Becoming bilingual in the classroom: Code choice in school

Abstract

In this sociolinguistic study of the language patterns of ten young mother‐tongue Panjabi‐speaking children, the children are educated in the North East of England and first exposed to English on entry into nursery school around the age of three years. Thus their bilingualism is acquired sequentially and develops within a basically monocultural and monolingual English educational system. Participant observation was used to collect the child language data, but this method was not suitable for collecting language data in the home. Instead, mothers’ reports of home language use were gathered via informal interviews. Considerable variation was found to exist in the classroom communication of the children, all from very similar cultural, socio‐economic and linguistic backgrounds. In four different school settings, all children used more English than Panjabi. Clear patterns of language choice emerged from the data: code choice was found to be affected by certain characteristics of the interlocutor, audience, topic and activity. Most of the time the children showed that they had acquired the necessary skills to function adequately as bilingual speakers, and the study highlights the children's linguistic skills. However, in doing so, many questions are raised about the adequacy of current educational provision for children from linguistic minorities becoming bilingual in Britain today.