Once your pupils can identify a number of languages, they can then start to explore the similarities and differences between the different languages. This is where their investigative skills really come into play.


1. Word level

Start off with words from Travlang.

· Take a look at the days of the week in a number of languages. Look in particular at Portuguese. What is the word for day? and what about Swahili? (Both of these languages use ordinal numbers to distinguish days of the week)

· Why not put the days up in the classroom in a different language each week.

· And how about the months of the year?

· Which languages have months which have similarities with English?

· Here are the numbers 1 –10 in many different languages:

· and place names in Europe

· vocabulary compared in various Indo-European languages:

· how the English language has borrowed words from many other languages

 

2. Sentence level:

· Return to Travlang. Is it possible to make accurate sentences by sequencing the words in the same order as English? What does this tell you about languages in general?

· Compare sentences in various languages. Use the following links:

An online phrasebook in 7 different European languages:

The chapter titles of Harry Potter in different languages:

Compare the languages of India



we read a book in english and also in swahili3 . At text level:

Parallel text work enables pupils to investigate a text in the foreign language using English as a support. In this way pupils can discover some of the key features of a language and compare them to English and other languages.

Here are some simple bilingual stories in English and a large number of languages:

Harry Potter around the world

Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky" in different languages:

 

There are a number of bilingual children’s readers which can facilitate parallel text work. They can be purchased over the internet from the following sites:

Mantra Lingua Ltd

Grant and Cutler