The bilingual child in the mainstream classroom.

The purpose of the study was to gain a greater understanding of the theoretical and pedagogical issues involved in learning a second language that would be of practical use to the researcher as a teacher at a time of transition in provision for children for whom English was a second language. Through an examination of specific features in the children's spoken English - past tense forms and interrogatives - information was gained about the developmental route children take to the target language. The study focused on a group of 8-9 year old Punjabi-speaking children who had spent some time in a language centre and who were now in a mainstream classroom. The study was conducted over one year in a Sheffield school and data were collected on five occasions. For the purposes of comparison, additional data were gathered on the first and fifth occasions from a group of Punjabi-speaking children born in Britain and educated in mainstream classrooms and from a group of monolingual English-speaking children. It is argued that, although the pedagogical implications are not clear-cut, there may be merits in specific instruction in the features studied in order to accelerate development and to prevent 'fossilization'.