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?

Idon'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.

Nothing is going on. It's just a label for extra funding. (Or at least there used to be). I remember the question was English as an additional language? Or that if the children speak another language at home. Both my DC have that ticked, but neither can speak a sentence of the other language. DC1 can speak a few words, DC2 speak none. But because I speak it, therefore they have ESL on their information. They are bilingual but native and fluent only in English.

So I'm not sure what you are actually complaining about?

I think it’s used as it’s still relevant if their parents don’t speak English at home.

My DCs go to a central London school and probably most of the parents speak a different language at home. When you speak to the children of Russian, Chinese, Belgian, French, Somali, Pakistan, Ethiopian, Spanish etc heritage they are all relatively well spoken English children - indeed they have what my mum calls a ‘posh’ voice because they aren’t hearing really Cockney accents all the time as the teachers are from all over the place too.

The disadvantage is for those children whose parents can’t read and speak English well- their parents can’t support them nearly so well and don’t engage with the school anywhere like as much.

I can assure you that 'academic fluency' is an issue in lower primary - and it's an issue that as a teacher I am becoming more and more aware of. My class is about 1/3 English as a first language, 2/3 ESL. Many speak several languages.
I am noticing that I need to do a lot of work on concepts of place and position (on, in, above, below, next to, top, bottom, left, right...) and spend lots of extra time on mathematical language (esp. shape, space and measure (straight, curved, corner, edge, side, face, tall/er/est, short/er/set)).
So you have children who are picking up the structure and grammar of the language, plus learning new concepts and the (sometimes quite precise) vocab that goes with it. And some go home to a family who don't speak English to them, so their only exposure is school and TV. I can tell the difference when they come back after Christmas/ Easter hols as they haven't been practising.

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.

You can't seriously think this proves anything? It's a sample of one without anything to compare it to. People you meet have no idea what you're vocabulary is like they have no idea of you're reading comprehension and they're likely to be complimentary to be polite. Why did you only do fine in exams, maybe you should have done really well? How do you know what level you would have achieved had you been a native speaker?

Do people really think important questions within our education system should be determined by random anecdote from one person and we should completely dismiss years of firmly established research?

www.ft.com/content/15cb77b0-7fc3-11e4-adff-00144feabdc0

Educations standards failing. But we're all to liberal and hand wringing to state the truth behind the cause.

Knowing that a student is EAL in your class is incredibly helpful. When children don’t speak English at home, it’s more likely there are gaps in their knowledge and understanding, relating to English. Teachers who have knowledge that the student is EAL can anticipate difficulties and give them hurdle help where needed. As an example...I had an EAL boy in year 10 so about 15 years old... had been in school since reception, but didn’t speak English at home, during one lesson it became obvious he was struggling, and didn’t really understand something. We were talking about a disco....he had no idea what we were talking about. He’d never come across that word before and so was at a bit of a loss in the discussion, until we explained it to him. That’s just one random example, but there are countless things that would otherwise be assumed that a student would know, but why would they if they only experience English at school? I am an assessor for Access Arrangements for exams and this is why some EAL students can have language dictionaries in exams... imagine an exam question hinged on a word you hadn’t experienced before? That would really throw you! We keep track of EAL students as sometimes they have to work harder than those who are at school with their first language

In terms of what my point is, I really don't have one :) It has always just mystified me.

As specific examples, a teacher recently told me that one of the problems in the playground was children whose first language isn't English not being able to understand the games being explained to them by other children or not being to understand when children explain they have broken a rule. Another explained the challenges they have with different academic standards in the class implying that children whose first language isn't English will of course find the material more different. These are children who started in the school in reception!!

Yes - DS1 has said some children at school don't believe that he speaks English at home. So I believe that you can't tell. What I don't believe is that his total vocabulary is comparable to the total vocabulary of his German peers. I only ever speak German to him when his friends are here (because I want his friends to understand!) - my German isn't even anywhere close to his so me speaking German to him has no benefit as I won't increase his vocabulary. It's more beneficial for me to reinforce his English.

It works the same the other way, BTW - once they start learning English at school (they are on French at the moment), even once the other pupils get to the point of fluency in English, their English vocabulary is going to be far less than my children's because ours are constantly exposed to English at home, we have English books all over the house, we access English TV, English news and tend to discuss all kinds of topics - from silly to serious - in English. The German kids with German parents won't have that. So it does even out along the way but it is useful for schools to recognise that children not speaking the majority language at home will have a certain lack of background language which the native speakers will be more likely to have.

Hun the bold function is nothing to do with speaking the English language. And your post already had * in it, I don't know if that would've affected it; so I thought it would be faster to use speech marks. Which aren't incorrect, but I digress.

