Not to understand why primary children aren't fluent in English after a year

[Claraetal]

I don't understand why primary school aged children, who arrive in reception not being able to speak English, are still considered as "English as Second Language" (ESL) for pretty much their whole time in primary school as far as I can tell. The teachers talk about them as if not being to speak, read, write English perfectly is a permanent state and I don't get it. Surely by year 1 they should be at the same level as everyone else. Let me try to explain why I am not insane... :)

I myself was moved to France with my parents as an 8 year old for a year. My parents are English and English speaking as were all of my friends before I moved. I was sent to an entirely French school at the start of the school year. It was a little tough but by Christmas I could speak French and some time between then and the end of the school year I was pretty much indistinguishable from the other kids.

As another and maybe better example, I spent some time in Denmark this year. There I spoke to English speaking families whose primary school aged kids had been sent to normal Danish language schools. They said the same thing. That is that after 6 months or so their children were pretty much fluent and after a year they couldn't really be told apart from their class mates. In these cases their parents couldn't speak a word of Danish on arrival and were still pretty terrible after a year.

I get it if the class or school doesn't have English as the majority language. In that case you are lacking the total immersion effect. But I am talking about our local schools where English is the only language commonly heard in the playground. I don't buy the story that it is because their parents don't speak English or that they don't speak English at home as that was exactly the same for me with French and also for all the ex-pat families in Denmark.

So what is going on?

Welcome to mumsnet op

could you maybe elaborate on what you are asking? when you say 'the teachers talk about them' what teachers do you mean and where is this talking happen. You do understand, don't you, that ESL children in other years of schooling will not necessarily have been speaking English since reception?

What do you think is going on?

'where is this talking happening?' that post should say

I think it is down to not speaking English at home. I know adults who have been here ten years and don’t know the language. I find that really odd. I couldn’t imagine living in another country for so long and not being able to communicate, even if they could understand English. I would feel extremely rude and like an imposter almost as well.

If English was not the first language they learned...then it is their second language.

Obvious surely? There's no saying they're not fluent...they may be. But it's still their second language.

People are different OP.

Some pick up languages easily, others don’t.

Some families are better at encouraging their children to speak English, other parents , who maybe don’t speak English themselves, aren’t.

It’s all normal.

ESL is just a way of categorising children who may be in need of additional support - it's applied to all children for whom the home language is not English - some do not need any help - others more so

hardly worth getting in a knot about

Older children coming in and going down the esol route may not even be literate in their first language (thinking of UASC ) so it's a lot harder to be literate in English.

I'm 48 and British born and bred and I wouldn;t class myself a fluent in English btw!

Are you asking why some children aren't able to fully grasp the language or why they are considered EAL when they can speak the language? Sorry if thats me being dim but I don't see a clear question

You do understand, don't you, that ESL children in other years of schooling will not necessarily have been speaking English since reception?

Yes absolutely. But the same general argument applies. After 6 months to a year they should be at the same level of English as their peers unless there is something different about our primary schools than the schools in France and Denmark.

English is not their mother tongue. It's not the first language they learned. Therefore by definition it will always be their 2nd language. Thus the ESL terminology is entirely correct.

Speaking English at home is detrimental to an EAL child’s language learning, the parents should speak in their first language. It takes 2 years to become socially fluent in a language and 5-7 to become academically fluent. In addition, some of these children will have learning difficulties and other special needs which will make it more difficult for them.

again it's just a school recording issue OP - just as they record other things that may impact education

I am the mother of a bilingual child and am somewhat involved in issues connected with bilingualism.

Children can easily acquire what I can "playground fluency" in a language quite quickly. But it does not mean that their language will genuinely be on the same level as their peers so soon.

In the context of school, teachers are interested in things like vocabulary size, because it is hard to write well or make sense of challenging texts unless you have a good vocabulary. It takes years to acquire a good vocab in a new language. Children also have to learn to read and write in the target language, which simply takes time.

The ballpark figures I have heard is that when a primary school aged child enters a country with no knowledge of the national language, it will take 2-3 years minimum for their spoken language to be on-par with their peers, and then another two years on top of that before their academics will be at grade level. And those are conservative/minimum estimates, to be honest. When a child does not speak the national/school language at home, there are often long-standing gaps in things like vocabulary size.

Your memory of being an 8yo may be that "I was indistinguishable from the other kids after a year," but frankly, this is hardly an objective or scientific verification of your language abilities all those year ago. Those who research bilingualism and do things like conduct testing on children, typically discover the sort of outcomes that I mention above--that children are not little sponges, that it takes time (loads and loads of time) to build up a strong vocabulary, that everyday surface fluency is not the same as being able to handle and produce high-level reading and writing.

