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Provision for Community Language Learning in Scotland: Final Report February 2006

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Footnotes

  1. See website: < http://www.onescotland.com/>
  2. Results for 2005 are pre-appeal figures.
  3. There is extensive research demonstrating that those who do not have the opportunity to maintain their 'first' languages risk losing these languages later in life. See, for example, Seliger & Vago (1991), Fase et al. (1992), de Bot (1996), Waas (1996)
  4. The Sunday Herald ('Poles Apart', 22 January 2006) reported 18000 people from Poland alone as having moved to Scotland since 2004, with 3000 Poles living in Inverness. The source of these statistics is not stated.
  5. Note that Welsh was not considered to be a community language in Wales, as it is one of the official languages of Wales, along with English. In the period during which this research was conducted, Gaelic became an official language of Scotland, along with English, and therefore its status as a community language needs to be reviewed.
  6. Portuguese is spoken by over 177 million people around the world, not only in Portugal but in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Thai is spoken by 25 million people in Thailand, which is in the top five of foreign holiday destinations among high spending UK tourists (National Statistics, 2005). Tagalog (also known as Pilipino) is the official language of the Philippines and spoken as a first or second language by 57 million people.
  7. These guides, produced with support from the Nuffield Foundation, will be published by CILT - the National Centre for Languages, in Autumn 2006.
  8. See for example, October 2004 when this issue was raised specifically in relation to 'native' Russian speakers. The Lingu@net archive can be accessed http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet-forum/archive.html
  9. < http://www.cilt.org.uk/clip/faqs.htm>
  10. There are some similarities with 'two-way immersion' programmes in the USA, where children who are 'native speakers' of English and those who are 'native speakers' of another language, usually Spanish are educated together. Researchers have found a similar range of positive outcomes to those associated with other immersion programmes (Howard et al., 2003). Two-way immersion programmes, however, allocate roughly equal amounts of time to education in the medium of English and in the medium of the other language, while Gaelic-medium education in Scotland is exclusively in Gaelic in the early years and then introduces English as a minor element.
  11. Some proponents of bilingual education have expressed major concerns about its effectiveness in schools where most students are not from middle-class backgrounds, most recently, in the context of Welsh-medium education: see BBC report, 'Welsh Medium 'Victim of its own Success"', 23 rd January 2006, < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4638444.stm>. In the interests of equity and social inclusion, it is imperative that effective models of bilingual education are developed to benefit all students, not only an already privileged group.
  12. < http://www.multiverse.ac.uk>
  13. < http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/mfle>
  14. See the Council of Europe Language Policy Division website for further details: < http://www.coe.int/t/e/cultural%5Fco%2Doperation/education/languages/language%5Fpolicy/policy%5Fdevelopment%5Factivities/Language%5FEducation%5FPolicy%5FProfiles>
  15. For example, at the time of writing this report, the newly appointed head teacher of a North London school which had recently begun to teach some science classes bilingually, using English and Turkish, brought the experiment to a premature end on the basis that the children's English could only improve if they ceased to use Turkish. See BBC news article 'Ethnic language classes scrapped', 17 February 2006: < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4724556.stm>.
  16. < http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/buildingbridges/>
  17. Falkirk collects detailed information only about Urdu, Punjabi, Cantonese, Arabic and Farsi. Other languages are listed as 'European' and 'Other' and therefore cannot be included in this list.
  18. http://www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/ess/education/gaelic.asp

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Page updated: Thursday, September 7, 2006