Reading in an endangered language in primary schools in Ireland

While Irish has State support in the Republic of Ireland, and is taught as a compulsory school subject from school entry, there is growing concern about a decline in the standard attained in this threatened minority language. The majority of Irish children begin learning Irish as a second language at school entry, and are expected to become literate in both English and in Irish over the course of their primary school years. The achievement of this biliteracy is to some extent taken for granted, with a tendency in recent years to focus more on developing oral skills and to view literacy in Irish as a lower priority, which results in less analysis of ways to support reading in Irish. While Irish now uses the same script as English, its orthographic system differs significantly from English and poses considerable challenges. An outline of the teaching of Irish reading is given, and a brief outline of challenging features of Irish orthography. This is followed by exploration of some outcomes of the current approach, and a discussion of the need to target the development of decoding skills from the outset, but also to look at increasing exposure to a range of Irish texts.