Language Competence

From children’s verbal responses and written work there is substantial

evidence to show that children in both groups were able to make sense of the

stories, as will become clear in the case studies. I now wish to draw attention to

some key differences related to language between the two classes before

looking more deeply at how these shaped children’s responses.

Children in school A are drawn largely from White British, middle class

backgrounds. The ethnic backgrounds of children in school B are, in contrast,

much more diverse. The group I worked with in school B had three white

children, the remaining twenty-six being non-white. English Language skills

matter in this project as children had to listen and speak in English to

participate in the drama lessons. During my field research with group B, I found

out that giving out written homework did not go well as it did in school A. The

reasons are complex and children’s language competence seems to be a

I recall vividly a key activity when running the scheme of Liang and his

Magic Paint Brush in school B. I needed a child to play Liang sitting on chair

saying only one sentence: ‘I only draw for the poor’. I picked a boy who

normally was quiet but showed enthusiasm volunteering to take part. I was

aware that he was new arrival and had very limited English, but I assumed that

this task would not be a challenge to him. The fact, however, was that he could

hardly say the whole sentence. This personal teaching experience and overall

observation led me to interview the language support tutor and head-teacher,

which I did not need to do in school A.

The words of Bob5, the language support tutor in school B gave me more

insight about that particular child. He had little knowledge of English when he

joined school a year before and he took a while to settle down in a new learning

environment. Bob also outlined the complex linguistic needs in school B as a

whole.

‘(In this school), you've got a whole wide range of different needs. New arrivals, children who have learnt a little bit of English in their home country, …who were born here, but at home, the main languages spoken are not English, and then you've got those parents who come from another country but who speak English quite well. Then you actually have got families, although they come from other countries, they were actually born here, and have been educated in English through their entire life’.

5

Bob saw these issues of children being taught additional language in this

school as closely related to broader cultural issues that could impact on

attitudes and motivation to learn.

‘Some groups are keeping hold of their culture, that the family brought with them. That also has a linguistic impact. For example, it's a bit of a stereotype, but it's also quite true, some Muslim families like to hold on very strongly to the Islamic faith, that way of bringing up children. You try to persuade parents to let children take part in a range of wider social activities, but the family doesn't want that to happen. They don't take part or there is very limited participation’.

Bob’s perception is based on this specific culturally diverse community,

but this cannot be generalised that all the minority children experience less

family support on school activities. Research done by Lindsay and Muijs with a

group of Muslim boys showed that pupils positively acknowledged their

parents’ support with their school work (Lindsay & Muijs, 2005) and research

by Strand showed that Black African parents became involved with their

children’s schools more than Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents (Strand, 2007,

p. 8).

The class I taught in school B had twenty-nine children, three of them

White, British, the rest of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Somalian or of

Russian origin. I asked Bob to describe their linguistic ability, and he said:

definitely have got special educational needs in terms of slower development as well as that intermingling with their EAL needs. The linguistic needs coming from the fact of their family background, give them different linguistic expertise or levels of knowledge, so you've got this complicated mixture of issues. Sometimes it's quite difficult to diagnose what's going on’.

The head teacher made similar points when I interviewed her.

‘Children come from varied backgrounds. Lots of them come from families where perhaps at least one parent would be illiterate, so there's no point to send them complex homework home, if we know that there's nobody there to support children. We also have children who have problems with domestic violence, family breakdown, all the usual things that will effect children's learning. And there's also a cultural issue as well. I mean children are under a lot of pressure to get into the mosque and to dress every night, so that has the impact on how much homework they have time for’.

Religion is important to children in this school and practising religion is

part of life, according to the head teacher. The research done by Strand claims

that minority children who attend religious classes more than once a week

progress less than children who do not take religious courses or attend them

with less frequency. But he also points out whether there is a relation between

attendance at religious classes and children’s progression, this requires further

research to explore (2007, p. 10). When comparing the figure from Ofsted with

respect to measuring children’s progression in both schools, there is fairly little

difference between them. School A’s score on English is 100.2, while school B

no matter what.

The overall learning needs and pressures in the two schools,

nevertheless, are different. I recalled the time when being TA with two groups. I

observed that children in school A had regular vocabulary mock tests in their

literacy time. In school B, no such tests had ever taken place; instead, the

class teacher used a word game to encourage children to speak out words

they had leaned. According to children’s KS2 test results in both schools, it is

not surprising to find out that group A on the whole is much more able to use

language than group B, but their different language competences did not make

teaching drama to children in school B notably more difficult. As a teacher, I

was able to interact and respond to both groups with nearly identical lessons.

Their output were nonetheless different which reflects Bourdieu’s point that

different social groups have their own aesthetic dispositions, from which effect

their own ways when come to choose what to present in social space (1984).

I will now proceed to present the analysis story by story and class by