Primary school teachers: what is your experience with children of immigrants?

MakeEmLaugh

Apologies if there was a similar thread on this subject. I was just wondering how primary school teachers find teaching children whose first language might not be English.

I live in Dublin city, and you often hear mothers addressing and conversing with their children in Polish or other languages.

When a four years starts school, having exclusively spoken Polish until then, is it more difficult to initially teach them than children who would have grown up in an English-speaking home?

This is a topic about which I am very curious.

_ariadne

Children with English as an additional language is a reality of most primary schools in this day and age.
Teachers deal with it in many ways and usually if the children are in school from junior infants they stand a great chance of having no problems with language as they move up the school.
Personally I find teaching children with complex behavioral needs a lot more challenging than EAL.

alexanderomahon

We have had some fantastic experiences with children who have EAL.

There is a great deal of research pointing out the advantages of a multi lingual upbringing, just google it.

Equality

Research indicates that the parent should be encouraged to continue to speak to the child in the native language of the parent.

So in a home where dad is from France, he should speak his native French. If his wife if from Poland, she should speak to the children in her native Polish.

If they live in an English speaking country the children are better off to learn English from native speakers, not from a parent who is not using the language properly.