1. Hearing the sounds of English
First, learners who are in the early stages of acquiring English need time to hear the sounds and rhythms of English. They need to be immersed in talk through play for younger learners, through talking about books, and through listening to stories told, poetry recited and a range of texts read aloud. They need listening and talking opportunities with adults and their peers. They need time to think about what they hear and safe supportive spaces to try out using their new language.
2. Offering a diverse selection of books
Multilingual learners need a rich reading menu, so that they can hear, read, and use new vocabulary in the context of meaningful authentic texts, and can build their knowledge and understanding of English words: how we say them, use them, and spell them. Beyond word level, access to a wide range of texts helps multilingual learners develop their knowledge of how English works at sentence and text level, and how texts in English are structured and what their key features are. Multilingual learners can develop their decoding skills (phonics) by focusing on sounds, including blends that they encounter in the context of quality texts that are curriculum-related, to support them in doing the double job of learning English and learning in English.
3. Using knowledge of other languages
“When children read in more than one language, they are not dividing their literacy – they are expanding it.” Jim Cummins
This quote leads to the third point: the biggest asset that multilingual learners bring to their reading in English, is their knowledge of their home language, or of another language they might have learnt. This knowledge can be transferred to reading in English. For those learners who have learned to read and write in their home language, they will already know that print carries meaning, they will know about the directionality of text (although some whose written language uses right to left directionality will need to switch, with the help of modelling by their teachers and peers), and they will have learnt to use cues like pictures and photographs to make sense of written text. To harness this knowledge, multilingual learners need planned and spontaneous opportunities to use all of their languages, including continuing to read in their home language, as they navigate the world in two or more languages.
4. Reading in different mediums
Multilingual learners need opportunities to make meaning from a range of sources such as by watching a film of a set text, listening to audio versions of books the class is reading, accessing translations of key texts, reading texts with lots of images, and using bilingual dictionaries and picture dictionaries. These resources will help to take some of the heavy lifting out of reading long, potentially inaccessible texts in English.
5. Developing readers and writers
Finally, multilingual learners need to develop as writers in English, alongside developing as readers. Teachers can create opportunities for learners to respond in writing to the texts they read, and to remake texts, for example by writing a different ending to a story, with scaffolding like sentence starters and writing frames. These will help multilingual learners to engage more deeply with the texts they read, and to see text as giving voice to a writer’s experience in and understanding of the world.
Teachers can draw on a range of strategies for supporting meaning making from texts, including:
- Designing activities, known as DARTs that are linked to texts and support understanding and assessment.
- Using a range of different types of visuals that help to provide context for meaning making.
- Designing collaborative learning activities like jigsaw activities, in which learners acquiring English can work with others who share their language and peers who can provide models of English.
- Engaging in multilingual storytelling and story reading: https://bit.ly/multilingualreading
Teachers can visit this collection of worksheets and activities which includes examples of language support for accessing texts across all key stages.
The good news for schools is that research has shown that multilingual learners are more engaged with reading than their monolingual English-speaking peers. (Teravainen-Goff et.al., 2021). In this National Year of Reading, encourage multilingual learners to continue to Go All In, as they develop and consolidate reading habits for life. As a bonus, building whole-school good practice for multilingual learners that develops reading and writing in English, will help schools meet the requirements of the EAL focus in the updated OFSTED toolkit.
REFERENCES
Cummins, J. (1979) Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research.
Teravainen-Goff, A., Clark, C and Little, S (2021) ‘Multilingual young people’s reading in 2021’. National Literacy Trust research report. Multilingual_reading_2021_Final.pdf
