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Equal opportunities
The UK has always been a multilingual society – and many people whose first language is Urdu, Hindi, Chinese or Turkish may also be fluent speakers of English. Opportunities for people from ethnic minorities exist as they are often expected to act as interpreters, or offer customer support to communities who also do not speak English as their first language. People who are bilingual often provide an invaluable informal service in dealing with non-English speakers. However, little financial rewards exist for these jobs.
Source: Languages work website 2004
In schools, little account of pupils’ bilingualism is taken which results in two weaknesses:
- the failure to meet children’s linguistic and cultural needs
- the failure to nurture their talents
Children from multilingual backgrounds tend to have a more positive attitude to learning languages and learn them more easily. However, bilingual and plurilingual children in schools are still seen sometimes as a problem rather than a resource.
Source: Nuffield Languages Inquiry 2000
Last cached: 2008-05-09 12:26 PM