English in Inclusive Multilingual Preschools. Kirsten Birsak de Jersey
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… Therefore, for the purposes of this Special Issue, YLs [young learners] are those at pre-primary and primary level, roughly from the age of 3 up to 11 or 12 years old. (p. 224)
While the study that is presented here focuses on the pre-primary level of preschool children aged 3 – 6, some of the research that is reviewed does not always clearly separate these two age groups. Whenever possible, this study will make this distinction.
Language choice
One of the simple facts of life in the present time is that the English language skills of a good proportion of its citizenry are seen as vital if a country is to participate actively in the global economy and to have access to the information and knowledge that provide the basis for both social and economic development. (Burns & Richards, 2009, p. 1)
English has become an international language, not only in the areas of research, businesses, politics, informatics, tourism or advertising but it has also developed to be the lingua franca which people of different nationalities share to communicate with each other in everyday contexts. From an early age English is a language that is also familiar to children. They are often exposed to English through electronic media, games, popular songs, English loanwords or products from the toy industry, for example. These early encounters with the English language are therefore closely associated with their interests, which in turn stimulate their natural curiosity and keenness to explore the language further.
Preschool teachers are generally reluctant to introduce a foreign language as the groups of children in their contexts of work are extremely heterogeneous due to their multicultural and multilingual background (→ chapter 3). This puts preschool teachers in a dilemma: on the one hand, they recognize that English is a lingua franca and therefore has a particular status in language education. Consequently, the teachers are generally open-minded and consider the idea of introducing English in preschool is an appropriate choice. On the other hand, they see the need for their groups of children to learn German as a second language first. This is expressed in the following quote of one of the preschool teachers who participated in the study which is presented here and may be considered to be representative of preschool teachers’ attitudes:
“It’s difficult to say, because of course children are here to learn German, because they need it for school and their lives. They also have to learn English in the [sic] school later on. So, it is also important, I think. What should I say?” (Nadia, 26.03.15: int. 2).1
This idea of the merits of consecutive language learning in preschool (first German – then English), that is also expressed in this preschool teachers’ quote, is a widely spread preconception among teachers as early language acquisition researchers have demonstrated: “Entgegen lange gehegter Vorurteile wissen wir heute, dass Kinder, die von frühester Kindheit an mit zwei (Erst-)Sprachen konfrontiert werden, dadurch nicht überfordert sind. … Offensichtlich ist die Sorge, Kinder durch potentiell widersprüchlichen Input zu verwirren, groß” (Tracy, 2008, p. 125). But the issue of language choice, that is, which potential additional language to offer in preschools if it is offered at all is yet another concern to teachers.
The European Commission (2011b) in their Policy Handbook which promotes foreign language learning (FLL) at the pre-primary level suggests that it is best to offer a foreign language in preschool education, which will be continued in primary school:
The aims of any EFL policy for children in pre-primary education should be to foster intercultural and multilingual education focused on the development of the child’s personal potential. Where appropriate, it could also be to provide an introduction to a particular language that will be taught later on in primary school. (p. 9)
This understanding is also expressed in the Language Education Policy Profile for Austria, which was published by The Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe and Austrian’s Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur (2008b). The report recognises – if with some reservation and referring to the omnipresence of the English language in society – that English is an “inescapable part of their cultural context”:
As in most other Council of Europe member states, the teaching of English dominates to the extent of sometimes seeming to be synonymous with foreign language teaching. With the exception of arrangements that have been made for autochthonous minorities and migrants, whenever discussion focuses on early-start language learning it tends to focus exclusively on English. In Austria as elsewhere the importance that is attached to developing proficiency in English makes it difficult to get a hearing for diversification, and even more difficult to imagine how it might be implemented. But English is so pervasive in international media, especially the Internet, that there is good reason to suppose that young people will learn it not only as a result of the teaching they receive at school but also because it is an inescapable part of their cultural context. (p. 8)
It has been statistically established by the Special Eurobarometer 243 that “English is perceived as the most useful language by citizens in both new and old member states” (European Commission, 2006, p. 31). According to the latest data, 97 % of all Europeans study English as a first foreign language and languages other than English, French or German are rarely studied (European Commission, 2017). Nevertheless, the European Commission in the same year “reiterated the ambition of ‘enhancing the learning of languages, so that more young people will speak at least two European languages in addition to their mother tongue’" (European Commission, 2018, p. 2; italics in original).
This development may seem at first to contradict European education policy’s aspiration of plurilingual education and the diversification of language teaching as their additional long-term goal: “Furthermore, the co-existence of many languages in Europe is a powerful symbol of the European Union's aspiration to be united in diversity, one of the cornerstones of the European project. Languages define personal identities but are also part of a shared inheritance” (p. 2). But on closer scrutiny this is not the case as it is not a question of ‘either – or’, but of ‘both – and’: while early childhood language development obviously needs to focus on the language of instruction (German), and – in the interest of equal chances for all the children – on a foreign language, children’s first language education must not be neglected:
Deutlich größeres Gewicht (als Dialekte oder Nachbarsprachen, zum Beispiel) wird auf die Wertschätzung und Berücksichtigung der Herkunftssprachen und unterschiedlichen Familienkulturen der Kinder gelegt und vielfach betont, dass andere Familiensprachen als Chance und Bereicherung, nicht als Belastung oder Risiko zu betrachten seien. Es wird nahegelegt, die verschiedenen Herkunftssprachen am besten durch Elternbeteiligung einzubinden. (Sambanis, 2016, pp. 174-175)
Considering the roles of different languages in elementary education, in my research project English was selected as the foreign language to be introduced in the inclusive state preschool for its relevance as a commonly shared European language that contributes to mutual understanding of people with diverse heritage languages. At the same time, English would be integrated in a preschool, which is characteristically multicultural and therefore multilingual. Consequently, it would support European language policy recommendations in a context where at the same time all the languages represented by the children are equally respected and important in their own right (→ chapter 6.2.2). In practice, this means that conscious attention is given to valuing the children’s many heritage languages as a principle in the state preschool, which was selected for the research project. Two examples illustrate this preschool’s language policy: when entering the preschool there is a large paper archway greeting everybody with good morning in the various languages of the children and three times a year they have story-day in which different stations are set up throughout the preschool as story-corners. Various mothers, fathers or grandparents who represent the different cultures and languages come to the preschool with their children’s storybooks and share them in one of the stations. The children are free to go from one station to the other to listen to the stories and have contact with the various languages. As I am a native speaker of English, I read English children’s books in one of the stations. During the day, at various opportunities, the preschool teachers engage the children in comparing words and trying to pronounce them, which is an experience that makes