Welcome!

Over the past few years the diversity of students has gradually increased in our school. We now have students from twenty different countries. In our school community English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) students now comprise around 30%  of the whole school population and we have become one of the largest and most effective EAL/D schools. EAL/D, more commonly known as ‘ESL,’ describes people whose first language is not English. Most of the EAL/D students at our school came to Australia as immigrants or refugees.

Since the recent increase in the number of EAL/D students in our school, it is important for all teachers to have fundamental knowledge of the students, as well as to establish effective English language teaching pedagogies in mainstream classrooms. Most EAL/D students in Australia are expected to achieve a reasonable level of success within mainstream classrooms after attending only a short intensive language-learning course. Meanwhile, the students still require extensive ongoing assistance with their English language (Alford, 2001).