Summary to come
On 17 November, presenters from Lexis Education showcased how they use a Systemic Functional Linguistics approach in their classrooms.
Payal Yadav detailed her experience in a New Arrivals primary setting, working with students with diverse language backgrounds. She outlined a unit of work using the description genre on the topic of animals with a range of highly scaffolded yet high challenge language activities to enable students to develop an understanding of how language works.
Imogen Lazarus presented on her work with secondary students and detailed her use of the teaching and learning cycle and explicit instruction about clause and phrase structures.
Both presenters demonstrated how they build students’ metalanguage both for learning English and learning about English. Drawing on students’ existing language resources to contrast English with their first languages was also highlighted in the session. Overall, this was a highly engaging presentation that enabled participants to learn from teachers experienced in this approach and offered a variety of practical ideas for how to develop students’ understanding of how language works using a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework.
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Dr Anna Filipi, Dr Minh Hue Nguyen, Angie Valcanis and Emily Smith shared their research, knowledge and experience relating to their research project ‘Challenges and possibilities in using The Victorian Curriculum F-10: EAL in a Year 7 science unit: A focus on word knowledge’.
The project explored the collaboration between EAL teachers and content teachers, eliciting valuable strategies to support the learning process for students. The research and teaching team presented their clear and concise findings, highlighting ways for teachers to become more linguistically responsive within the learning environment.
The presentation outlined strategies that can be implemented into teaching to support all students to meet the linguistic demands of a learning experience. Based upon five key principles, the research / teaching team have elicited 25 strategies derived from the analysis of the science classroom. The presentation provided the audience with classroom examples, clearly outlining how teachers can be linguistically responsive; demonstrating how complex and / or abstract learning material can be made accessible to all learners. It was evident within the presentation that implementing linguistically responsive instruction would not only support the learning experience for EAL learners but has the capability to enhance learning for all students.
Please click here for a summary of the paper titled: Students’ unsolicited initiations in a science classroom as displays of competence (published in Linguistics and Education), and email Dr Anna Fillipi at anna.filipi@monash.edu if you would like to read the full paper.
Read the November VicTESOL eBulletin online now.
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Over the course of 3 days and after two years of Covid related delays, people from across Australia came together in sunny Brisbane to share knowledge, learn and network with others in the TESOL community.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Pushing the Boundaries”, and the conference program certainly did this. There were at least two presenters who zoomed in, including the conference opening keynote speaker Professor Ee Ling Low, and a range of workshops which focused on everything from the history of EAL Policy in Australia, to the current situation for Indigenous and Torres Strait Island EAL/D students, to how drama can be used to assist EAL learners.
The conference also featured a workshop of ACTA’s Early Childhood Principles, a session on ACTA’s National Roadmap for EAL/D education in schools, and the launch of a book titled Decisions and Dilemmas of Research Methods in Early Childhood Education edited by VicTESOL’s own Dr Anne Keary, as well as Professor Janet Scull, Associate Professor Susanne Garvis, and Professor Lucas Walsh.
Victoria and VicTESOL were very well represented at the conference, with numerous speakers from our state being supported by VicTESOL, and a large Victorian contingency being present.
Congratulations to Conference Organising Chairman Gae Nastasi and the rest of her team on a very successful event!
We look forward to seeing everyone in Melbourne for the 2025 ACTA Conference…
VicTESOL Committee members, and teachers and academics from Victoria at the 2022 ACTA Conference in Brisbane
This in-class teaching and learning task provides an opportunity for students to explore and communicate their linguistic identities and language practices and the role these play in shaping their experiences as language learners.
Read the October VicTESOL eBulletin online now.
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And if you would like to subscribe to receive future updates please click here.
October 12 from 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
At the recent AMEP Virtual Roadshow – Resources for the EAL Framework webinar, TESOL teachers from across the country zoomed in to hear Mary Wallace from LWA provide a detailed introduction to a range of future focussed resources that are being rolled out to support Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) providers deliver the future national curriculum for AMEP, the EAL Framework. She highlighted the key features of three sets of resources: a new series of booklets designed for pre-certificate level learners called English Ready; the updated AMEPOnline that will be available from Course in Initial EAL to Certificate III in EAL (Access); and the AMEP Digital Literacy Framework and Guide and companion Teacher Resources. All of these resources will be made available free of charge to teachers, regardless of whether you teach in the AMEP or not. These valuable resources, funded by the Department of Home Affairs, are a welcome addition to the suite of tools available to teachers of EAL in the adult sector.
AMEP Digital Literacies Framework: key principles
AMEPOnline (homeaffairs.gov.au)
Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) – Background (homeaffairs.gov.au)
Department accredited VET courses | Victorian Government (www.vic.gov.au)
EAL Framework “101”: A Beginner’s Guide to the Victorian EAL Framework Curriculum – VicTESOL
EAL Framework 101 (2): How to approach delivery and assessment of a group of units – VicTESOL
As the EAL Unit and VicTESOL say farewell and thank you to Christine Finch, Blackburn English Language School Principal Mark Melican took the opportunity to lead her through a series of reflective questions.
