Linguistic reflections on the education of immigrant students

Abstract

The vast arrival of immigrant students to the compulsory education in Catalonia has challenged the educational system to reach the educative standards. Since the mastery of the instruction language is directly related to the students’ potential achievement at school, linguistic education is a central issue. In that sense, an interesting challenge consists in developing new strategies to organize and expand educational practices which consider the different levels of Catalan proficiency. The paper draws attention to the diverse peculiarities of the sociolinguistic context in Catalonia which play an important role in the school language acquisition of immigrant students. Results obtained in our research are used to discuss the linguistic management in schools and to point out some orientations for teaching.