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Bilingual education in the united states essay
The state of being bilingual
The history of bilingual education in America
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The variety of languages that revolves around our nation makes it a very diverse place to live in and a comforting one as well. There are hundreds of languages being spoken at this very moment and it is the sole factor that keeps a culture alive. Although many children are raised to embrace who they are and where they come from, attending school in the United States of America can contradict their pride since English is used as the dominant way of communicating. This encounter forced these children to know and fluently speak two languages: the language of their homeland and the language being spoken in school. Coming from a culture in which two languages, Chamorro and English, are spoken, many Chamorro children are forced to become bilingual. In spite of their gifted ability to speak different languages, the two languages often contradict with each other. This results in miscommunication and academic deficiencies. Nevertheless, speaking two languages fluently does not affect children’s learning capabilities within the American Education System because of the over diagnosis of learning disabilities among bilingual children and the rewarding effects of being bilingual. Merriam Webster defines bilingual as a person’s ability to speak two languages fluently whereas monolingual is the ability to only speak one. Today, the amount of bilingual children in America is at its highest. According to the Hanen Certified Speech Language Pathologist Lauren Lowry, “In the United States, 21% of school age children (between the ages of 5-17) speak a language other than English at home” and “This number is projected to increase in the coming years.” In addition, her statistics showed that “Worldwide, it is estimated that there are more second la... ... middle of paper ... ...l children and America as a nation. Works Cited E. Glyn Lewis. Bilingualism and Bilingual Education: A Comparative Study. University of New Mexico Press, 1980. Print. Guadalupe Valdes and Richard A. Figueroa. Bilingualism and Testing: A Special Case of Bias. Third Printing, 1996. Print Lauren Lowry. Bilingualism in Young Children: Separating Fact from Fiction. The Hanen Centre, 2011. Web. 10 May 2014 Daniel Olson. How Does Being Bilingual Affect Learning? National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2014. Web. 10 May 2014 Viorica Marian Ph.D and Anthony Shook. The Cognitive Effects of Being Bilingual. The Dana Foundation, 2012. Web. 10 May 2014 Alessandra Hickson. Education Nation: The real benefits of being bilingual. NBC Latino, 2012. Web. 10 May 2014 AOL Jobs Contributor. Why It Pays to be Bilingual. Aol Jobs, 2009. Web. 10 May 2014
In Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, the author Richard Rodriguez argues that since there is a lack of bilingual education taught in American schools, many students face a loss of intimacy to their native language, leaving them identifiable-less. He makes this claim by expressing that although native language can cause divisions in communication, it is the basis structure to a person.
Opinion Editorial By Hassan Abdi In the article written by Richard Rodriguez, Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, he conveys an opinion that Bilingual education doesn’t work. He conveys it through his personal experience. Published by the Phi Beta Kappa to the American Society in 1981, the audience and his message are a broad and important now as it was thirty five years ago. As the amount of children that don’t speak English as their first language continue to rise, bilingual education has become a polarizing topic like most things, and for me, I am neutral on the topic. A form of bilingual education has failed me, but, for most students it benefits in the long term, and it 's not right to dispel one side of the topic to push your own
As I have read multiple articles about what bilingualism means, I have come to understand that it’s more complex than just speaking two or more languages. The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides three definitions of bilingualism: (1) the ability to speak two languages, (2) the frequent use (as by a community) of two languages, and (3) the political or institutional recognition of two languages. Espada’s view of bilingualism seems more in line with the third definition, and Rodriguez’s view identifies with the second one. I have developed my personal view as a mix of the second and third definitions. Although Merriam-Webster provides concrete definitions for bilingualism, people like Espada, Rodriguez, and myself have developed their own interpretation of bilingualism based on our cultural backgrounds and community environments.
Bilingualism can be defined as the ability to speak and/or write in two languages. In Australia English is the main language although in 1996, statistics show that 15% (2.5 million people) of the Australian population communicate in a language other than English at home and 42% of the population is born overseas (Australian Bureau Statistics, 1996). Most recently there are around 22 million Australians that speak in approximately 400 different languages (Australian Bureau Statistics, 2009). These statistics highlight the fact that there is an increasing rate of people who communicate in more than one language hence language is increasingly changing throughout society (Arthur, 2001). This suggests the need for support and understanding of bilingualism within children, families and the community.
According with Jean Piaget whose theory on child development has been a great influence in education; language development is the most important phase during the Preoperational stage of cognitive development. During this stage children develop and build up their knowledge and vocabulary by asking questions and expressing ideas through words, images and drawings. This stage is considerate to happen from two years of to seven years of age (Kendra Cherry). Language development has direct implications in the intellectual development of a child, and it is one of the main tools to develop our thinking process. We use words to store and access memories or other information. For Latinos children and especially recent arrivals whose language is Spanish entering to school where their primary language (Mother tongue) has no validation neither use may be traumatic and even hinder their future opportunities to succeed in a school system that is complete foreign in concept and in language. In order to integrate and create opportunities for the Latino students to succeed the in the educational system we must create programs that address the specific needs of the Latino community such as bilingual education where students learn to speak, read and write in their mother tongue language first.
