Promoting Learning for Bilingual Pupils 3-11

Opening Doors to Success

Jean Conteh, Jean Conteh

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781446234747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

Written by a team of teachers, this clear and accessible book shows readers how they can help bilingual learners in their classrooms to access the curriculum as effectively as possible.

Advice is included on:

- developing whole-school policies

- creating positive classroom settings to promote learning

- using drama

- supporting bilingual learners in the early years

- the importance of home-school links

There are also plenty of practical suggestions for ways to improve classroom practice, and some photocopiable material.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Principles and Practices for Teaching Bilingual Learners

---

Jean Conteh and Avril Brock

In this book we provide principles, advice and practical ideas for promoting the learning of bilingual pupils in mainstream primary schools, including children in the Foundation Stage. Most of the ideas and activities presented in the following chapters are from teachers and teacher-trainers who have worked for many years in schools in Bradford. In some Bradford schools, as in other cities in the UK, the majority of pupils are bilingual, and many are the children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of people who arrived to work in mills and factories 40 or 50 years ago. But there are also schools where bilingual pupils are very much in the minority, and where children have recently arrived from many different countries, including Eastern European and African countries. The guidance in this book is designed to cover both kinds of school setting.

We believe that the basic principles for promoting learning for bilingual pupils are the same, in many ways, as those for all pupils, so the first and overarching principle for promoting learning is:

Good practice for bilingual learners is good practice for all learners

But, beyond these basic principles, there are important and distinctive features of bilingual learners’ experiences that need specific support, and these are our main focus in this book.

In this chapter, we introduce the main ideas that flow through the book. We discuss:

• The centrality of language in learning
• Who are ‘bilingual learners’? – definitions of bilingualism
• Language repertoires
• Links between first language and additional languages
• Transitional and additive bilingualism
• Whole-school benefits of bilingualism
• Key principles for planning teaching to promote additive bilingualism
• Translating principles into practice.

In Chapters 2–7, the principles are then developed and illustrated with a wealth of practical examples. Teachers who have carried out successful projects share their experiences and analyse what made their work successful. Words printed in bold in the text are explained in the Glossary, which begins on page 103. You will find full details of books and other resources mentioned in the chapters in the further reading sections at the end of each chapter.

THE CENTRALITY OF LANGUAGE IN LEARNING

Language is all around us, we hear and see language in the home, in the media, in the street, as well as in the school environment. Language forms the essence of thought; it is the medium in which understanding occurs. Through language, we construct our understanding of the world and are able to communicate with others. Language does not just occur in school as a body of knowledge in the subject called English or in the Literacy Hour. It is cross-curricular and forms the basis of learning in all the other curriculum areas. Language underpins learning, so, for young bilingual learners who are new to English, not only are they:

learning a new language

they are also

using language to learn new things.

This, of course, is true for all pupils, but it is more significant for pupils who enter school with very little English. It is essential that bilingual pupils have as much opportunity as possible to develop concepts in their first language, so that their learning is based on a firm foundation. At the same time, equal access to English should be offered to all bilingual pupils from the start of their time in formal education.

Because language and learning are linked in these ways, it can be a complex matter to identify correctly the needs of young bilingual learners who have little English and are at the early stages of schooling. It is well known that many learners new to English need a ‘silent period’ – when a child does not speak or respond to others – in order to build up their knowledge of English and their underlying proficiency before they begin to speak. Language needs can seem like learning needs, and sometimes specific learning needs can go undetected. In this book, we are not dealing directly with assessing bilingual learners’ needs, but we recognize how issues of assessment influence teaching in many different ways. An excellent book that deals directly with this area is Assessing the Needs of Bilingual Pupils (Deryn Hall et al., 2001).

WHO ARE ‘BILINGUAL LEARNERS’? DEFINITIONS OF BILINGUALISM

In government documentation, the term most commonly used for pupils who speak other languages besides English is EAL (English as an additional language) learners. When we use the term ‘bilingual’ in this book, we are including EAL learners. We prefer the term ‘bilingual’ because we believe it is broader and more inclusive, and represents more accurately the important idea that, for bilingual children, all their languages contribute to their whole language experience and their knowledge of the world. Languages are not separate and isolated units. Bilingual children and adults naturally switch and mix between the languages they have at their disposal, they do not keep each language separate.

If you listen to groups of bilingual people having a conversation, you will often hear English words, phrases or sentences amongst the other languages they are using. This is known as codeswitching, and is especially common in children whose families have been settled in the UK for two or three generations, and who still maintain strong links with their homeland. Children from such bilingual (or multilingual) families will often speak different languages with different family members as a perfectly normal part of their lives; they may speak English with their siblings and perhaps their parents, but they will speak the family language (perhaps Urdu, Punjabi, Bangla, or Gujerati) with uncles, aunts and grandparents.

In talking about bilingualism in this way, we are not intending to suggest that children are fluent in all the languages they speak and write, but that – like the majority of people in the world – they have access to more than one language in normal and natural ways in their daily lives. The following, from Deryn Hall’s book (2001), which she calls a ‘working definition’, is helpful in understanding the experiences of bilingual children in schools in England:

In England the term is currently used to refer to pupils who live in two languages, who have access to, or need to use, two or more languages at home and at school. It does not mean that they have fluency in both languages or that they are competent and literate in both languages. (2001: 5)

This way of thinking about bilingualism, as ‘living in two or more languages’, makes clear the links between language and identity. An understanding of these links is very important for success in education. Our identities are formed from the activities we do every day and the conversations we have with the people around us. Through this, we develop a sense of where we belong, and of how we identify with the social worlds that surround us. There is a great deal of evidence to show that, if pupils feel they belong in the classroom and that their teachers value them as individuals, their attitudes to learning will be much more positive, and their achievement will improve.

Official statistics currently state the numbers of bilingual children in schools in England to be about 10%, or around 650,000 children, with almost 300 languages represented. These figures are partly based on the 2001 census where, for the first time, as a population we were asked to declare our ethnicities. But, there was no specific question on the census form about the languages we speak, so the official figures are based more on information about ethnicity than about language. It is likely that there will be questions specifically about language on the next census forms in 2011, which will be the first time that systematic information about the languages spoken and written by the people of Britain has been collected.

Even though the ethnic minority population of Britain is currently about 10% and so quite small, DfES statistics reveal that virtually all secondary schools and about 75% of primary schools have some learners who can be defined as bilingual on roll. Of course, the proportions vary considerably, with a few primary and secondary schools in cities like Bradford having virtually 100% bilingual pupils, and other schools having perhaps onl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Note on royalties
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Principles and Practices for Teaching Bilingual Learners
• 2 Promoting Positive Links Between Home and School
• 3 Promoting Learning in the Early Years
• 4 Talking, Learning and Moving on to Writing
• 5 Using a ‘Bilingual Approach’ to Promote Learning: Ideas for Talking and Writing
• 6 Using Drama to Promote Learning
• 7 Promoting a Positive Whole-School Ethos
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Useful websites
• Index