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?

Believe what you like, and let's meet up in 20 years and see whose strategy has been more successful in creating a fully bilingual child .

I belong to a large association to help bilingual families here in Paris - an association that is not remotely aimed at families that are rich, middle-class or with high prestige languages. And the money issue crops up again and again and again...

I wonder Anna if the difference that we are experiencing is between

• a situation - in Wales and in inner city immigrant communities - where there are large numbers of people speaking both languages, whether in school, religious organisations, extended family or whatever. In that situation bi-lingualism is the norm, and a monolingual person is the exception.

• a situation where you are effectively an island of English in a sea of French unless you make a particular effort to mix with other english speaking families

For me an interesting comparison would be between my experiences of learning Spanish as an adult (pretty easy - I had only to walk out of my door to be surrounded by native speakers who couldn't speak English) and learning Welsh (much harder, as the natural instinct is to communicate in English which everyone even if mother tongue Welsh speaks at native level).

Obviously if you live in a bilingual community, where everyone speaks two languages, your experience of bilingualism is different to a situation where one parent speaks a different language to the language of the country.

But bilingualism comes in very many different guises to those two. If I have learnt anything it is that both parents have to be very vigilant and keep an eye on their children's language development in both languages right through their whole childhood, making adjustments to exposure on a needs basis.

Obviously if you live in a bilingual community, where everyone speaks two languages, your experience of bilingualism is different to a situation where one parent speaks a different language to the language of the country.

But bilingualism comes in very many different guises to those two. If I have learnt anything it is that both parents have to be very vigilant and keep an eye on their children's language development in both languages right through their whole childhood, making adjustments to exposure on a needs basis.

Anna

I have not once challenged any of your strategies for effectiveness or even desirability. Indeed, I plan to use most of them myself.

However, you did say that you were commenting on the original article - which is about people in situations very different to yours - and you do seem to be saying that there is little alternative to your own strategies, whereas I am saying that there demonstrably are and that they are being used with phenomenal success around the world. Indeed, the USA was essentially populated by people in just such situations and they seem to have done okay, all things considered.

In the USA it was common until recent times for immigrants to abandon their native language and only speak English.

Like I said, what I commenting on is effective bilingualism that is developmentally advantageous to the child in a modern economy. I have no interest in or feelings about bilingualism in the past or in less developed countries - the issue is how can a developed country like the UK accompany/promote bilingualism among its newly immigrant population?

And I think that it costs a lot of money (to individuals or to society as a whole), which is why it is very difficult for UK state schools to help non-English speaking families become fully bilingual families.

"In the USA it was common until recent times for immigrants to abandon their native language and only speak English." For the major influx of immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century this was not at all common and yet bilingualism resulted with an effective majority lingua franca (English) and thriving community languages coexisting.

"I have no interest in or feelings about bilingualism in the past or in less developed countries" - what, not even if these strategies have proved successful, at lower social and financial cost - because they're not how you'd do it you are going to consign them to the scrap heap?

The question has already been answered by theorists and practitioners alike, but the answer is not politically expedient - it was answered, for example, in Germany. It was found that Turkish immigrants whose use of Turkish was actuively fostered then performed better in German - and this strategy, effectively a "buddy" scheme, was pursued without summer camps, bilingual schooling (in the sense of providing instruction in both languages) or so much as a whiff of a DVD!

Anna, I really don't agree with your last statement. Looking at a direct parallel - Welsh state schools educating English speaking children to become fluent Welsh speakers - I can't see that they are spending substantially more money than English medium local schools directly on language support.

The exception to this would be that they probably do spend a more money on teaching materials - but this is because Welsh is a minority language, and I imagine (just for example) that Welsh language ORT books will cost more than the equivalent English language version.

I would guess also that Welsh general costs for schooling per head will be higher, but specifically because it is a more sparsely populated country than England with many small rural schools.

I do agree that the schools are not specifically supporting bilingualism - their job is to get the children to speak Welsh - but the same is true of inner city schools with non English speaking intakes. They are tasked with getting the children to speak and function in English. It is then, clearly, up to the parents if they wish to maintain mother tongue fluency.

I don't see why it should be harder to achieve this in English than Welsh, and indeed, as I have said before, I would have thought that it would be easier given the vast amount of resources available in the world in English.

(Actually, come to think of it, the Welsh schools are expected to produce children by age 11 who can also read & write fluently in English, as many go into English medium education at this stage.)

On the USA you are just wrong. Languages typically out within one generation.

I am not interested in what happens in less developed countries because I live in a developed one and I need a developed-country level of fluency and literacy in order to function within it (which is the case in the OP).

I know all about studies and I am not disputing that bilingualism is desirable and that people should not be supported to be bilingual, quite the contrary.

Your refusal to accept that education in developed countries (because that is what bilingualism is - part of education) costs a lot of money is really odd.

Takver - what can I say? Of course it costs extra money to educate bilingually. Whether those costs are born by individual families or by the state is largely irrelevant.

It is the lack of extra money (not "evil prejudiced schools despising third world languages") that is the real issue for immigrants to the UK to contend with. If you are affluent, you will be able to support your child's bilingualism, just as Cory, Brangelina or I do, with books and trips etc as well as time spent talking to your children (and time is money not earned). If you are poor, and uneducated to boot, you will not have the resources to do this.

languages typically out within one generation - not the case with Spanish, Italian, French, German or Dutch. Besides, it is within one generation we're talking about - what will happen to the newcomers and their children, not the next generation.

"A developed-country level of fluency" - as opposed to a me-Tarzan-you-Jane level of fluency like everynoe apart from the English and the French has?

I am not saying, have never said, on this thread or anywhere else, that education does not cost a lot of money. The debate is whether bilingualism NECESSARILY significantly adds to those costs, and who should bear such costs as there are.

