Supporting language development

Teaching and supporting students’ language development is like coaching a sport. The students are the ones running around with the ball – reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and presenting – ‘doing’ language. The teacher, as ‘language coach’, has the job of analysing and assessing what the students can do right now, establishing what they need to be able to do, and finding strategies for teaching them those skills. Students need plenty of practice with each skill, and they need to be able to put the skills together into a whole game – that of language use and interaction in relation to curriculum learning.

Teaching and learning language involves moving in a cyclical progression through language that uses increasingly sophisticated vocabulary and increasingly complex text features and structures. Teachers need to ensure that their students notice these aspects of language and how they are used, and they need to provide feedback on students’ efforts to use the new language they are coming to grips with. Note that the term ‘feedback’ has specific connotations when used in the context of language learning – for example, in the related terms explicit feedback and implicit feedback , and in the concept of a recast .

All curriculum learning is expressed through language, and language learning should be integrated with curriculum learning rather than developed through isolated programmes. Just as teachers develop ICT skills through all curriculum areas, they can plan to support language development throughout the school day. Planning in this way caters for the diversity of bilingual Pasifika students’ language achievements and needs. All teachers – not just bilingual teachers – can plan ways for their bilingual Pasifika students to draw on and use their Pasifika languages in the school context.