Competence in English language literacy can be assumed to be an essential factor for the competitive market in the context of the 21 st Century globalization. However, in some cases, pupils learning English as an additional language in same classroom are not homogenous due to their diverse background experiences (Conteh, 2015). For instance, in the UK, there are over 1.5 million EAL learners (Bell, 2019) whereas, Cinkara (2017) in Turkey's context, Turkey welcomed around 2.523.554 Syrian refugees. This study reports the processes of reading English by two Arabic native speaker pupils. Salah (pseudonym) 9-year-old, without prior formal and informal education who was admitted to Year 4 in West of England primary school, UK. Ahmed (pseudonym), 8 years old in Year 3 in a South Turkey school learning English as a subject, possible as his third language, in addition to Arabic and Turkish. The study aims to understand the ways to improve these pupils' English language reading skills. Action research and structured interviews were used to collect the participants' data. Thematic analysis was used to identify the themes of the structured interview. It was found that the whole-word approach when reading a word, is the preference for both participants rather than the phonic approach. Further research with larger sample and encouragement of cross-border professional co-operation to improve refugees' Basic English reading skills is recommended.

The question of whether classroom reading activities in primary schools in England can be solely relied on to be sufficient for English as additional language (EAL) pupils to comprehend English text was the focus of the paper. Two case studies where Somali origin EAL pupils involved in learning English reading comprehension were utilized as a springboard to develop my argument that parents are an intrinsic part of developing pupils’ English comprehension as they may constitute financially less expensive and rich resources in terms of cultural experiences. Furthermore, England’s education policy regarding EAL pupils, reading for comprehension, and factors that influence it: vocabulary knowledge, teacher -students ratio in England school and parental involvement in schools were explored to provide an answer for the question of whether only reading for comprehension activities in the classroom is enough to promote the understanding of EAL Somali origin. It was argued that only those activities are not sufficient, and there is a need for the use of parents as resources to enrich the text input, which potentially increases the comprehension skills of Somali origin EAL pupils.