Advantages And Disadvantages Of Plurilingualism

Foreign language classes are often put off until high school due to the fact that this is when people believe students are most ready to learn another language. This belief is widely accepted despite the fact children are able to learn to speak like natives in foreign languages, whereas teenagers and adults usually are not able to learn how to do this. Speaking “like a native” entails being able to think in a foreign language without having to translate (Nadia 1). The ability to speak like a native in a foreign language can be easier to obtain when taught the foreign language during elementary school. Once a student passes the prime learning stages, learning a foreign language can be extremely difficult. Adults starting to learn a language have to work through an established first-language

Judie Haynes’ article, “Stages of Second Language Acquisition”, clearly states five stages that a new learner of English may go through. In Haynes’ theory, there are five stages in total, and they are pre-production, early production, speech emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency. According to Haynes, new learners of English acquire language by going through the same stages. However, how much time each student spends at a particular stage may be different. Despite the different time length, the stages of people acquiring new language are worth discussing.

We learned in our text that the development of language is a complicated process that involves phonemes, morphemes, syntactic development among several other factors (Siegler, DeLoache, Eisenberg & Saffran, 2014, p. 218). Proper and effective development of these language skills has been shown to have a critical learning period that enables successful fluency of a language; this period usually occurs between the ages of 5 and puberty (Siegler et al., 2014, p. 220). I believe that this critical period is the backbone of the argument against bilingual education. Proponents of this argument believe that the sooner a child is immersed in the new language, the better off they will be with regards to mechanics and use of that language.

“One of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time”, Federico Fellini once stated that “A different language is a different vision of life” and I, in my turn tend to say that he was perfectly right. A person who speaks more than one language can experience multiple personalities, visions and reflections consisting which language is he speaking. High School students should comprehend the real benefit of speaking a foreign language. Being a multilingual myself and speaking fluently four languages and studying another two, I consider that I am qualified enough to persuade that my argument is strong, plausible and not ultimately-right. In the following paragraphs I am going to address the following three reasons why should other High School students learn at least one foreign language? Firstly, learning a new language enhances performances in the academic domain and makes you smarter. Secondly, knowing a new language is a high estimated and a very valuable characteristic in your professional CV. Thirdly, international travel is more pleasant through knowing a foreign language.

To understand children’s language learning we have to go beyond language classrooms. Regarding the child as a language learner we have

By many researchers, it has been hypothesized that language could be acquired only within a critical period, which is from early infancy to puberty. If this is true, this should be extended to second language acquisition as well, and, if so, young children should be better at acquiring the second language than adults, and younger children should reach higher levels of proficiency in the second language. If this prediction is true, it would importantly demonstrate that children should be exposed to language with rich vocabulary and grammar within the critical period, and foreign language exposure at school should take place in early grades in order to maximize their opportunity to learn the language effectively. However, the motivation and the purpose of learning the target language may differ depending on the individuals and those factors can limit or expand the exposure to the target language. In this paper, I would like to discuss the correlation between the age that bilingual individuals are exposed to the second language as well as their motivation, purpose, and value of learning the second language. I would like to suggest that regardless of the age that individuals are exposed to the second language, if one values the importance of learning the second language and maximize their exposure to the targeted language, they can reach to the native level of proficiency in that language.

Through completing this research, there seems to be a distinct age in which a child must acquire or learn a language. With this in mind, it does seem that Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis is correct in its assumption. But, it also seems that Lenneberg was incorrect with a few aspects in his hypothesis. For example, he claims that all aspects of a language will be lost once a child reaches the age of puberty or when the brain is fully mature. This claim is counteracted with the research and study done with Genie. Although Genie was unable to acquire all aspects of her language like grammatical meanings and was incapable of producing coherent sentences, she was still able to communicate with two word utterances. Due to

Children’s acquisition of language has long been considered one of the uniquely defining characteristics of human behaviour. Even today, it is widely thought that children acquire their native language from the imitation of their parents, caregivers or the people in their daily environment. In this essay I will go through what the typical stages of language acquisition in children are, I will explain and show examples of cognitive disabilities and other difficulties in acquiring language, show the theories that explore how language is acquired and see if these theories account for children who are not cognitively impaired but who still do not acquire language.

