Blog Post 1.4
24.02.2020
Hello and welcome back to Zealous English. This blog is all about selecting suitable texts for middle years EAL learners.
I was inspired to write this post because currently I’m re-reading the texts our students will be studying in their English and EAL classes this year. At present, I’m reviewing Hannah Kent’s Burial Rights and it makes me appreciate how remarkable our Australian authors are; whilst also making lots of notes around language use and teaching points.
Speaking of texts, I wanted to take this opportunity to ask you all a question. What texts do you use for your year 9 and 10 EAL classes? Choosing suitable texts for EAL learners in these pivotal pre-VCE year levels is challenging to say the least.
With a preference for Australian texts, here are some popular suggestions for year 9-10 EAL students:
Looking for Alibrandi (Marchetta)*
Tomorrow When the War Began (Marsden)
Jasper Jones (Silvey)
Laurinda (Pung)
Growing Up Asian in Australia (Pung)
The Happiest Refugee (Do)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Linsday)
This is How We Change the Ending (Wakefield)
The Blue Dress (Hathorn)*
At my school, we study Alibrandi and The Blue Dress in our year 10 EAL classes. We study the film adaptation of Alibrandi in Term 2 during a unit on essay writing, film language and comparative writing. Then in Term 4, we read a selection of short-stories from The Blue Dress during our creative writing unit.
This year, I am actually planning to give my year 10 students a choice which film we will study in order to allow for more choice in the course. The film texts they will be able to choose from include:
Looking for Alibrandi
The Year my Voice Broke
My Brilliant Career
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Strictly Ballroom
My plan is to show the previews for each of the films then take a vote. I have never done this before, so fingers crossed my students appreciate having more autonomy around which texts they will study. Again, you can see that these texts are all Australian, the majority with an associated novel as this is my preference. I believe this adds more depth to a film study unit. Having the ability to bring in extracts of the novel from key scenes and compare the text to the film is quite advantageous.
At year 9, choosing texts has been more challenging for us. We tend to choose a selection poems (to complement the mainstream English classes poetry unit) and possibly a film (last year we did The Sapphires). Text selection at year 9 is very much dependant on how many students are eligible for our EAL classes in addition to their English language proficiency.
One of the main challenges of choosing suitable texts for EAL learners in general is that year by year we have to choose texts that suit the needs and preferences of our student cohorts. You may not even be able to choose texts in the preceding year for booklists having to bide some time getting to know your students before you can make your final decisions.
Some schools use abridged texts or readers with their middle years EAL students. There are some wonderful truncated versions of classics such as the Oxford Graded Readers (usually level 5 – 6 are appropriate for years 9-10) and they can be a great way to introduce our EAL students to the classics. My personal preference is to choose unabridged texts and work the students up. But this isn’t always possible. When I was working with New Arrival students we did use abridged readers quite successfully, yet I feel that in the mainstream we should be exposing students to authentic texts.
Despite this, the biggest challenge when choosing appropriate texts for middle years EAL learners tends to be, that the most popular English texts taught in mainstream in Victoria in years 9-10 are:
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
Animal Farm (Orwell)
Macbeth (Shakespeare)
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
The Outsiders (Hinton)
Lord of The Flies (Golding)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
Yes, I’ve done my homework. Having scoured multiple booklists from a broad cross-selection of schools across the state, I have found that the above texts feature prominently in years 9 and 10 English courses. Jasper Jones is also a very popular choice. At my school, in mainstream year 10 English four texts are studied including, Persepolis, To Kill a Mockingbird, Jasper Jones (film) and Macbeth keeping with the popular trend in the state of a predominance of non-Australian authors.
So, the ultimate question remains: how do we strike a balance between the high literature of mainstream English and the needs of our EAL learners when selecting texts for our years 9 and 10 EAL classes? This is particularly important where students are taking both EAL and English classes in your schools and expected to read the classics. This is of course very school specific. If your students are streamed and take either EAL or English you may have more autonomy and flexibility when choosing texts for your EAL students.
I do think we can select texts in our EAL classes which showcase the beauty of high literature to our EAL learners whilst complementing the development of their writing and reading skills. Of course, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to text selection and the challenges facing EAL teachers in this space are quite complex. Also, how we teach these texts to our students greatly affects students’ ability to comprehend the complexity of the language and themes presented. I would love to know what texts you are planning on teaching in years 9 and 10 this year and how you made your choices.
This year, I am hoping to design some recourses which bolster student capacity to analyse texts and knowing which texts you are using will make this process much easier.
If you would like to encourage your students to read more, I have lists of suggested classics at years 9/10 on the resources tab on my website.
Thank you again for following and sharing these blog posts with your colleagues. Thank you also for your feedback in terms of emails, messages and face-to-face. I look forward to hearing your responses to my questions about text selection for year 9-10 EAL students.
Happy teaching!
Julia
