The Same Mistakes: But More Often

In Christchurch the number of Pacific Island children is small, they live in every area of the city, from 'working class industrial' to 'middle-class suburban', and most are New Zealand-born Samoans. The families rarely shift and their children rarely change schools, at least between the ages of five and eight. Under such conditions it seems likely that any differences between their spoken English and that of native-English-speaking children will highlight difficulties, and might even provide some clues to the reasons for the difficulties.