BKK Prep, Event, News, Primary May 31, 2019

On Wednesday, we held a workshop for parents focusing on the importance of developing first language at home alongside English. We also explored how useful technology can be to aid EAL learning and looked at a range of apps which are specifically suited to EAL students.

This workshop was part of an initiative by the EAL Ambassadors which is a group of teachers who meet regularly to discuss EAL strategies and EAL development within the school with a mainstream classroom focus.

The workshop emphasised the importance of focusing on home language (the language spoken by the family). Research has shown that if a child understands concepts and vocabulary in their first language, it is easier for them to transfer this knowledge into another language. There is no hard and fast rule about how quickly a child will become bilingual and the workshop stressed that the bilingual journey is different for each child and their family.

Particularly useful apps for EAL include – Google Translate, Speechify and Sentence Maker. The parents were able to try out these different apps on the school tablets and see how useful they can be. They can be downloaded and used for free on iphones, ipads and other devices (with guidance and supervision from parents).

Thank you very much to those parents who were able to attend. A similar workshop will be held in Term 1 of the next academic year for KS2 parents.

If you would like more information, the presentation can be viewed here