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?

As to low cost of learning new language by immersion, another example (sorry, all from personal experiance, no data to back this up): I spent a year in Denmark when I was a teenager. Language input was through school and daily life with host family. Total extra cost for school was one hour grammar lesson each week for the exchange students. 6 months to pick up enough basics to follow a group conversation, by one year almost complete fluency (with accent and vocab deficiency, of course). And not just in my case (I'm no genius!!), but general consensus among fellow exchange students.

What did it take? Support by host family and school friends and their commitment to point out my mistakes and guide me in the right direction.

sing, my point would be that they did talk to you in Chinese as well English, so you would have picked up the maternal fluency through that.

I know some parents whose english is really quite poor who only talk to their kids in English. they cant pass on the instinctual subtly and richness inherent in their maternal language at that level. And that does hinder language acquisition. Confidence is also a part of this, being unconscious and confident in your maternal language is the basis for further successful language acquisition. Children who do not have that can lack confidence in the "second" language they are learning inappropriately at home, often with inaccurate grammer, usages and a limited vocabulary.

And if all the children in my ds' school who speak another language (there are about 70 other maternal languages) were as supported in that language as english, what a fabulous bunch of little diplomats and global citizens we would be creating.

I mean grammar! sorry for spelling. Clearly I have never managed to master even my own maternal language!

Thanks, pinkbubbles - that's good to know. I'm definitely in favour of building as much confidence in the native language as possible - that's one of the reasons I'd like to teach DD to read in English before she starts Czech school at 6.

I was at a seminar on bilingualism yesterday afternoon and various points were raised comparing language acquisition with second language learning. And it was quite clear from the studies cited that a child's language acquisition can be damaged/delayed if he/she is spoken to repeatedly in a language that the parent doesn't master with native fluency.

I think it is celebrated in some places in this country. I was quite surprised to read that my children's school has a higher than average number of children who have English as a second language but was reminded (by the children ) that they have language celebration days and the like at school. It is seen as a wonderful thing to them which I think is lovely.

I'm sure if you asked most adults in this country they would admit how they would love to be able to speak more than one language fluently.

Our European neighbours put us to shame I think (when it comes to the provision of languages!).

This has been a really interesting thread - its lead me to do a bit of research on funding for bilingual education in Wales. As far as I can see, there is no additional funding, and overall school spending per head is currently running at around £500 per year less than in England.
The two main problem areas for funding appear to be

• limited availability of good quality teaching materials in Welsh compared to English
• overcrowding in Welsh medium schools in some areas There is a fair amount spent on the general promotion of Welsh, but it doesn't seem to be spent in schools. In practice I think it mostly goes on subsidised language classes for adults, plus odds & ends like funding the Eisteddfods, grants for producing business materials in Welsh & so on.

Takver - at the seminar I attended yesterday, it was made very clear that bilingualism in Canada (a bilingual and developed country, like Wales) does not raise the same issues for families as bilingualism in monolingual countries.

The seminar was attended mostly by people with Arabic or African languages at home that they wished to maintain. The early years (up until around 6) were not normally too problematic, but once children were learning to read (in French), it became much more difficult to maintain the other language(s). And for all the families there were huge issues of cost of travel to their countries of origin.