ABSTRACT
Many primary schools undertake language awareness and language study courses, in line with National Curriculum requirements. Multilingual schools are ideally placed for this work in that their resources, in terms of children, staff, other professionals, and parents, are often substantial and always to hand. An initial survey of Who-speaks-what-in-which-context? (see Appendix 2) will indicate some of the language riches to be mined. (A school secretary knows some Welsh songs; a child speaks four languages and is literate in two of them; a teacher learnt some Polish phrases from her parents; a dinner assistant has a strong Scots accent and dialect.)
Accordingly, this chapter describes such a survey. It also highlights several other language activities across the infant-junior range, in a school readily alert to the possibilities: • capitalizing on story with 6-year-olds; • using a language notice board with older infants; • organizing a staff-children language teach-in; • improvising with shadow puppets; • shopping and photographing in the local High Street. All these activities are presented with commentary and analysis. The whole aim is to show a living community drawing on its own resources for its own benefit, a vast kind of DIY exercise. Many practical ideas for language work are suggested, which are as appropriate in monolingual as in multilingual contexts.
