The Q-BEx Project: Creating a Tool to Document Bilingual Language Experience

As a part of the Q-BEx project, we created an online tool for schools to use as part of their assessment of needs for EAL children. The tool consists of an online questionnaire (for parents to fill in) and an automatic report generator, which can be used to draw a language profile of individual EAL children. The tool can be customised to elicit different amount of information. As a minimum, this report will include:

• the amount of experience the child has had in English and in their Home Language(s)
• an indication of whether their experience with English should already be sufficient for them to have “caught up” with their monolingual peers

The reports obtained through the Q-BEx questionnaire can help teachers gather relevant information about each child’s linguistic background. For instance, if a report shows that a child has had sufficient exposure to English, but is still struggling with it, this is an indication that the child should be referred for assessment by a language specialist. Currently, we are working with teachers, teaching assistants and EAL coordinators to help us gather feedback about the ease-of-use and accessibility of the questionnaire for caregivers and children. Please get in touch if you would like to join this part of the project.