The bottom line is that we are an ageing population and actually need immigrants to counter future labour (and therefore tax) shortfalls so, if such money is to be spent, I would suggest that the public purse is exactly where it should be coming from because, whether they know it or not, they are doing us a favour by coming here. But I still think that, based on your actually fairly narrow experience of bilingualism and (what this has more to do with) mass language teaching, you are greatly over-estimating what those costs are by viewing the only solution to be in terms of goods and services purchased retail from profit-orientated companies.

I also think it is worth examining the practicalities of whether we actually need universal competence in English, as long as everyone accepts that not to understand does not liberate them from their responsibilities. All this salute-the-flag, Britishness-test bollocks that the Govt cook up is really rather tedious, frankly.

Incidentally, are you saying that Germany is NOT a developed country? If it is, then surely their experience merits a bit more consideration than you have so far given it?

You are very arrogant to presume that you know what I know about bilingualism...

A fault we share, Anna ...

So what do you know, and how did you learn it?

It is vital for children with two or more languages to be spoken to by their parents in the parents maternal language. In terms of language acquisition, it gives them the deep linguistic base to build other languages from, even if they parents themselves speak different languages. iyswim.

Often parents try to talk to their children in English, in an attempt to make it easier for them in an English (or whatever) environment, but this is the worst thing to do, because the parents cannot instill this base linguistic sophistication in a language which is not their own.

ugh! Got there, I think.

I think we've kind of got off the point. As I understand it, the OP is discussing our attitude to the linguistic education of children in the UK who are not MT English speakers. And how they should best be helped.

Salome, you make a good point that it is important that parents speak their mt at home to build up the basic building blocks of language.

My dd is in exactly that situation but in reverse. We have moved to a country that officially has 3 languages. None of them being English. The fact that her MT is not French has never been seen as a "problem". She goes to a french speaking school, some of her class mates are native french speakers. Others speak dutch, english, czech, turkish, hindi etc at home.

At school they teach them in french. End of. When she is 8 she will be taught dutch. She will have english lessons much later on. And the option to also study German and Spanish.

It is the responsibility of the school to ensure that she is fluent in the language(s) she needs to live in this country. The same applies in the UK. There is obviously a benefit to have the ability to speak/read/write in other languages. Whether that should be paid for by the taxpayer is another matter - if the languages fall outside the normal UK curriculum. Depending on the parents and the language, this may be fostered at home, but if it isn't does it really matter?

In my case, I want dd to be equally fluent in English, so I will do my best to help her achieve that. It won't be an issue with the spoken language as we use that at home. She is learning to read/write in English. It doesn't take much special equipment. Paper, pens, some letters. Yes, I might buy extra books, but I would buy her lots of books anyway. The internet has pretty much every thing else you could need.

With regard to helping children who don't have the native language as mt, the younger they are exposed to it the better. Surely the govt now pay for so many hours of nursery education anyway. This should be solely in English (or Welsh ). Reception class too. Start as you mean to go on. Resources should then go on helping the older children, maybe 6 onwards who have recently moved. Little children do not need special help to learn languages. They are like sponges.

"Often parents try to talk to their children in English, in an attempt to make it easier for them in an English (or whatever) environment, but this is the worst thing to do, because the parents cannot instill this base linguistic sophistication in a language which is not their own."

I must tell my parents what a terrible mistake they have made! They are Chinese and spoke to us in a mix of Chinese and English. I am deeply thankful that they did, and only regret that they didn't throw in a good mix of all the different dialects they knew.

Salome, we're native English speakers who live in the Czech Republic, and I'm continually surprised by the number of British people (my relatives and others) who ask us whether we speak Czech to DD (now 2).

I tell them that we speak English to her because that's our native language, but I think they still don't really get it. There's this British assumption that you should be talking to a child in the community language at home as well in order to 'help' them...

Portofino, aren't all children who don't speak the community language at home going to have a vocabulary shortfall compared to the others, though (even if they learned the CL at nursery) since they don't have much adult input in the CL?

This is all theoretical to me still, since DD is only 2 (and just started going to nursery 2x a week last week!) but I've read in a few places that 'playground fluency' is deceptive when it comes to determining what help a child needs (even if it's only a very little extra help.

Vesela, yes I agree with you and think I made this point ealier in this thread (or was it another one). I think that it is more important for dd to spend more time with her friends, and their parents, and I am trying hard to foster some play dates for her. She already spends a lot of time with her friends next door and is often invited to lunch. I think TV is useful for this too. (Though normally it is obviously only "bad" ) I tell DH off for only recording cbeebies as I think she should watch a bigger proportion of the local stuff.

Portofino - yes, you did, sorry! You were talking about traffic lights...

This isn't a big playdate culture, unfortunately, but we should see more of our Czech friends in any case (although I don't have enough of them!) Interesting about the TV for the grown-up language (that sounds better than 'adult'!)

Not necessarily grown up stuff, but I try to make sure she watches the age appropriate stuff her friends might watch. There's probably a cultural aspect to that too, that at the moment, Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake are pretty universal. Even though the latter especially makes me boak!

Vesela, I don't think (from personal experience) that not speaking the CL at home hinders the learning process. I think it just slows it down a bit. I moved to Brazil at 8yrs, knowing no Portuguese, and have no accent whatsoever and full fluency. Likewise, my Dh who was born here to an English family spoke only English at home and went to Brazilian school - completely fluent in both languages. DCs are being brought up the same way - English at home and Portuguese at school. By now (6 and 4) they are almost completely fluent in CL, have slight accent and slight vocab deficiency which is fast disappearing.

Keep on at the mother lang. at home and immersion will take care of the rest, eventually, imo.