Picture an English instructed school anywhere in the world, with a classroom full of bright, curious children, many of whom are trying to master not just one, but two languages. English isn't their first language, and as they juggle vocabulary, grammar, and speaking rules from their home language, they face a whole new set of hurdles in English. These kids are working double-time – decoding a language that seems full of exceptions, silent letters, and phrases that don’t always play by the rules.
Children learning English as an additional language (CLEAL) often lag behind their monolingual English-speaking peers in key academic areas such as reading, writing, and maths. It’s not necessarily for lack of intelligence or effort—it’s the hurdle of mastering English that impacts their academic progress. The data shows a clear pattern: the better their English language skills, the smaller the academic attainment gap. As their English language proficiency increases, they catch up in the classroom, narrowing the divide in performance. But until they hit that critical point of fluency, CLEAL face an uphill battle, trying to keep pace in subjects where language is the key to unlocking success.
But what exactly are the most common difficulties they face when it comes to oral English language? Do they struggle more so with particular aspects of English oral language in comparison to their monolingual English-speaking peers? And what can we do to help them thrive? Our recent systematic review addresses exactly these questions.
Before diving into the findings of said review, it's essential to understand how the studies that were included were selected. To ensure high-quality and relevant insights, only studies meeting specific criteria were included. These criteria were: the study must have an age-matched monolingual, English-speaking control group; focus on children between the ages of 3-7 years old; investigate at least one element of English oral language; include children learning English as an additional language; involve children enrolled in mainstream education; collect or report empirical data; and be published in English. A search of four databases: Psycinfo, Web of Science, British Education Index and Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts, returned 2125 articles, and after screening against the inclusion criteria listed above, 20 research papers were eligible for inclusion in the narrative review.
Taken together, the findings show that CLEAL are comparable with their monolingual English-speaking peers in certain areas of English oral language development, like some areas of narrative skill, lexical and pragmatic understanding, morphological production and elements of phonological production and processing. However, CLEAL do face more challenges than their monolingual classmates in other areas, such as English receptive and some tests of expressive vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, some aspects of narrative, listening comprehension, embedding and collocational knowledge.
Identifying the areas where CLEAL need extra support in oral language, is a crucial step in closing the achievement gap between CLEAL and their monolingual peers. By focusing on the specific aspects of English where CLEAL may struggle, this review highlights where more research is needed and where targeted interventions can be created to help address these challenges.
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Author
Dr Nicola Lester
Dr Lester is a lecturer in Psychology at the University of Manchester. Her research focusses mainly on promoting language learning opportunities for children learning English in addition to another language, and also exploring the impact of ethically diverse (or lack thereof) main characters in children’s literature, on the self-esteem and self-concept of children from such ethnic backgrounds.