Why EAL? Challenges in the Current State

The prevailing approach to teaching English as a second or additional language (previously known as ESL but increasingly referred to as EAL) may be well-intended but is misguided and ineffective, treating English learners from a perspective steeped in the deficit model. Several challenges exist that contribute to the complexity and difficulty of the current state:

• Student body make-up and changing expectations: Trends in international education indicate that host country nationals form 80% of the student body in international schools.  They expect to graduate high school being able to perform in undergraduate programs in English medium universities.  Many also expect to maintain their mother tongue and, as such, expectations for international schools to provide programs in support of such additive bilingualism have grown.
• According to the research, students who have a strong mother tongue (also known as a primary language) will acquire higher levels of proficiency in shorter amounts of time. Often, international schools make the mistake of believing the myth of maximum exposure or ‘the more English the better.’  At times, schools adopt “English only” policies with good intentions when in reality immersion instruction leverages English learners’ languages and cultures. This distinction is based on additive vs. subtractive bilingualism (the former is when students go to international schools in order to add languages to their repertoire while the latter is when students immigrate to the US in order to nationalize).
• Language learning as a whole is often considered, traditionally, an “elementary school issue”.  In the international school circle, the population of non-native English speakers continues to increase.  However, many schools deny admission to older English learners as they fear they won’t have enough time to achieve full English proficiency.
• At times, foreign language teaching in international schools is conducted by local teachers, who may not be familiar with Western pedagogical expectations and practices. The available instructional methods and teaching resources may require international schools to provide professional training for local teachers.   
• Many schools have perceived or still perceive EAL as a deficit program (vs. enrichment) whereby the role of the EAL teacher is to ‘fix’ the EAL students. EAL students are often considered by teachers as a “problem that needs to be solved” or “an extra imposition placed upon them as a teacher when they are already overloaded”.  Therefore, administrators, parents, and teachers often associate English learners with ‘special needs or remedial learners’ (i.e. implying a fixed mindset vs. a growth mindset).  As a result, program services for English learners have been ‘medical’ in nature; that is, a special program was created for students, very similar to the Special Needs model of the past.  A major result is the confusion that exists between such instructional practices as ‘modification and individualization vs. scaffolding and differentiation.’
• Most monolingual English speakers do not realize that the English system of logic related to writing and thinking is not universal, and this causes an immediate challenge to teaching.  Respect for another language’s system and logic is often absent as Western thought seems to assume that its logic is universal and therefore the only way to think and write and communicate. Native speakers, of any language, may not have analyzed the systems and structures of their language so they are limited in their ability to demystify it for others --- even though they may be highly literate and proficient in the language. Explicit teaching about the system of a language and demystifying its organization and logic are necessary.
• “Language Learning” versus “Language Acquisition”. The former implies that people may learn about the language but not be able to use it. Language acquisition, on the other hand, signifies usage or what is called proficiency – the capacity to speak, read and write a language fluently
• Foreign language vs. second language proficiency: the former implies that people may want to learn a language in order to travel or for social conversations, while the latter signals a higher level of proficiency (in the case of K-12 schooling it means students need to have an academic level of language proficiency in all subject areas in order to achieve academically in an English-language school). 
• Teachers of all subject areas often choose teaching the content over teaching the learner. Teaching the content is easier because there is very little accountability in that approach. Teachers focus on what they have instructed and what they have ‘taught’ rather than what the learners received, applied and understood.