PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 18
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
The dialogic and exploratory talk that mediates between school knowledge and pupils’ action knowledge allows pupils
to contribute fragments of their home cultures to the ever-expanding knowledge of the class. Some of those fragments
will be broadly familiar to many pupils, while others are startlingly different; in many cases difference will be linguistic
as well as cultural. But the adoption of the plurilingual approach advocated by the Primary Language Curriculum and
explained in these guidelines should help pupils to accept novelty and difference with interest and respect, welcoming
all forms of diversity for the enrichment they bring.
Parents’ appreciation of the benefits of a plurilingual approach
Our children see these other girls and boys in their class speaking this other language with
fluency and with confidence and I think they say, ‘Why can’t I do that with my Irish?’ It
makes them want to speak the Irish more at home. I think it spurs them on
We like the school’s interest in our language. Before, my daughter was ashamed to hear us
speaking it. Now she wants to read and write in it
I really think because it is so much encouraged in this school, how to speak and to find the
similarities between your own home native language and English, Irish and French, it
definitely speeds up the learning of English
When my child came home and told me that the teacher asked her to say something in
[our home language] I sat down and cried because I thought, ‘Someone wants to know
about our language’.
A weight was lifted off my shoulders when I heard that it was alright to speak
my language at home.
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