Immersing Pupils in a New Language with Dr Mirain Rhys & Dr Katharine Young

Wales is a country in which two languages (English and Welsh) have equal status in law. So parents can choose whether their children are educated through the medium of English or Welsh. There are lots of interesting issues that arise when pupils educated in Welsh come from homes where English is mainly spoken, and these issues are interesting to teachers anywhere in the world who work with pupils where a different language is spoken at home to the one being used in the classroom.

We welcome Dr Mirain Rhys and Dr Katharine Young to the studio to discuss their research into language immersion, which is where pupils receive an immersive intervention in the language to help them make progress in the classroom. They've got plenty of advice about what teachers and parents can do to support pupils whose home language is different from that which they experience in school.

You can find the Welsh Government page about this topic (with plenty of Mirain and Katharine's work featured!) here.

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Recorded in Studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 25th June 2025.