[susan53]

I differ a bit from Mark. Surely the public education system has the responsibility to educate every child, including those of immigrants, and not just nationals? In England for example, where Chinese is now frequently taught at High School, mother tongue Chinese kids can now do a GCSE course and exam for Chinese native speakers while the other kids do a Chinese as a Foreign Language. And as for the tax payer's money - don't the parents of those kids pay taxes too? I've been paying taxes in Italy for 30 years. Shouldn't I get equal return for my money as everyone else?

We now live in a multi-cultural world, and education systems everywhere have to cope with the fact that more and more they're going to have to provide the chance for bilingual kids to develop their mother tongue identity as well as integrate into the host country. Then of course there's also the problem of the immigrant kids who weren't born in the country and don't speak the language at all. They too need special attention, even more so than the others. There's a public school here in Milan where 80% of the kids are not Italian.

Here the education copes totally inadequately with the second situation and virtually ignores the first. There's one public elementary school in Florence where Arabic speaking kids are now taught to read and write in Arabic, in extra lessons after school hours - the result of enormous pressure from the very large Arabic community here.

My son, who's completely bilingual, does just sit through the English lessons and I'm resigned to the fact. But it doesn't bother him and at least we know there's one subject where he'll come home with straight As ... His teacher this year has said she will give him something different to do. we'll see ...

One other issue is when the kids have non-native speaker teachers who don't have a particularly good grasp of the language (which is understandable) and don't have the humility to recognise it (which is not). A British friend of mine has had real problems with a teacher who constantly "corrects" her daughter's work incorrectly, and then gives her low marks. Low marks in Italy, even in one subject, now mean repeating the whole year, so it's not just something you can shrug your shoulders at. (Clive, if you're reading this, you have this to come ....)

If it were me, personally I would give the kids something different to do at most points in the lesson, while unashamedly using them in others. I'd differentiate homework too. Asking the kids to fill out exercises in English File really is a waste of everyone's time.