Supporting EAL/D and Indigenous writers

Abstract

This chapter explores the teaching of writing to students who are learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). In Australia, the term ‘EAL/D’ encompasses a diversity of students: they may be born overseas or in Australia, and they may be from immigrant, refugee or Indigenous backgrounds. Many EAL/D students come with little prior experience of writing successfully. They may have accumulated experiences of failure and may demonstrate a reluctance to write. Many Indigenous students in Australia’s most remote regions, on the other hand, have access to schooling, but are not immersed in practices of reading and writing at home, or have social literacy practices that diverge significantly from practices at school. All of these students need explicit teaching to help them make sense of the purposes of school-based academic language, and to learn how language is used to achieve the specific purposes of the curriculum disciplines.