Most EAL beginner students are on the preproduction stage (silent language) of language acquisition, some of them are those who are on early production stage (social language). When I get a new EAL child my primary concern is to help him/her to adjust and build confidence. First couple of weeks the performance standard needs to be reasonable, sometimes even a bit lower than the child’s ZPD. As comfort increases the requirements are increased accordingly. As for me, the most important teaching strategy is the extensive use of visual clues and ICT.
