Activity Placement and class groupings

Case studies: Language portraits of students in MYP

(Although the school and country have been anonymised, these case studies are based on actual students in
IB schools and the notes have been contributed by their teacher for use in the workshop.)
A
Stephanie is in an MYP 2 Advanced French
class. She is a completely bi-lingual, native
French speaker. She writes accurately and
fluently as a French native of her age. Her peers
in the same MYP year group are in Phase 3.

B
Kaito is in MYP 4 in a monolingual state school.
He completed grades 1-7 following national
curriculum and learnt English as a foreign
language for 4 years. His parents are highly
educated and they speak English at home, as
well as their mother tongue, Japanese. His
parents have put him in an international school
because they see international education as a
great opportunity for Kaito to develop English
and be exposed to another education system.
Kaitos oral English is good. He has picked up
English by watching movies and spending time
on the internet. He expresses complex ideas
with ease but he uses vocabulary and register
that are not always appropriate. His reading and
writing skills are problematic. His writing may
not reflect his thinking. He has learnt writing
conventions in his mother tongue and transfers
them to English. His sentences are difficult to
understand and reflect his mother tongue way of
thinking.

C
Ramona is in an MYP 2 Spanish class. Her
mother is Spanish and her father is English. She
speaks fluent Spanish; orally she is a native
speaker. This year she started Spanish for the
first time at school, having just moved into the
area. She has never read or written Spanish
before, and her spelling is poor, as is her
sentence structure.


D
Tinas (MYP 5) parents are diplomats and Tina
has lived in a number of different countries.
German is spoken at home, but Tina had no
schooling in German. Her parents encourage
Tina to learn foreign languages and she is fluent
in several. Her parents last post was in a
Spanish speaking country and she attended a
school where the language of instruction is
Spanish. In the same school she also learned
French for two semesters. During the first
semester she was in the beginning class, but
she made such progress that she was put in the
intermediate level. Her new school offers MYP
French as a foreign language and the host
country language. Tina would like to continue
with French and her parents encourage her to
do so. She intends to study DP French next
year. The previous French teacher wrote on her
transcript: Tina is very chatty and can carry out
a conversation with the little words that she has.
However, when it comes to writing, her ideas
are not developed and lack complexity.

E
Rhadwa is entering ninth grade in the fall. She
and her family arrived in the United States in
May from Somalia. She has spent the summer
hanging out at a local community centre where
she has picked up some English and has some
basic vocabulary such as the foods, the names
of music groups, and clothing. She and her new
friends seem to be able to communicate on a
certain level with hand gestures and a few
phrases.

F
May-Lin has been in the UK since she was 3.
She lives with her parents and her grandmother.
At home they speak Chinese, Cantonese and
Mandarin, most of the time. Therefore she
understands and can communicate orally in
Chinese. She can write in Chinese but makes
mistakes particularly with more complex
grammar. We have no data on her reading
skills. She has attended UK schools since
kindergarten and is fluent in English. She wants
to take Spanish at school in MYP Year 1.


G
Jeff has been in your schools PYP and is now
entering 6
th
grade, Year 1 of MYP. His PYP
language is Italian. In grades K-4, the students
had Italian one day a week for 30 minutes. All of
the language practice was oral; there was no
writing or reading of Italian. In grade 5, the
students had two hours of Italian each week for
the entire year. All language skills were
developed in fifth grade.

H
Amelia will be entering 6
th
grade and has been
in a German immersion school for the last three
years. She can read and speak very well in
German although she makes occasional
mistakes when writing. At times she is not able
to comprehend written texts that are not in
common, familiar language.