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?

Immigrants with ESL on average do better in the long term than native speakers.

Oh I see you're just causing trouble

Apologies, it was flippant of me.

I've said all I need to say.

A much more interesting subject, IMO, is why IQ levels are falling and what should be done about it.

I've only read the Op not the whole thread. I have to say Op you are talking from a position of ignorance here. I supported ESL pupils for five years and I can tell you few children attain the level of a native speaker even after seven years of primary. There will always be things they need support in. Even children who are able to communicate fluently still need academic support.

When I was a primary teacher I had several children join my classes with no English at all.

Learning English as a 2nd language is F###ing hard!!!!

Teaching a pupil with no shared language is also f###ing hard! Hours spent creating bilingual topic vocabulary lists to send home. Egyptians in Bulgarian. Tudors in Polish.
Buying biligual reading books with my own money.
No support from the local authority.
Teaching myself other alphabets so that I can write biligual marking comments.

Parent consultations via a translating friend whose English is poor also is pretty tricky.

... and these pupils are expected to meet the same end of year targets as all the others which is why they stay labelled as EAL for a long time.

Immigrants with ESL on average do better in the long term than native speakers.

Not arguing, but we do have to be careful with averages. The distribution is also important.
And it doesn't mean that those children don't need some help through primary school as they start with English.

My kids are 10 and 7 and we put them into French speaking school last September, having been in the uk system and speaking only English at home prior to that. After almost one school year they are good fluent French speakers, they can read and write and socialise with their peers perfectly and they have lovely accents. However, French grammar is hard, and both kids have gone from being at the top end of the class in London to being low to middling in the new school. It's a struggle and we have private tuition at home to help them keep up. French will never be their first language and I think it will be another year before they are really thriving. It's too sweeping to say kids are up to speed within a few terms, and it's definitely easier the younger the kid is - my 10yo has a lot more catching up to do

Op - we are an English speaking family living in a continental European country. My 14 yr old dd speaks English at home and is taught in two other European langs at school; the main language being French. Although my dd is good at languages and has been educated in those langs since the age of 2.5 yrs (3rd lang a little later), she is never going to be quite fluent as someone whose parents are native French-speakers. This is because her vocabulary in French (despite studying Molière in French lit and having to give countless presentations on moral issues of the day in French and 65% of her other lessons being in French, and French being the language in which she speaks to her friends and classmates) remains relatively child-like compared to someone whose French parents are discussing that day's political events around the supper table every evening (despite the fact that we watch the news in French every night; it is just not the same!) . This is not just my opinion btw, but that of very experienced teachers too. This is also true of about 40% of the pupils in dd's class who do not speak French at home. I have been assured that the gap will close as my daughter progresses up the school but there will always be a slight difference.

Imho, to suggest that a child whose parents speak a different language at home will be as fluent as a native speaker after a year - and classed as such - is frankly ludicrous!

So I think we (and my daughter's - very academically rigorous - school) may disagree with what we term as "fluent".

I'm just going to say this again, as I am appalled by some of the comments on here:

The level of a second language that anyone achieves is directly related to the level of their FIRST language.

If their first language is limited and poor and limited vocab, then their second language will be.

If their first language is deep and wide and complex, then their second language will be eventually.

So, if you want to improve a child's English, stopping them from speaking their mother tongue at home in order to insist they speak English at home, is not going to help. Support their mother tongue, and at the same time support their English learning through school is the way to go.

When I was 21 my work colleague was 56 German born. She said “I used to be conscious, but I’m not now.” I laughed because she meant conscientious. She said oh well I’ve only been in England 22 years. I remarked that was longer than me.
We established that she spoke German at home and thought in German. There were many people working there whose first language wasn’t English, they all said they only thought in their native tongue. I wondered if anyone would ever comprehend a foreign language as well as their original one.

steppemum - agree again, and in the circumstances you describe there are many cognitive benefits to bicultural and bilingual upbringings.

My son is 4, almost 5. He goes to a Welsh nursery and Welsh Reception. His mum and her parents speak Welsh all the time where as I only speak English with a smattering of Welsh (where's your shoes? numbers, etc)

It really does make me proud that he can just switch from English to Welsh and back again in an instant. Amazing really.

claraetal it is very hard to generalise, I have taught eal children where the parents are educated professionals, where I know that the first language skills of the child are rich in vocabulary and grammatical depth - for these children the embedded language knowledge they have in their first language helps enormously in developing their second language, they have an expectation that a wide vocabulary exists, they understand that you can use language to explore, explain and to question, their brains are hard wired to learn a new language . In addition these children are usually supported at home in both developing their first and their English language skills.

