English is a second language for one in seven school pupils in UK

[MmeLindt]

It is a Daily Mail article so slightly biased but it does raise some valid points.

I was particularly interested as we have recently moved to a French speaking area of Switzerland and put our children into local schools.

Particularly here around Geneva there is a high percentage of school children with French as a second language.

We have been offered extra French lessons to help the DC learn French faster. They are already speaking in sentences and are doing reasonably well in school.

I feel that this a lot of the "problem" in UK is that it is seen as a problem. Lots of people have said to us how fabulous it is for our children to be learning a third language (they are bilingual English/German). Ok, they speak 3 languages that are quite high up the hierarchy of desirable languages. I am sure we would not be congratulated on our children being bilingual croatian/polish/russian.

I feel that bilingualism is a great advantage for a child, and it should be seen as desirable and not stigmatised. There does need to be a nationwide system to help the children learn the local language as fast and as young as possible, perhaps even before schoolage is reached.

Any thoughts?

You're right MmeLindt. My children go to a school where 60% are growing up in a bilingual or trilingual family. It's seen as a huge advantage. A speech therapist comes to the school and helps the children who have difficulties. The children in the school are aged two and a half to six.

You're right, MmeLindt, I just read this in the news and the Tories are presenting it as a huge problem- they basically seem to be saying that anyone who speaks another language can't be any good at English. Pah!
They should hear my dd.

Besides, it is a well known fact that Asian children outperform British children academically in British schools. And presumably a lot of those children speak one or more Asian languages.

I do find living in the UK that I am always asked which is my children's first language, their real language, all the forms you fill in assume that you can only ever have one language and anything else is a second class add-on. I always make a mess of the form, scribbling all over in my attempt to explain that my children don't have a first language, their two languages have been with them since birth.

That is fantastic, Belgo, the speech therapist will be very experienced with bilingual children. I found it impossible to find a bilingual speech therapist in Germany, I am sure that I would find one here no bother.

Cory
I have problems with that too. People always assume that we have a native language and a second language. At present that is true, our DC speak better German than English or French, but we are working on that.

While I think that bilingualism can be a huge advantage for a child (and my own family is a bilingual family), I also think, based on my own quite extensive experience, that a successful bilingual upbringing and education requires extra support (skill and time) and resources (money) that not all families can access. And when that support and those resources are not forthcoming, children with two or more languages can encounter many extra hurdles.

Putting a book mark so i can post later when I get a mo.....

I have also never figured out what my and my children's first language is. How do you tell?

Seeing as Chinese children outperform white British children educationally it would seem that you don't necessarily need enormous resources to support bilingualism: as far as I'm aware, a fair few of these high-performing children are the offspring of Chinese take-aways. A positive attitude goes a long way. Also, strong family cohesiveness probably helps.

my DH's 2 nieces are both classed as having English as a 2nd language, because their "mother" tongue is Shona. However, they both speak fluent English (with a very posh Hampshire accent ).

I'm guessing that statistic includes Welsh as a first langauage?

My DH's first language is welsh and ds1 is in welsh school. He's learning so quickly it's fantastic!

cory - your Chinese example isn't great, you know. I had an English-born Chinese flat mate at university (with a take-away owning single mother to boot) and knew most of the Chinese society and I have never met a group of students who had so many educational resources provided for them - ballet, violin, French etc. Though they were all notoriously bad at swimming and didn't ride horses...

BonsoirAnna - speaking from experience, many Chinese parents would go without a great many things just to provide their children with what they deem to be part of their children's education. I think, in general, Chinese people believe very deeply in education ...

slng - absolutely, my experience was that education was first priority every time for Chinese families. So Chinese children in the UK system are probably getting far more educational resources than your average British-educated child, hence the bilingualism not being any kind of issue.

Surely the "problem" part is for the children who have English as a first language who are put in a class where a sizeable contingent do not speak English.

Surely that sort of situation must cause difficulties for the teaching staff?

In dd's last school, there was one child who joined her class speaking no English. With a lot of support, the child learned to speak English very quickly. But how to give that sort of support when it is not just one or two children, but 10, 15 or more? And how can such support not have any effect on the education of children who already speak, write and read English fluently?

BonsoirAnna, fair enough.
But you did mention money as part of the necessary resources and as far as I'm aware
most Chinese families in the country are not particularly affluent. Of course there are wealthy business men, but many Chinese families in the UK do relatively low paid work. It's more about attitude. And that attitude is something we could all cultivate.

