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ESL or ‘EAL’?: Programme or ‘support’? The baggage that comes with names.
Maurice Carder, International Schools Journal, Vol. XXIX No.1. November 2009.
Pp.18-25.

At the Vienna International School (VIS) there are students from over 100
nationalities, with some 75 languages. Many of these students come to the VIS with
little or no knowledge of English, so the school has developed a programme of
language provision for the needs of the students. There are ESL and Mother Tongue
departments in place in the Primary and Secondary Schools. These give appropriately
structured programmes of language development in English and in students‟ mother
tongues, from grades 1-12. The school is proud of its IB Diploma results, and I
believe a primary reason for such results is the focus on language development in
each student‟s languages. We also maintain, in the secondary department, a staff
which is well-qualified; all have an MA in TESOL, Applied Linguistics, or the
equivalent (see Carder, 2007, for a full description of the programme).

It has not been easy to maintain such a programme. Over the 28 years of my tenure at
the school, the most frequent protest from ESL department heads was about not
getting sufficient staffing when there was an extra influx of students in need of ESL
classes. Many senior administrators seemed, from my perspective at least, to see extra
staffing for ESL as an unwelcome burden on the budget, the underlying attitude
appearing to be „They‟ll pick up English, won‟t they? Why do they need classes?‟
Drawing on reserves of patience to coax more staffing out of such unwillingness was
a regular challenge. One departing colleague remarked to me: „I just couldn‟t face
having to educate another in-coming administrator about the fundamental importance
of a sound ESL programme‟.

What concerns me is the current perception of ESL and mother tongues. Staffing and
curriculum for another language area, Foreign Languages, is seen in most
international schools as routine and necessary (Hélot and de Mejía, 2008:199:
„modern foreign languages have higher status than ESL‟). Fishman (2004) notes, as
“he has been arguing in print for 35 years”, that
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It is just as scandalous and injurious to waste “native” language resources as to

waste or air, water, mineral, animal, and various non-linguistic human
resources. How long must language and cultures be trivialized if they are
learned at home, in infancy and childhood, and only respected if they are
acquired later, during adulthood, when they are usually learned less well and
at much greater cost in competence, time and money? (ibid, p. 417).

For foreign languages a curriculum and staffing are provided. It can be argued that
foreign language classes have a much less demanding aim than second language
classes (see Spolsky, 1999, for clear definitions of „Second Language‟ and „Foreign
Language‟). In foreign language classes, often French or Spanish in international
schools, students generally learn a language progressively in a carefully-structured
way over five years.

ESL students have to learn language for academic success in the entire curriculum,
and need and deserve all the support they can get. However, the word „support‟ is
generally defined as „encouragement; sympathy; help.‟ This is what we give anyone
with immediate problems – a twisted ankle, sudden bereavement – but is hardly the
right terminology to be included in an educational accreditation document prescribing
pedagogical pathways for young people who face a major educational challenge when
moving across languages and countries. These second language students need a
programme.

Over the years at the VIS, I became very curious about why my chosen pedagogical
area – the education of second language learners – was often marginalized, ignored or
described in the emotional terminology of „support‟. I believe I have found the
answers, and will expound on them below.

In international education, which the CIS (Council of International Schools) serves as

an accrediting agency, at times linked with the NEASC (New England Association of
Schools and Colleges) and other American accrediting agencies, children from many
nationalities attend international schools for varying lengths of time, and often then
return to their own countries. They bring with them their own languages, and in most
international schools they need to learn English in order to succeed in the curriculum.
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Huge amounts of research have been undertaken in recent decades on language

acquisition, and it is now clear that the key factor to enable children to succeed in
learning English is maintaining literacy in their mother tongue while enrolled in a
second language programme of carefully-structured development in content-area
language.

The problem is that in the USA, and also in Britain, the instruction of ESL students
has become a political issue. To summarise the English experience briefly:
 Taking students out of classes for ESL instruction was defined as
discrimination.
 The government „resolved‟ this by stating that „all teachers are ESL teachers‟;
therefore no separate ESL classes were provided. However, research has
shown that „all teachers‟ largely do not cater for the needs of ESL students,
especially at the beginning level.
 In England there is no professional qualification for ESL teachers, who as a
result are mostly peripatetic, and a majority of them change to another subject
or profession after a few years.
(See Carder, 2008, which traces the history of the issue through the USA, Canada,
Australia, and England, with recommendations for international schools; see
Crawford, 2000, and Krashen, 1999, for the politicization of the issue in the
USA).

