Children bilingual socialization in Galicia

conversational interventions in early chilhood education students

Abstract

This article shows the fieldwork conducted in a school setting in a Spanish-speaking area. It studies the Early Childhood Education conversational interventions when the students speak in Galician. These children, who have been educated mostly in Galician and come from Spanish-speaking families, utter these verbal contributions within a literacy activity called ‘‘words proposal’’ which is part of the most important scholar routine: Assembly Time. Thanks to this activity, these children learn how to plan their interventions by receiving instructions in which, for them, would be their second language: Galician.

In order to do so, a semi-participant observation methodology was applied. Ethnographic notes were taken during the visits and the witnessed interactions in the classrooms were recorded in audio. The results obtained from analysing these data indicate that the selected group of students does not show signs of doubt for understanding and performing the tasks suggested by the teacher, whose base code was Galician. This work pinpoints the fact that schooling in this language is not detrimental for the students.