Writing challenges of children learning EAL

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) have been shown to have specific problems in reading comprehension. However, there has been little research to date investigating their writing skills in English, despite this being an area of national concern for primary school children.

This controlled empirical study will systematically compare children learning EAL and native-speaking children, and will identify the specific linguistic challenges that children learning EAL face with their English writing. The two groups of children will be assessed on a set of measures to analyse their writing skills at word, sentence and text level in two genres (narrative and expository). Researchers will assess the children at two time points within the school year to identify whether their writing has developed, and if so then how.

This research will be used to develop intervention-based projects to improve the writing skills of children learning EAL.