Professional paper
Some Aspects of Developing a Bilingual Pupil’s Oral and Written Expression
Branka Vegar
; Yugoslav supplementary school, Vienna, Austria
Abstract
In the school-year 1985–1986 an examination of 29 Yugoslav pupils was carried out in the Viennese ASOs (i. e. special schools for pupils having difficulties with learning), which showed that their living in the conditions of subculture had been leaving marks on their expression. The author of this paper has put together the results of the examination and the ideas gained from her own practice of teaching Yugoslav migrant workers' children, on the one hand, and Basil Bernstein's theory on restricted and elaborated codes (1962), on the other. The theory is the result of Bernstein's observing relations between social strata that bring about the phenomenon of different speech systems or linguistic codes. Applying the theory to the written and oral expression of pupils attending in Vienna “supplementary classes” in their mother tongue, the author is induced to claim that the pupils differ by a relative usage of syntax and vocabulary, but this does not have anything to do with the system of grammar, dialect or jargon: it is caused by their different attitudes to the structure of society. Some features of the Yugoslav children's “common language” are depicted. It is “restricted”, yet it has its own aesthetics and its possibilities. The author pleads both for the pupils’ maintaining such a language and for their developing a “formal” one. Some recommendations are furnished in this con¬nection.
Keywords
children of migrants; mother tongue; Yugoslavs; Vienna
Hrčak ID:
128541
URI
Publication date:
29.5.1987.
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