This page is one of a suite of pages to support families learning at home during Covid-19. We hope this page helps if English is not your first language. Here is another page to help, especially for younger children.
Children acquire language from their day to day interactions with their teachers, other students, parents, family and from their environment.  

Children for whom English is an additional language  may receive some help from their class's support teacher with their learning of English.

It can take up to seven or eight years for a child to become fluent in a second language e.g. English.  The video below explains the stages of language acquisition.
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Developing Oral Language

  • Encourage your child to speak in English.  It doesn't matter if mistakes are made.
  • Ask them questions about their day e.g. what they enjoyed doing. 
  • When reading to your child, ask them to describe the pictures in the book.   The following website has many different picture books:  www.storylineonline.net/
  • Ask them to tell you about the books that they are reading or the stories that they are writing.

Reading

  • Encourage your child to read by having DEAR (Drop everything and read) time at home where everyone in the family is reading.
  • Bring your child to the library to borrow books.  Local libraries have lots of activities for children e.g. book clubs etc.
  • If going to the library is not possible, you can borrow ebooks through: https://www.librariesireland.ie/elibrary/ebooks 
  • Let your child chose their own books.  Encourage them to choose both fiction and non fiction books.  
  • Encourage them to listen to audio books.  The following websites are a source of a wide range of audiobooks:
​​https://stories.audible.com/start-listen or https://www.worldofdavidwalliams.com/elevenses/ ​

Writing

  • Encourage your child to brainstorm a list of key words that they might use in their work.
  • Advise your child to orally answer  questions before they write down their answers.
  • Record their oral response so that they can play it back when they are writing.  
  • If writing a creative story, encourage them to draw pictures of their story prior to writing about it.  
  • For older children, remind them of the importance of using a dictionary when doing their work.