Her Complementary School

4.2.4.1 The Setting

Called a „learning club‟, the French complementary school located in Yorkshire welcomes all francophone children of this region. It first started in 2005 thanks to a couple of French mothers‟ initiatives as a playgroup (see section 5.2.1.5) and has evolved into a school in which around one hundred pupils are registered. The aim is to meet the needs of the French speaking families who are not given the opportunity to fully develop their [multilingualism] in the British education system. In this rented Saturday school, children are between three to fifteen years old and are divided into nine classes in accordance to the French primary school system.Two and half hours are dedicated to a curriculum for CM1 (equivalent to Year Four) in a classroom rented for

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that purpose which implies that tables, chairs, white board, data show, light and heating only could be used.

4.2.4.2 The School‟s Linguistic Practice

The Saturday complementary school concentrates solely on the French culture and language. The school‟s staff members communicate consistently in French with one another within their premises; it should be said that occasionally, an English word is inserted in the conversation to facilitate the communication. For example, translanguaging ((Blackledge & Creese, 2010; Garcia: 2009)) happens in pedagogical meetings because the French Primary consultant works in the UK and does not systematically know the corresponding word in relation to pedagogy in French. What is noticed is that she constantly asks the rest of the group how to translate the word in French as if it is not appropriate to use an English word even though everybody in the room is Anglophone (see section 2.2.4 on the macro system).

In addition, in classrooms, the teaching team mostly resort to the French language to teach their pupils. The data has shown that one of the school criteria to recruit their teachers is to be French/francophone or have good command of the French language. Once, an English father (field notes 18 December 2012) mentioned to me that “what was striking when I dropped my daughter to the French school on Saturdays was that it felt like a French territory” as French was the dominant language.

After introducing the French school practice, I intend to focus on my participants‟ French complementary school teacher: her background in relation to the languages she uses in different contexts.

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4.2.4.3 The Teacher‟s Background

Christine, the complementary school teacher, is a French citizen who herself is the offspring of a mixed-background couple, a French mother and a Tunisian father. She is a secondary teacher in a girls‟ school whose majority of pupils are from Asian origins. She has been married to an English man for several years and has two children, a boy (seven years old) and a girl (four years old). She teaches French and Spanish in a mainstream school dominantly populated by children of Pakistani origin. Until the age of three, the children mainly spoke their mother tongue, French, but when they started school, they were exposed to much more English and thus mostly spoke in English to their mother, who admitted speaking more in English to them than before; moreover, the father does not speak French. An additional reason is that the family does not have many opportunities to visit France. The mother sometimes feels that English is overwhelming.

She states that:

Some people do feel threatened by it [by the fact that I speak French and they do not understand] […]”that is why English sorts of creeps in you speak more English than you should really”) (Interview One on 23 November 2012).

However, recently, because of family circumstances, she has resorted to a French au pair who speaks French to her children. “An immediate improvement has taken place”, confirmed the mother.

In the following section, I will emphasise on the complementary French teacher‟s practice in relation to Dahlia.

4.2.4.4 The Teacher‟s Practice

The complementary school teacher concentrates mainly on oral skills the whole year long. She had a calm attitude. She gives every pupil the chance to express themselves

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and encourages everyone to voice their perspectives, feelings and personal experiences for the first thirty minutes of the French class. I have always noticed that French is used consistently by the French native speaker teacher as well as by the pupils. However, when a pupil is stuck because of not having the right word at hand, the teacher helps by suggesting a word on some occasions or gives the child the chance to say the word in English and Christine repeats after him to familiarise the class with the unknown French word. This practice is consistently adopted. Homework is given on a regular basis. Assessment is fluid as the school has not imposed any kind of scoring scale. It is up to the teacher to establish a grading system. In my participants‟ Saturday class, the teacher does not grant any mark on work done either in class or at home. At the end of the academic year, she decides overall whether the child is able to move to the next level. It is done according to the teacher‟s understanding over the child‟s ability to fit in the upper class.

This institution offers a space to multilingual children to express themselves in their home language. The fact that the pupils only use French in front of the teacher illustrates the home language ideology. As a matter of fact, the teacher‟s upbringing took place in France where monolingual educational system was in place. This section indicates the importance of ecology (see section 2.2.2.1 ) illuminating the social forces (macrosystem/culture) impacting on multilingual pupils‟ home language maintenance. What is noticeable in the complementary school practice is that connection with mainstream schools is inexistent and that the child is occasionally given the chance to draw on English language when he or she does not know the French corresponding word. The complementary school teacher‟s experience as a multilingual individual, a mother of multilingual children and a teacher in a mainstream school seem to have given her the skills (flexibility/value given to both culture, English and French) needed

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to cater for multilingual pupils even if the children believe that in the French school, it is the rule to speak French.

In the following section, I shall look at the relation between Dahlia, her family, her mainstream and complementary schools within the meso system.