1. Not all kids are the same. Some easily manage 4 accent-free languages. Some struggle to maintain two and speak both with an accent.

1. It's overstating the case that kids are indistinguishable in language skills after a year. Vocab can be very location-specific. A child can know all the school words (board, marker, essay, teaching assistant) but not be able to name the parts of a bike (spoke, pedal, hub) because you don't need bike vocab in school. Idiomatic phrases can also be very hard for second language kids to pick up. This makes less difference for small children, but can become noticeably at secondary school.

1. Languages don't just happen. They require work. Maybe you didn't feel it as a little kid, but the energy you used to learn French wasn't available for other things. If you read in your second language, that's time you're not reading in your first.

And finally - what's the problem? All kids should get the help they need to succeed at school. Kids with ESL may need some specific help. What's wrong with giving it to them? I bet most kids with ESL in the state system would benefit from some extra language help but don't get it. Maybe they won't need it for long, or maybe they will - depends on the kid.

After 6 months to a year they should be at the same level of English as their peers unless there is something different about our primary schools than the schools in France and Denmark

There are schools in the UK that are almost 100% E2L. English isn't a commonly heard language in the playground.

what's your take on the situation op?

JacquesHammer In those schools I completely see that there is no total immersion and so the children might learn English very slowly.

It's the schools where all they hear all day is English that are mystifying.

It takes several years for ESL children to acquire the depth of vocabulary and expression of a native speaker monolingual child. Playground fluency and academic fluency are very different beasts.

This is a subject where there is a great deal of academic research. You have to go far deeper than mere observation by bystanding to understand the issues raised by bilingual language development.

After a year there is no way their level of English will be up to the level of a child who is a native English speaker (although they'll probably be able to communicate enough to get by). It's also likely they don't have someone helping them read English at home (if their parents aren't fluent English speakers).

I'm not sure what you expect people to say.

Are you trying to imply that teachers in this country are rubbish and teachers in other countries are better?

user1499173618 I realise this is stated as a fact by many school teachers, but I just don't believe it. Think about what academic fluency means in practice at primary school, in particular in the first few years.

I live surrounded by plurilingual children (and adults). The issues are ongoing.

Maybe schools get extra funding based on ESL numbers so it's in their interest to keep them marked as ESL even after the child no longer needs extra support.

BottleOfJameson My point was that neither did I in France and neither did any of the kids in Denmark. I don't buy that argument at all.

It is useful for them to be flagged as ESL if they don't have the English back up at home which other children will have. Just because a child becomes fluent in a language within school it doesn't mean they won't have difficulties. We have a similar situation in that DS1 is at school here in Germany, he had 2 years in a German Kindergarten before starting school, and he was still classed as DAF (German as a foreign language) when he started school. In fact, he was prevented from starting school a year earlier despite being technically old enough because at the time they were doing the assessments, he had only 6 months of German and wasn't yet fluent. He was fluent enough by a year and IMO would have been fine, but it was too late to enter him by then.

Anyway, in the first and second year and first half of the third year of school his German grades were just as good as the native speaker children. They didn't have any problems with him at all. He was enrolled in extra classes with all of the other DAF pupils but by the third year, this was deemed unnecessary, and he doesn't do the extra classes any more.

In the second half of this year, however, his grades have started falling. I think this is inevitable, because the children are now 8-10 years old. At this age, they're starting to be more aware of the wider world. Most of them read for pleasure. DS1 doesn't - if he reads, he reads in English. That's fantastic for exposing him to more English vocabulary than he gets by watching Youtube and chatting with us, but I'm conscious that his German vocabulary is basically limited to anything he comes into contact with at school - which means it's playground slang from the other children, basic functional German for everyday interaction, and then very clear, direct language which teachers and other authoritative adults tend to use with children, plus any specific vocabulary on a topic which teachers introduce. He doesn't read in German, he doesn't watch German TV, and he doesn't discuss things with us (his parents) in German, so while his peers' vocabulary is becoming more sophisticated because they do these things, he just doesn't have that exposure and I think that is likely to be a problem as the pace of learning and expected general knowledge is now rapidly accelerating. He knows things but he won't necessarily have the language to express it, and that might make things harder for him the further he moves up in school. He doesn't need the extra classes or support with understanding the basics any more, and if you spoke to him in German you probably wouldn't know that he hasn't spoken it from birth. He even says that he feels more comfortable in German and has to think more about English. But there is likely to be a discrepancy, and so it's useful for us (for him really) to have access to the DAF support should he need it later on. I think he'd do absolutely fine without it, but it's definitely nice to know it's there, I think there's a potential for his progress to be slowed without it.

ESL children are likely to have these exact same issues.