ABSTRACT
It is true that in most areas in Britain today there are few new arrivals of children from abroad, but this does not mean that language difficulties, and in particular the problems of teaching English to both immigrant and native-born children belonging to minority ethnic groups, have diminished. On the contrary we now have a clearer and more realistic view concerning the nature of such difficulties and, what is more important, it is generally recognized that there is no speedy solution. Many of the children, especially those whose language deficiencies have attracted most attention so far, need to learn English as a completely new language, i.e. as a second language. Most of these children have come to this country direct from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Cyprus, although there are also small, yet significant, groups from Portugal, Hong Kong, Yemen and elsewhere. Once it was believed that non-English speaking immigrant children would soon 'pick up' the English language without special help, but this notion is now discredited. A n equally important group of learners, much neglected until the past five years, is that of children of West Indian origin whose Creole dialect is frequently very different from the dialects
