London: The primary school where every child learns to speak 40 languages

[Harold Schiffman]

The primary school where every child learns to speak 40 languages
By Richard Garner Education Editor
Monday, 10 March 2008


If this is March, it must be Nepali. Welcome to Newbury Park Primary
School in Redbridge, north-east London, where its 850 pupils will have
learnt phrases in 40 languages by the time they transfer to secondary
school. The school has adopted a policy of teaching each language
spoken by the 40 ethnic groups among its pupils. "It was more out of
politeness," said Joe Debono, who runs the "language of the month"
programme. "You have 250 Tamil children in the school. It is just
polite to greet them in their own language and recognise their
culture. And it is a way of celebrating the ethnic diversity of the
school and not seeing it as a problem."

The scheme has tangible benefits, he explained, as it can help
children who may be refugees to overcome the sense of alienation they
might feel in a new school. It may also encourage pupils to study in
more depth one of the languages they have encountered at Newbury Park
when they transfer to secondary school, where language learning is
compulsory for 11 to 14-year-olds. Mr Debono selects a child every
month to present lessons in their native tongue. He researches the
language with their parents and films a video of the child talking
their own language which can then be used in every class in the
school.

In introducing the new language of the month, every class starts by
greeting each other in the language to be learnt. In consultation with
the pupils, Mr Debono draws up a list of a dozen or so phrases they
feel it would be useful to learn in each language. The pupils then go
on to recite them.  "It's the sort of language that would be useful if
you were holidaying in the place," he said. The pupils go on to play
games to further their knowledge of the language, with teachers
placing cards with words on their heads. They have to guess what the
words are by asking their pupils questions. The pupils then shout out
"yes" or "no" in the language of the month.

This month, it is the turn of seven-year-old Aneeka Bhattarai, whose
family is from Nepal, to be the school's latest foreign language
teacher. "It gives them a lot of self-esteem and they are quite proud
they've done it," said Mr Debono. "They've appeared on the internet,
too, and, in some cases, all their relatives abroad in Nepal or Sri
Lanka have watched it and said: 'That's so-and-so's daughter on the
screen.' They often seem quite fascinated that an English school is
taking the trouble to teach their language."

Mr Debono is at pains to point out that the language of the month is
not taught as part of the modern foreign languages curriculum. Under
new government regulations, every primary school will have to ensure
that all its pupils start learning a language from the age of seven by
2010. "It's not taught in depth," he said. "It is complementary to the
national curriculum." Newbury Park's pioneering project has aroused
interest among teachers from other schools in ethnically diverse areas
who have visited it to see if they might be able to implement a
similar project in their own schools.

The scheme has also won international acclaim, with visits from
Finnish and Danish schools and a twinning project with a school in
Barcelona, and has helped to boost community involvement in the
school, particularly among parents who might otherwise have been
bashful about becoming involved with their children's education
because of their own poor English. Colin Whitehead, who has been
headteacher at the school for 14 years, said: "In that period of time,
our proportion of children with English as an additional language has
gone up from 40 per cent to 80 per cent."

The school has also doubled in size in the past six years as the
borough of Redbridge plays host to thousands of new immigrants. The
biggest ethnic group at the school are Tamils who have fled the civil
war in their homeland, Sri Lanka. "Many of them started off by
settling in Europe – Norway, Denmark, France or Germany – and then,
through the European community, they came on to England," said Mr
Whitehead. "The languages they spoke at home were Norwegian, Danish,
French and German so we included them on our 'language of the month'
list."

The result was the pupils learnt a more ethnically diverse mix of
languages than might otherwise have been the case. The school is
already taking steps to implement the Government's primary school
languages initiative by introducing French to seven-year-olds and, in
a rare move for a state primary, Latin for 10-year-olds. Latin is
considered by many experts to be a good language to give youngsters
the necessary skills they then need to go on and master another
language.  In fact, Latin is now being considered by the school as a
future candidate for another language of the month so the entire
school from the age of four upwards can get some basic knowledge of
the subject. In the meantime, though, the lessons in Nepali will
continue until after Easter, at which point the school will embark on
its 41st language of the month – Afrikaans.

"We have one pupil at the school who speaks that language," revealed Mr Debono.

Newbury Park's language lessons

1. Albanian
2. Arabic
3. Bengali
4. Cantonese
5. Catalan
6. Dari
7. Finnish
8. French
9. German
10. Greek
11. Gujarati
12. Hebrew
13. Hindi
14. Italian
15. Japanese
16. Kannada (Indian dialect)
17. Lingala (a Bantulanguage from Congo)
18. Lithuanian
19. Mandarin
20. Mauritian
21. Creole
22. Nepali
23. Norwegian
24. Polish
25. Portuguese
26. Punjabi
27. Romanian
28. Russian
29. Sinhala
30. Slovak
31. Somali
32. Spanish
33. Swahili
34. Tagalog
35. Tamil
36. Thai
37. Turkish
38. Twi
39. Urdu
40. Yoruba

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/the-primary-school-where-every-child-learns-to-speak-40-languages-793716.html


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