Description

The start of a new school year is a good time to think afresh about that deceptively simple question Jim Cummins posed at a NALDIC conference some years ago, ‘What am I doing here?’ This question underlies our choice of topic for this first ‘special’ edition of NALDIC Quarterly: Language and Content in EAL. In NALDIC News 30, Richard Barwell argued that, ‘the term ‘content’ is perhaps unhelpful, since it implies that content and language are separable, whereas in reality the two are inextricably intertwined’. Point taken but perhaps it’s equally the term ‘language’ that has proven to be unhelpful in its apparent ‘transparency’ and maybe it is that which we need to rethink in the context of EAL learners in schools. How do we define the language content of the curriculum? Should we be focussing on grammatical structures? On functions? On registers? Do we start with the language or the learner? What about other languages?

Contents

Integrating EAL Learners into the mainstream (page 3)
Constant Leung

Exploring the landscape: an alternative model of EAL and the mainstream (page 10)
Richard Barwell

A knowledge framework for relating language and ‘content’ (page 12)
Bernie Mohan & Tammy Slater

Planning for language development in the multilingual classroom (page 14)
Manny Vazquez

Finding a common language for EAL and mainstream teachers – functions and concepts in curriculum content (page 16)
Jonathan Brentnall

The long march through the intuitions (page 19)
Steve Cooke

EAL across the mainstream – using webquests (page 24)
Frank Monaghan

An annotated reading list (page 29)
Constant Leung & Frank Monaghan