[jambutty]

Originally Posted by WillowTheWhisp

It quite often happens nowadays. Some children start reception class not being able to speak a word of English and yet these children are in the same classes as children whose first language is English so it does make teaching them anything at all incredibly difficult. A problem they didn't have back in the good old days.

Oh! Yes they did WillowTheWhisp – during and in the post war years, except it wasn’t a problem. There were thousands of refugees from Europe. Poles, French, Dutch, Czecks etc. But they made the effort to learn English and did so during evening classes and Saturday mornings. 5 and 6 year olds pick up a language quite quickly with older kids taking a bit longer because they are also living the language all day and every day.

Once the kids got reasonably competent in English they joined the English schools and then had tuition on their own language in the evenings and Saturday mornings so they grew up bilingual.