I recently visited a primary school where low writing outcomes for multilingual children had led leaders to search urgently for ways to “close the gap.” For many school leaders, this phrase often leads to discussions about data dashboards, targeted interventions, and heightened accountability measures. These discussions often neglect one key factor: the children’s first languages.
Many children in this school confidently use two or three languages and travel regularly to their countries of origin. Leaders worry that this rich linguistic exposure might be contributing to weaker writing outcomes. While understandable, this view risks misidentifying the problem.
The challenge here is not multilingualism. Rather how much we, as educators, value and use the children’s linguistic proficiency to further their learning, including their writing. If we focus intentionally on using the multilingual children’s rich language skills to support learning, particularly their writing development, outcomes could look very different.
Building Strong Foundations Through Explicit Language Instruction
Language and subject learning develop together. Children do not learn content first and language later; they learn both simultaneously. Evidence from Cummins states that,
“Conceptual knowledge developed in one language helps to make input in the other language comprehensible.” (Cummins, 2000,p.39).
Therefore, embedding spoken language approaches across the curriculum can strengthen literacy and attainment when language is taught explicitly and in context. For multilingual learners, this means making the language demands of lessons visible and teachable.
In practice, this involves modelling how this language is used in speech and writing.
Classroom example: Year 5 science (States of Matter)
The educator explains evaporation using sentences such as:
“When water is heated, it evaporates.”
“As a result, the liquid changes into a gas.”
The educator unpacks key vocabulary like evaporate and evaporation and gives children sentence stems to support their explanations. Alongside the science objective, sits a clear language objective. Children now have the words and sentence structures they need to explain their thinking clearly.
Strengthening Learning Through Cultural and Linguistic Connection
Multilingual children bring a wealth of cultural and linguistic knowledge into the classroom. When educators recognise and build on this, learning becomes more meaningful and inclusive.
Schools that invest in understanding children’s linguistic backgrounds are better placed to design teaching that connects new learning to what children already know.
In practice, this means:
Gathering information about a child’s home language/s and experiences
Using this knowledge to make lessons more relevant and accessible
Classroom example: Year 5 science (States of Matter)
The Educator invites children to share where they see evaporation at home: drying clothes, steaming dumplings, or burning incense. Then explicitly links these examples back to the scientific explanation.
By connecting the abstract concept of ‘evaporation’ to something tangible like ‘incense’ or ‘steaming,’ the child is able to relate to it.
Deepening Understanding by Harnessing Home Languages
Research and classroom practice both show that strong first-language skills are crucial for developing English proficiency and achieving academic success.
“The idea that a multilingual classroom is not only beneficial to EAL students but to non-EAL students (suggests) the need for a strategic whole-school approach to language teaching and integration.” (Arnot et al., 2014,p.7)
In practice, schools should:
Encourage translanguaging as a learning strategy. Translanguaging enables children to first process complex cognitive tasks in their strongest language, before expressing them in English.
Encourage families to use first languages to support key topics and concepts.
Classroom example: Year 5 science (States of Matter)
The children use their first language to clarify why the change is happening. Once they have secured the concept, they then describe it in English.
The child is not cognitively overloaded. They use their first language to handle the heavy lifting of thinking, and only then move on to using English to demonstrate their understanding.
Final Thoughts…
Closing the gap for multilingual children requires a clear understanding of how language underpins attainment, a commitment to evidence-informed practice and a shared vision that places language at the heart of curriculum design.
When leaders get this right, the impact is profound – not only for multilingual children s, but for all learners. Prioritising language isn’t just an inclusion strategy; it’s a school improvement strategy.
References
Arnot, M., Schneider, C. and Welply, O. (2014) School approaches to the education of EAL students. Cambridge: The Bell Foundation.
Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