Leung and Franson (2001) have traced the history of ESL in Britain, and the salient
points are worth reviewing here. They isolate two issues that have determined why
ESL has ended up in its current low-status position in Britain now. First: „The British
education system has always been wary of segregation along racial and language
lines‟ (p. 158); Second: „The trend towards communicative language teaching led
educators to see that learners needed extra help across curriculum subject areas‟ (p.
158, 159). The Swann Report (DES, 1985) emphasized its „fundamental opposition‟
to separate provision for ethnic minority children, and the Calderdale Report (CRE,
1986) held that separate ESL provision was racially discriminating. „The issues
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surrounding ESL teaching had become overtly political and ideological (my italics),
directly tied up with issues concerning . . . anti-racism within educational institutions.‟

The British government, ever eager to avoid trouble, recommended that „the needs of
English-as-a-second-language learners should be met by provision within the
mainstream school‟ (DES, 1985:426), echoing the DES (1967:291) endorsement of
„language specialists . . . sitting in on subject classes.‟ With the 1988 Education
Reform Act, which cemented the National Curriculum in place, the ESL teacher was
commonly known as the „language support teacher.‟ Thus ESL in England is no
longer regarded as a distinct subject area (Leung and Franson, ibid. pp. 163-164). As
they note (ibid. p 163): „One of the consequences of mainstreaming ESL in this
particular context is that ESL is no longer regarded as a distinct subject area. ESL and
the needs of ESL learners are subsumed in the mainstream curriculum. It can be
readily observed that mainstreaming as an educational response is a genus open to
different uses and interpretations. It allows policy-makers and teachers to make the
claim that equality of access to educational provision has been achieved; and at the
same time it effectively removes the need to commit curriculum space and resources
explicitly to address the specific language and learning needs of the pupils. The
English (subject) National Curriculum has been written without explicit reference to
second language learners, except to suggest that „where appropriate, pupils should be
encouraged to make use of their understanding and skills in other languages when
learning English‟ (DFE, 1995:2). In the revised version of the National Curriculum
(DfEE, 1999), there is a general requirement for all teachers to take account of the
English language needs of pupils whose first language is not English, but this
requirement is not reflected in the programmes of study or the level descriptions. As a
curriculum area, ESL has not been allowed a distinct discipline status; there are no
ESL curriculum specifications and there is no national ESL scale for assessment. In
the past few years, the funding for ESL has been reduced repeatedly and the cuts have
always been justified on financial grounds. These can be seen as indicators which
point to ESL‟s loss of academic status and curriculum value in the official view, and
with it the privilege to argue for its protection and development.‟

In England, ESL is not given professional recognition as a discipline, and, in fact, in

schools „language support teachers‟ come under the umbrella of Special Education
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Needs Departments. The negative effects of treating ESL students as Special

Educational Needs students have been documented throughout the literature on ESL
students (e.g. Cummins, 1984).

It seems clear that the CIS has taken its terminology and its recommended practice
from England. But the English model works in quite different circumstances from
those which obtain in international schools. In national systems, immigrants often
become assimilated, and after three generations the mother tongue has largely
disappeared.

In international schools, students need to maintain their mother tongues as, even if
they go on to study in English at university, they retain strong links with their home
country and culture: pluralism should be our aim. In addition, there are many
advantages to bilingualism, as outlined below.

Various authors have commented on the earlier metalinguistic awareness of bilinguals

compared to monolinguals (e.g. Ben-Zeev, 1977), their increased metacognitive
abilities and metalinguistic awareness (De Avila & Duncan, 1979; Heeschen, 1989;
Tunmer & Myhill, 1984), and their greater separation of form and content (Leopold,
1939-49). Cognitive advantages attributed to plurilinguals by psychologists, e.g.
advantages in conceptual development (Bain, 1974; Cummins & Gulustan, 1974;
Liedke & Nelson, 1968; Peal & Lambert, 1962), higher verbal intelligence and greater
psycholinguistic skills (Cummins & Gulustan, 1974; Kittell, 1963; Lambert &
Tucker, 1972; Peal & Lambert, 1962), and more divergent thinking (Balkan, 1970;
Landry, 1974) are all related to metalinguistic awareness as to the practice of
switching between languages (from Dewaele, Housen and Wei, eds. 2003:48).

Bialystok, 1991; Cummins, 1984, 1993, 2000; Genesee, 1975; Hakuta, 1986; and
Lambert, 1974, also show that maintaining the mother tongue and adding English – in
other words bilingualism – confers advantages.

By borrowing terminology that was developed in an often highly-charged national

and political context the CIS is imposing an inappropriate model on international
schools. The CIS knows about this as the ECIS ESL and Mother Tongue Committee
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has written to them several times about the matter, and I have written articles on this
which have been published (Carder, 2005).

A response from the CIS in the ISJ (Percy, 2005) with regard to their stance was: „The
CIS only wishes to use a non-specific or generic term which could cover the multitude
of similar interrelated terms such as EAL, E2L, etc.,‟ and „We will be aware of the
need to maintain a careful balance between allowing schools to set their own agendas
and the inclusion of a number of basic principles within the Accreditation Standards.‟
I would argue that the CIS is already being prescriptive by including ESL as „learning
support‟ under „student support services‟ and making recommendations as to how it is
to be improved. „Support‟ is not anything that a trained teacher of a vastly complex
subject area uses as the basis of a curriculum which is in fact becoming ever more
complex as the teaching profession develops in line with the current realities of
professional life in the world at large. Placing ESL at the end of the CIS accreditation
document with Special Educational Needs (SEN) also implicitly presents ESL
students in the same category. (In England, since ESL is not a professionally
recognised discipline, and SEN is, ESL teachers report to the SEN department).

