Seminars in term 2 will be held online weekly on Wednesdays at 12pm.

Speaker

Dr Marta Wesierska

Talk title

Language and literacy of Polish pupils learning English as an additional language in the UK

Abstract

Children’s reading comprehension difficulties can lead to lower performance at school and limited access to the curriculum. Reading may be a particular challenge for those children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL). Within this population of pupils, Polish is one of the most commonly spoken mother tongues. This presentation will outline the language and literacy abilities of a group of Polish EAL pupils in early education, benchmarking their performance against their monolingual peers in both languages. Relationships between the constructs of reading comprehension, decoding and language comprehension will also be considered both within each language as well as across the two languages. The relevance of these findings for EAL learners in the school setting as well as practical implications and future directions will also be discussed.

For TEAMS link, or if you are interested in giving a talk, please contact Dr Jesse Preston j.preston@warwick.ac.uk

"This departmental talk series is a good chance for us to gather as a group, and to hear about some of the cool work that is being done by colleagues in the department. Presentations are fairly low-key. These may be a lab-style presentation with discussion, or a more formal talk. Any PGR or post-grads who wish to give practice talks, this is your opportunity to do so! "