As language users, we all have different varieties that we draw on as we conduct our everyday lives. For example, the language resources that we need for a doctor’s consultation are different to those we use when we chat on the phone to a friend. Similarly, the language that we use to write a student report is different to that of a text message.
For most people in the world, language resources include not only different forms of the one language but also different language varieties; for example, Portuguese and English; Tagalog and English; Tongan and English; Arabic and Swahili; German and Dutch.
The interesting feature of languages use is that people will have different levels of competence in different varieties, depending on their language needs in life. For example, a Brazilian-background EAL school student might have greater proficiency in English than her Portuguese-speaking mother and act as a language broker between her mother and a doctor during a medical consultation. The student is the conduit between her mother and the doctor, codeswitching between the different language varieties to facilitate her mother’s health care.
The language profiles of EAL migrant and refugee students are varied and dependent on factors such as:
- Length of Residence (LOR) in Australia and Age On Arrival (AOA)
- Interrupted or no schooling in the home language;
- all schooling in the Australian system but with a language other than English spoken at home;
- developed oral skills but no reading and writing skills in the home language;
- developed oracy and literacy in the home language.