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Carefully chosen scaffolding strategies can bring writing success for EAL and multilingual learners, says Iva Miteva H ave you ever had to write a poem using rhyming words; or a story with a clear beginning, middle and end using powerful adjectives; or an essay using similes and alliteration? What if you had to do it in a foreign language? What would you struggle with? What would help you express your thoughts? We consistently see that mastering successful writing skills in more than one language can boost confidence, creativity and communication skills, lead to improved language acquisition, and improve a learner’s chances of success both academically and later in life. But mastering writing can bring challenges for teachers and pupils alike. If we can implement some simple activities to help structure teaching and learning, we’re much more likely to see our EAL children thrive (and encounter less stress!). Common challenges When learning to write, multilingual learners often face various difficulties that might have linguistic or cultural roots. To begin with, English spelling is complex compared to other languages. Focusing on teaching spelling rules and eliminating careless errors as early as possible in a child’s schooling will help improve the quality and fluency of their writing. EAL learners often have very limited vocabulary at first and, naturally, their sentences might sound repetitive and too simple. Due to the lack of acquired vocabulary, they struggle to express themselves and find the appropriate words, e.g. ‘There is no place in the hall’ instead of ‘There is no room in the hall’. Grammatical structures including word order, tenses, prepositions or subject-verb agreement might also differ significantly from the learners’ home language. There can also be discrepancies between English and the home language in what is expected with regard to content and layout for written work. This can lead to incoherent paragraphs and disjointed ideas, with incorrect transition words. How many of us actually double-check that our EAL learners have understood the writing task and the prompts? These pupils can struggle to fully comprehend what is expected of them and might write off-topic due to unfamiliar and subject-specific vocabulary in the written instructions. Multilingual learners will also often need longer to plan, draft and edit their writing compared to native speakers, as they try to use the whole of their language repertoire to navigate a written task successfully. Luckily, there are several scaffolding strategies that can be used to effectively support the different stages of EAL learners’ writing development. First things first When introducing a new genre of writing, draw on children’s prior learning, and discuss the similarities and differences between this and styles and genres with which they’re already familiar. Before the children begin their own compositions, show them examples of a completed piece of writing to model expectations and structure. You can then help them to approach their writing task confidently by breaking it down into more manageable chunks, e.g. brainstorm > plan > draft > edit. Scaffold expectations Paired or group writing activities will allow pupils to use their more fluent peers as models for language development. Remember too that translation software can help if a child is struggling to find the words they need. Provide writing frames such as substitution tables, graphic organisers, and sentence starters. These will help EAL learners develop their ideas in a coherent way. A substitution table presents words and phrases with different columns for each part of a sentence, e.g. subject, verb, object, article, adjective (see Table 1). This helps break down complex sentence structures into more manageable chunks. The children can then create grammatically correct and meaningful sentences more easily to use them when speaking or writing. Give these ideas a go, and you might just find your multilingual pupils start to shine as a result. TP Building new WRITERS www.teachwire.net | 53 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG Iva Miteva is an EAL specialist with Learning Village. Pronoun Verb Article Noun Adverb I touched the door gently. He opened window quickly. She closed book slowly. We moved chair quietly. They table noisily. Table 1 learningvillage.net

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