ABSTRACT In the 1980s, the teaching of English to EAL (English as an Additional Language) learners in England moved from the provision of separate programmes to providing language support in mainstream settings. Both The Swann Report (1985) and The Calderdale Report (1986) considered teaching EAL students away from schools as racial segregation. Nowadays, the English government policy in England expects EAL learners to be included in the mainstream as quickly as possible, requiring subject teachers to teach both language and content in their classes. However, many schools still provide some withdrawal-based support to EAL learners, seeing such an approach as the most practical. Whilst, over the years, there have been numerous research papers debating the advantages and drawbacks of EAL withdrawal and mainstreaming, this debate has almost never included EAL children’s opinions themselves. This dissertation reports on a small-scale study conducted at a secondary school in north-east England into the opinions held by new-to-English EAL pupils and mainstream teachers on whether or not such pupils should be mainstreamed or withdrawn for English language lessons, investigating whether these opinions are aligned or divergent. 5 EAL pupils and 5 mainstream teachers were interviewed for this study. Were EAL pupils’ and their teachers’ views very different, an assertion could be made that schools do not serve this group very well and act directly against their needs – perhaps due to political, historical and social processes. Taking into consideration factors likely to influence the opinions held by the two parties, this dissertation presents its findings, conclusions and recommendations for the future.

1. Kamil Trzebiatowski, University of the West of Scotland
EAL Coordinator & EAL Academy Associate
Languages in the Globalized World conference, Samuel Beckett University, Leeds, 28 May
2015
EAL pupils and classroom teachers’
attitudes to class withdrawal vs
mainstreaming
http://valuediversity-teacher.co.uk/

2. RESEARCH QUESTION
To what extent do the attitudes and opinions of EAL pupils and classroom
teachers to class withdrawal vs mainstreaming differ?
1. Do subject (mainstream) teachers and EAL pupils have different
views on whether or not they should be mainstreamed or
withdrawn for EAL support?
2. Establish the ratio of preferred number of withdrawal sessions to
the time spent in mainstream classrooms
3. Reasons for both parties’ opinions

3. England and EAL: National background
• The Calderdale Report (CRE, 1986) = mainstreamed approach
now expected (Green, 2012)
• OFSTED (2014): subject teachers have the responsibility to plan
for language and content and collaborate with EAL staff
• EAL is not a subject: Leung (2001): EAL is “supra-subject”
phenomenon and “diffused curriculum concern”
• Chen (2007): “children are treated the same despite their
differences” – their linguistic needs ignored
• Often placed with little in-class support, teachers are not EAL aware
and resources are minimal

4. • Mainstream: problematic = EAL peripheral? (Reeves, 2006)
• Mainstream teachers “better” and EAL teachers not “proper”
(Creese, 2005)
• Mainstream teachers found unprepared to teach language and
grammar to EAL learners (Cajkler and Hall, 2009)
• Creese (2005): metalinguistic function of language vs
referential function of language in English schools
• Places of submersion with little focus on form
England and EAL: National background

5. Ainscow and Booth (2002): Index for Inclusion: listen to all pupils’ voices
Are EAL pupils’ opinions on mainstreaming vs withdrawals the same or divergent?
Is EAL pupils’ education done for them or to them?
Research gap:
scarcity of research investigating the views that pupils themselves hold
regarding EAL withdrawals
Chen (2007) appears to be the only one conducted in England.

6. Context
• Conducted in spring 2015
• Comprehensive mainstream secondary school for girls in north-east
England
• Attended by approx. 700 pupils
• 21.7% EAL pupils
• Social/economically deprived area
• EAL Coordinator + 2 EAL Teaching Assistants with no formal
qualifications
• EAL pupils on short withdrawal course, combining English Language,
English, Literacy and Maths)
• Pupils leave for the mainstream upon achieving satisfactory level of
SLA

7. • 5 EAL learners and 5 mainstream teachers involved
• EAL learners: Poland, Portugal, Chad, Lithuania and Latvia
• Learners in the mainstream – not higher than EAL(QCA) level 2
• Teachers: all white British (English, Arts, Food, MFL)
• Semi-structured interviews with all participants
Design

8. Findings
Mainstream or
withdrawal
preferences
Number of
preferred EAL
withdrawal
sessions (out of
15 lessons per
week)

