An Agile Mind Is A Bilingual Mind; Prospects of learning a secondary language
Bilingual education involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in line with the program model.
Children, who are in the process of learning a secondary language at school, have more advantage than their monolingual peers, resulting in linguistic and sociocultural benefits. But this kind of learning is either obligated or necessary by heritage, or by choice. Nevertheless it is a clever strategy to educate students in a foreign language, considering the widespread globalization.
Crystal (2003 p.364) states that the immeasurable majority of bilinguals does not have an equal command
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Primarily because bilingual education fails to demonstrate any substantial development, that are beneficial to students. And additionally an underlying fear of cultural identity loss, and individual identity misplacement is present. Even though bilingual education is up voted and preferable, there is also a chance for the students to succeed in academics’ speaking only one language, because the goal is to develop literacy in the students’ native language first, and transfer these skills to the second language, if …show more content…
The educational system in Sweden has bilingualism introduced to monolingual students, in 5th grade, where the same policy in Hong Kong mandates. There is a positive approach in learning a second language or even three, giving students the opportunity to better their mother tongue, and choosing to learn a complete different language, such as French or Spanish. Many nations, do insist on a secondary language requisition in their respective schools mandatorily
Bilingual people often get pushed away or bullied for not being able to speak a new language. Bilingual speakers should feel like they belong in their own identity. They should also speak out about their struggles and challenges with bilingualism. In the essay, "Hunger of Memory", Richard Rodriguez explains that being able to keep his native tongue while also learning a new language can be very helpful in the outside world. Being able to acknowledge different languages can help at school, work, or even just the grocery store.
When I was younger I was enrolled into Bilingual classes since preschool which cost me dearly. While taking these classes I had trouble learning English and Spanish words at the same time. I struggled through elementary school because I was not used to focusing primarily on English which affected my grades. While it is true that colleges look for students who know more than one language, the problem with that requirement is that students who focus on two languages at once are more likely to fail their classes because they do not have their full attention directed towards the English language and they don’t pay attention to that factor. Colleges do not see the risk of being a bilingual student.
Lesley states that bilingual education is “an educational program in which two languages are medium of instruction.” (P. 11) Before specifically discuss about California, as a whole, the United States never has been officially announced as a bilingual or multilingual country. Despite the fact that the U.S. adapts the method of assimilation, bilingual schools exist early as pre-World War I (P. 18). And then, with Bilingual Education Act of 1967 brings a rebirth and structural bilingual education back to schools and districts (P.
In the essay Rodriguez challenges the idea of bilingual education, he takes us through his personal experience of a bilingual childhood where he talks about what he encountered in America as he attempts to adjust to the American culture, and how he preserved his intimacy with his family even through the language barrier. Throughout the essay, we soon see that his identity and success is tied to the place and how he was raised, his parents are a major part of his success. Richard Rodriguez was Born in a Mexican immigrant family, him and he’s family moved to California, so he had to adapt to the new and unfamiliar situation, where the culture and language is completely different, therefore making him feel like he did not belong in the American culture. There was something Richard said that was really interesting, he said “An accident of geography sent me to a school where all my classmates were white.”
The author, Barbara Mujica, uses her niece’s school experience in Florida as an example of what not to do with bilingual education. Mujica’s niece called her feeling very upset about the decisions she had to make with her athletic scholarship, because her comprehension and writing skills in English were deficient. Although her niece had lived in Miami most of her life the environment was equipped to service people in foreign languages. During Mujica’s visit she observed this first hand; businesses, not just teaching, were conducted in Spanish. People and business think they are helping those who do not speak English, but in actuality it may be doing them a disservice.
If students begin their bilingual education as early as kindergarten, they are more likely to successfully acquire a second language. Children are like sponges and soak up information easily. Research conducted by Dr. Patricia Kuhl at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington shows that by 8-12 months, if babies are exposed to a second language, they retain the ability to distinguish those foreign sounds. Moreover, through the age of 7 or 8, children are able to learn to speak a second language with fluent grammar and without an accent.
