Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

8. “Immersion Preschooling in Ireland: Training Provision and Best
Practice”
Dr. Tina Hickey
Professor at the University College Dublin
Introduction
Preschooling through the medium of lesser-used languages has played an important role in
the revitalisation movements of many minority and heritage languages. It has been found
that it is easier for parents and language activists to establish a preschool offering an
appropriate curriculum through a non-dominant language, than to attempt to establish a
primary school. Surveys of pre-primary provision in lesser-used languages in Europe (e.g. van
der Goot et al., 1994) have highlighted the importance of providing monolingual preschool
immersion in endangered languages both to native speakers, who may be in need of mother
tongue development and enrichment (Corson, 1993; Baker and Jones, 1998), and to
dominant language children learning the target language as L2. Such preschools help to raise
the status of the minority language in children's eyes, as well as in the local community, and
promote awareness of the need to maintain the language. Preschool education through the
minority language benefits mother-tongue speakers, helping them to develop firm
foundations in their first language before acquiring the dominant language later. One
example of such preschools is seen in the Irish-medium preschools known as naíonraí, which
offer early immersion in Irish as L2 for the majority of children coming from English-speaking
homes, but also provide mother-tongue pre-primary education for the minority who are
native speakers of Irish (Hickey, 2001). These naíonraí function for between two and three
and a half hours per day for groups of children aged 3-4 years. There are 185 such groups,
serving approximately 3,800 children in English-speaking communities in Ireland (according
to the umbrella body Forbairt Naíonraí Teo.). In Irish-speaking communities, a further 74
groups operate (under the aegis of Comhar Naíonraí na Gaeltachta Teo.) serving another
1000 children.
The Irish Context
While Irish is described in the Constitution as the ‘first official language’ of the Republic of
Ireland, it is English (also a constitutionally recognised official language) that is spoken by the
majority most of the time. Efforts at revitalising Irish have had mixed success (Ó Laoire,
2006): there has been growth in the numbers of second language speakers of fairly low
proficiency, but a decline in the number of native speakers, and a decrease in the use of the
language overall. Census 2006 (CSO, 2007) found that 1.66 million people aged three years
and over were ‘able to speak Irish,' representing 42% of the population. However, 60% of
these reported that they either never actually speak Irish, or do so less often than once a
week. Learners’ main use of Irish is in school and only about 4% (68,685) of those who can
speak the language speak it daily outside of education. Thus, for Irish, the educational
context has become a highly significant arena for maintaining and speaking the language, as
well as a place where it is learned.
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