You haven't answered the rest of my post. What do you want them to do? Deny them an education because they can't speak English? You know kids learn over time, right? You just want them to stay at home?

My cousins both teach in a primary school with very few British born children. Some of the children they teach leave primary school illiterate. Their parents don’t turn up to parents evening, they themselves don’t speak English and very little support for their children to learn and integrate is offered by them. My cousins said it is very confusing for the children to go home and be talked to in one language, then come to school and have another. With regards to reading, they are taught to read Arabic at home which is of course right to left, hugely conflicting.

Also bear in mind that reception aged children will still be learning their first language, still at simple grammar stage, vocab still growing, still learning to read, and if their parents want fluency in both languages they will appear to be slower at first, so one year at that age to achieve anything near fluency (beyond play date fluency as another poster has said) for all children is utterly unrealistic. Also there is fluency and fluency - my French is not bad, but put me in the midst of nattering parents who have all known each other since school then it is still a struggle!!

DD (and I think 4 others in her year classed as ESL as English is not their main language spoken at home.

DD and all the others are born here, speak English with a cute local accent and unless you know it you wouldn’t guess that some of them are bi-lingual or in one case tri-lingual.

It is a way for schools to log information for the government and also to apply for extra funds and with the current funding situation I do not mind my daughter being responsible for extra money even if she does not need it.

edition.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html

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

But it's still the case that they really only speak, read and hear English at school.
It's still a second language, not mother tongue.

My English, for example, is, I'd say, pretty good. Better than for some (e.g. your/you're, should of/should've! ). But it still is and will always be a second language for me. I know I don't get some subtleties that come with a first language.

Yes, i have a similar experience to bertie. My kids are in Welsh school but they don't encounter much Welsh outside of a school environment. I can imagine it being the same for some kids with ESL if they live in a community of people speaking their first language. My children are very much fluent in Welsh but it's not their first language and they won't speak it as well as those who have brought up in Welsh speaking households.

It is a way for schools to log information for the government and also to apply for extra funds and with the current funding situation I do not mind my daughter being responsible for extra money even if she does not need it.

This seems makes sense.

Claraetal

Well you asked why our education system distinguishes these children from native speakers and it's been explained to you. So I guess that clears it up.

With respect to *mousefunky's" comment.

So the teacher has to spend a lot more time with these children, meaning other people's children suffer. It's completely obvious.

It's just a shame that people will accept children's educations are being comprimised for the sake of liberalism.

I taught in a school where we had large numbers of students who were EAL. They tended to cluster in friendship groups based on native language/culture so often the only English they'd be hearing would be from the teachers. And they wouldn't be hearing/reading English at home. I once tried to encourage one student who was frustrated that her English wasn't improving to get her parents to let her watch English TV and take her to the library to borrow books in English, but she said her dad thought British culture was wicked and wouldn't let her watch our TV or read our literature.

My kids are in Welsh school but they don't encounter much Welsh outside of a school environment

Why have you sent them to a Welsh school then?

ErictheGuineaPig Actually you make a great point. Maybe I am comparing children who only ever hear the native language of the country except when at home (me in France, the children in Denmark) so get total immersion with children who are somehow sheltered from the native language of the country except when at school. Maybe...

Even if a child is fluent in English by the end of the year, they are still not in the same position as kids whose parents are also native English speakers. If their parents don't have English as a first language the kids won't be getting the same support from home with their reading and spelling, they won't have anyone correcting their spoken grammar outside of school etc. It makes total sense that they would need the extra support from school to account for this.

Why have you sent them to a Welsh school then?

It's relatively common that the Welsh language school has the highest standards locally.

But they might well find material more difficult, because classroom materials use challenging language, ie, vocabulary which might have never been used within the classroom, but which pupils are likely to have come across through their exposure to things outside the classroom such as news programmes, books, discussions with parents, etc.

Even as a native speaker I sometimes came across words at school which I'd never heard before and needed explaining to me or which I had to look up in a dictionary. That would be much more frequent for an ESL child. Even just for silly things like spelling practice - a (native English) mum I know recently was baffled at needing to explain the word "obscene" to their child who had brought it home in a spelling list (they needed to write the words into sentences.)

The playground understanding issue sounds more like something which would predominantly affect children new to the language and/or new to the school. Or could be teachers projecting issues which aren't there, of course.

I think that the use of and attitude towards languages at home has a big impact. There is surely going to be a big difference between children who go home and hear and speak their first language and those whose families use English pretty much all the time. We have French friends here who seem to speak French at home, have French TV and radio on etc. I think it has an impact on their DCs whose English is very good but still sounds translated rather than fluent after several years in this country.