English as second language at school

[mids2019]

I was wondering how being a child of immigrant parents where English is a second language at home i.e. the native language is default fare generally at school where obviously English is the language of academic priority?

Do these children become fluently bilingual or is it a challenge to become adept in English if not exposed to the language to a sufficient degree at home?

My experience is just through seeing friends of my dc. I would say up to the age of about 8-10 they mainly become fluent in English in about six months even if their parents don't use English at home.

That shows our amazing ability to learn languages. I know from my school days there were children of immigrant parents who were perfectly bilingual who effectively gained a language GCSE very easily.

Is this ability to learn languages easily only apparent in naturally academic children though?

My DD is 100% bilingual and I only speak English at home. Spanish spoken at school and with friends/daily life.

She also speaks a dialect (Catalan) fluently, which has just been taught, not really used, at school.

All this happened from day 1 though!

She is clever, but this is not an exceptional acheivement at all.
English people I know here, if anything, need extra help with English! (grammar etc)

The advice is that it is better for the parents to speak in their home language at home and not use English at all.
Children I’ve known learn the language really quickly, usually within a year or so.

Thank you for the replies.

Why is it relatively difficult to get top grades in say French and German at GCSE if we are naturally adept at foreign languages?

For foreign students at university in the UK there is the expectation that there is a command of the English language that allows the degree to be followed but ultimately the degree classification will not be impacted by minor grammatical aberrations.

Do you think there should be allowance when assessing secondary school work for native language?

For instance if some one moves to the UK at the age of 14 and needs to sit an English GCSE should the fact English could be a relatively new language be considered in the mark given?

I was thinking of a hypothetical situation where a lack of mastery of English may mask inherent intelligence. If a Chemistry paper was answered perfectly in Polish would no marks b we given despite perfect formulae etc being written down?

If you arrive in the UK within 2 years of sitting gcse exams you are entitled to extra time in the exam and use of a dictionary to help you.

@mids2019

Thank you for the replies.

Why is it relatively difficult to get top grades in say French and German at GCSE if we are naturally adept at foreign languages?

Immersion is the best way to learn a language, and that is what is happening to these non-native speaker children for their entire school day at least. Learning a language from books and CDs is very difficult by comparison.

"Do you think there should be allowance when assessing secondary school work for native language?"

Depends how you define native language doesn't it? Language of the mother? Language of the father? First/main language? The main language of an immigrant child might well be English even if their parents taught them another language in infancy.

What I find interesting is that the number of children from non-English speaking households is seen as a factor of deprivation in the education world, mentioned in inspection reports along with number of children having free school means, but in Welsh-medium schools you can have up to 95% not being native speakers and that is not seen as a disadvantage.

@mids2019

Thank you for the replies.

Why is it relatively difficult to get top grades in say French and German at GCSE if we are naturally adept at foreign languages?

There is an almighty difference between learning a language for a couple of hours a day and being surrounded by it and people talking to you in it all day long.

@Gwenhwyfar

Interesting reply.

I think there may be an element of classism involved with this

For academic publications many of which are published in English there is an acceptance that non native English writers may have someone look over the work to correct grammar. Additionally allowance is made in higher education for foreign students (fee paying) for English being a second language. I would hazard a guess many of the above will be from middle class backgrounds.

When deprived communities are considered having English as a second language at home may be (or may not) be detrimental to achievment but there is no formal allowance in the education system.

Doesn’t that have to be set against the achievements of immigrant children? We know that, for example, that London immigrant children can do very well at school. Many are not disadvantaged in terms of passing exams and, as explained above, may get extra time. If they are disadvantaged in other ways, they get pp funding. Just like others.

However it is a choice in many cases to be here so it’s still an advantage to be here rather than in other countries. Therefore it all has to be weighed up. Is it ever a disadvantage to be bilingual? I don’t think so.

Every single child in my secondary school including myself that spoke English at school and the mother tongue at home did well at school.
The English speaking majority white kids dropped out after hardly gaining any decent GCSEs.
The sixth form only had the non white kids and these kids had mostly 2 parents from India.
However, Indians and Chinese tend to do better in school than other groups. This was in the 90's / 00's.
Maybe things have changed now.
It's all in the power of the parents.
Our parents cared about education.
Schools were institutionally racist.
If you care about your kids education and put your own time in they will do well.

