In the essay “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” (1981), Richard Rodriguez, an experienced writer, expressed that “…it is not possible to for a child – any child – ever to use his family’s language in school” and began expressing his past experiences with bilingualism (510). Rodriguez recollects his feelings toward the accents he has listened to throughout his childhood, his “disabling confusion” from gaining fluency in English and Spanish, and the intimacy passing between sounds and words (519). By implementing his personal experiences, he entices his reader into reading actively in order to express how confusing, yet beneficial bilingualism can be. Rodriguez’s audience is focused to those who can relate when using more than one language
There are a lot of controversial issues surrounding this country. Whitin all those controversial issues there 's the “issue” of illegal immigration. I 'm sure we 're all familiar with the term “illegal immigration”. We’re always told about how bad it is. Don 't get me wrong, it is bad but it 's not done with the intention of hurting someone else but to try and change their future. To get out of the violence, drug, and alcohol abuse where they come from.
The film “Speaking in Tongues” (2010) obtained the students, parents, and communities perspective towards bilingual education. The students interviewed were all mainly towards learning how to speak a second language. The students felt they could benefit in learning a second language or in expanding their home language. In the film, Kelly Wong stated she loved speaking Chinese to her grandmother. Kelly could practice, learn, and get corrected by her grandmother while speaking Chinese. The parent’s perspective towards bilingual education was like the student’s opinions because both individuals felt immersion classrooms benefit the students and the parents. The father of Jason was proud his son was the first in his family to read, write, and speak in English. Jason’s father knew his son would have many career opportunities by learning English at school. Learning the English academic language was not the only proud language Jason’s father encouraged for Jason to learn but also the Spanish language as well. Jason’s father only speaks Spanish so if his son was to lose his home language, a language barrier would form between father and son. To prevent the language barrier Jason’s father encouraged a bilingual immersion
Social interaction, myelination, brain maturation, and scaffolding are evidence that early childhood is a sensitive time for learning language. In addition, children in early childhood are considered “language sponges” because they absorb every bit of language they hear or read.
Everyday, people all around the world are migrating from their home country to a new first world country for a better life for themselves and their children. The reasons as to which they migrate can be classified as social, economic, or political issues that push them to seek a healthier environment. Although immigrants are finding new lives in other countries, it facilitates the loss of familiarity with their native culture. The young immigrant children that move or are born in their non-native countries sometimes never get the chance to experience the ethnic background that their parents grew up with. Therefore, the lack of familiarity with a child's native background fosters global social issues such as the negative impact it has on future
In her article, “Teach Them Spanish Early, Too,” Carlene Carmichael questions why young Californians are not being taught a basic understanding of both the English and the Spanish language. Carmichael contends that more job opportunities are available to bilingual applicants. She suggest that children could be taught both languages together from a young age. Carmichael pities the many Americans who are barred from employment at bilingual businesses because of this disadvantage and she wonders if anyone else feels the same. Carmichael’s suggestion to offer Spanish curriculum to young children and teach both English and Spanish at the same time makes a lot of sense; After all, California does recognize both English and Spanish as official
Today, bilingual education used in many countries for a variety of social and educational purposes. It is become actual problem of this century. Because, the world is changing and according to the requirements of time, the human mind adjusts to new discoveries, to new tops. Large-scale changes in all spheres of human activity: the globalization of the economy and politics, the information explosion, the rapid development of communication defined new requirements for the quality of education. First of all, a general global trend towards integration in the sphere of education determines the trend towards integration of subject knowledge. All of this need to focus on the knowledge of a coherent picture of the world. Modernization in the field
Increasing development of bilingual education and the evolution of language may be due to the population size, social, political, economical and personal requirements. Numerous researches show that learning a language can improve mental agility, it can strengthen brain, develop communicative abilities of invidividuals and strengthen and improve overall humans´ abilities and skills. The concept of bilingualism should be tackled because of the various definitions that are given to this term. Those definitions seem to share one basic element, which is the use of two given languages by a given speaker. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages or the frequent use (as by a community) of two languages.
Learning languages is a treasure. This is a sentence that we know it holds some truth, however we can’t claim for sure that our bilingual kids are smarter than the kids who learn one language. Well, a study has shown that learning languages from a very early stage is extremely important in the brain development of the child, especially in the areas responsible for decision-making and problem-solving.
Everyone involved in our life has helped raise and teach us about almost everything as they all played a role in our lives. But how exactly did they play a role in our lives? In my opinion, they educated us on things that our time in school did not. In school, they teach us the same four subjects each year: English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. However, they are not teaching us things that we would have to learn from experience later in our lives. They are not focused on teaching us what to expect when we reach the age of adulthood, they are focused on teaching us about the subjects appointed by the Department of Education (DOE). This is the issue we face every day with the school system because although it is great to have a better understanding in these subjects, they should also focus on teaching us how to prepare for the real world. I strongly believe that they should be teaching us how to save money, how to be a better candidate for a job application, and how we are are going to need to be independent. Education should not just be about our academics or else we will never get anywhere. It should also be about how to prepare yourself for real-world problems.
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. However, many kids learn to speak another language, beside English, at home from their parents. Sometimes, it is the primary language. The primary language could be learned before English. Foreign languages should be required at elementary schools because it helps the students become more culturally diverse, students get more opportunities and foreign language can helps students relate to other students better.
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
Bilingualism is slowly becoming a popular “trend”. Those who are able to speak a second language at an advanced level and not only, are clearly considered by the society intellectually capable of great things. As a bilingual, the individual must not only know the grammar rules or achieve a high level in communication. He also has to study the cultural background of that specific language. Knowing a second language has a major impact on one’s life. It does not only change his vision on the world, and other cultures, but it also affects his internal psychology, his emotional side which influences furthermore his relationships with other people: relatives, friends and strangers.
This chapter discusses the pedagogical and the research implications that evolved from this early sequential bilingual project conducted during the early years. The implications are based on the performance of the bilingual educators, the early childhood teachers and the children involved, as well as the materials employed to carried out this implementation.
It is essential that younger generations receive a quality education. Children all over the United States of America are being deprived of their schooling. Not all schools receive equal funding. Kids who grow up in less wealthy areas are less likely to receive a good education. Children are being set up for failure. They 're funding is based on the wealth of the area they live in. Kids who might have excelled in certain areas with the right tutoring will never get the opportunity to without the proper funding. This is a shame to see talent going to waste. Think of all of the possibilities that these children could have created for the world with the right education. The United States has to invest in the youth. Keep the chain going to better the standard of life. That 's what the future is all about. We must improve on our previous generations to make the world a better place to live in. The United States must rehaul the out of date education system to compete with other top nations to give children an opportunity to education with equal funding so they can learn to the best of their ability.