PPLI Primary Guidelines - Flipbook - Page 41
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
2.3.4 Consolidating plurilingual learning
When a plurilingual approach to language education is implemented across the school, teachers will think of many
different ways of consolidating language learning. Here are just four examples; teachers will think of many other
possibilities.
Inter-class interaction
EAL pupils from senior classes (Third–Sixth) can visit junior classes and interact with pupils in Irish and their home
languages. Senior pupils can also teach juniors songs in their home language. These activities benefit senior pupils as
well as juniors because they acknowledge and affirm their linguistic identity and promote self-esteem.
Senior pupils read stories to juniors
In Fifth and Sixth Class pupils may regard fairy tales as suitable for much younger children. However, having pupils at
this level read Irish versions of stories such as Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears to Junior and
Senior Infants is a good way of boosting the language skills of all involved. Similarly, EAL pupils in Fifth and Sixth Class
can read stories in their home language to Junior and Senior Infants who have the same home language; and they
can repeat the exercise for their classmates, who try to identify and understand key words and phrases.
Autonomous language learning
One way of encouraging autonomous learning is to introduce a Language Box to which pupils voluntarily contribute
texts of various kinds: favourite recipes written in various languages, free writing in languages of their choice, personal
profiles, etc. This provides an opportunity for pupils to write in languages they know while providing support for pupils
who are learning a language already spoken by one or more of their classmates.
In addition:
•
Pupils from a variety of language backgrounds may choose to learn the home language of a friend (often a
reciprocal arrangement).
•
Individual pupils use a variety of methods to teach themselves new languages – CDs, course books, language
quizzes, language videos, keeping language notebooks, etc.
•
Two or more pupils form a language learning partnership.
Encouraging pupils to improve their home language prociency
When grandparents or other family members phone or pupils visit their parents’ country of origin, they may realize
that they cannot converse as easily as they would like in their home language. This is quite normal: growing up in an
English-speaking environment will influence children’s home language development to varying degrees. They should
be praised for what they can do and given every encouragement to continue to use and learn their home language,
perhaps by practising it with other speakers of the language during break. Plurilingual development is not a matter of
instantly achieving “native speaker” proficiency in the language of the home but of gradually acquiring a linguistic
repertoire of which the home language is a fully integrated part.
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