‘We can't tell our stories in English’: Language, story and culture in the primary school¹

A version of this paper appears in Teaching Bilingual Children (Trentham Books, in press).

Abstract

The paper arises from my experience as a teacher in the multilingual primary classroom. In the course of developing bilingual education strategies I became aware that bilingual children's work would sometimes improve dramatically when they used their home language. This was particularly evident when children were telling stories to each other. Research findings elsewhere have suggested the cognitive benefits of home language work with very young children coming to English for the first time. This paper suggests that the children's home languages are valuable not only in terms of linguistic and cognitive increment, but as part of a broad provision of multicultural and anti‐racist education.

Notes

A version of this paper appears in Teaching Bilingual Children (Trentham Books, in press).