But I'm looking for practical help.
I'm teaching in secondary schools in the UK, in an area which has been traditionally racially non-diverse (that sounds SO politically correct, but anyway). We now have an influx of Polish and Portugese kids, many of whom speak next to no English on arrival. Everyone seems to muddle through and we get no real help from our Local Authority. Anyone got really smart ideas? I've put together a 'point at this' sheet to show the usual instructions you'd need in a school with help from the few students who've come through. One of the big problems is that there is grammatic and spelling insecurity in the native language among the younger kids. Any ideas from the linguists among you?
Thanks
Cog
cogito
1
stormboy
How about some intensive ESL classes?
<blockquote>Quote
<hr>One of the big problems is that there is grammatic and spelling insecurity in the native language among the younger kids<hr></blockquote>
I think many children don't have an in-depth knowledge of the grammar of their native language. Perhaps sessions based on topics (e.g. shopping, sport, weather, clothes, etc.) as the primary focus would be more helpful than grammar-drilling lessons. There's no reason why grammar can't be introduced as part of these sessions (and it should be), but the days of parsing sentences and teaching grammar for grammar's sake are long gone.
2
fieldgate
The age of those kids is of importance. As you say, it's secondary school, so I guess they are in their teen-age.
I'm Polish myself, living in Sweden now. I'm not much upto date with Polish education system right now, but at the times when I went to school, grammar was taught extensively, and I'd tend to think it has not deteriorated.
From my experience, my kids and the kids of various Polish friends here in Sweden, have been doing very well at school, often excelling in other subjects, especially maths (because of different school curriculae).
It's usually much easier with younger children, who become fluent in about six month time. Older children, teenagers, need more time to become fluent, due to more complicated tasks at school, and also because of losing their natural ability to soak in the language, "without learning".
I'd say it's disappointing that you don't get any help from the authrorities. Here in Sweden, children of immigrants get additional classes, to get them trough the initial stage of schooling in a new environment.
I suggest, you do some local search and try to get in touch with some language teachers (here called "home language teacher"), who surely should be able to give you a better advice, as to methods of teaching. Good luck.
3
han_girl
Assuming you speak a second language, you could borrow what worked for you to teach your students.
After learning individual words (from the 'point at this' sheets), the next step will be sentences, then variations of them (by changing one word at a time in the sentence). Once they know how to construct sentences, they'll be speaking and writing.
Han Girl
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