Helping Your Child to Learn English: Advice for Parents

Parental involvement is greatly welcomed and valued by teachers working with your child in school. Teachers need to have as much background information about your child as possible in order to meet her/his needs.  

If your child can read and write in your first language you can provide a dual-language dictionary for school. This dictionary will be of great help in supporting your child's learning in class. Teachers will be able to highlight key vocabulary in English. Using the dictionary, your child can then find the meaning of these words.  

It will be very helpful to set up a two-way diary between home and school. This way the teacher can inform you about what is going on in school and ask for your help with school work. You can also use this home-school links book to ask questions or send notes to the teacher.  

Continue to use and develop the home language

Your child will grow up to be Bilingual and this has many advantages.  

• Learning more than one language is good for the brain. Bilingual children develop better thinking skills and get higher marks in intelligence tests.  

• If their first language is strong, they will find it much easier to learn English and cope with their schoolwork. So regular reading in their home language will develop the skills they need to read in English too. 

• Your children will continue to learn more about and appreciate their culture through their language. They will be able to converse with grandparents, elders and other people from their linguistic background.  

• Learning a new language can be tiring and stressful. Your child needs to come home, relax and enjoy the security and comfort of being able to talk in their home language.  

• Encourage your child to take books in the home language to school. These books can be read during 'quiet reading' time. 

How to help your children learn English 

• This is usually best done by playing games or reading books.  

• Join the public library and take out interesting books for reading. Use the library regularly in the holidays. Children can also use the internet and listen to audio books. 

• Read books with your child, talking about them in your home language and, if possible, English too. It is helpful to read to your child in both languages.  

• Select good television programmes for your child to watch. Ask your child's teacher to suggest suitable programmes.  

• When watching television, consider using sub-titles in English. This will help your child’s listening and reading. 

Working with the school 

• Teachers will sometimes send home information about subject/topic areas that are going to be taught in the classroom the following day/week.  

• You could prepare your child by discussing this work in advance and this will improve your child's understanding when the work is completed in the classroom and also help the learning of English. 

• If possible invite English children home. Your child's friends in school will play an important role in developing English social language skills.  

• Your child's teacher will give homework which is suitable to meet his/her needs. It is important that s/he tries to do the homework set. Your help will be needed. If your child finds that the homework is too difficult, please let the teacher know.  

• Praise your child's achievements. It is important that your child knows that you understand the difficulties s/he is experiencing. Learning a new language, and at the same time learning all the school subjects in this new language, is hard work. Motivate your child to keep trying and to keep listening. Slowly but surely things will get easier.  

The EAL Assessment Framework 
Pupils in the English education system, who are New to English, progress at very different levels, according to their education background and the support they have received. Here you can see the Assessment Framework that schools use to assess children’s levels of acquiring English. It may take up to 7 years for a child to become fluent. 

A: New to English: (First 2 years) 

May use first language for learning and other purposes. May remain completely silent in 

the classroom. May be copying/repeating some words or phrases.  May understand some everyday 

expressions in English but may have minimal or no literacy in English. Needs a considerable amount of EAL 

support. 

B: Early acquisition:  

May follow day-to-day social communication in English and participate in learning 

activities with support. Beginning to use spoken English for social purposes. May understand simple 

instructions and can follow narrative/accounts with visual support. May have developed some skills in reading 

and writing. May have become familiar with some subject specific vocabulary. Still needs a significant amount 

of EAL support to access the curriculum. 

C: Developing competence:  

May participate in learning activities with increasing independence. Able to 

express self orally in English, but structural inaccuracies are still apparent. Literacy will require ongoing 

support, particularly for understanding text and writing. May be able to follow abstract concepts and more 

complex written English. Requires ongoing EAL support to access the curriculum fully. 

D: Competent:  

Oral English will be developing well, enabling successful engagement in activities across the 

curriculum. Can read and understand a wide variety of texts. Written English may lack complexity and contain 

occasional evidence of errors in structure. Needs some support to access subtle nuances of meaning, to refine 

English usage, and to develop abstract vocabulary. Needs some/occasional EAL support to access complex 

curriculum material and tasks. 

E: Fluent:  

Can operate across the curriculum to a level of competence equivalent to that of a pupil who uses 

English as his/her first language. Operates without EAL support across the curriculum. 

N: Not Yet Assessed is also available for use where the school has not yet had time to assess proficiency.