PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 51
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
In addition:
•
Pupils from a variety of language backgrounds may choose to learn the HL of a friend (often a reciprocal
arrangement).
•
Individual pupils may use a variety of methods to teach themselves new languages – CDs, course books,
language quizzes, language videos, keeping language notebooks, etc.
•
Two or more pupils may form a language learning partnership.
Encouraging pupils to improve their HL proficiency
When grandparents or other family members phone or pupils visit their parents’ country of origin, they may realize
that they cannot converse as easily as they would like in their HL. This may inspire them to become more proficient in
their HL, perhaps by practising with other speakers of the language during break. Plurilingual development is not a
matter of instantly achieving “native speaker” proficiency in the language of the home, or in any language, but of
gradually acquiring a linguistic repertoire of which the HL and taught/additional languages are a fully integrated part.
2.6 Instead of a conclusion
The plurilingual approach to teaching and learning that we have described in these guidelines is truly transformative.
This is how Fintan O’Toole responded to our account of its development and implementation in Scoil Bhríde (Cailíní),
Blanchardstown:31
Bubbling under the surface of Irish life is a great polyglot stew, a profusion of tongues unlike anything in our
history. And here’s the thing we need to grasp – this is a fabulous resource for indigenous culture. It is turning
a monochrome screen of words to a glorious technicolour.
And instead of creating the tower of Babel that is often feared, this policy simply made all the kids better at
languages. They became a great resource for each other, adding insights from their own linguistic worlds.
Imagine a classroom in which half a dozen children are retelling an Irish legend in half a dozen other
languages, translating, inquiring, playing with the infinite diversity of words. What a fabulous educational
experience that must be – working-class kids getting a daily course in applied linguistics that would be hard
to match at university.
And one of the beneficiaries of this approach is, rather wonderfully, the Irish language. Kids who are
comfortably polylingual are much more at ease with Irish than those who live in a monolingual English
world… “the presence of other languages in the classroom helps them to accept Irish as one more medium
of communication”. 32
31
32
David Little and Déirdre Kirwan, Engaging with Linguistic Diversity: A Study of Educational Inclusion in an Irish Primary School, London: Bloomsbury
Academic 2019.
Fintan O’Toole. “Schools with immigrants producing tomorrow’s Irish speakers”, The Irish Times, 26 November 2019.
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