ABSTRACT
If the child has a language in which he can communicate effectively in his everyday life, he knows a great deal. The nature of this knowledge should become clear in the course of this discussion, but the knowledge can only be utilised if what the child knows is understood by the school. In order to gain such understanding one must put language in a proper perspective. In an educational setting, its significance does not so much lie in itself, but in the fact that it is a mediator of learning. Further, the view that cognitive and affective structures underlie linguistic structures is now widely held. 1 The role of natural languages is then to give verbal realisations to these structures. Indeed, all languages have the mechanism to express on the one hand our basic cognitive structures and on the other to elaborate on them. On these grounds one could argue that the school should give priority to subject-matter learning over second dialect or second language learning.
