidence, what can’t be photographed or marked becomes invisible. So we default to writing.
Oracy Cambridge supports two strands: learning how to talk and learning through talk.
I have always argued that a teacher of EAL has too much on their plate, but that they should strictly divide their energy in two ways: first they should spend half their time nurturing their pupils but they must also spend half their time on supporting their colleagues so they are in a stronger position to help EAL learners.