My children cannot have the kind of resources that go with lots of money either: they can't ride horses, they can't attend private school, their leisure activities are limited by budget. But of course it's an enormous resource to have parents who are interested in their education and talk to them about what they are learning- so in that respect they are advantaged.

So if this is what you mean by resources- then I think you are right: some children from Asian communities do have an advantage here. My experience suggests that this also applies to many of the children whose families come from the Indian subcontinent. They are not all wealthy (certainly not where I live!) but many of them do value education very highly.

cory - Chinese families may not be particularly affluent, but if they are prioritising their children's education their children may have much more money invested in their education than children from other non-Chinese families that are overall more affluent.

My Chinese flatmate (with the take-away owning single mother) went to a private school and had done ballet, piano and violin to a very high level, spoke fluent French etc. She was on a full grant at university.

I think we are actually saying more or less the same thing, BonsoirAnna.

The only thing I took issue with was the fact that you mentioned money as one of the two essential factors in your first post. And that is because I have come across so many families who are short of money but still achieve a lot with limited resources. You don't have to have private education and extra music lessons to go far in life.

Obviously your Chinese flatmate must have come from a relatively affluent background if she could manage private school (unless she got a scholarship). Maybe it was a particularly successful takeaway.

All I wanted to say was, prioritising education is bound to be a deciding factor. This can be done whether you have a lot of money or not.

So I think we are basically saying the same thing.

The real educational drawback does not lie in being bilingual but in having parents that don't give a toss about education.

Besides, these scare stories never take account of the fact that "lingualism" is not a static thing. People change, they learn. Dd's Polish friend spoke hardly any English when she first arrived in Year 5. By Year 6 she had learnt enough to be an active member of her class and afaik did well in her SATS.

cory - I think money is critical, personally, when educating bilingual children. That's why Chinese children are not a good example of non-affluent children succeeding despite the odds - the families may have "non-affluent" lifestyles by the visible standards around them, but their children have "affluent" standards of investment in education.

We are a bilingual family and frankly it costs a FORTUNE.

Lots of extra tuition if you want your children to be biliterate not just bilingual (including trips abroad etc). Lots of extra books, DVDs - my DD has twice the books she would have were she monolingual...

You could also factor in loss of income for SAHPs into the costs of bilingualism - lots of parents here SAH because otherwise the minority language doesn't have a hope in hell.

i'm going to sit on the fence

i gave up my teacher training course (in 1990 lol) after my second TP at a school where english speaking children were a minority. the children in the class spoke eight or nine different languages, and few of them understood any english. the school made all children extremely welcome - all the posters around the building were in other languages to the exclusion of english. many of the children just sat, either bemused or upset, whilst some were disruptive. i found it extremely difficult and was given no support, and have no qualms about my subsequent decision to leave the course - clearly someone else's vocation, not mine!

a couple of years ago my own children spent a year at a primary school that whilst is an ordinary state primary school, by virtue of location it hosts pupils from approx thirty different countries, most of whom stay for one year and then return home. (i use home in this context as they have visitor status) the school has dedicated EAL staff, and children (and parents) arrive speaking no english, and depart the following summer with a good grasp. having had such a difficult experience previously, i was a little dubious about how this would work in reality, but i have nothing but praise for the school. the EAL kids spent time both in the EAL lessons, and time with their usual classes, and i have no concerns that the system was detrimental to either group, far from it.

i do wonder periodically whether i'd actually be a teacher now if i had seen this example of how EAL can work in a school, but i don't lose sleep over it.

so, nothing new in the headlines tbh. maybe they need to visit a few schools where it works well? (i'd suggest the one mine went to - only twenty minutes from the hub of dave's constituency lol)

madwoman - can I come and sit on your fence too? I think to support children who don't speak language X in a school where X is used as the teaching language would cost a fair bit of money. As a family though, I don't think I've spent much money to "support" my children to be bilingual (and biliterate - my ambition for my children is that they would be able to enjoy all my novels). A lot of time, but not money. I teach them myself and don't send them to tuition, though they may make that decision later if they want pieces of paper to say they can do it. Perhaps we are lucky - libraries with Chinese books, and online bookshops where you can get 32 books + CDs delivered for 50 pounds which I think is not bad at all. I work part-time too, so can afford 50 pounds now and then. We are very fortunate! And I love teaching them. Of course we don't know if they will be bilingual (after all they are only little now) but what is there if you can't try and hope?

Is 50 pounds once a year or so a lot of money? It isn't , is it?