ABSTRACT
Modelling' by fluent language users during play and collaborative learning tasks is a natural way into a new language for children. Where a game or a task requires each child in the group to make contributions, good language learning is likely to take place. This chapter highlights that the introduction of individual education plans for special educational needs pupils in the wake of the 1994 Code of Practice was useful in focusing on the next stage of the pupil's development and strategies for achieving success. Though the contribution to a partnership of the specialist peripatetic teacher is necessarily less than the class teacher's and of shorter duration, the combination of experience and access to information and research, which is offered by specialist teachers, plays a major part in the education of bilingual pupils throughout the country. Their more recent role as providers of training for mainstream teachers is likely to have an increasingly important effect.