9. Pupils’
reasons
Teachers’
reasons
EAL PUPILS TEACHERS
PREFERENCE:
Mainstreaming

10. Teachers: Emotions teaching EAL learners
“Help me!”
(Teacher C)

11. Teachers: language of
uncertainty
“I try to pre-plan” (Teacher A)
“I think I'd be able to do – I mean, I –
some of the standard procedures. So,
things like having bilingual dictionaries.
Things like having perhaps a list of key
terms, maybe some word ((shifts)) and
some picture associations.” (Teacher B)
“I think as a language teacher, I could
probably say, yes. I think I c- +could–you
know, quite easily, because if we deliver,
which we do as majority, the language–
the lessons in the foreign language, we're
almost teaching EAL learners anyway.”
(Teacher E)
Teachers: EAL training
“No.” (Teacher A)
“Apart from the stuff that you have done,
no. Not that I remember but that’s 21
years.” (Teacher B)
“No. None.” (Teacher C)
“Only that coming into our graphic
organizer–our own in-house training; but as
training to be a teacher, no. Not at all.”
(Teacher E)

12. Interviewer: What did your teacher do for you
to learn English language? Did they--?
Pupil D: Uh–They–{NS}
“Yes, I have help. Yes, if I ask for it myself.” (Pupil E)
”If I call them I don't understand something, they
help me.” (Pupil B)
“the teacher help me to find in tablet.” (Pupil D)
“for example, sometimes he gives me an iPad, and
it’s easier somehow.” (Pupil E)
“She writing–writing–and I am copy what she
writing.” (Pupil C)
Pupils: Support from teachers

13. Negative
emotions
• Guilt and
feeling
overwhelmed
• Pleading for
help
And…
• Language of
uncertainty
• Not
grounded in
EAL pedagogy
• Only most
basic
strategies
used
• No EAL CPD
Thus…
• Unfounded
assumptions
of teachers
• Little
consideration
of what
English
language
needs
teaching

14. Teachers: Benefits from
participating in the
mainstream
“Also, the longer you have a student
withdrawn, for whatever reason, the
less a bond they have with their peer
group, and also the less up to date they
are with their learning as it happens in
the classroom, so I would always say
the priority for a student is to be
absorbed in that learning, the
mainstream learning, as much as
possible.” (Teacher A)
“I think that would help them develop
their communication even more
because they're in with peers”
(Teacher E)
“I think sometimes students can be
overwhelmed, so it depends on the student as
well.” (Teacher A)
“I think for a lot of these students, if they're
coming in, they genuinely are gonna be shell
shocked.” (Teacher B)
“So they are – they are very scared, I think.”
(Teacher C)
“because it must also be quite scary for them”
(Teacher E)
Teachers: Perception of
pupils’ stress in the
mainstream

15. Social benefits
• Interaction
with native
speaking
peers
• Less
interaction
in EAL
withdrawals
But…
• Elevated
levels of
stress in
mainstream
classrooms
• Krashen
(1982):
Affective
Filter
Hypothesis
Thus…
• Language
confidence
and social
confidence
less likely
due to stress
“low anxiety appears to be conducive to second
language acquisition, whether measured as personal
or classroom anxiety” (p.32)

16. Pupils: Struggling with
the English language in
the mainstream
“reading I don’t understand”
(Pupil A)
Because sometimes I understand
what the teacher says, but
sometimes–they–they talk very
quickly–and sometimes I don't
understand. (Pupil E)
“It’s a bit difficult, because I don’t
know many– words and such.”
(Pupil E)
Pupils: On being differentiated
for by mainstream teachers
Interviewer: “Ok, uh–Do you ever get something
from them–like a piece of paper–something–”
Pupil D: “No.”
Interviewer: Do you get any additional materials,
for instance, from teachers?
Pupil E: “No, I never get any.”

17. Pupils: The value of
withdrawal
Pupil B: “There teach you slowly slowly,
understand more, but in–”
Interviewer: “the subject lessons–”
Pupil B: “Yeah, they talk, like, difficult English. “
“Here, is like more family. “ (Pupil D)
“In here, every time helping me. In other
lessons, sometimes.” (Pupil B)
“I think if I don’t understand something, I will
learn it here better, and if I have some
problems with writing, I think it would be
great to learn it here again.” (Pupil E)
Pupils: Disadvantages
of withdrawals
“Because every lesson is different, and in
every lesson I learn something different, and
here in those EAL I only learn English.” (Pupil
E)
“Yeah, because here we just have PE, English
and Maths, and in normal lessons we have all
the subjects.” (Pupil D)
“I found it boring because the same – like
easy.” (Pupil B)

18. Effectiveness for
embedding subject
knowledge
• Agrees with
NALDIC’s
distinctive
pedagogy and DfE
But…
• Pupils difficulties
understanding
vocabulary
• No reported
differentiation
from teachers
Thus…
• Very similar to
Chen’s (2007)
findings: pupils are
lost in mainstream
classrooms

19. More subject
domains available
•EAL is only one
subject as
opposed to
many in the
mainstream
But…
•Ignoring
difficulties
understanding
vocabulary
and language

