Literacy for All: quality language education for few

Abstract

With a focus on educational provision the area of English as a second language (ESL), this paper takes stock of developments in the last 10 years since the inception of the Australian Literacy for All policy in 1998. A review of the issue is timely, not least because of the recent window of opportunity afforded by the first change of government at the federal level for more than a decade. More than this political imperative, though, is a consideration of what contemporary research now reveals about the nature of second language development itself, and the implications this raises for the teaching and learning of English to students from language backgrounds other than English. As such, the b..