Teachers what help should I expect for a non-English speaking child from the primary school?

[rrbrigi]

My son is in Reception (he is a summer born). He speaks good English but not as good as his peers. He was born in England; he went to an English nursery (Montessori) when he was 2. But we do not speak English at home, however he watch tales in English. We want him to learn his mother language perfectly. And it seems to me he is better in his mother language in each way (math, reading, speaking, listening, comprehension, etc?). I think because all of the homework the school gives us and any more learning we do at home, we do it in our language.

He is very good in the school, I have no any concern that he would be behind his classmate, however I think he could do a lot better if his English would improve rapidly. His teacher told me they do not give my son any support, because they do lots of speaking in Reception as a whole class and in groups so she think giving my son support would not help him, because he listen and speak English in the class anyway. I do agree with this in one hand but in the other hand I think if he could get a 1 to 1 teacher for a half or 1 hour a day to speak with him in English would help him, because he do need to listen and answer for that teacher even if he does not want or if he is a bit slow. I did ask the teacher that if my son would be in Year 3 or 4 with the same gap between his English and his classmate English would the school give him extra help, and she said yes.

So I am just interested that should I expect more help from the school or it is normal in England? If I should expect more help what kind of help is available?
Thanks.

I have to agree with SSimTee. You shouldn't expect any help if youa re unwilling to help him learn English by speaking at times to him in English and doing his homework in English. Surely it is more effort to do his homework in whatever native language it is than to do it in English?

At the end of the day hard as it is, you live in England and speak decent English (you certainly write good English) and it is your responsibility to ensure you son fits in with he country he lives in.

(but suspects my view is not a minority, just people may not want to own up to it)

Areyoumadorisitme I do understand that most of you wants me to speak English with him. I would like to tell you that there is no English people in my family, so we learnt English when we came here, and speak English as we speak (certainly it is enough to work with it). I would say my son English is probably better or at least the same as my English. Thanks for saying my English is good, and I do agree with it, however I won?t be able to write an interesting story in English, but I could do it in my language.

I think we can agree that learn something in a wrong way, than learn it again correctly it is a lot harder way than learn right in the first time (Not to mention how powerful when a parent teach something to her child incorrectly, and the teacher try to fix it. There is a whole world breaking inside the child.). I help him at home as much as I can, but for example when he asks me how to pronounce the word available or village or serious, etc?, I can tell him how I pronounce, but probably I am not right (and I do not speak about accent). It is nothing to do with willing or unwilling, I just want him to learn from the best (from English people) and of course I am his mother and I want him to receive as many support as he can, but I also can understand if he cannot receive any more help. You ask me to teach something for him that I am not sure how to use it myself. I certainly know that he is not a SN child (not behind in anything except English), but heard of things like everybody should be assessed against her or his individual needs, etc? And I read the EYF curriculum that has lots of different parts about children with English as a second language and they are saying we should speak our mother language at home too. Probably is for the same reason, because they want these children to learn proper English from the beginning.

Do you mind saying what your family language is?

No, I don't mind. We speak Hungarian.

Sashh, sorry but that's absolute bollocks. A child will easily bilingual if the parents make the effort to include both languages in his/her life. But I would never ever speak solely English to my DD, it is just not natural for me. Language is a very emotional tool, talking about feelings just don't come out automatically in English. Any why should they?

DD hears me speaking English when we out, socialise with her friend's parents or we attend classes. We sent her to nursery very early on to enable her to learn English from native speakers which is 100% better than learning it from parents with another mother tongue who still make errors despite living here for 13 years.

Yes, my DD may not know every single word in both languages but if not she can use another one, talk around it and will learn it when she reads, hears movies, stories and songs.

The OP needs to make amendments yes, but every book or recommendation about biligualism says "do not talk solely in the second language"!!

Is there a large Hungarian community in the area? If not I would doubt that the school or indeed the LEA have the resources (Hungarian speakers) or expertise to provide more than basic support.
Most LEAs have EMTAS who may be able to provide some ideas to help but IMHE the general advise to schools/teachers is to immerse the child in English give running commentaries, find a chatty child to support and provide lots of good modelling of language.

blog.ican.org.uk/2012/01/what-happens-when-children-need-to-learn-to-talk-in-more-than-one-language/

There is no large Hungarian community here. I would like him to learn Hungarian because most of his relatives speak only Hungarian. Also I do would like him to remember where we came from. I have no any doubt about his Hungarian. Reading your posts I feel stronger that probably I should not worry about his English as well. He is not behind in the school at all (however he could be a lot better with proper English, but I understand that English will come with the time). I just need to give him time and don't expect that it will change from one day to another.

I think you are correct.

You might find dual language books helpful - try asking at your local library

As a nearly qualified SLT I would suggest you continue to speak Hungarian. Oh

Sorry message posted too soon. I would suggest you continue to speak Hungarian but use English for things like his school reading books which he needs to read to you in English.

He is likely to improve as he gets older, you could always consider something to boost his English in a year or so.

I have a girl in my class who joined us in Year 3 speaking no English at all, yet now in Year 5 she is one of the highest achievers in the class, simply because she is bright and wants to learn. Her parents speak Polish at home, indeed she goes to Polish Saturday school to ensure she is as fluent in her home language, but she reads in both languages voraciously, I have provided a Polish-English dictionary and any word she is unfamiliar with, she looks it up and commits it to memory. Her parents are keen for her to do well and I think it is that which has helped. You will soon find your son correcting you!

