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?

"It is hard for a foreigner to correct these mundane but common mistakes."

I disagree. I was taught english as a second language as a child, not living in England and my english is (close to) perfect because of this. I learned the language from books designed for this purpose without the everyday influence of mistakes from parents/peers.even teachers. I recognise (and get irritated by) mistkes that most of my english friends don't even realise they make. My husband is english and he finds difficult learning languages because he was never taught english grammar at school.

The comment was racist and showed the teachers lack of commitment -so pathetic!

Cory, I see your point, but you'd have to admit that it's fairly unusual for somebody for whom English is a second language to have the high standard of English that you have. It is unusual full stop!

When I was typing that, I was actually thinking of the Polish mum I know, who can hardly speak English, but she can speak fluent Russian!

I used to spot mistakes when I lived in Spain though come to think of it, but I desperately wanted to be excellent at Spanish.

"I see your point, but you'd have to admit that it's fairly unusual for somebody for whom English is a second language to have the high standard of English that you have. It is unusual full stop!"

sorry have to totally disagree that it's unusual.

I'm merely praising Cory's extremely high standard of English. I believe her standard of English is higher that the "average" standard, regardless of first/second/third langauges...

This may not be quite so obvious on Mumsnet, where the general standard is high, but if you tested a hundred random British people (with English as their first language) Cory would come out very near the top.

Maybe it is having a high standard in your mtoher tongue that makes you want to learn the second language to the same standard.

sorry but think that you would find a lot of people with as high a standard of English as Cory.

If we're talking in broad spectrum about people with English as a "second language" - I can tell for starters that the 100'000's of South Africans and Zimbabweans in this country alone will skew the figures.

I'm not kidding when I say that my DH, SIL and her DH have a better standard of English than any of my family do (and no we're not all thick ).

I suppose you could argue that "well English is an official language in those countries".

But - they grew up in a non-English speaking home, with the majority of the older people in their family (including parents) unable to speak much, if any English.

Actuall one of DH's Aunts can't speak a word of English (made for an interesting visit 3yrs ago when we went as I dn't speak a word of Shona ) - yet all of her children speak fantastic English - and were taught in English at school.

I do think there needs to be some sort of distinction (not sure how?????????) of "English as a 2nd language as in - well none of us really speak it" and "English as the least commonly used of 2 (or more) languages".

As it is those that grew up bilingual get classed along side those who are learning the language later (I know what I mean but I'm not sure I'm making it clear.....if anyone that's good at interpreting and picking out the main points in my waffling non-sensical posts cares to put it better I'd be delighted.........and English is my only language )

CaroCaro - "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."

This could have described my dd after her first two terms in school. Her teacher & TA were very relaxed about it - they encouraged her, but didn't push, and from the third term she started to speak, and just flew. She just took her time to listen & get it all clear in her head before she was willing to speak in Welsh.

I do think that a large proportion if not most of the problems that get put down to children coming in without English are really the result of poverty, overcrowding and general problems at home, meaning that parents just don't have the time or ability to be involved and help their children, nothing to do with language.

Interestingly, my first primary school had some ridiculous number of languages spoken at home - but that was because it was in an area of London where a lot of embassy staff lived. You didn't see a lot of social problems or poor results there, funnily enough . . .

Yes a lot do, but why would you zone in on individuals who skew the statistics (such as myself)? What statistics specifically?

I would never expect Afrikaaners to have a lower level of English than any British person.

When I say second language, I don't mean in some constitutional or technical sense. I mean second language in a real sense.

why not - I met plenty of Afrikaaners who'se English was poor to say the very least.

Grew up in Afrikaans speaking families, went to Afrikaans schools, had Afrikaans speaking friends. Of course some of them learned English very well - but not all of them.

How can you say that my DH's 2nd language (English) isn't his 2nd language when he spent the first 6yrs of his life only speaking in Shona, and at home shona was (and still is) the language used?

Now you're contradicting yourself. I'm not entirely sure what point you're making now.

A group of individuals whose second language (in a real sense) is English are obviously, as a group, at a disadvantage.

NOt all will reach such a high standard as Cory; possibly because they never had that high a level of competency in their own language.

I know nothing about your husband but he is one person. Even if his second language is of a very high standard, that doesn't affect the overall situation. The average still has to include everybody

no I don't believe I am contradicting myself.

Large numbers of Afrikaaners (and in my DH's families case Shona) speakers grew up in houses where their mother tongue was the only language used at home. In many of those cases their parents could speak very litte, if any, English.

They spoke in their mother tongue at home, spoke to their friends in their mother tongue, but at school were taught in, and learned English. The vast majority of them have a very high command of English, despite the fact that their parents didn't/don't.

Of course there are those that will never have the same command of the English language, but the same can be said of those people who have English speaking parents and are taught in English at school.

