Spanish-speaking children take their ethnolinguistic and sociocultural heritage to school. School culture requires socialization and learning solely in English. Spanish-speaking students’ success depends on their ability to learn English and process subject matter in English effectively. Doing so means that students are grade-level proficient in English. But Spanish-speaking students are not developing English literacy accordingly. The English-only approach in educating Spanish-speaking students is ineffective and accounts primarily for the dropout rates of these children in the five Southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. Bilingual education, many witnesses feel, would enable Spanish-speaking children to use the home language and culture to adapt positively to the culture of the school and learn content area material.

In the OECD countries, children are students. The findings concerning the generally poor school results obtained by children of migrant families ask for a reorientation of French as a Foreign Language (FLE), French as a Second Language (FLS). This reorientation will be called French as a Language of Scolarity (FLSCO). The idea behind it is to allow these children a harmonious school time that can lead them towards the profession of their choice. This way all teaching matters become a way of training the FLSCO. As an axample, this article tries to highlight the educational position of  FLSCO through teaching the names of large numbers in French, which normally fall within the scope of mathematics.

Contrary to scholastic failure, the question of language insecurity in adult native speakers has not attracted much attention. Beyond the obvious political and ideological debates, the question for research is to understand whether increased linguistic mastery can allow speakers to communicate in an efficient manner with any given interlocutors. Analysis of collaborative discourse in low educated native speakers shows that, as well as lexical and syntactic issues, problems linked to interaction can appear that impede the flow of exchanges. These give rise to collaborative discourse construction practices that require numerous readjustments and conversational negotiations.