Language is the basis of everything children do in school; second language learners

need a carefully developed programme to enable them to master the language of
instruction.

The CIS admits that there are many different types of ESL programme in international
schools. I am regularly told of practices considered inappropriate by colleagues
around the world. Such practices may arise because of ignorance, financial
considerations or simply bad management, or perhaps because the CIS argues that
„schools can set their own agendas as regards ESL programmes.‟ However, I would
argue that this goes against the aim of the CIS as intending to promote higher
standards, and may in fact encourage bad pedagogical models.

On ECIS/CIS websites, ESL is increasingly replaced with „EAL‟ (English as an

Additional Language). This has not been discussed with the ECIS ESL and Mother
Tongue Committee and is yet more evidence of how the „British‟ model – the term
EAL was created in England – is being promulgated.
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The terminology of the discipline (of teaching developing bilingual students) also
leads to bizarre exchanges among ESL teachers. An American professional recently
recounted to me how she was told, after mentioning the term „ESL:‟ „Oh, how ethno-
centric you Americans are, talking about „second language‟; catch up with the world.‟
Apart from the fact that teachers in the USA have some of the best professional
training programmes for ESL and bilingual teachers (George Mason University is a
fine example), this comment misses the point, and also shows how susceptible, and
potentially open to exploitation by ill-informed school leaders, young teachers can be.
ESL is the standard terminology used by the majority of academics and researchers
writing about the field of second language learners. Indeed, the term „EAL‟ is often
not mentioned in any literature outside Britain. By rejecting the term „ESL,‟ teachers
are cutting themselves adrift from the basis of the profession they are serving, and
possibly from the chance of teaching in a clearly-structured programme. David Block
(2003:57), after masterfully deconstructing the „Second‟ in „Second Language
Acquisition‟, writes „we might well conclude that such a shift [from „second‟ to
„additional‟] will never occur.

The field of ESL and bilingual education is an emerging profession, and various terms
are used in different parts of the world (e.g. the unfortunate „LEP – Limited English
Proficient – in the USA – rejected now by professionals, but still the legal term for
obtaining funding; also „ELL‟ – English Language Learners - and there are many
more). But arguments such as “my students have felt so much more positive since
being called „EAL‟ instead of „ESL‟” are hardly valid if the EAL teaching they get is
„support‟ maybe given by non-professionals and is not a professional programme of
instruction.

Bourdieu (1984) shows that the dominant can only dominate with the consent, mostly
passive, of the dominated. Accrediting agencies for international schools devise their
„rules for being accredited‟ largely unchallenged – and challenges can be brushed off,
as was the input from the ECIS ESL and Mother Tongue Committee already
mentioned. We have shown in the VIS that a good programme – including both ESL
and Mother Tongue – has a beneficial effect on students‟ achievement. In this context
it is recommended that „ESL as learning support‟ be removed from the vocabulary of
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the CIS/ECIS, and that the CIS keep up with best educational practice for second
language learners in an international school context by including them only in the
section of regular subjects. Indeed, these second language learners now constitute the
majority of students in CIS accredited schools (ESL Gazette, 2005).

The clientele of international schools are an elite (Baker, 2006:252), and it is bizarre
that a section of the elite – those who are learning the school‟s language of instruction
– are often served a „support‟ model that was designed for immigrants to Britain.
Having watched second language students excel and students in the Mother Tongue
Programme gain good or excellent scores for the IB Diploma (never failing in their
mother tongue) over three decades at the VIS, I am unable to understand the
CIS/ECIS‟s lack of promotion of good practice in this fundamental area in
international education. My view is clear: they are frightened of „getting it wrong‟,
and by so doing are in fact getting it wrong.

Biographical note
Maurice Carder’s career has been dedicated to second language learners of English.
After graduating with a BA Honours in Spanish (Bristol), he gained Qualified
Teacher Status at the Institute of Education (London). He had teaching posts in
Seville, Tehran, Lisbon, Greece, Porto and Bath before gaining an MA in Linguistics
(Lancaster). This led to posts in Mexico and Germany, then to the Vienna
International School, Austria, in 1981, where he remained until 2009. He has worked
on various projects with the International Baccalaureate, done much committee work
with the European Council of International Schools, and served on accreditation
teams for the Council of International Schools. His writings on bilingualism and
language-related matters have appeared in several books as well as in journals such
as the International Schools Journal and the Journal for Research in International
Education. His most recent book is ‘Bilingualism in International Schools’. He is
currently undertaking research on bilingualism in International School students at the
Institute of Education, University of London.

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