PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 31
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
2.4.2 Stage 2
Using an integrated plurilingual approach to support learning
By encouraging an EAL pupil to volunteer words and phrases in his or her HL, the teacher ensures that the language
is always activated in the pupil’s mind and available to support learning. EAL pupils know that the teacher and their
classmates do not know their HL, which means that they can contribute information that would otherwise not be
available to the class. This is empowering and fosters self-esteem; it also means that pupils learn at least fragments of
many different languages.
The teacher may tell the class that a small orange is called a mandarin and ask EAL pupils what it is called in their
language. Always accept whatever they offer – e.g. mandarynka in Polish – even though you may have no way of
knowing whether it is right or wrong: experience suggests that in the great majority of cases it will be right.
Contributions from EAL pupils are almost guaranteed to produce interesting insights. For example, cold is fuar in Irish;
in Romanian it is frieg, which sounds a bit like fridge, which is cold.
The use of Irish for classroom management and to reinforce the communication of curriculum content ensures that
the language is not confined to the Irish lesson pupils have each morning but becomes part of their everyday reality.
This effect is strengthened by spending a few minutes each day getting pupils to share their news in Irish – perhaps
something they heard or saw on the way to school (chonaic mé…/chuala mé … bhí timpist ar an mbóthar/is é seo mo
bhreithlá/ etc.) or some other event that has made an impression on them (e.g. bhí accident ar an mbóthar): language
that has personal relevance is easy to retain. Allow pupils to use English words to fill gaps in their knowledge but write
the missing Irish words on the whiteboard. Correct grammar and pronunciation, but without comment. Pupils should
always write new words and phrases in their plurilingual copybooks; in junior classes they may draw matching pictures
as a way of helping them to remember. By the time pupils are in First Class it should be possible to introduce individual
lessons and topics in Irish, using the whiteboard to model correct language use (Figure 8). The Irish that pupils write
in their copy books can then be translated into English and/or HLs for homework.
Figure 8: Text in Irish subsequent
to discussion and modelled on
whiteboard (First Class)
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