Bilingualism and Language Education in French Primary Schools: Why and How Should Migrant Languages be Valued?  

Oleh:

Helot, Christine ; Young, Andrea

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Full Text) vol. 5 no. 2 (2002), page 96 — 112.
Fulltext: Vol. 5, No. 2, 96 — 112.pdf (221.92KB)

Isi artikel

While bilingual educationprogrammes in European mainstreamlanguages arebecoming increasingly popular in France, the bilingualism ofmigrant children remains overlooked and is believedby many to delay the acquisitionof French. An institutionalised language hierarchy lies all too often unchallenged within the French education system and linguistic policies for primary schools, while trying to develop foreign language learning from the earliestage, fail to dealwith the questionof minority languages. This study presents a language awarenessproject in a smallprimary school in theMulhouse area of Alsace as an example of how languages of unequal status can be placed on an equal footing in a school context, how children can be educated to linguistic and cultural variety and teachers made aware of the linguistic and cultural wealth present in their classes and their community. Finally, we shall argue that language awareness programmes do not have to compete with early foreign language teaching, but can be implemented in a complementary way, to educate children about language, languages and cultures, thus valuing differences as a source of learning, helping to foster tolerance and fight racismand extending teachers’knowledge and understanding of multilingual and multicultural issues.

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