PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 13
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
generated by the school’s language policy enabled pupils to make a great deal of progress under their own steam. By
doing so, they confirmed Cummins’s Interdependence Hypothesis, according to which skills developed in one language
can be transferred to another language provided there is adequate exposure to that language and sufficient
motivation.19 The key procedure adopted by Scoil Bhríde was the production of parallel texts – that is, texts with the
same structure and thematic content – in English, Irish, HLs and (in Fifth and Sixth Class) French. To begin with, in Senior
Infants, the texts were very simple:“My name is …, my teacher is …”.But as pupils gradually learned to write more complex
texts in English and Irish, so the texts they produced in their HL became correspondingly more complex.20
Transfer of skills between languages is fundamental to the Primary Language Curriculum, to which we now turn.
“
Cummins’s Iceberg Model of
Language Interdependence
Cummins's Interdependence
Hypothesis claims that when
children learn to read and write
“
in one language they develop
generic skills that they can
transfer to other languages
Surface Features
of L1
Surface Features
of L2
Common Underlying
Proficiency
19
20
P. Ó Duibhir & J. Cummins, Towards an Integrated Language Curriculum in Early Childhood and Primary Education, Dublin:
National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2012, pp. 31–36.
For examples from all classes, see Chapter 4 of D. Little & D. Kirwan, Engaging with Linguistic Diversity.
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