Our first issue arrived yesterday. Hundreds of NALDIC members all around the country will have woken to a quiet thump on the mat and already begun reading; many more will be looking forward to a quiet moment to savour it as they prepare for the start of a new school year.
Let me take a moment to say thank you to the team that made it possible: Carrie Cable, Hamish Chalmers, Catharine Driver, Diane Leedham, Constant Leung, Vicky Macleroy, Frank Monaghan, Nandhaka Pieris, Kamil Trzebiatowski and Manny Vazquez. The team of associate editors will change with each issue as we contribute in our areas of expertise and according to our workload, but the first issue was an immense job and their work should be recognised.
And now … it’s over to you! We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts, comments, suggestions and recommendations. You can leave a message below, get in touch through the contact form on this website, or email me at r.sharples@naldic.org.uk.
Best wishes,
Robert Sharples
Editor, EAL Journal
EAL Journal 
[…] Source: Our first issue […]
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[…] We have very little opportunity for whole-staff EAL training at my school, so we are always going to struggle to share our specialist knowledge with subject teachers. From this perspective, you might think I’d welcome the opportunity to involve teachers in the assessment of our learners – and I do. However, this is not the way to do it: asking them to make judgements based on a set of rather vague ‘stages’ without having an opportunity to learn more about language assessment. I think all teachers, whatever they teach, like precision. As such, the stage descriptors will only bring confusion, not clarity. In fact, I think it is somewhat insulting to anyone teaching young people to present them with such imprecision Luckily, we can use guides produced by the EAL community – such as the the very helpful Solihull guide, which makes the ever-so-important distinction between the four language skills, and the detailed guidance in the EAL Journal. […]
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