ABSTRACT
All children bring to school their own experience of the world. Those children who begin their schooling overseas and then arrive here between the ages of, say, seven and nine years, have to adapt to a new country, a different education system, and an unfamiliar language. Most are old enough to be aware that: • they have left close relatives and friends behind; • life in a terraced house in an English city is very different from their
previous home in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh (or Vietnam etc.); • the norms and teaching styles they encounter may be at variance with
what they were used to at home; • their reference points against which to measure experience are
confusing; • they cannot function in a language which, clearly, many younger
children have mastered. Such apparent and temporary deficiencies must be set against positive attributes such as: • greater knowledge of first language; • more advanced cognitive development (than a younger child in the
same position); • greater skill to transfer to learning a second language; • more motivation, perhaps. This Appendix is about three children who may be considered ‘late arrivals’. They are Abdul, Fatima and Yasmina.
