The development in Mauritius's three major languages is
essentially sequential for most of the population: Creole, French,
English. In schools, English is used alongside French (and some
Creole) in Primary Standards One (ages 5-6) to Three (ages 7-8).
English is officially the sole medium of instruction from Primary
Standard Four (ages 8-9), though this is not the case in practice.
Two Mauritian cousins (aged 6 and 8 years) in the initial stages of
the development of English were filmed playing school. The children
are native speakers of Creole and (to a varying extent) French, have
some exposure to Bhojpuri (used among older family members) and
Hindi, and have attended French-medium nursery schools. Although
older family members speak English, it is little used in the home
domain, and the children's major exposure to English is in the
classroom.
The children were told that the rule of the game was that they
would use only English while playing school. However, they
sometimes broke the rule. Code-switching in the enacted English
lessons is compared to that of actual teachers and pupils who were
observed in classrooms. Both children show realistic knowledge of
how different languages have different domains and functions in the
classroom