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?

FFS OP I'm getting frustrated at you ignoring the point - classing a child as ESL is just that - a classification - it's NOT saying every ESL child is struggling - I can't understand why you don't grasp this.

I don't really know where to start with this!

EAL students make very different errors in their English to native English speakers and accordingly need to be supported differently - even if their English is good, it's still helpful for a teacher to know that they are EAL.

Children are different and learn at different speeds. Many children struggle with language acquisition and literacy even if they are only exposed to one language. Surely you know this?

I struggled with an 11 year old EAL child in my class for nearly a year (secondary), beating myself up about what I was doing wrong. It wasn't until the school finally funded a specialist teacher and found someone to translate that I was told he had learning difficulties and barely had a grasp of his first language.

ESOL funding is appalling. When I taught in London we had one teacher for the whole borough - as a secondary of 1,200 students we got him one afternoon a week. What honestly could he have achieved? ESOL for adults isn't funded at all and costs a fortune. I now teach many many mums who are isolated from forming friendships because of a language barrier. I can't imagine there isn't a knock on effect for the children there.

So yeah, stuff like that.

Clara - if you want to advance strong opinions on this issue you would do well to read research into plurilingualism rather than rely on your quite limited personal observations.

I suspect the acquisition of French is easier when mummy and daddy take you to France for a year, than say the acquisition of English after you have escaped a war torn country, had two of your siblings die, spent a considerable amount of time in a refugee camp and are now dealing with effects of malnutrition and trauma.

Not all students learning a second language begin in an comparable position.

How is it mystifying? as many people here have explained, most of those kids you are talking about probably speak perfect english and you wouldn't hear any difference BUT their vocabulary and grammar may not be on par as I am sure your french at 8 wasn't!

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.

To be fair, I was not bystanding in France, I was actually at school and had to take their end of year exams.

But I would love to know what the academic research says on this topic. Specifically about children who arrive in the early years of primary school where English is the main language heard in the playground.

Having classrooms with lot's of kids who don't speak English has the benefits of both draining the Education Budget and affecting your children's education.

I give zero ***s if that triggers anyone.

Most children are not fluent in another language after a year - this is a myth and often causes problems in ex-pats who move overseas. Even primary age children do not learn that fast.

Even before the fact that they may not have encountered certain grammatical constructs in a year at school. That at home they will still be spoken to in their home language. They may not have someone to read to at home. Etc. They are only in school for about 6 hours a day, if their home life is in another language that is more of the day.

You also were almost certainly not "indistinguishable" in a year, your teachers and friends may have understood you very well, but I would be pretty certain that you made grammatical errors/accent errors etc.

With respect, how on earth did you know that your language use was "the same" as your peers? That's one of those areas where you would naturally think that you on point and weren't missing anything when to everyone else there would've been an appreciable gap.

That's really interesting BertieBotts. Thank you.

oh very interesting A4710Rider do you have some facts to back that up?

Incidentally--if you look at "language learner" kids across Europe (kids arriving in the UK with no English, vs kids arriving in Sweden with no Swedish, kids arriving in Denmark with no Danish, kids arriving in Italy with no Italian etc.)Britain actually has the best performance of pretty much anywhere.

Our ESL kids mostly perform on-par or very slightly better than non-ESL by most measures, by secondary age.

In most European countries, it's a different story, with immigrant kids typically doing a lot worse than regular native-born kids.

I do think that the fact that our national language is English (a massively internationalized language) helps us a lot (immigrant parents are more likely to come to the UK already speaking English, unlike immigrants to Sweden or whatever who most often don't know a word of Swedish when they arrive; this means that immigrant parents in the UK probably find it easier to support their kids through the school system and so on).

However, it's also testament to the good job that the UK system (mostly) does with our language-learners.

Claraetal

What is your point? Of course there are differences between our primary schools and those in France or Denmark. In the UK we acknowledge that children who are not native speakers will have poorer language skills than native speakers (as is firmly established by research). Some of them might need additional support, others won't. What's your problem with this?

My DD is bilingual. Her stronger language is the minority language, even though she has lived all her life in the same country and attended local schools. She is an excellent student but less good at her majority language than she would be if she were monolingual. This is normal.

Because in many cases they are only exposed to the voculabary of the classroom.
The majority of the language of home, trips out, TV, books, discussions that might come up, are all in the parents mother tongue, or could be in low quality English.
The E2L kids simily just aren't exposed to the amount of English monolingual kids are exposed to.

That's a fair question anothersnappyfarter . I guess I mean the following. When I went to French friends' houses their parents would sometimes enquire whether I was really British whereas earlier in the year they just knew. The same for when I spoke to strangers in France where earlier in the year they would assume I was foreign and then later in the year they stopped assuming this. I also did perfectly well in the end of year of exams.

The younger they are, the easier it is, I am sure.
When we lived in the Gulf we had Swedish neighbours, and with no Swedish school the only option was the English-speaking one. But they wouldn't take them without a certain level of English.
The girl was just 5 and after just one month at an English speaking nursery, her English was good enough for the school.
The boy was a year or so older, and it did take him a bit longer.

However after what seemed like a very short time (they played a lot with our dds) you'd never have known that they weren't native speakers.
Although both the parents had good English, they obv. spoke Swedish at home, so it wasn't a question of practice there.

I dare say that playing a lot with English speaking children after school (it was mornings only) did help.

There is a huge difference between play date fluency and deep academic and cultural fluency, Clara. You are taking a very superficial view of language development.

There are many issues involved that affect acquisition of new languages, it's really not as simple as you suggest.

For one, there is research to show that children who have a good grasp of their first language and are exposed to a wide vocabulary and range of expression pick up a second language much more easily because those pathways have already been laid.

It's very easy to google the research.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/pisa-oecd-rankings-uk-schools-falling-behind-leading-countries-global-international-singapore-a7458751.html

Coincides with the UK's population rise.
– up from £204 million in 2011*

"Having classrooms with lot's of kids who don't speak English has the benefits of both draining the Education Budget and affecting your children's education.

I give zero *s if that triggers anyone. "

Would you care to provide some evidence for this?

What do you want them to do? Stay at home where they can't learn English at all?

Bit rich of you to be complaining about people's English skills affecting education when you don't even know how to use apostrophes correctly.

Bit of a C&P error there, obviously.

We are in France, dc are pretty fluent, in top half of class in French in the last assessment, but still French is their second language.

Bit rich of you to be complaining about people's English skills affecting education when you don't even know how to use apostrophes correctly

Only if you're a pathetic pedant.

You appear to be unable to use the highlight & bold function but you don't find me whining about it.

Rider that link makes no mention of ESL students though