Student in HBS who speak English as an additional language?

8 replies

lll36 · 10/09/2017 11:03

I saw HBS' Ofsted report that said a lot of student there do not speak English as a first language. How do they manage to pass the English exam and verbal reasoning paper?

OP posts:

noitsnotteatimeyet · 10/09/2017 11:07

Presumably because they speak English extremely well and also have another language as well . It's perfectly possible to be bilingual and a high achiever ...

AlphaStation · 10/09/2017 11:15

I don't know, maybe English is just their second language? I don't understand the question...

allzwell · 10/09/2017 13:49

Children who can speak more than one language usually do better academically than those who don't( in personal exp)
You have lots of questions about HBS today Op!

Donostia · 10/09/2017 13:56

they might be like my ds who has been at a bilingual spanish/basque school since age 2 (in spain) but counts as an additional language student and gets them funding by virtue of both his parents being british. Statistics hide a lot!

MongerTruffle · 10/09/2017 13:58

Maybe because they speak English fluently?

eyebrowsonfleek · 15/09/2017 16:25

They come from multilingual families where each language is spoken at native level.

corythatwas · 16/09/2017 00:14

After a total of 6 months in England, I got an A in English lit O-level and a B in English language. My family was not English-speaking, so this was pretty well my first opportunity to interact with native speakers. But I had put in a lot of hard work.

As an adult, I teach English undergraduates and correct the grammar in their essays. I write my research in English and occasionally write poetry in English. This incidentally doesn't mean I have forgotten my first language: I write in that too.

My dc are in a different situation: born in the UK to one English and one foreign parent (=me). Both languages spoken at home. But in any school statistics, they would have gone down as having English as an additional language, as the forms are designed so you can't say you have two first languages. "Two first languages" is simply not a thing according to the people who design questionnaires.

Kenlee · 16/09/2017 05:58

Actually I find this amusing. My DD speaks two dialects of Chinese and English equally well. Her Spanish is not to good...She also did her EAL at school.

Flip