These signs in turn send a message that many languages are welcome. Multilingual signs in a school help parents to navigate the building, and also show that many languages are welcome and a normal part of school life. This means that they are included in decision making, and active in the life of the school. Learners can create multilingual signs for their school. Schools that create a culture where linguistic diversity and multilingualism are the standard can lessen prejudice against learners. Many refugee learners who have been interviewed about their school experiences tell stories about how speaking a different language makes them targets of linguistic prejudice, bullying and xenophobia. Seeing and hearing home languages can make school a safer place Families, aides and learners can help with readings and translation. Learning and using these words and phrases together as a class can create community and provide insight into cultures. Teachers can also encourage children to read books in their home languages. Surprise can describe the experience of reading a book that keeps you in suspense, but it can also describe shock or happiness. Mandarin has several ways to express surprise. For example, tjoepstil in Afrikaans describes being absolutely silent, chon in Korean is the bond between friends, and hüzün in Turkish is a form of deep sadness. If your class reads a book together that is full of surprises, knowing Mandarin could be helpful.

Our languages express certain feelings, concepts or ideas particularly well. Using home languages can provide insight into other cultures The statements can be written, spoken, visual, musical, dramatic, or a combination, and can be done collaboratively. The researcher Jim Cummins and his colleagues have argued that ‘English language learners will engage academically to the extent that instruction affirms their identities and enables them to invest their identities in learning.’ They give examples of children in Canada whose teachers let them create positive statements about themselves. But when children feel their home language is respected, they are more willing to participate in the classroom. Making space for only one language sends a message that ‘there is no space here for you’.

Welcoming home languages will involve learners This is also a good opportunity to learn from learners. Asking learners to talk about the similarities and differences between languages makes learners more conscious of language structures (this process is called contrastive elaboration). This can be a whole-class activity. Make a class chart of the languages spoken, and add differences and similarities throughout the semester. Those teachers are also better able to predict the types of spelling mistakes learners will make.įind out which languages learners speak by doing a class language profile at the beginning of a school year. Teachers who know that their learners’ home language is Arabic are more likely to understand why learners make certain spelling mistakes. What counts as a mistake in the target language is often a creative attempt to solve a problem using language resources learners already have.įor example, Arabic doesn’t have /p/, /v/, /n/ and /r/ so learners may spell English words using other letters. Humans are problem-solvers, and we use our resources to communicate with each other in lots of different ways. Being able to move between two languages lessens the cognitive load (the brain having to do too many tasks at once) and lets learners explain what they know and can do.Īs one student teacher put it, ‘I can flow with my home language’. When learners use their home language to learn another language, their understanding and performance is likely to improve. Learners learn more when they are able to use home languages Jocelyn Wyburd, the Director of the Language Centre at the University of Cambridge, maintains that the world is becoming increasingly multilingual. Most of the world’s children grow up in multilingual communities and interact with speakers of different languages.

When we welcome home languages, we acknowledge that multilingualism is a global norm Sometimes we can have multiple home languages. Kerryn Dixon, Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, makes the case for integrating learners' home languages into the life of the school.Ī home language is the first language we learn to speak and is generally the language of our parents and community.

Teachers home visits