School and Nursery English: The B1 Words Parents Abroad Need
Parenting in a second language has a particular kind of pressure. You can accept a misunderstanding about your own bank account, and you cannot accept one about your child. The vocabulary of schools is narrow and completely learnable, but it is also almost never taught, because language courses are written for students rather than for parents. This is the list nobody hands you at the school gate.
This one is at B1 because a parent has to do three things at once: understand a letter, ask a specific question about it, and disagree politely if the answer is wrong. That combination is squarely B1.
The general layer is in the free B1 vocabulary list. What follows is the school half of it.
Getting a place
Enrolment vocabulary appears once and matters enormously, which is the worst possible combination for a learner. These are the words in the letters and on the forms.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| catchment area | the streets a school takes children from |
| oversubscribed | more applications than places |
| waiting list | you are in the queue, not rejected |
| offer and acceptance | you must reply, usually by a date |
| intake | the group starting together |
| settling in period | short days at the beginning |
| term and half term | the teaching blocks and the break in the middle |
| key stage or year group | the level your child is in |
Letters that come home
Schools communicate almost entirely by short notes that assume you grew up in the system. These are the recurring ones, and recognising them at a glance saves a great deal of worry that turns out to be unnecessary.
- consent form: you must sign and return it
- trip: an outing, usually with a cost and a deadline
- non uniform day: your child does not wear the uniform
- packed lunch: food from home rather than the canteen
- PE kit: sports clothes, on a specific day
- reading record: a small book you sign each evening
- absence: you must report it, usually before nine
- parents evening: a short appointment about progress
The words teachers use about a child
This is the group where a misunderstanding does real harm, because the English is gentle and indirect and can easily sound worse or better than it is. The table gives the plain meaning.
| What the teacher says | What it means |
|---|---|
| He is working at the expected level | average, and that is fine |
| She is a little behind with reading | needs practice, not a crisis |
| He finds it hard to settle | he moves around and talks in class |
| She is very sociable | sometimes a polite way of saying chatty |
| We are keeping an eye on it | not formal yet, but noticed |
| We would like to put some support in place | extra help, usually good news |
| He is a pleasure to teach | genuinely positive, take it at face value |
| Have you noticed anything at home | they want information, not blame |
Questions to ask at a parents evening
These appointments are short, often ten minutes, and it is easy to leave having only said thank you. Going in with three written questions is the whole technique, and teachers respect it.
Ask for specifics rather than impressions, because a specific answer is something you can act on at home.
- How is he doing compared with where he should be?
- What is the one thing we could work on at home?
- Is he speaking English confidently with the other children?
- Does he have a friend in the class?
- Is there anything you are concerned about that I should know?
- How do you want me to contact you if something comes up?
- Sorry, could you explain what that assessment means?
- What would progress look like by the end of the year?
Raising something you are not happy about
School complaints in English are extremely indirect, and being too blunt gets a defensive answer while being too soft gets no action at all. The reliable shape is factual opening, then the effect on your child, then a direct request.
It also helps enormously to put it in writing afterwards, in two lines, so that what was agreed exists somewhere other than in your memory of a conversation held in a second language.
- I wanted to raise something, probably small.
- He has come home upset three times this week.
- I may have misunderstood the letter, so please correct me.
- What I would like is for somebody to keep an eye on it for a week.
- Could you let me know what happens next?
- I will put this in an email so we both have a record.
The bilingual question
You will be asked, often, whether you speak your own language at home, and there is a strong temptation to switch to English to help your child. Teachers in most systems will tell you the opposite: a strong first language supports the second rather than competing with it.
The useful sentence for that conversation is simple. We speak our own language at home and English everywhere else, and we are happy with that. It ends the discussion politely and it is the answer most schools want to hear anyway.
Where MindDory fits
School language arrives in bursts, in letters and ten minute appointments, and disappears until the next one. That is the pattern where vocabulary is least likely to stick and most likely to matter.
MindDory is built for it. If a letter is in front of you, scanning it into cards turns a thing you had to decode into a thing you now know.