Download resource

Please enter your details to download this resource
Login
 

Enter your details to access this video

Or if you already have an account login to watch the video (if you don't you can register here).
Login
Email share link LinkedIn share link Twitter share link Facebook share link
Approximate reading time: 1 minute

In schools where English is the language of instruction we welcome new arrivals with limited English and, step by step, they become skilled in speaking English. These young learners have a gift, the gift of bilingualism. A skill that has a profound effect on their lives. This skills may affect their identity, the way they are educated, their employment, the friends they keep, marriage, where they choose to live, travel and how they think. The consequences are significant.

However, we often see cases of young learners losing their valuable mother tongue as a result of immersion in a new majority language, in this case, English. It’s very easy to focus so much on the importance of the new, majority language that the mother tongue is lost almost completely in some cases.

It is essential to foster the ongoing development of mother tongue in class and with parents and, where possible, try and ensure learners are immersed in their mother tongue from time to time.

To find out more about bilingualism in general and all kinds of question a teacher or parent may have about the area, have a look at Colin Baker’s book: A Parents’ and Teachers’ guide to Bilingualism. It includes an easy to follow list of questions highly relevant questions. Examples include:

Neither of us speaks a second language. How can we help our child become bilingual?

  • My child mixes two languages. What should I do?
  • Is it better to develop two languages together or one language later than the other?
  • Will my child learn two language only half as well as a monolingual child?
  • I do not speak the language of the school. How can I help my children with their homework?
Email share link LinkedIn share link Twitter share link Facebook share link

More articles from our blog

Girl online learning

Engaging EAL learners while learning remotely

Created: Mon 8th Mar 2021

In January 2021, we commenced another lockdown in the UK and put our recovery curriculum on hold. The question on most of our minds was immediately: "How will our EAL learners progress without the English academic and social interaction school provides, and which they need in order to flourish in their language learning journeys?"

multilingual books

Using multilingual books and stories in the EAL classroom

Created: Mon 12th May 2025

What happens when a child never hears their own language or they can never identify with any of the characters in the stories they read at school?

Child scared of Maths equations

Using language skills for maths

Created: Sun 27th Mar 2022

Studying mathematics in an English-medium school presents learners of English as an Additional Language (EAL) with a double cognitive whammy as they grapple with learning English and maths at the same time. Understanding maths is more than just knowing how to add and subtract; it also requires learners to use language to make sense of what they are studying, so that they can apply their maths knowledge in real life (Ramirez, 2020; Winsor, 2007). All learners need to be able to discuss their mathematical thinking in order to clarify and embed their understanding of new concepts.

Back to Blog