Since the late 1980s, many local authority EAL specialist teams have devised schemes to describe the developmental stages of English language acquisition and to identify some of the less visible pupil gains and needs. An early example of such schemes is the Stages of English (Hester, 1990). Another example is the EAL assessment system produced by NASSEA. It has been argued that these help teachers to identify the progress learners make in their acquisition of English and that they are a useful means of ensuring that the distinctive learning situation of pupils with EAL is taken into account.
The fundamental issue is whether specific descriptors relating to the acquisition of English for pupils learning EAL in mainstream schools are necessary or not. For our view on EAL assessment, see the NALDIC position statement (NALDIC, 2003) and our updated briefing paper on assessment for EAL and bilingual learners (NALDIC 2005).
EAL is not a uniform phenomenon at the level of individual pupils. Some pupils learning EAL are bi/multilingual local young people with (relatively) long experience of residency. These pupils tend to have a working knowledge of local ways of using English, particularly in the spoken mode in informal social contexts. Others arrive at school from Europe and other world locations with some knowledge of the English language but they have little experience with the use of English for a variety of personal, social and academic purposes. Yet others join school as absolute beginners of English and new comers to local British culture. These latter groups of pupils have different language and literacy learning needs from those who are already long term residents in local communities.
Teachers have found that it is very important to identify the distinct types of pupil English language needs with reference to different ages, language backgrounds/levels of English proficiency, educational experiences, and community contexts through assessment. While it is understood that the use of any assessment criteria will yield a result, the issue is whether the assessment result is summatively meaningful and formatively useful (for responding to pupil needs). Our experience tells us that effective assessment of EAL development, particularly for formative purposes, requires specialist professional knowledge and practice. NALDIC has produced its own descriptors for formative assessment in KS1 and KS2.
Recent research in educational measurement has shown that well-planned and pupil-oriented formative assessment, sometimes referred to as ‘assessment for learning’, can have a very beneficial effect on learning. Formative assessment is carried out by teachers in the classroom and is directly concerned with improving pupils’ learning. Sensitive formative assessment of pupils’ classroom performance demands a high level of teacher awareness of pupil needs. Given the very diverse language experiences and language learning needs of the different groups EAL pupils, account needs to be taken of not just the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the English language, e.g. vocabulary, pronunciation and word order, but also the even more complex and less ‘visible’ aspects of language use. These include social rules of language use (e.g. politeness and formality in context), use of literary and metaphoric language expressions for different purposes, subject specific registers, established and taken-for granted social ways of doing things through language in school and in the local community (e.g. conventionalised ways of offering information during circle time, collaborative talk in group tasks).
Government department, curriculum agencies and professional bodies in many other English-speaking countries with linguistically and ethnically diverse populations have published dedicated EAL (sometimes referred to as ESL) assessment scales. These EAL standards and assessment frameworks are linked to the mainstream curriculum as the learning of EAL takes place at the same time as the learning of academic content. Within these assessment scales, social English is clearly differentiated from academic English and practical ideas for assessment are included.
