According to OFSTED (2022: online), pupils' proficiency in English, especially in reading, is essential to their academic achievement and serves as a gateway to other subject areas in the curriculum. Because of this, the national curriculum was updated to include the statement that 'English language competence is a necessary basis for success in all courses' (OFSTED, 2022: online). Moreover, OFSTED (2020) reports that children who speak English as a second language struggle with various language and communication skills. And in terms of being better at comprehending the increasingly challenging written material they are exposed to; children of all ages need to acquire a wide variety of abilities where pupils need knowledge of vocabulary, context, grammar, and the basic outline of a story in order to have reading comprehension (EEF, 2016).
Understanding how EAL pupils acquire text comprehension and what reading approaches could be used to enhance EAL children's comprehension skills in the upper KS1 classroom is the purpose of my research. In addition, it will have a major impact on my professional development as a teacher, as well as on my ability to develop effective lessons and teach pupils the skill of reading with comprehension.