20. Teachers: Planning /
time issues
“now you've got 2 EAL students who
don't speak any English, and it's that
extra thing on top that it's hard to–it
adds to the planning.” (Teacher D)
“because I have her on a Monday,
whereas before, Thursday nights, you
get done what you can get done–”
(Teacher A)
“So that's probably my weakest area: trying to
be firm with them and say no.” (Teacher C)
“Is what's written down legible for them? I
don't know. And that unknown worries me,
because I don't know if I am expecting too
much of them or – if they are–” (Teacher C)
Teachers: expectations
of EAL pupils

21. Low expectations
• EAL last group
considered in
the lesson
planning process
• Language barrier
leading to deficit
view of EAL
learners
And…
• Despite
mainstreaming
benefits,
teachers still
want 2x more
withdrawals
than pupils -
counterintuitive
Thus…
• “Integration”
talk (vs.
“inclusion”)

22. Pupil D: Because–in lessons, we do English, but not English like vocabulary and listening–
We do English like tests, we–
Interviewer: So you do everything in English.
Pupil D: Yeah.
“English teachers are not
teachers of English.”
(Teacher E)
3 out 5 students: believe they learned more English in the mainstream

23. Teachers: What language is to be taught?
“I want to say you would be covering the sort of the
basics of English language and understanding:
comprehension, grammar, spelling and things like that.
(Teacher C)
“You'll teach them English, and not worry about
Science”(Teacher C)
“the role of the EAL teacher would be more specialised
approach” (Teacher A)
“we should start ((encoding)) them into some basic
comprehension of what we do.” (Teacher B)
“we have to worry about the rest. “(Teacher C)
“And then from my own point of view, it's then to pick
up from there and to help them to be starting to make
progress in my subject” (Teacher D)
“you would want them to focus on the core subjects
rather than – the foundation subjects, first of all”
(Teacher C)
“Probably leaving in practical things. Like PE or Food or
Textiles where–if–they don't necessarily need to have
their language–they can observe and go from there.”
(Teacher E)

24. Teachers: Integration vs inclusion
“to enable and facilitate that child integrate” (Teacher B)
“they could spend some time learning the basics of the language, and then perhaps some integration into lessons”
(Teacher C)
“most of the girls I’ve seen coming to my classes, have certainly integrated very quickly” (Teacher D)
“because they would see that these students were making that effort and getting that support to integrate into that
system” (Teacher E)

25. English language in
the mainstream
• Belief pupils
learn more
English language
in the
mainstream
But…
• Mistaken belief
that learning in
English is
learning about
English
• Not truly
provided with
English language
teaching in the
mainstream
Thus…
• “Diffused
curriculum
concern” (Leung):
no discussion of
what language
should be
learned
• Content is
primary, EAL is
secondary

26. EMERGING ISSUES
• EAL as a non-subject
• Superiority of the mainstream = little linguistic differentiation
• Little differentiation = EAL pupils’ stress = social/linguistic benefits of
the mainstream nullified
• EAL difference perceived as a deficit due to lack of teachers’ training
• Children think in English = learning English language
• Children not aware that not teaching English language has become
normalized in their schools
• Choose content over language as metalinguistic function of
language is not required of them

27. CONCLUSIONS
• Teacher and pupils: hope for very different educational outcomes
• Lack of EAL pedagogy awareness leads to pursuit of myths and false
assumptions
• urgently needed: professional EAL training to all mainstream teachers
• EAL to become a subject
• Establishing criteria for what language is to be taught by mainstream and
EAL teachers alike
• Elimination of the confusion that learning in English is the same as
learning English language
• The voice of new arrived EAL children to be heard more often
• More research needed to build a more comprehensive picture

28. REFERENCES
• C.R.E. (1986) Teaching English as a Second Language: Report of a Formal Investigation in Calderdale Local
Education Authority. London : Commission for Racial Equality
• OFSTED (2014) English as an Additional Language: Briefing for Section 5 Inspection. Available at:
http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/20169/5/English%20as%20an%20additional%20language%5B1%5D.doc [Accessed 26
May 2015]
• Leung, C. (2001) 'English as an Additional Language: Distinct Language Focus or Diffused Curriculum
Concerns?', Language and Education, Vol. 15(1). Pp.33-55
• Chen, Y. (2007) 'Equality and Inequality of Opportunity in Education: Chinese Emergent Bilingual Children in
the English Mainstream Classroom', Culture and Curriculum, Vol. 20(1). Pp. 36-51
• Creese, A. (2005a) Teacher Collaboration and Talk in Multilingual Classrooms. Multilingual Matters: Clevedon
• Cajkler, W. and Hall, B. (2009) ''When they first come in what do you do?' English as an additional language
and newly qualified teachers', Language and Education, Vol.23(2). Pp. 153-170
• Reeves, J. (2006) 'Secondary teacher attitudes toward including English-language learners in mainstream
classrooms', The Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 99(3). pp. 131—143
• Ainscow, M. and Booth, T. (2002) Index for inclusion. 1st ed. Bristol: CSIE