EAL Digest August 2026

By Pete on August 16, 2026 • ( 0 )

Shorter summary than usual, but I’ve been a bit busy!

New releases

The new EAL Journal from NALDIC is out: Putting Multilingualism on the Map. Find out more here.

Jason Anderson and Suyog Dixit have a new book out: Translanguaging in Language Classrooms – a guide for teachers. Find out more here.

I think I mentioned this is the last update, but Anderson also recently updated the Cambridge Paper on ‘The use of L1 in English Language Teaching’. The original from Kerr and Hall was, IMHO, a pretty important piece.

What is that bird in Anderson’s photo?! It’s like a Hoopoe but not.

Planning for EAL/D learners: Understanding and using vocabulary

I stumbled across this mini-guide for teaching vocab the other day – it’s a snippet to promote a book (you’ll see at the end). Could be something useful in this download to share with colleagues though.

SecEd guide to oracy in schools

Another thing I stumbled across was this interesting March 2025 supplement from SecEd on oracy in schools. I haven’t read every article in it, but there were some good ones. Page 9 in particular – using subject-focused talk.

Speaking about oracy (ha, ‘speaking’ about it), I was ranting about the lack of listening development in oracy drives recently. A few interesting comments on the LinkedIn thread from the likes of Emma Meade-Flynn, Matt Noble, Marc Jones. See thread here.

Talking their Language podcast

A couple of new episodes on this podcast since my last update. One from Eowyn Crisfield on family language planning, another from Sarah Guinon on celebrating languages and supporting families. I’m bookmarking it for a listen this week. (link here)

Upcoming COBIS webinar from Password Language Testing

A few interesting blog posts

Teachers creativity in the language classroom, from Dr Catherine Ames (link here)
MLRC celebrating three years of research (link here)

On-demand EAL webinars from Flash Academy

Anna B mentioned these to me, so thanks for sharing. Lots of free viewing. Link here.

Interesting research I’ve read this month

Adri Szlapak put me onto this interesting article: A model for Adolescent Reading Instruction (Frey et al, 2025). It’s open access, woohoo. Link here. I thought it was an interesting attempt to review science of reading research focused more on secondary school learners. The list of research analysed is in itself a great springboard…

And there are some practical take-home points in there for sure. Ultimately, I felt that it didn’t really highlight tooooo much difference between the research into science of reading in elementary vs high school contexts, but it was a much needed summary. My top read for this month.

The article mentions Lesaux et al (2010) which, coincidentally, I was reading at the time Adri suggested this one. An 18-week academic vocabulary intervention, interesting. Significant benefits for learners re: things like morphological awareness. See here.

I read another good article on vocab, this time on vocabulary pre-teaching:

Here’s a link to the original paper.

Structured Word Inquiry (SWI)

I’ve been writing a bit recently about word inquiry. I wasn’t aware of structured word inquiry as a branded approach – if you’re interested then here’s a useful site explaining the methodology.

What have I been up to this month?

ESL projects – dabbling with AI tools a bit. Some publishers have in-house AI tools these days (the engine of which is still things like OpenAI). Fascinating to see how it’s being used.
Thinking about what a genuinely solid syllabus from an accelerated/intensive programme would look like, and shaping some loose ideas. I have concerns about general English coursebooks creeping back into EAL domains, so I’m trying to shape something more purposeful. Just as a pet project, no end user yet. I’ll share my ideas down the line.
I’ve written drafts for our book on some interesting topics. Lots of vocab, hence my current academic reading vibes. And some stuff on inclusive pedagogy.

What have you all been up to? Please let me know in comments here or on the socials.

EAL infographics

Duncan Rose, an EAL teacher (I think) based in Singapore, has started sharing these little AI-generated infographics on key EAL ideas. I mean, they look AI-assisted to me anyway, but I could be wrong:

They are simple and shareable with colleagues. I can’t say whether they’ll all be valuable, but I’d suggest following the guy just in case a good shareable pops up. He’ll probably collate them into a free download booklet and that might be useful for some.

If you only read one EAL thing this month…

Heddle are advertising for an associate EAL specialist