A guide of best practice for working with EAL students

Supporting EAL (English as an Additional Language) Students
With a proportion of any classroom including students that speak English as an Additional Language, it’s important that we adapt our teaching to make sure that, not only these students participate in learning, but can thrive in an inclusive and academically agile environment.

We’re lucky in Australia to have such a richly diverse population – a mixture of knowledge, culture and values to contribute to our community and drive our future.

In our schools, approximately 300,000 students identify as EAL/D throughout Australia, and come from more than 2000 different ethnic backgrounds. Approximately 25% of Primary and Secondary students learn EAL, and some schools have EAL populations of up to 90% (australiancurriculum.edu.au).

Historically, we have used ‘ESL’ (English as a Second Language) to align with someone that speaks a language besides English as their native language. However, in more recent times, this reference has shifted to ‘EAL’ (English as an Additional Language) to acknowledge that, for some of our students, English may be their 3rd or 4th language.

Considering that there will likely be EAL students in almost any classroom that we work in, it’s important that we adapt our teaching to make sure that, not only these students participate in learning, but can thrive in an inclusive and academically agile environment.

This resource offers advice for Teachers in delivering learning content for work with EAL students. We provide tips on:

• Preparation for lessons
• Delivering content
• Creating an inclusive classroom
• Behavior managemeny

View our EAL guide here:

A big thanks to the anzuk Educators who contributed to this resource:

• Bec Lonie
• Aziza Hussein
• Vicki Drozdowski
• Hannah Shearer

If you are interested in working with EAL students please contact your consultant directly, if you are not yet working with anzuk you can get started today by registering your details here.