What are your earliest memories of schooling?
I didn’t attend kindergarten, but have many very strong and happy memories of my primary schooling at Horsham North Primary School, including reciting the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen at Monday morning assembly. My earliest memory is of my mortification for getting in trouble, probably just being spoken to, for pushing in line with Shireen in Prep. I remember my amazement when Miss Smith explained to me in Grade 1 that ‘this morning’ was in fact two words, not ‘dismorning’, Singing and Listening ABC music lessons being broadcast over the classroom loudspeaker, quiet reading time, Cuisenaire rods, free government-provided milk (1/3 pint daily, left in the sun until we drank it), oral Sabin and many injections, and learning both the imperial and metric measurement systems.
At what age did you decide you wanted to be a teacher and what prompted that thought/decision?
Teaching was always in the background as an option. My mother was a teacher and I was one of those kids who love school. I decided to do a Diploma in Education after my Bachelor of Arts (for a number of complex and not terribly interesting reasons) and because of my interest in languages and linguistics, and working with EAL learners (see below) it was a no-brainer to select EAL as a method.
Where was your first teaching appointment and how do you remember the experience?
My first teaching appointment in 1984 was at Hopetoun High School, in the Mallee, as an English teacher. It was an excellent place to start a career and hone my teaching skills. It’s a small community, and the school was a strong part of that. As well as teaching English, I worked with students on all sorts of extra-curricular activities such as the school magazine and drama performances, coached sport, learnt to drive a wheat truck so I could drive school buses on camps. Cultural diversity was not an obvious element of the town and I recall someone saying ‘Are you a migrant?’ with some amazement when I told them I was a Migrant English teacher (as EAL was then known).
When and where in your career did EAL teaching come to prominence and what was the stimulus that led you to this field?
At university, a friend got me involved with a volunteer group. We went to the homes of recently arrived adults and children to support them with language learning. The students I remember most vividly were two Vietnamese refugee orphans, boys in Year 11, who had lost their parents and travelled to Australia in circumstances that I found staggering. Here they were, a year or two younger than me, and they had survived all that and were positive and forward-looking and trying to make the best of their new lives. And I could help them, because of the relatively privileged life and education I had had. I learnt as much from them as they did from me, obviously in a very different way, and really enjoyed the challenge and the reward of working with them.
After Hopetoun High School, I was appointed, in 1987, to Footscray High School which ran a very large and strong EAL program, and it was there that I had the opportunity to teach students at all secondary levels and stages of English language learning, from both migrant and refugee backgrounds. Our students at that time came largely from Vietnam and what are now the former Yugoslav republics. Over the ten years I worked there, the student cohort changed and included students with no first language literacy as well as those with intact education, so I had the opportunity to broaden and deepen my understanding of student needs and pedagogies to support them.
I heard you say that you joined LMERC in 1999 and how much you loved the work there. What was it about that role that you remember so fondly?
I belonged to LMERC as a teacher and always found great resources, inspiration, enormous expertise and like-minded people to talk to there. When I worked there, we had a shared understanding of the needs of EAL learners and multicultural communities, and a common purpose in working to provide their teachers with resources, advice and professional learning to support them. I loved working with teachers and MEAs across the state, gaining a deeper knowledge of our schools and students and programs, planning and delivering professional learning, developing resources – as well as the unplanned day-to-day questions you would be asked or issues you would need to think about. And all of this focused around EAL and cultural diversity, and used and built on my teaching experience.
At this transition point in your career you have probably reflected on your work and the people you have worked with leading the EAL Unit in the DET. How would you sum up that experience?
It’s very difficult to sum up in a few words. It’s been a privilege to work within the central office of the Department and to lead the work of the EAL Unit. In that role, you learn of the breadth and depth of work done by so many principals, teachers, MEAs and other staff to support EAL learners in Victoria. You get to work with the non-government sector: the professional associations, the tertiary institutions and their staff, settlement support and welfare agencies. And in your core role, you work within and across the Department, ensuring that appropriate supports, funding, resources, data and policies are available for and take into account the needs of EAL learners. Starting out as a classroom teacher, I did not feel any connection to ‘the Department’, and certainly did not realise what was going on behind the scenes to support me being in a classroom, as a specialist teacher, to support those EAL learners.
So much has changed in the field since I began teaching. From Migrant English to ESL to EAL to…emergent bilinguals? From Learning English in Australia to the course advice to the CSF (I and II) to VELS and the ESL companion to the Victorian Curriculum F-10 EAL. From the discourse about non-English speaking background to a curriculum that acknowledges, includes and leverages existing skills and knowledge through the plurilingual strand. From scattered English language centres to a growing new arrivals eco-system with multi-campus schools and a virtual program delivering to students across the state. We’ve come out of the broom closet, as I like to say!
What hasn’t changed is the need of students to learn English and the energy and dedication of the professionals in the EAL field to ensure that they have the best possible chance of success in education and in life. I’ve been incredibly lucky to work with such people in schools and in the government, non-government and not-for-profit sectors for more than 38 years, and to see the positive changes for EAL that have taken place during that time.
