School and home language

Between the languages a teacher speaks at school and at home is a difference. Also pupils use another language in writing an exam and communicating at home or with their friends. At home dialects and even other languages are common. The pronunciation is often a different one and pupils feel more comfortable. That leads to the fact that pupils are more fluent in talking at home, because they have more self-confidence.

There are two different types of language proficiencies. BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills = home language) and CALP (Cognitive academic language proficiency = school language). BICS are the skills of listening and speaking in everyday life. They can be acquired within 6 months constantly confronted with the language (when you live there). CALP is the academic language, which is normally not used in everyday life. To acquire CALP it takes much longer. If you want to be able to communicate in a foreign language on a CALP level it takes 5 to 7 years.
You can only express yourself in the sophistication your language level is. And a foreign language can only be as good as you master your mother tongue.

So how should it be possible for a child who immigrated, to learn a new language and become better in it than in the mother tongue? Languages are important, especially because of the fact that globalization is an important topic today.
In some schools in Belgium there is a sign which indicates that only Dutch is allowed also during breaks. Even on some public playgrounds you will find such a sign. In my opinion this is very stupid. You can not prohibit someone from speaking any language he or she wants to speak or is able to speak.

This weekend I also read an article from Austria about the same topic. In one of the Vienna Business Schools in a kind of village next to Vienna there was a letter posted in the school which says that it is only allowed to use German to communicate, also during the breaks. The letter was signed by the principal. The only exceptions are the foreign languages (English, Spanish, Italian and French) which are taught in the school and only during the lessons or to the teachers of these languages. These rules are also effective for phone calls. If a pupil can only communicate in his or her mother tongue on the mobile phone with his or her parents, then the pupil should go to a place where nobody else is disturbed or can be offended by the phone call.
These strange rules are caused by an intercultural conflict with the cleaning stuff it’s written in the letter.

That’s really not the way it should be and that’s not the solution for a better integration of immigrants and that doesn’t ease the language acquisition. I think it even makes it more difficult, because I really can imagine that if you are forced to speak a language then you are not motivated to learn it. As it also says in the news the formulations in the letter were misunderstood. But I think they just said it to the press to save their reputation, because I think the reactions of the society were not very positive about the stupid idea to only allow German in the school.

The posted letter from the principal