If the schools are racist, how did this affect the outcomes for DC from different cultures? Some, as you have said, did well.

Foreign language teaching in the UK is abysmal. That's why the French/German/Spanish results are poor, and it's not a popular A level. Thats not meant to be a dig at the fab MFL teachers, just that it is too little, too late, and too formal.
DH learnt his English from the TV, then school. He spoke 2 (related) languages at home - standard language to his parents, and village dialect to his grandmother. He's mostly lost the dialect now, but is still bilingual.

If you expose (young) kids to quality spoken language, they pick it up. Nearly half the world is bilingual. Living abroad, my kids were exposed to 4 languages. They just rolled with it, then listened in amazement as the taxi driver, who had been speaking to us in English answered one call in a second language, then made a call in a third. He has 7 languages at a conversational level.

Monolingual "I'm crap at languages" is a very English thing. We dont need to make the effort to access most stuff, so dont bother. For much of the rest of the world, access to English is essential to progression in school and the workplace.

"When deprived communities are considered having English as a second language at home may be (or may not) be detrimental to achievment but there is no formal allowance in the education system."

Maybe not, but it is obviously deemed noteworthy in the reports so it means something to some education authorities.

20:45TizerorFii

It's not the crappy comp!

It's the immigrant parents that tend to be from better means in the home country in terms of social class and expectations.
Immigrants tend to drop a few social rungs when they get to Britain.
You're not living amongst your aspirational equals.
Open or both parents probably know English anyway as it's taught in India.
However university educated Indians had to work in factories / taxis in the 70's and 80's.

When you know you are living amongst people that don't care for education, that the schools are rubbish. You teach your kids yourself.
The only reason schools were used because it was compulsory and it allowed both parents to work.

I hate my s* school taking credit for my doctor siblings and my CEO cousin, that was not due to the lazy and racist teachers that was due to their own parents and a private tutor from the local church.

That how immigrant kids do well - their parents actually care about education.

"That how immigrant kids do well - their parents actually care about education."

Don't Indian immigrants do much better than Pakistani immigrants though and doesn't it depend very much on the education level of the parents to begin with?

23:23Gwenhwyfar

I should have said ...
I can only speak about what I've been exposed to and know about.
I'm only speaking for Indian immigrants.
If I really want to break it down I'm talking about mostly Sikhs and some Hindus.
Caste is also obvious amongst these groups.

Poor people from India don't immigrate, they can't afford the air fare.
Some that converted to Christianity had help from the missionaries.

Sikhs and Hindus that came here as first generation immigrants tend to be from petite bourgeois.

It's the subsequent generations that have seen a slight, very slight decrease in the view that education is God.
After a while your host culture becomes you.

Why other immigrant nationalities don't do well, it's not for me to say.
The obvious ones are difference in religion, culture, different ideas of what is important.

From my experience even if the parents can't help their kids they'll get someone that can.
My generation of kids had parents that made that the primary goal.
If parents suspected that a certain family didn't value education or their kids were not intelligent or lazy, it's common to start to avoid those families. Rarely happended within our actual community of people.

During the summer holidays my brother would tutor school kids.
He always said yes to the Nigerian families, he said that they had very similar views to education as Indians did in the 70's and 80's and 90's and these kids were worth tutoring as they actually wanted to learn and the parents made them.

I've just posted elsewhere here about a GCSE teacher criticising my ability in a language I spoke pretty fluently with my father when growing up.

So many young people slip in and out of cultures, identities and languages nowadays. In general they cope.

"The obvious ones are difference in religion, culture, different ideas of what is important"

Yes, so nothing to do with which language is spoken at home really.

23:43MMBaranova

Maybe she's more formal and you were speaking informally?

For instance, what you hear in EastEnders and Corrie is not correct but many natives speak that way, and that way of English language isn't taught anywhere in the world.

23:43Gwenhwyfar

If you knew anything about India and Pakistan, you would know language, religion and culture is very much intertwined!

Every immigrant from India has their own languid and their own religion and their own culture!
They aren't going to forget them because they moved to UK!

You don't have a point because you don't even understand.