Language Education
EAL, French language acquisition, and applied linguistics — unified by the belief that every language in the room is an asset, not a barrier.
Overview
Three disciplines, one coherent vision of language teaching
My work in language education sits at the intersection of English as an Additional Language (EAL), French MFL teaching, and Applied Linguistics. These three fields are too often treated in isolation — but together they form a richer, more theoretically grounded approach to supporting learners who are working in, through, or acquiring new languages.
Whether scaffolding academic English for a newly arrived student, designing a French lesson that draws on contrastive analysis, or using SLA research to challenge a school’s grouping practices — the same conviction runs through it all: every learner’s linguistic repertoire is an asset to build on.
Connecting Threads
SLA theory informing both EAL and MFL classroom practice
Contrastive linguistics — using learners’ L1 as a scaffold
Translanguaging as a pedagogical tool across EAL and French
Critical language awareness — whose language is privileged?
Sociolinguistics of multilingual classrooms across Africa and Europe
Subcategories
Three areas within language education
Each subcategory has its own dedicated articles and resources. They are designed to be read together as well as independently.
EAL & Language Acquisition
Supporting multilingual learners to access the curriculum and develop academic language — not despite their home languages, but through them. Draws on Krashen, Cummins, and translanguaging frameworks.
French Language Acquisition
MFL pedagogy grounded in second language acquisition research — moving beyond grammar drills to communicative competence, contrastive analysis, and meaning-making in context.
Applied Linguistics
The research engine room of good language teaching. SLA theory, sociolinguistics, translanguaging, language and identity — made practical for classroom teachers and school leaders.
EAL in practice
Beyond withdrawal: what genuine EAL support looks like
Too many schools still treat EAL as a temporary condition to be fixed through withdrawal groups and English-only immersion. Applied linguistics tells us something different: acquisition is a long, cognitively demanding process that benefits from meaningful input, low-anxiety environments, and permission to use the full linguistic repertoire.
This section explores what truly supportive EAL provision looks like — from lesson design to whole-school strategy.
French MFL
Teaching French through the lens of how language is actually acquired
My French teaching is shaped by applied linguistics — understanding why learners make the errors they do and using that knowledge to design more responsive, less anxiety-inducing lessons. Communicative competence over grammar drills. Real contexts over isolated exercises.
Particularly relevant for teachers working with EAL learners who are simultaneously acquiring English — a rich and underexplored third-language context.
“A child who walks into school speaking Kiswahili, Yoruba, or Wolof does not arrive with a language deficit. They arrive with a cognitive advantage — if only we design classrooms wise enough to use it.”
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