Key Benefits for EAL Departments

A description of the features and benefits that Rollama can provide for EAL/ESL departments

Andrew for Rollama

11/6/20223 min read

Rollama's EAL Provision

English has a reputation for being particularly tricky to learn. Its style norms, loanwords and idiosyncrasies have grown and compounded over generations of global proliferation.

Learning English can be easier or harder depending on the similarity of the learner's native language (aka L1). Swedish is one of the closest cousins of English. A Swedish native speaker is likely to find the process considerably easier than a Chinese native speaker.

Language comparison

Languages can be compared in a range of aspects - phonics (sounds), syntax (word order), sentence structure, vocabulary, to name but a few.

Speakers of different L1s will find English challenging in different ways.

For instance, Korean has no capital letters. Chinese has no subject-verb-agreement or tense inflections. Finnish has no auxiliary verbs. Japanese has no stylistic preference against repeating nouns within a sentence.

L1 translation issues

Learners who translate language directly from their L1 will encounter many predictable and natural mistakes.

Meaning is not always impaired, but some cases will create confusion: in Korean, Turkish and Japanese, respondants to a negative question ('Don't you like popcorn?') will use yes to agree with the statement (speaker doesn't like popcorn), and no to disagree with the negative (speaker does like popcorn). Misunderstandings are easy to imagine.

One of the top priorities of English teachers is to enable clear communication of meaning. Stylistic fluency comes afterwards. Both are served by focused, repetitive, and independent practice of common difficulties.

Rollama EAL Challenges

That's why we created EAL Challenges: different curated lists of games which address English skills that are particularly tricky for speakers of specific first languages.

We closely studied academic research (see link below) to identify which games would have the greatest impact for EAL learners of each background.

We are always looking to increase the list of first languages we cater for. Please get in touch if you have a request.

Reference:

Swan, M. & Smith, B. (2001) Learner English - A teacher's guide to interference and other problems. Cambridge University Press.

Open Help Centre: How to Set EAL for Your Students

Full list of supported home languages (as of Sept 2024)

Please contact us if you'd like us to add any other languages.

Rollama can address common errors of EAL learners

Rollama provides certificates and tracking to easily celebrate achievements and progress

Rollama supports independent practice and consolidation with personal accounts and child-friendly Teacher Tips

Native speakers generally absorb the grammar of their L1 (first language) through usage alone. Some explicit teaching of uncommon or esoteric parts of speech may be necessary, plus some guidance on formal Standard English versus colloquial, informal constructs.

These complexities, dialects and spoken abbreviations can be bewildering for those learning English as an additional language (EAL).

At any age, EAL learners are at a particular disadvantage when school is the only place on which they encounter Standard English.

The language of the home and the playground provide the 360° immersion which native speakers take for granted.

Grammar must be explicitly taught for EAL students to attain native-speaker fluency. In mainstream classrooms, this is difficult as there is no additional challenge for native speakers (i.e., once a student has mastered using was/were with every sort of subject, there is no relevant extension to challenge them).

EAL learners need to know the rules then have sufficient opportunity to practise and notice their errors until automaticity is reached. The mainstream classroom does not always provide enough opportunities for this on its own. This is the seed of the problem which Rollama is built to solve.