to be shocked but not surprised when a teacher says "With children where English isn't spoken at home... not much you can do?"

[toilettrouble]

This Times blog why I hate my child's school

is a rant about what I presume is a typical primary in South London. But read the last bit!

I went to a school where I was taught in 'foreign', as were the 29 other people in my class, none of whom had the school's language as their first one. No one, but no one, expected any the less of us.

Do you think that racism is just an excuse for poor teaching?

But you obviously speak English cory. That was the point being debated I think.

no - I worked at a school in Zimbabwe where English was the language used to teach in, where many of the pupils had non-English speaking parents.

I don't think any ESOL type thing for Shona would have done me any good.

I had Shone teachers (who taught Shona at the school) trying to teach me, I had English teachers (who spoke Shona) trying to teach me, I had the kids trying to teach me, I had my IL's desperately (but kindly ) trying to teach me.

all I can remember for all their efforts is how to say thank you, milk, cow and good morning .

I work as a TA these days in a pretty multi cultural school. We have quite a big mix of children and a number who are EAL.

I work with some EAL childrnen in my class, including some who only ever hear English out of their home. Their home environment doesn't include spoken English at all. And I work with others who spend a lot of time every year in their parent's home countries, hearing no English at all. On top of this a couple of them have speech and language impairments too.

They are n Y1.

But their EAL and SLI are not ging to stop me from doing my very best for these chidldre. Hence spending a lot of my time outside of work producing many many materials in order to help these children access the school curriculum, and to learn to use English in their spoken and written forms. And, after half a term, it is really showing that it can and does work.

EAL is not an excuse to not teach our children!

But then, I have never yet come across a school that has given up on these children.

Well, who needs more than that!

The box-ticking thing can lead to bizarre results. Dd has had two mother tongues since a baby: I think dh and I both spoke at the same time in the delivery room, so there literally hasn't been a time when one was her first language. Yet she has to tick a box to call one her first language and another her second. Which box she ticks depends entirely on how she feels on the day, and has nothing to do with actual competence.

I can truthfully say that English is my second language. But I still teach at an English university, I am certainly not socially isolated, and I can still help dd with her homework.

"English isn't spoken in the home" can also mean all sorts of things. You might not speak it on an everyday basis but still be able to help with homework. Or someone else might help with homework. Or whatever. All sorts of possible permutations.

...what i'm saying is, there are schools in this country where alot of pupils struggle with English.....

my children would not go to those schools...

and i think it's abit unfair on teachers, if i went into teaching i wouldn't expect to be fluent in Somalian....(for example)

I do agree with whoever posted that it is easier to teach ESL in schools that have many different languages spoken at home as opposed to school where 90% of the children have a common language

And I do agree Hula, I think that most, if not all, teachers work so hard on educating all children.

I just think a little in put from home goes a long way.

mrsruffallo Wed 25-Nov-09 13:54:13
"But you obviously speak English cory. That was the point being debated I think."

Nope. Point debated was "English is spoken in the home". Which is a totally different kettle of fish.

Lots of perfectly competent speakers do not speak the majority language at home, but use their own minority language consistently, because this is one of the approaches recommended to support bilingualism.

(Only reason I don't do this is because I'm a lazy slob who doesn't do consistency, and has never even been able to keep a star chart without losing half the bits).

I imagine this happens in lots of Indian and Pakistani families: the parents can speak English and do so at work, but think it makes more sense to speak their mother tongue to their children.

But I assume you can read to them in English? Or listen to them do so with a discerning ear?

As I said, I know many families who speak their mother tongue at home yet when it comes to the children reading at home speak well enough English to point then in the right direction

Yes home input is also very important, I agree.

We make a point of sending home key topic vocab, on flash card type sheets, along with their rhebus symbol (or other relevant image if not available). The parents then are aware of what we are covering, and canbe helped to add their own language alongside the English. We try to involve parents as much as possible. It does make a difference in terms of how quickly they progress.

It was very clear last year that ne little girl I worked with got no input from home. Her mum, to be fair, had so much going on with other children and a disabled daughter too, she just didn't have as much time. It was very noticable when her mum went to visit family for 4 weeks, leaving the little girl with an auntie and cousin. They spent lots of time with her, bought her books, read with her, did colouring and writing with her, etc. Over those four weeks she made so much progress. Sadly, this dropped again once mum was home and the little girl wasn't get that regular home input.

"..what i'm saying is, there are schools in this country where alot of pupils struggle with English....."

yes and sadly lots of those come from English speaking homes.

Cory

"
(Only reason I don't do this is because I'm a lazy slob who doesn't do consistency, and has never even been able to keep a star chart without losing half the bits)."

are you me

this is TOTALLY off topic - but displays my ineptitude.