I have also taught children whose family background is very different, parents who are barely or not at all literate in their first language, so the child not only brings poor language skills to school but is not supported in their English learning at home. The only exposure they have to good language role models in any language is during the 6 hours they spend at school. They do pick up school specific language but this can be quite superficial, you usually see it in the lack of depth in their vocabulary, particularly related to topic work or descriptive writing, for example I used to try to pre teach vocabulary for history topics, by the time an eal child has cottoned on to what even basic vocabulary like castle, soldier,armour,sword,helmet mean the lesson has passed!

some years ago an academic survey did an in depth analysis of the responses year 6 children gave to English Sats questions, it became clear that EAL children were finding some specific language structures in English more difficult than others and were quite simply not picking them up in their normal classroom lessons. Teaching these points specifically meant that their understanding and ability to use those structures more confidently both orally and in written work meant a measureable improvement. I am not teaching now so don't know how the new emphasis on grammar and punctuation is affecting EAL learners, it would be interesting to find out.

It used to be said that on average it took a child at least seven years to access the wider English language skills needed to cope with secondary school work on a par with native English speakers of the same potential ability . It can be very deceptive to think that the social language skills a child picks up quickly and that seem enough to deal with friendships and chat in the classroom are sufficient to support the child academically for their whole school career.

Language acquisition is a fascinating subject, tiny babies babbling at a few months of age babble indiscriminately, but they very quickly select and use the tones and sounds of the language they are hearing in preparation for speaking that language, language is learned behaviour not instinctive.

steppemum That's interesting (RE not inhibiting first language to benefit second). I would also imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) that a child practising their second language at home when their parents may not be totally fluent speakers could present a disadvantage.

user - maybe we should start a proper thread about bilingualism, instead of trying to take this one seriously!

Can I ask all of you who have looked at research.
Are the research paper done in the uk?
Or are they true where ever you are in the world?
Has there been any studies done on the sociology economic background of those children as well as how they actually have mastered their ‘first’ language?

Basically, being monolingual is the aberation, most people in the world are bilinguals. So expecting people to become bi or multilingual shouldn’t be so out of this world.

My experience with that is that a child who has a good mastery of their mother tongue will have little problem when learning a new language (eg by moving away). Even as a teenager. That’s what a lot of adults do too.
Children who have a poor grasp of their first mother tongue struggle too in the new language. Which makes sense because they won’t have learnt the idea/concept associated in any language.

A PP mentioned how their child struggled to keep up with their peers learning new vocabulary because they only read in English.
Imo this is something that you need to keep in mind. Whatever is learnt in one language, vocabulary wise, needs to be learnt in the other. That’s why I’ve always encouraged (well forced) my own dcs to read in BOTH languages for example.
Butbthat wouldn’t be because said child is struggling with the language or learning two languages. They have the same issue than ‘native’ children who don't read at all, have limited conversation at home etc.

There were many people working there whose first language wasn’t English, they all said they only thought in their native tongue.

That is interesting and I think it depends on the person.

I notice this when trying to translate something. If it's already written in Portuguese, the resulting English is poorer than if I start something from scratch. It helps to understand the meaning, and then to think of it in English.

I wonder if children are able to think in two languages or to switch to English at any point.

But you still spoke French as a second language. I was ESL and didn't know English when I started. It took about three years plus encouragement at home for me to adopt English as my first language. First language means the language you are most fluent in. Being fluent in English doesn't prevent you from bei g more fluent in other languages.

We could, but what I would really like to explore is why IQ is declining. I think bilingualism has a lot to teach us about best practice in child development!

Clara, here in Germany, when my kids were small, children whose parents spoke another language used to get "mother tongue lessons", by which they meant lessons in German! Even if their mother tongue was actually English, Turkish or whatever. I'd have been delighted to have heard the correct terminology being used.

I've been here since 1992 and met lots of bilingual children and seen them grow up. Some have problems for years, others have none whatsoever. Obviously, the system can't be that finely tailored to all needs. You get the same issues here of extra help being useful for some and pointless for others.

I can't believe so many people are saying parents should speak English with their children at home if that isn't their first language. It's wonderful to have two languages, it's a gift. Growing up hearing English that isn't fluent is a terrible idea. I meet parents all the time who have been advised by HVs to only speak English at home, when the parents' English is very basic. Madness, and damaging.

@Lweji I used to this k in Russian then speak in English when required
I now think in english. I don't need to translate Russian into English in my head but my internal monologue is in English.

@IHearKingThistle I really struggled at school because of the language barrier at school. I only started to improve when my parents started speaking in English to me.

I don't think in any language unless I'm reading/writing or imagining a conversation. In the latter case I imagine a conversation with a German in German, and a conversation with an English speaker in English. The kids (bilingual from birth) say the same.

There were many people working there whose first language wasn’t English, they all said they only thought in their native tongue. I wondered if anyone would ever comprehend a foreign language as well as their original one.
I’m a bit at loss about that tbh.

I’m bilingual and so are my dcs.
When I speak English, I dint think in French first. Nor do I think in French abiut events that have happened in English.
I dream in English often, sometimes in French, often a mix of both langauges together BECAUSE I’m fluent in both languages. I dint think my brain makes a difference tbh.
My dcs report something similar.
I am sure that I comprehend English just as well than most English people, actually probably better than some.
I also do know that sometimes I’m missing things because I’m missing some cultural things (eg the idea of classes in the U.K. and all that goes with it) but that has nothing to do with the language itself.