Immigrants and Education We believe that teachers and parents are struggling to make their students and children involved in a different community from their original community. Because these students have different cultures, languages and values from their teachers who are doing their best to meet the needs of all international students (Shurki & Richard, 2009). The schools across the country today are looking for ways to welcome and assist immigrant families because they become a big part of their communities. So how these effect on each of students, teachers and parent? Teachers Some school districts respond to the needs of immigrant and refugee students by creating “newcomer” programs (Hertzberg, 1998).
A person who speaks more than one language is described as being bilingual. According to the United States Department of Education, “about 21% of school-age children speak a language other than English at home,” (Lowry, 2011). As Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier describe in, “Two Languages are Better Than One,” children who come into school having a first language besides English, tend to struggle. Usually when a child struggles with a particular subject, they are taken out of the main classroom and brought somewhere for a remedial class. But according to Thomas and Collier, in order to help narrow the gap in comprehension, English learners and English speakers need to be kept together in order to be fully enriched in a successful learning
The ability to develop foreign language become reduces. Besides the age factor Experience and school environment as well as the teaching. They play an important role in the development of language skills. So the bilingual is necessary: using
Questions of abandoning or maintaining one’s home language affects education policy in all immigrant receiving nations. Because of the consequences of colonisation, migration, nation-formation, traditions of exogamy, and modernisation, some degree of bilingualism is typical of most people in the world.” Today the most advanced nations realise that they can no longer be ignorant of the languages and cultures of other people on this planet. This is why bilingual-multicultural education was initiated. It was believed that this approach will build closer ties between the students’ community, their language background, and the educational plan of the school.
Being bilingual has got many advantages. It has been debated that bilingualism has multiple advantages such as cognitive, cultural, academic benefits as well. Cognitive benefit reveals that being bilingual help to facilitate human brain. People who are bilingual have two language systems which are working simultaneously. These systems don’t create hindrance in individual’s performance and ensure brain’s functioning of both cognitive aspects (Bialystok, 1999).
Being bilingual in the era of globalization opens up many doors to the world as well as opportunities to a brighter career and future. The myths and misunderstandings of bilingualism has to be corrected and in order for them to come to an end, since they were proven by scientific researchers that they were nothing more than just myths from the past. Parents, educators along with researchers play an important role in spreading the facts about bilingualism to avoid future confusion especially to many new bilingual families. Aside from that, motivation from parents is the main key for a bilingual child to learn and excel in both languages to achieve a balance in order to be successful in the future. It is also important for the parents to guide and monitor a child’s learning development.
Code-switching refers to the linguistic phenomenon that occurs when an individual who is either, bilingual or multilingual, alternates their dialect with various languages (Moodley, 2013:55). Associated with code-switching is the concept of Matrix language (dominant language) and the idea of when to use code-switching; whether it is conscious or subconscious. In terms of code-switching in the classroom, there are several aspects that contribute to the advantages of using different languages which may help a student learn particular subjects. For example, an English teacher who is reading a poem that has certain words in a different language. However, there are disadvantages which may hinder the student’s ability to understand certain concepts
The notion of bilingualism is frequently connected to the idea of code-switching since a person should have ability to speak using two or more than one variety. Researchers have made countless studies describing bilingualism as they create awareness in different ways. To begin with is Bloomfield (1933) who defined bilingualism as having the “native- like control of two languages”. However, Haugen (1953) pinpointed that bilingualism is the ability of a speaker to communicate and understand an additional variety. This is to mean that the concept of bilingualism exist only when an individual of a certain variety has the capability to communicate effectively in an additional variety.
Learning a second language at a younger age is beneficial Most little kids first day of school is when they are approximately five years old, and about to enter kindergarten. Kids go to school from about age five till graduation from high school at about age eighteen. Most schools focus on the basic core subjects, such as math, reading, science and history. Until junior high or high school, foreign language is not even offered.