Last week a great teacher from a school near me visited me to see how we support EAL learners. My contribution to the discussion focussed on my movement towards criteria-based teaching and planning (more to come on that later).
Some points about what she uses:
Initial paring with students of the same language. There are clear cons against this, but pastorally this might be the right reason.
Allowing students to initially use words from their native language for lexical choices that they might not know in English. Translation occurs prior to completion. While it is somewhat accepted that it is a poor idea to let students write in their own language too often: teaching instinct is necessary when judging this point.
Using internet translation .
