Home languages in the literacy hour

Date of issue: Jun. 2002
Audience: coordinators

Languages other than English spoken by children and young people outside school are referred to as community languages, home languages or first languages. In multilingual homes, children may be used to speaking two or more languages from their earliest years, making it difficult to identify their 'first' or strongest language. This paper, therefore, refers to children's 'home languages'.

No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of the home as he [sic] crosses the school threshold, nor to live and act as though school and home represent two separate and different cultures which have to be kept firmly apart.

The Bullock Report (1975): A Language for Life

Successful schools:

• show they value all children's home languages
• where possible, use home languages in teaching to support understanding
• encourage and, where possible, build on children's literacy development in home languages as well as English.