Sunday night I actually not only listened to DS2 read - but I actually listened to him reading his school reading book (usually DS2 prefers to read to DS1, or reads something totally different to me). We even discussed what we thought my happen before turning the pages.

Monday afternoon he came out of school with a new reading book - and comments in his reading record book that "DS2 had read very well and managed to guess what would happen at the end of the story"

Of course he bloody did - we'd read it the night before and talked about...........it was just I totally forgot to write in his book that we'd finished it

On the parents using their home language whilst being able to speak English. i agree this can be great and can help children grow up bilingual. However, is it not recommended that one parent uses one language, and another parent or regular carer uses the othe - so the xchild consistently hears both?

We have a nuber of children in my class that speak at least two langauages - but those who are using the above method seem to be the ones who are making most progress in school.

Hulababy Wed 25-Nov-09 14:20:58
"On the parents using their home language whilst being able to speak English. i agree this can be great and can help children grow up bilingual. However, is it not recommended that one parent uses one language, and another parent or regular carer uses the othe - so the xchild consistently hears both?"

That depends on whether the parents have different mother tongues. In a family where both the parent spoke a minority language, the recommendation would be that they both spoke that, i.e. that each parent speaks their own mother tongue. The OPOL method is for families where the parents have different mother tongues.

Children who learn two languages learn more about language in general. And children learn fast too - you don't teach children with EAL by dumbing down everything, but by teaching better to everyone. Would you rather your DC went to a school were the teacher stood at the front and talked all day, or one where the teacher used puppets, drama, songs, movement and fun?

I only spoke urdu at home before school.I have been a criminal barrister for 13 years.People are always asking which private school I went to ( rough comprehensive).We were surrounded by books in both languages.

Like bigboots, my dd goes to a Welsh medium school. She's already (age 7) well past my reading competence in Welsh.

I can speak a little, understand spoken Welsh reasonably well, but I can't read beyond about say ORT level 4 or 5 (not helped by the fact that Welsh is a very geographically diverse language, and what I understand is Pembrokeshire spoken Welsh, which often bears little resemblence to written North Walian).

I would say at least 3/4 of the children in dd's class have parents who speak as little or less Welsh than I do. This doesn't seem to stop them all doing perfectly well in school.

Indeed in areas where there is a choice (unlike here), middle class English speaking parents notoriously opt for Welsh medium education because it is considered higher quality & better resourced - I've heard it described as 'private education paid for by the state'!

Similarly plenty of English first language children opt for Welsh medium secondary education here, even though they have the choice of an English medium secondary, because they prefer the 'feel' of the Welsh medium school (or because their best friend is going there, or whatever).

The only disadvantage I would see, potentially, in sending dd to a school was if 90% of the children spoke the same non-school language, because I suspect this would become the language of the playground, and the English speakers could feel isolated - and less likely to pick up the majority language if it is not also taught in school. I do know Welsh speaking parents who avoid dd's school for exactly this reason, because the playground language is generally English. But if children are coming from many different language backgrounds, then English will almost certainly be the dominant social language.

The EAL chldren I work with are unable to access the normal curriculum, so they do need to have special teaching. Obviously the teacher uses all of the resources you mention, but the language element is such a huge stumbling block that they need something more. It doesn't help that two of them also have SLI mixed in with EAL, making the difficulties even bigger.

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very good point about the homework by pitchounette; you can have a massive input into your child's learning without ever speaking a word of English

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Pitchounette - it all made sense to me and I'm English .

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Pitchounette, I completely agree with you. I went to a French school and my mother hadn't got a clue + her accent was terrible but she still listened to me read everynight and encouraged me with my homework.

My afther would confuse me with the maths because his way was different but I just ignored him.

Not read all posts, but my cousin is a reception teacher in Stockport, 50% of the class is of Indian/Pakistan origin. Around 20% don't speak any English at home, don't read letters or homework notes, never attend parents evenings, are late regularly into school each day.

My cousin is a brilliant teacher and really tries he best with them all, but when there is nothing at all from home this makes it extremely hard for her. My Auntie (her Mum) goes into class 3 days a week to help out, umpaid and even she says it is so so hard to help these children when there parents are not interested at all.

One boy has not spoken since the start of the school year, he will talk to his classmates in his own launguage, and understands English well, but won't speak, despite their best efforts.

Some of it is language barrier, and they have two teachers who can commincate with each sets of parents, but this makes no differnce.

She has taught at this school for 7 years and it's been the same every year.

So the problem is not really speaking a different language, caro, but not being interested in the school. Otherwise surely they could make arrangements about parents letters etc?

So no different to a monolingual child whose parents never read letters, do not help with homework etc. And sadly those are not uncommon.