Bridging English as an Additional Language

Unit 1-2

Bridging English as an Additional Language (EAL) is the intensive and explicit study of the English language in a range of sociocultural contexts and for a range of purposes, including further education and the workplace. Students develop their language skills and confidence, assisting them to communicate effectively in a range of contexts - including academic and everyday - using a range of registers of spoken and written Standard Australian English. This contributes to students being able to participate effectively in Australian life.

Bridging EAL focuses on language skills needed by students for whom English is an additional language. Students develop knowledge and skills in speaking, listening, reading, viewing, writing and thinking, and progress from informal use of language to more formal, academic and technical language use.

Aims

This study enables students to:

• Develop their understanding of how language, structural features and sentence structure are used to make meaning for a range of purposes, audiences and sociocultural contexts

• Develop their language skills in speaking, listening, reading, viewing and writing Standard Australian English

• Communicate ideas, feelings, observations, information and understanding appropriately across a range of curriculum areas

• Develop competence across a range of increasingly challenging English language texts in order to construct a variety of responses, including creative, personal, factual, persuasive and critical

• Strengthen and extend their understanding and use of metalanguage to explain the structural and language choices made by authors and themselves for different contexts and audiences

• Edit and reflect on their own use of language to achieve accuracy and clarity of expression

Course outline

Assessment

Each area of study and elective will have two or three different assessments in combinations of spoken, written, listening and reading modes.