This chapter provides a longitudinal analysis of progression in a sample of EAL students newly arrived in the United Kingdom, highlighting the development of competence in different features of English language use in speaking and writing. In addition, we discuss evidence of change in the students’ experience of social integration as revealed in two sets of interviews with EAL students of different ages and national backgrounds and we consider how the students’ reported experience of social integration impacted on their linguistic and academic performance in the school over the two-year period following arrival. The chapter closes with an examination of the use of direct speech in English as a discursive framework in which they were able to dramatise their social experiences and to self-identify in the new environment.