I also know of Dutch, German and Spanish people who can have an excellent command of the English language.

then there were pupils at the school I taught at whose 2nd language was English, their parents spoke little, if any English, many of those that could speak it couldn't read or write it. Those that did the best at school were the ones whose parents supported their learning despite their own lack of English literacy. And in most cases those children did no worse than those that came from families where English was already fluently spoken.

What is "second language in the real sense"?? I'm now actually quite confused.

and if the language spoken as home is such a major factor in how well successful a child is at school/how well they cope with it then 1000's of children shouldn't be "failing" - as there's really no excuse for it as they speak English and their parents speak English..........

And conversely all children that have ESL should be failing - because they're diadvantaged. But of course ESL doesn't just cover those that are learning English and those that simply have it as another language under their belts.

Of course not everybody will reach the same standards in their second language. But I do believe a positive attitude towards learning in general is going to be immensely advantageous to children quite regardless of what language is spoken at home.

This is why Asian children in UK schools regularly outperform white English working class children: they have parents who expect high standards and treat education as something valuable. It's not the language as such, it's the educational level and the attitude towards education.

I do confess that I speak a bit of a hotchpot to my children- a typical dinner table conversation in our house may switch languages 5 or 6 times without anyone even noticing. But I also believe that having a Mum with a PhD and a love of literature would put my dcs at an advantage compared to most of their monolingual friends even if they had never heard me speak a word of English. Because the love of learning and the ability to listen to a story is not tied to one box: it is transferable.

As I mentioned in a previous post, every time my children spent 6 weeks doing exciting and new things in a monolingual Swedish environment their English improved, to the extent that people were remarking on it when they returned to the UK. Yet during these holidays they did not hear a single word of the language. It did seem odd, but I think the explanation must be that the learning they did do meant that they were better equipped to expand their use of the English language.

And my ds spent about 6 months at the age of 4 refusing to speak English. It was embarrassing, but said nothing about his ability: once he did decide to speak, there was no difference between him and the other children. He just had a bit of a wobble about belonging to two cultures, which got mixed up with a wobble of starting school.

"they have parents who expect high standards and treat education as something valuable. It's not the language as such, it's the educational level and the attitude towards education."

that's it - that's one of the points I was trying to make

In Belgium the Educational system is run predominantly by the French and Dutch commununities. The Dutch system is supposed to be superior to the French system, so where it is possible, many French speaking families choose to place their dcs in Dutch speaking schools. (Both groups will start to learn the other language at Primary level).

It has been identified as a real problem in some areas that the playground language in some Dutch schools is actually French as they outnumber their Dutch speaking counterparts. This has lead to a total ban on speaking French within some schools, as it was considered to hinder the education of the French speakers and exclude the Dutch speakers socially.

My dd goes to a school where her friends have a number of different mother tongues. They are all taught in French, there is no special help. The problem is only apparently where you have a majority of children speaking the SAME minority language.

It's absolute rubbish! I'm Danish and I have to work really hard to avoid my kids forgetting Danish - English was their primary language only months after we arrived, even if their native language is Danish.

Children want to fit in - my kids only speak English between them, they are practising.

My dd is nearly 5 and she is among the best at spelling and reading in her class.

That said, maybe it's more difficult if your native language uses another alphabet and is very different to English.

When I was a teacher at a vocational school (is that what you call it?) in a very deprived area, the problem wasn't the language for the immigrant students, it was the lack of cultural background. They just had other nursery rhymes, so to speak.

Bilingualism has a very bad reputation - unless it's two West European languages.

There are three children in my DS1's class (year 3) whoose one/both parents are russian, german and pakistan. They have all helped the class learn words etc in their other language, DS1 was fascinated.

I love also that their parents tend to be firm/tell them off in their native tongue and not english. The russian mum sounds very stern and sexy at the same time!

Portofino, that sounds very similar to the situation in my dd's Welsh medium school. They don't ban the use of English in the playground (too many echoes of the bad old days when children were beaten for speaking Welsh!), but they do get housepoints, rewards etc for speaking Welsh in non-class situations. There's even a rather cute toy dragon who gets sent home with reception children who speak Welsh in the playground

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Spot on, Pitchounette.

I was lucky enough to hit on a mature sensible teacher - so the fact that ds refused to speak for a bit in infants never was a problem. I was able to reassure her that he had no speech problem that needed dealing with, and she was patient enough to wait until he did start speaking. Problem solved.

I have had countless people suggest that if my dcs can only speak intelligently about a certain subject in one language (e.g. sailing), then there is a problem with their language development because they are not "balanced bilinguals". Until I point out that their monolingual friends who don't know sailing terminology can't speak about it either- so what does that make them?

It's about as intelligent as ds's CM suggesting he had a problem with a speech development because he didn't know the word for the goat's baby: we live in a highly built up suburban area with absolutely no goat farms around.

But once you're bilingual, everything has to be a problem.

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