Learning additional languages significantly boosts
first language literacy by enhancing phonological awareness, grammar
understanding and decoding skills. Francesca Pini, the founder and creator of Language
Angels, explores these benefits and
the literacy boosting power of learning foreign languages from a young age.
How Does
Learning a Foreign Language Specifically Improve Literacy in the First
Language?
- Phonetical & Grapheme Awareness: Explicitly teaching
letter-sound relationships and comparing these sounds and letters
in different languages is impactful for both languages. Spending time learning
how to make these new sounds with new tongue placements and mouth shape deepens
understanding of how they sound and are made in the foreign language, but what
happens with sounds in the first language too.
- Grammar & Structure: Learners
become more aware of grammatical rules, spelling, and punctuation by seeing how
they function in a similar fashion or differently across different languages.
Adjectives may need to ‘agree’ in another language and why is this?
- Decoding Skills: Using
language learning strategies to decipher new words in a second language
strengthens the ability to decode and infer meaning in the first language.
- Reading Fluency: More
practice reading aloud in a new language builds confidence for reading aloud in
the first language.
- Metacognitive Skills: Learning
another language improves overall cognitive flexibility and problem-solving
across all areas of the curriculum.
How does
Language Angels Ensure This Happens?
Language
Angels has a very clear and structured approach to ensuring pupils see the
patterns in language learning generally. The pedagogy and methodology of
teaching a second language (or a third or fourth for some pupils!) is very
different to teaching the first language in school. Time restraints play a part
too but by promoting translanguaging pupils make progress in both languages.
The cognitive effort required when mastering a new linguistic system makes
learners more conscious of how language works overall, leading to better
reading, writing, and even creativity in their native tongue. Children become
more strategic readers and writers, and it supports academic success in other
subjects too.
- Using Similar Literacy Learning Strategies: Language
Angels has intentionally used many similar literacy learning strategies in our
materials so that pupils will encounter similar patterns across the curriculum.
There is lots of visualising, predicting, questioning, summarising and
organising of foreign language but also generally of ‘ideas. We build from noun
and article/determiner to phrase and then text level, as children learn to do
things gradually and carefully. We ensure that pupils have opportunities for
plentiful output - including role-play and high-quality dialogue so pupils have
opportunities to express themselves orally too and enrich their vocabulary
before written output.
- Differentiated Activities in all
Four Language Skills: There are multiple opportunities for
pupils to perform specific speaking, listening, reading and written tasks
across a variety of topics with progressively more challenge so that pupils
become more confident and aware of how to develop and improve their skills in
talking, listening, reading and writing. They learn how to communicate ideas
and information in the foreign language through the supported activities and
reference tools and then transfer these skills.
- Different Genres of Media: Through
Language Angels, learners are able to explore the different types of media and text
through the resources and broad choice of units. This ensures they become more
familiar and confident with ‘handling’ of progressively more complex and
unknown vocabulary. Using new technologies and reference tools to communicate
will help boost pupil learning and will help pupils develop literacy skills for
the digital age.
- Decoding Skills: We
teach pupils to gradually read and listen for longer, to hunt for cognates, to
infer meaning and to use a dictionary and reference tools to help them
understand and retain more but also so that they can adopt new transferable
skills.
- Tying in with SPaG & Using
Grammatical Terminology: We teach pupils to gradually
understand the grammatical terminology and then work on word order in sentences
to help them focus more clearly in the first language too. Understanding that
nouns, adjectives and verbs exist in all languages but may work differently
helps pupils focus their attention and consolidate their knowledge of SPaG in
both languages.
All of the above ensures pupils develop
strong literacy skills in more than one language and also helps unlock
potential across curriculum subjects.
