Final thoughts

Final thoughts

Hammond reinforces the importance of the role of the mainstream teacher as a supporter of EAL/D students either to the lack of EAL/D teachers or individual school circumstances (2012). She also states that the majority of teachers will deal with EAL/D students at some point in their career, and therefore emphasises the importance of the essential knowledge of language teaching and adapted teaching strategies in their subject areas. 

In semi-rural high schools such as ours, mainstream teachers may still have limited exposure to migrant or refugee students However, I hope this long, yet still brief, report on EAL/D students, English learning and second language acquisition theories has assisted you to create an idea of embedded English language teaching in your subject areas. 

As head of the EAL/D department, I want you to put yourselves in as EAL/D student’s shoes. Somehow they need to find a way to adapt to an unfamiliar setting, so that they can succeed in their study of both academic subjects as well as mastery of the English language. It is our duty to construct the scaffolding on which they can base their future learning.