I'm an early years teacher and have had recent dealings with speech and language and a bilingual child. They encouraged the child's mother to continue speaking to him in their home language at home to encourage him to become really secure in that language, with a wide vocabulary. We spoke English to him at nursery, but also had tapes of stories (recorded by his mother) in his home language so that we could listen to them together and then talk in English about them. His mother also taught us a few words in his home language so we could greet him, remind him about going to the toilet etc. while his grasp of English developed.

He'll be fine.

Actually I wouldn't describe him as non-English speaking if, as you describe "he speaks good English but not as good as his peers". I would describe him as "English as a second language".

He will pick it up quickly at school. Very quickly!

Dd2 had a child start last October who didn't speak a word of English. Nor did her parents. Chinese, so very different language formation (not sure which dialect). She's been using a laptop at school which translates any instructions for her that she doesn't understand, and there's another child in the form who speaks the same dialect who has helped. She hasn't had an adult in to help much at all, I think she has an extra lesson which is given to all that are weak in reading once a week.
She now speaks reasonable English, does some reading and writing too. You would know at present that English isn't her first language, but she's speaking pretty well.

I used to be a specialist EAL teacher as well as primary in a very linguistically diverse area.
I think...

1. You are right to talk Hungarian and only Hungarian at home. He will hear enough fluent English outside home to learn that perfectly. (The best way to gain the enormous benefits of bilingualism is to learn both languages naturally from native speakers - his school friends and you!)
2. The school is right not to put additional support in. He really doesn't need it. In reception children learn by interracting with each other and their teachers. All learning they do is language-based through talking and listening. Taking him out of the group setting to do 1 2 1 intensive work will only make him feel different and will not have any effect on his English.
3. In my experience children entering school with not a single word of English all learnt English very quickly and most quickly of all in the playground from each other. Reception is about learning to be at school (listening, putting on your own coat, taking turns etc and for your ds and many others including native english dcs about learning language). Your ds is in the very very best environment to learn fluent English and by the time he is starting to need to know ten different words for 'run', he will not sure if I do though!

I am not so sure- speaking as a bilingual parent here- that making the OP speak in a language she is not confident in is necessarily the solution to her son's limited English.

He will be exposed to various levels of English (including adult and literary English) at school, through books and television. His ability to appropriate them and make them his own will depend on his general cognitive and social level.

From this perspective, developing his Hungarian on multiple levels may well be better for his English too. Our childminder always used to comment how dc's English had improved over the summer holidays- which was the one period when I knew they had neither spoken nor heard a word of English for 6 weeks.

But their general language had improved, their horizons had been expanded, they had done more thinking, and that carried over into their second language too.

The teenagers mentioned by a previous poster who only have "teen English" are unlikely to be in that situation simply because their parents speak a different language. Most likely they have grown up in culturally impoverished families where adults don't speak to children very much at all.

slambang and cory speak sense- read his school books with him, let him hear you speak English to other people, but stick to Hungarian at home.

In my class, we tend to have 4-5 children each year who are in a similar situation to your child. We don't have a dominant minority community, so the children who are not English don't speak the same language (if that makes sense!).

I agree that it is really important to keep speaking Hungarian at home. I've found that the children who do best - and those who end up with the most perfect English - are the ones where the families make a real effort to stick to their home language and, importantly, make sure that there are links made between the 2 languages. For example, making sure that you teach the words for things your child is learning at school - what is the Hungarian for "cube", "plus", "full stop" or whatever. And also, making sure that he knows the English for home-related objects. You can probably do this through the reading books he brings home or that you have yourselves.

In terms of what we look for in speaking and listening,

ooops ...

take a look at the early learning goals with his teacher, and if you are happy that he can do them in Hungarian, then you don't have too much to be concerned about at the moment.

Thanks.
I do all of the study with him in Hungarian. If I look the English curriculum, he is around Year 1 level for most things (maths, spelling, writing, reading and Hungarian) but in Hungarian.

But for example if he learns something from Math in the school that we have not learnt in Hungarian yet, he can apply his knowledge in Hungarian straight away without me to explain anything. But this is not true in the other way. I taught him adding up number in Hungarian, e.g. he knows that if you add 0 to a number it will stay the same so he does not need to count. So if I ask him in Hungarian how much is 6+0, he says 6 immediately, if I ask him in English he start to count 6 on his hand and add 0 to it (not open up any more fingers) than says it is 6. It is the same with lots of things. We have a hundred board and I used to ask them the numbers in random order. In Hungarian he did it without any mistake, with quick answers, as long as I wanted. In English he knows the number, but it takes a lot of effort for him to say it randomly, and he could not do it as long as he could in Hungarian. He has a very good imagination and an extremely good vocabulary in Hungarian. He can make a joke in Hungarian. Looking the time that I spend at home with him with learning and the time he spend with learning in the school, I am a bit surprised that his Hungarian knowledge (I mean maths, spelling, treading) is a lot better than his English.

But I will stick to not speaking English, because I want him and he needs to learn proper English.

He will be fine. Carry on as you are. He is in Reception. They spend half the day in free play. Talking and playing with their peers teaches them English. My DSs best friend did not speak English in Reception only Polish. Now they are in year 3 and she is fluent and doing really well. The EAL children get an hour a week with a specialist TA but that is it. They find that playtime spent around friends is enough and the schools stats show that by KS2 they have caught up with their peers.

Carry on speaking your MT to your DC at home but enrol him in some extra-curricular activities in English where he will get closer attention than at school ie one-to-one or small groups. Music, drama, gym, swimming - anything really!

Hi, your post was 7 years ago, that means your child is nearly 11 years old now.
How was his school all this time?
I am in the same situation, we came last year from France and I have a 9 years old boy in year5 and a 4 years old girl in Reception. It’s difficult for them to understand English like a native child.
I am interested if you have any feedback or experience to share?