PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 40
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
Developing plurilingual literacy – preparing to write in two or three languages
Sooner or later EAL pupils who are being taught according to the plurilingual approach will begin to produce parallel
texts in English, Irish and their HL. At this stage it is a good idea to encourage them not always to begin with the same
language so that they learn how to move freely among the languages in their repertoire. In Third and Fourth Class, it
is not unusual for pupils to produce parallel texts that run to several pages (Figure 22).
Figure 22: Writing in three languages – Irish, English, Tagalog (Third Class).
Not to be outdone by their EAL peers, some Irish pupils may produce text in English, Irish and a language that is not
taught at school – an older sister may be learning Spanish at secondary school or a neighbour may be a native speaker
of Italian. It is important to recognize that with appropriate help pupils can produce well-formed text in a language of
which they know little besides the text they have written. Even if they have no further contact with the language,
performing such a task is a worthwhile learning experience, to be set beside the learning of fragments of EAL pupils’
HLs when playing in the school yard. Some pupils may attempt to include the school’s MFL at this stage. All such efforts
should be acknowledged and affirmed as every pupil will perform at their own level. Those who can achieve more
than the curriculum demands at a particular level should not be discouraged from doing so.
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