Bilingual education in public schools has been the topic of much discussion over the last several years. This discussion has been prompted due to the ever increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking persons emigrating to the United States, especially in those states that border Mexico--California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. What the debate seems always to overlook is our country’s other non-English speaking members. This country is now and has always been the “Melting Pot” for the world with persons emigrating to this country from most every country in the world; however, we commonly gear the focus of bilingual education toward our Spanish-speaking citizens.
As America’s demographics become more diverse and the issue of whether or not we should accommodate minorities arises, bilingual education has become a hot topic. Bilingual education has been discussed and connected to other controversial topics such as nationalism, racism, immigration, and adoption of English as the official language of the United States, along with minority rights, cultural diversity, and the goals of education itself. Here are some questions to be discussed:
The author Maria de la Luz Reyes explains through several characters born and raised in a family that spoke different native languages but he managed to excel in learning English. Biliteracy refers to the ability to communicate and write more than one language and this represents a major achievement because it takes a lot of sacrifice and dedication to realize it. The situation surrounding biliteracy is controversial because some parents appreciate when their children learn more than one language but others are not as Collins explains in the book, Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Biliteracy and its influence differs and Collin Baker identifies that diverse bilingual classes and schools, culture and language, influence dissimilar
When visiting just about any school across America, students who attend come from all over the globe. This raises the question across America about bilingual education. This can create many challenges in and out of the classroom. The classroom should be a safe place for all students regardless of what native language they speak. In the essay Lost in translation written by Eva Hoffman, describes a foreign student who tries hard to fit in. Instead, Eva begins to feel angry, hurt and confused because people laugh at her. In Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education by Elizabeth R. Howard, Julie Sugarman, Donna Christian Center for Applied Linguistics Kathryn J. Lindholm-Leary San José State University David Rogers Dual Language Education of New Mexico. Guiding principles gives great ideas to educators to stop kids from making other students feel the way that Eva felt. After reading several articles about bilingual education, it is evident that all children in school should learn English but never lose their native language. When all the students speak one language, students will be less likely to make fun of each other. A good educator should learn enough foreign languages to aid them in effective communication in their classroom although; if an educator does not speak a foreign language, they should recruit within the classroom students to be peer mentors. However, a teacher should be willing to listen and encourage the students. Above all a good educator should be a good role model to their students by respecting their heritage and their language.
From my experience, bilingual education was a disadvantage during my childhood. At the age of twelve, I was introduced into a bilingual classroom for the first time. The crowded classroom was a combination of seventh and eighth grade Spanish-speaking students, who ranged from the ages of twelve to fifteen. The idea of bilingual education was to help students who weren’t fluent in the English language. The main focus of bilingual education was to teach English and, at the same time, teach a very basic knowledge of the core curriculum subjects: Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. Unfortunately, bilingual education had academic, psychological, and social disadvantages for me.
When children’s home languages are considered an asset in the classroom, they tend to have a stronger belief in their academic performances (López & Iribarren, 2014). This further highlighted the importance of making connections between home languages and instructional practices in order to effectively include all ELs. Instead of recommending the bilingual education for ELs, López & Iribarren (2014) argue that monolingual approach such as content-based instruction is a more effective second language teaching strategies. Content-based instruction calls student’s attention to the learning content and the way of how English is used for communication during the learning process, without limiting or prohibiting children’s use of home languages. Children in this language-learning model use their native languages as scaffolding tools to support their learning in both content and English.
In my case, I speak three languages, but this time I am going to focus on the ones that I am in touch with most of the time. Spanish is my mother language and my second language is English, consequently, I am a bilingual person for all people who does not know what is being bilingual. According to Myers (2006), being bilingual is not only the ability of understanding a language, but learning how to produce it and also, deciding where you can use a certain way of language depending on the context you are. This is the real bilingual I am.
The world is changing every day. Society is evolving along with the world. The countries of the world are interacting with each other. In a world that is evolving, the people of the world must go with the flow or get left in the dust. The difference between getting left in the dust and going with the flow of society is bilingualism. “Over 50% of countries in the world are officially bilingual or multilingual”(Bilingual Countries). In those countries that have adopted other languages, there are people who are still monolingual. There are benefits and drawbacks of both, but at the end of the day being bilingual is better than being monolingual.
Being multilingual has great importance. As previously presented, it keeps cultural diversity alive and creates better communication with the rest of the ...
In 2009, teachers of a New Jersey school banned foreign languages and stated, “any language other than English will not be tolerated" (Debaron 1). This situation was soon no longer allowed. While over ten percent of the total adolescent education systems contain emergent bilinguals, a whopping sixty percent of those students are educated in only English (Bale). Maria Estela Brisk, a Boston College Education professor, believes, “schools has wasted much energy in the search for a "perfect" model and the best way to learn English” when they could just focus on proving “quality education” to every student in the system (1). Teacher’s main priority should consist of effectively teaching their students to prepare them for the future, but currently there are a lack of certified bilingual education teachers. When students are taught more in different ways, they can educationally benefit their cognitive abilities, involving the brain with “mathematics, problem solving, logic and memory”, can be improved to create an overall better student. Even by learning another language at a earlier age can contribute to __________. Learning another language will be