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eBook details

• Title: Good Intentions, Bad Advice for Bilingual Families.
• Author : Childhood Education
• Release Date : January 22, 2006
• Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 175 KB

Description

Quite often, educators tell families of children who are learning English as a second language to speak only English, and not their native language, at home. Although these educators may have good intentions, their advice to families is misguided and stems from misunderstandings about the nature of bilingualism and the process of language acquisition. Educators may fear that children hearing two languages will become permanently confused and thus their language development will be delayed; this concern is not substantiated in the literature. Children are capable of learning more than one language, whether simultaneously or sequentially (Genesee, Paradis, & Cargo, 2004). In fact, most children outside of the United States are expected to become bilingual or even, in many cases, multilingual. Globally, knowing more than one language is viewed as an asset and even a necessity in many areas. Also of concern, the misguided advice that students should speak only English is given primarily to poor families with limited educational opportunities, not to wealthier families who have many educational advantages. Since children from poor families often are identified as at-risk for academic failure, teachers believe that advising families to speak English only is appropriate. Teachers consider learning two languages to be too overwhelming for children from poor families, believing that the children are already burdened by their home situations. A workshop on Childhood Bilingualism: Current Status and Future Directions (Li, 2005) highlighted this stance as the significant difference between bilinguals in the United States and those throughout most of the world. In the United States, bilinguals tend to come from low socioeconomic groups, whereas bilinguals in most other parts of the world are from higher socioeconomic groups and have had more positive academic experiences. In the United States, the problems lie in the language learning environment, the educational opportunities, and the attitudes towards people who speak other languages, rather than in the individual child's ability to learn languages.

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