“Any realistic account of language acquisition must take into account the manner in which the child passes from pre-speech communication to the use of language proper (Brunner, 1974–1975)”.

Many studies show that kids who are taught a language by the age of 7 they begin to be fluent in that language. Why? Because if kids hear it long enough they will start remembering it. According to the text it says, “A 2007 in Harwich, Massachusetts showed that students who studied a foreign language in an Articulated Sequence outperformed their non-foreign language learning peers on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test after two-three years and significantly outperformed them after seven-eight years on all MCAS subtests”(Caccavale). Even many teachers would say that learning a second language would take time off of basic learning such as Math and Language Arts it doesn’t really. Many kids are learning many of the basic learning skills in foreign language classes. The fact is that many teachers need to stop babbling about how foreign language is not going to help you on state standardized tests. Because it will. Evidence shows that, “Every piece of research in the field points to the benefits of starting a second language as early as three years of age. The other key to becoming proficient in another language is a long, continuous contact with the language. Until we have a well-articulated PK-16 second language ‘buy in’ from legislators, school boards, administrators, and parents, the U.S will continue to lag behind other nations, thus prolonging monolingualism”(Stewart). The notion of earlier is better in language learning seems to be upheld by the fact that longer sequences of foreign language instruction seem to lead to better academic achievement, overall. Because second language instruction provides young children with cognitive flexibility and creative thinking skills, it can offer gifted students the intellectual and developmental challenges they need and

“The learning experiences of a child determine which [neural] connections are developed and which no longer function. That means what is easy and natural for a child – learning a language – can become hard work for an older learner” (Curtain & Dahlberg 2004). Research indicates that children who are exposed to a foreign language at a young age achieve higher levels of cognitive development at an earlier age. In high school, where most students learn a second language, the brain is already too far developed to easily learn a foreign language and will most likely be forgotten within 2-3 years of finishing a language course, unless practiced daily.

Language development in the early years is a milestone in the growth of a child, signifying major learning developments and cognitive engagement (Raising Chldren, 2015). Green (2006) notes that a child’s first experience with language is essentially at home. Since the use of language is purposeful, meaningful and functional, the majority of children are successful in learning and pracitising their first language from interactions and imitation (Gee & Hayes, 2011). Within one year, children develop foundations that underpin language and speech development although learning language is a continuous, lifelong process.

“Less than 1 percent of American adults today are proficient in a foreign language that they studied in a U.S. classroom,” states Amelia Friedman in The Atlantic. “That’s noteworthy considering that in 2008 almost all high schools in the country – 93 percent – offered foreign languages” (Friedman). This has resulted in, as Brad Marshall, a teaching fellow of languages and literatures, notes, "[the] widespread belief that adults will inevitably have problems and will certainly never become fluent, while children are supposed to pick up languages with ease". However, study after study has shown the procedure of language learning of the infants. The essential elements of learning a language lie in your ears and the way you process into the language. Although there is a widespread myth in learning a language – children acquire a language much easier than adults do – the innate ability of adults’ language acquisition are basically as same as that of children’s.

Some experts believe that it is better for children to begin learning a foreign language at primary school rather than secondary school.

Of the more than 6,700 languages spoken in the world today, half are at risk of disappearing by the end of this century. Every two weeks, the last living speaker of a language dies, taking the language with him. The lingua franca that Global English has become, has a lot of disadvantages for our society and for our personal development. Approximately two billion people from different countries speak this language nowadays and as a result other languages become extinct. Not only do entire languages become extinct when everybody uses the same language to communicate, also languages harbour all kinds of human knowledge, which will be lost forever if the language will be forgotten. Furthermore, learning a new language helps the brain to perform more efficiently. Moreover, a whole culture with its unique traditions and celebrations will be lost forever.