Abstract:
In this paper, I argue for a response to the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students
that is both high challenge and high support. In elaborating this argument I draw on an English
literature programme that was designed for a year 7 boys' class (the first year of high school) in
an Australian public school. The students in the programme were diverse in terms of their
socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds and although academically capable, required on-going
English language support. Although all were English as a Second Language (ESL) students, they
worked in a 'mainstream' class, and were expected to participate in full content instruction of all
key curricul urn areas.
In the paper, I focus in particular, on the ways in which the teacher, in a Unit of work on Romeo
and Juliet, drew on socially oriented theories both of learning and of language to articulate the
nature of the challenge that students faced in their engagement with academic language in the
mainstream curriculum. I suggest that the ways in which the teacher wove both content and
language teaching in her lessons. Her explicit teaching of language, as well as her ability to
incorporate drama into the Unit, contributed to her students' successful learning of intellectually
challenging curriculum content and their affective engagement with that content. The teacher's approach to ESL learning in a mainstream content classroom, I suggest, provided a constructive
and positive alternative to the more common response of modifying the curriculum for ESL
learners.
