PPLI Primary Guidelines - Flipbook - Page 13
Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
ppli.ie
The classroom activities presented in Part II of these guidelines embody three general principles:
1. When English is the language of instruction and Irish the second language of the curriculum, teachers should use
Irish for interactive routines with which pupils are already familiar in English, especially in the early stages. Obvious
examples in Junior Infants are learning to count and learning to match shapes and colours (already referred to in
section 1.3). Action games can also be played bilingually, and stories with which pupils are already familiar in English
can be read to them in Irish. In this way, pupils’ proficiency in English scaffolds the development of their proficiency
in Irish.
2. In the presentation of curriculum content, teachers should as a matter of course give pupils the Irish equivalent for
key words and concepts. As pupils’ proficiency grows, it should be possible for Irish to replace English for parts of
each lesson in a version of CLIL (content and language integrated learning).
3. The production of parallel texts of the kind described in section 1.3 should play a central role in the development
of pupils’ writing skills. It is not necessary for texts always to be produced first in English. If the teacher and pupils
collaborate in writing a story in Irish during class, pupils should find it easy enough to rewrite the story in English
for homework; rewriting a comparable English text in Irish, on the other hand, might well be beyond them. It goes
without saying that teachers should sometimes use Irish informally when communicating with pupils outside the
classroom.
Whether they come from Irish or immigrant families, pupils at Scoil Bhríde encounter Irish for the first time when they
start school. Junior Infants teachers have reported that home languages tend to be used when the focus switches from
English to Irish: the second language of the curriculum evidently licenses multilingual communication. This has two
important consequences. Irish pupils are strongly motivated to learn Irish because they too want a “home language”;
and pupils from immigrant families are no less keen on learning Irish than their native-born peers, which in turn
motivates some Irish pupils to learn another language with help from a family member or on their own.
Whether English and Irish are the only two languages in play or they are supplemented by a variety of home languages,
the plurilingual approach lends itself to intercultural education; indeed, the Council of Europe binds plurilingualism
and interculturality together in a single concept: plurilingual and intercultural education. This prompts the question:
how exactly does the development of plurilingual repertoires lead to intercultural learning?
Delivering
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