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D. 
The melting of fresh ice into the ocean 

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Welcome to Mr Aslanov’s Lessons 
QUESTION-TYPE BASED TESTS 
FunEnglishwithme [phone] 
TEST 6 – The Significant Role of Mother Tongue in 
Education 
One consequence of population mobility is an increasing diversity within schools. To illustrate, in the 
city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of kindergarten pupils come from homes where English is not the usual 
language of communication. Schools in Europe and North America have experienced this diversity for 
years, and educational policies and practices vary widely between countries and even within countries. Some 
political parties and groups search for ways to solve the problem of diverse communities and their 
integration in schools and society. However, they see few positive consequences for the host society and 
worry that this diversity threatens the identity of the host society. 
Consequently, they promote unfortunate educational policies that will make the “problem” disappear. 
If students retain their culture and language, they are viewed as less capable of identifying with the 
mainstream culture and learning the mainstream language of the society. 
The challenge for educator and policy-makers is to shape the evolution of national identity in such a 
way that rights of all citizens (including school children) are respected, and the cultural linguistic, and 
economic resources of the nation are maximised. To waste the resources of the nation by discouraging 
children from developing their mother tongues is quite simply unintelligent from the point of view of 
national self-interest. A first step in providing an appropriate education for culturally and linguistically 
diverse children is to examine what the existing research says about the role of children’s mother tongues in 
their educational development. 
In fact, the research is very clear. When children continue to develop their abilities in two or more 
languages throughout their primary school, they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it 
effectively. They have more practice in processing language, especially when they develop literacy in 
both. More than 150 research studies conducted during the past 25 years strongly support what Goethe, the 
famous eighteenth-century German philosopher, once said: the person who knows only one language dose 
not truly know that language. Research suggests that bilingual children may also develop more flexibility in 
their thinking as a result of processing information through two different languages. 
The level of development of children’s mother tongue is a strong predictor of their second language 
development. Children who come to school with a solid foundation in their mother tongue develop stronger 
literacy abilities in the school language. When parents and other caregivers (e.g. grandparents) are able to 
spend time with their children and tell stories or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother 
tongue, children come to school well-prepared to learn the school language and succed educationally. 
Children’s knowledge and skills transfer across languages from the mother tongue to the school language. 
Transfer across languages can be two-way: both languages nurture each other when the educational 
environment permits children access to both languages. 
Some educators and parents are suspicious of mother tongue-based teaching programs because they 
worry that they take time away from the majority language. For exampie, in a bilingual program when 50% 
of the time is spent teaching through children’s home language and 50% through the majority language, 
surely children won’t progress as far in the latter? One of the most strongly established findings of 
educational research, however, is that well-implemented bilingual programs can promote literracy and 
subject-matter knowledge in a minority language without any negative effects on children’s development in 
the majority language. Within Europe, the Foyer program in Belgium, which develops children’s speaking 
and literacy abilities in three languages (their mother tongue, Dutch and French), most clearly illustrates the 
benefits of bilingual and trilingual education (see Cummins, 2000). 
It is easy to understand how this happens. When children are learning through a minority language, 
they are learning concepts and intellectual skills too. Pupils who know how to tell the time in their mother 
tongue understand the concept of telling time. In order to tell time in the majority language, they do not need 
to re-learn the concept. Similarly, at more advanced stages, there, is transfer across languages in other skills 
such as knowing how to distinguish the main idea from the supporting details of a written passage or story, 

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