ABSTRACT
As the different chapters in this book illustrate, multilingualism is the norm in most countries of the world. It is increasingly likely that at some stage of their career, teachers will work with students who have limited previous experience of the language of the school curriculum. At the same time, their classrooms may contain children who have grown up confidently speaking two or more languages, and switching between them for different purposes and in different contexts. Yet these special strengths of young bilinguals are too rarely recognized in the classroom, or built on in supporting the development of the second language and literacy of their more newly arrived peers. It has been far more common to define the needs of minority group children whose home language differs from that of their school in terms of a deficit, sometimes in need of urgent remediation, requiring the ‘silver bullet’ of intensive language classes away from their peers. In this chapter I pose the following questions. First, in making provision in schools for second language learners from minority linguistic group backgrounds, should the emphasis be on setting up remedial programmes, or is a more radical programme required, one that entails a reappraisal of all mainstream ‘good practice’ and of the role of the ‘normal’ class and subject teacher? And second, using the terminology explained by Cummins (this volume, Chapter 1), how might it be possible to integrate supportive ‘immersion’ strategies for minority second language learners into the mainstream classroom, while avoiding the danger of ‘submersion’, where the learner is simply left to sink or swim?
