Case Study

Introduction

Valentines High School has an Ethnic Minority Achievement Department that organises a system of community mentors which works closely with the Department of Modern and Community Languages within the school. Turkish, Panjabi, Tamil, Urdu, Somali and Polish are taught as after school clubs. However, the school stresses that despite the format of after school clubs, these are not informal ‘homework clubs’ but properly structured formal teaching classes.

Each year, a community languages conference is organised. 2 years ago, the theme was 'how can schools develop a positive and effective approach to community languages?' At last year’s conference, workshops were arranged on Asset Languages, training community language teachers for GCSE oral exams, and speakers from CILT, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and a Researcher from the Institute of Education were invited to speak.

The community language teachers are all native speakers who have considerable autonomy in their teaching approach. They are expected to teach the appropriate syllabus for the level being studied. The CILT community languages curriculum guides have proved useful and they hope to include a workshop on the CILT Community Languages Curriculum Guides at next year's community language conference.

The community language teachers are fully involved in selecting and procuring teaching materials, text books and DVDs and there is provision in the school budget for such material acquisition. The school is interested in the production of dual language resources for community languages. The community languages teachers attend training days and teacher observation classes organised by the school.

Innovative approaches

Innovative use has been made of mother tongue speakers amongst the students. For example, as part of their ‘gifted and talented’ program, Year 9 community language speakers have been asked to work on guides in their language for first lessons in primary schools. This work is being organised in the context of an interest in promoting community languages in local primary schools.

Other initiatives using the previously acquired talents and abilities of students include the use of an Urdu speaker with no command of English to work on the production of teaching materials for Urdu, which in turn helped her with her English. Additionally, a student of Greek heritage who had been partly educated in Greece was asked to give an introductory course in Modern Greek for fellow sixth-formers.

Information Technology

The school has good IT facilities and the interactive white board has been found to be most useful. The community language teachers have been given training in its use. The increasing availability of original material on the internet has been exploited to the full. The BBC World Service was mentioned as particularly useful, in part because it is used for the mainstream teaching of French and Spanish and this helps to raise the status of the community languages. The enthusiastic use of IT by the new Turkish teacher has boosted numbers.

Collaborative approaches

• Coffee evenings have been organised for parents on a language by language basis, and these have been found to have successfully raised the profile of community language teaching. The school has also received feedback that these have added to community cohesion (see CILT Community Language Bulletin, Issue 12 - Summer 2003).
• Later this year, a joint event will be organised by all the community languages students whereby each group will make a presentation celebrating the culture of their community and this will be followed by a social event with food from the different communal backgrounds.
• The annual community language conference has involved teachers and administrators from supplementary schools

Successes

• The community language conferences
• The after school clubs
• The coffee evenings for parents
• The relationship between community language teaching and the work of EMAG in the school

Challenges

• The program relies heavily on the enthusiasm of an individual.
• Some of the teachers could benefit from more IT training. This is in part due to the recent development of computer technology for languages that do not use the Latin script.
• The status of 'community languages' is perceived as lower than 'modern foreign languages.'

What could have been done differently?

• Community language provision would have benefited from greater integration into the formal structures of the school

Additional Comments

• The students nearly all come with a speaking knowledge of the language concerned gained through their family environment.
• One Somali student is also learning Polish.
• In all languages there is a separation of the teaching of GCSE and A level students.

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