English as an Additional Language (EAL) and NLP - a tentative theory on one child’s first few days in a new language environment by Susan Rowley

We all interact with the world visually, auditorily and kinaesthetically. If we are visual or kinaesthetic learners, our comprehensible input (a crucial indicator of success in learning a new language. Krashen, in Baker 1996) is still relatively high in an alien language environment. We look for cues to what we’re supposed to be doing and we physically follow the lead of those around us. However, if our main or preferred learning style (the way we make sense of the world) is strongly auditory we are at a loss. The language we’re hearing no longer holds meaning and the language we’re producing no longer evokes a meaningful response. We are suddenly cut off from our main contact with reality. For a very young child this can be traumatic. The negotiation and making of meaning needs to be a continuous experience as far as possible for all learners. (Cummins 2000) Being cut off from this process can lead to dis- empowerment and even a loss of a sense of identity, a concept negotiated with the people around us.

Hence, high levels of frustration and ‘bad’ behaviour?

In my job I sometimes meet children newly arrived in an English school with no English themselves, like Marta, who was a great cause for concern after only 3 mornings in a reception class. She fought to leave the room, hit out at people, grabbed things from other children, ignored teachers and ‘refused’ to follow leads or directions of any kind. She spoke in Polish to everyone she came in contact with.

The trauma of joining a system where no-one speaks your language can be huge. Marta’s mother offered dictionaries and word lists to the school, but being without transliterations they were of little use in the crucial first days. This episode points up for me even more strongly the need for teachers to prepare for taking in EAL beginners, with a focus not just on providing culturally familiar visual and play materials, dual text books and dual language story tapes. In the absence of bilingual support, we also need to have, at least, the basic few words of a child’s language ready and practised.

By the second week I observed Marta joining in basic classroom routines such as lining up (last in the line) and copying others to the extent of coming out to the front of the class to take part in a simple activity with a teacher. She had become a good ‘watcher’, picking up cues to classroom routines from her peers. She still talked extensively to the teacher and others in Polish and had also already learned to repeat extended phrases of rhymes in English, far more quickly than the average beginner bilingual child of that age.

From her actions it seemed that she had been frustrated by the lack of any meaningful communication and the inappropriate behaviour had been the only way she felt she could make herself ‘heard’. In NLP terms I suggest that she was a mainly auditory learner who floundered for a while but has now learned to exercise her other sensory input channels and is making sense of the world in a different way. Marta’s auditory ability is still the most efficient channel for learning but others are developing fast.

If we are not prepared to cater for all preferred styles of learning, we are failing children like Marta. Sensory deprivation is a serious business – is this, effectively, what we risk doing to beginner EAL children who are strongly auditory?

This is an extreme case, but many pupils may suffer in this way to a lesser degree and not show their emotions, or their limited ability to learn in a typical classroom situation, so graphically.

For me this raises an important question: Will all learners be missing out in some way if we do not facilitate and encourage the development of a more balanced use of all their modes of interaction with the world, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic? As a teacher I see my role as not just recognising and catering for the learning preferences of pupils, but also helping them to recognise their strengths and find ways of developing less efficient channels.

References

Baker, Colin 1996, Foundations of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, Multilingual matters, Clevedon.

Cummins, Jim 2000, Language, Power and Pedagogy, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Susan’s Bio

Susan Rowley works with EAL and Traveller children for the London Borough of Redbridge Minority Ethnic Achievement Service, and runs seminars on bilingualism and second-language acquisition. Contact her on 0208 924 3186 or at [email protected].