Ms Anne Tansey:

Perhaps I will talk a little bit about the acquisition of the English language. English is a very opaque language. It is a difficult language to learn. For example, grapheme-phoneme correspondence is more difficult in the English language. For example, consider the words "read" and "read". The two words are spelt in the very same way but are pronounced differently. We call it an opaque language. It is extremely opaque and, for some children, very difficult to learn. Other languages are less opaque. When we have children who are really struggling with the acquisition of skills in the English language to the degree that it is impacting on different parts of their development, we get very concerned. There are children who, after having had access to a response to intervention and support over time, are still struggling with the learning load that is part of their language acquisition and we probably need to consider the impact that learning a second language would have on them.