NALDIC members will be familiar with the Young Interpreters Scheme run by Hampshire EMTAS. PhD student Debra Page is conducting research at the University of Reading around the scheme and is looking for participants to help her. Here she updates us on her progress with her research on the Young Interpreter Scheme and EAL teaching and invites teachers of EAL pupils to participate in her project.

Have you been teaching children with EAL during home schooling? Does your school use the Young Interpreter Scheme? If either of these applies to you then I am very interested to know about your experiences.

One of the aims of our research is to collect survey information from teachers and other school staff about their experiences of teaching children with EAL and/or of your school running the Young Interpreter Scheme. Some of you may remember completing a questionnaire for me before, but times have changed radically due to the pandemic and it is important to capture what is happening now. The main findings from the first survey are available here.

We encourage as many school staff as possible to complete the questionnaire. This includes teachers, teaching assistants, SENCos and members of leadership teams who work with children with EAL and/or those who work in schools that are running the Young Interpreter Scheme. The questionnaire should take around 15 minutes to complete and will allow us to discover what you really think about the scheme, your experiences of participation, and working with children with EAL. Finding out your views in running the scheme (or not) will help Hampshire EMTAS improve and expand it, and you will be helping to shape its future.

If you want to know more about the Young Interpreter Scheme you can listen to this interview, or you can read about it in my blogs. You can e-mail me any questions about my research at debra.page@pgr.reading.ac.uk Stay safe and thank you for all for the great job you are doing for our EAL learners.