Working With Bilingual Children: Good Practice in the Primary Classroom (Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6)

The teaching of English as a Second Language to minority school children has led to much educational and political debate. This book is concerned with the primary school education of such children. The papers consider how to help bilingual children achieve their cognitive and linguistic potential and how to improve language awareness amongst teachers. Areas covered include: - strategies for supporting bilingual children in the classroom - the support teacher and classroom teacher relationship - development of children's bilingualism at home and in school - classroom-based research on spoken and written discourse - developments in the assessment of bilingual children - bilingual children and the National Curriculum - monitoring equality in the classroom - helping children settle down in a new language environment The papers reflect the views of experienced applied linguists and practitioners, as well as advisers and teacher-trainers engaged in curriculum development and training.

Mahendra K. Verma is a lecturer at the University of York. His research interests and publications are in the fields of Sociolinguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Learning, Linguistic Diversity, Bilingualism and ESOL and Hindi Language. He has directed several INSET courses for teachers. Karen Corrigan is a lecturer at the University of Newcastle. She has research interests in the areas of bilingualism, language acquisition, syntax, sociolinguistics and the sociology of language and has published in each of these areas. Sally Firth graduated in 1991 from the University of York. She then became the research assistant on the Working with Bilingual Children project. She is currently pursuing a career as a speech and language therapist.