Background

There are a number of situations in which children will find themselves in a multi-lingual environment: perhaps the parents have different first languages; perhaps the parents want to bring up their children with more than one language; perhaps the home language is different to the local community language or the language of education or work.

Resource’s initial focus was on children whose home language was different to the language of school. These children not only need encouragement in their second language, but support for their home language too, giving it equal value. Research seems to suggest that children who are given equal support in both languages do better socially and academically.

However, it was not our intention to create ‘language-teaching software’. We are not setting out to teach language, but rather to support learning taking place in other areas so that language is learned as a by-product alongside other learning activities.

Of course, the language of the home might well be the language of school and the wider community, in which a second or third language becomes part of a wider educational experience. Indeed, all pupils will soon be required to study a European language as part of their Primary education and Talk·2·Talk will be a useful component of this area of learning.