2.2. An approach to bilingual education in early years.
A lot of time ago the bilingualism was considered to be something negative. In the year 1928 the International Conference took place on the Bilingualism in Luxembourg (Vila I: 1983: 4). To her(it) there came a set of specialists that in those years it(he,she) was working on the matter. The questions that were done are the same that nowadays, ninety years later, we continue appearing: which are the effects of the bilingualism on the general intelligence, on the activity, the character? Which are the advantages and the disadvantages of the bilingual regime? What is the most favorable time to begin your learning? The answers were unanimous and the majority of those present expressed the influence refusal bilingualism exerted on the intellectual and personal development of the child. Why is concretised in 12 years the recommended age to start learning the L2. Fortunately nowadays public opinion
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In addition my own experience as a teacher, and many otros6, leads us to argue that as soon as possible start the child in language teaching, higher level reaches at the end of their school stage. According to Cummins (1980) the pace of acquisitions in the second language is much faster than the more elaborate is the mother tongue, however, after the period initial of one to two years, the little ones are those who show greater progress in relation to older. In short, if we want the child to develop a bilingual competence is necessary that contact with the second language begins as soon as possible and the more prolonged, more advantages the child who has started before (quoted in Abdelilah-Bauer B. 2011: 65), will have it which supports the promotion of bilingualism in early
With successive bilingualism a child has the advantage of their first language as a base. They use this to both analyze and develop the second. For example, the child knows that language is organized in a particular order. The more mature a child is they also have a better vocabulary base, acoustic perception, and comprehension. Therefore they would make fewer errors in a second language.
In my opinion bilingualism plays a major role in the educational development of children. This is because research has shown that children who are fluent in their home language are more successful in learning a second language. Furthermore, being bilingual offers greater sensitivity to language, more flexibility in thinking and better ear for listening. It also improves a child’s understanding for the native language. Moreover, knowledge of other languages increases a career of opportunities offering several job options.
Bilingualism is skill that is gained through life circumstances that does not require some innate skill (Bialystok, 2011). Some of these circumstances could include one’s family, immigration history, or birthplace. The ability to speak and understand more than one language is common among over half the world’s population (Bialystok et al., 2012). In the 1960s, many researchers warned against teaching children more than one language as it many cause confusion and it appeared to have negative effects on a child’s cognitive development (Bialystok, 1988). As research regarding bilingualism has progressed, the effects of bilingualism have been shown to be advantageous compared to monolingual counterparts. Recent studies have even found that bilingualism provides benefits all stages of life (Bialystok, 2011).
This essay will demonstrate the research that is implemented on children with bilingual ability; discussing three main issues in bilingualism which is: the maintaining children’s first language, social and cognitive benefits, also why bilingualism should be in cooperated into school programming/curriculum.
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.
In the summer of 2017, a young man named Justin went to Mexico for the first time to visit family. Justin, speaking only English, struggled to communicate with those around him where the main language spoken in that country is Spanish. Here, being bilingual would sure be handy. Knowing more than one language, becomes beneficial in class, or when people are trying to communicate with each other, or possibly even to order food. Learning a second language should be mandatory for kids and also adults for the advantages they will earn, for a sense of belonging, and also to find ways of teaching others about another dialect.
The world has become a global village and that has brought a lot of changes and new work positions into the market. Almost everywhere around the globe, bilingual professionals are in high demand. Also, bilingualism opens up two worlds of experience, job opportunities, literature, resources, and cultural heritage. Bilinguals have the privilege of getting their information from a wider variety of resources. Besides, research has shown that it’s easier for bilingual children to acquire other languages later in life. A study conducted by professors of the Department of Special Education of the University of Haifa, Israel showed that “students who know two languages would have an easier time gaining command of a third language than would students who are fluent in only one language.”
In the video, fistly, it is talked about the facilities and problems to learn another language for children and according to Bialystok, children have facilities to learn a language because they pass his five first years of their life learning it, although each person has verbal abilities and some people have more facilities to learn languages than others, but everyone can be a functional speaker. Secondly, it is talked about if a bilingual child build his vocabulary slower than other monolingual, it will be dangerous for his learning, like a parent asked and Petitto suggest that it is normal and it is not dangerous for him.
These days there are more and more people who live in a country where other language than their home language is spoken. This could be due to different reasons, like immigration of the whole family or having married a person from another country. When children are involved most parents would like them to be bilingual, but this does not happen automatically. Some effort is required.
As the title suggests, “Speaking in Tongues: The Many Benefits of Bilingualism” is an article that examines the advantages of bilingualism. Due to the nature of the world, a great number of people have acquired the ability to speak more than one language. The author explores the benefits such an ability offers, arguing that bilingual children develop social, linguistic and cognitive skillsets that not only provides a chance to explore different cultures, but raises a child’s awareness of how language functions. The author also weighs on the cognitive aspect; applying the works of Ellen Bialystok to their ( the author’s ) argument. In the author’s view, bilingual children are better at dealing with conflicting cues and assessing information.
Many people do not believe in bilingual education because they think that the student would confuse the two languages and in the end speak neither one correctly. A closer look at when the two language mixes reveals that most of them master one of the languages to the same degree as a monolingual speaker (Korth 3). Through their bilingualism, they can use linguistic means creatively in accordance with the demands of the situation. This flexibility is a cognitive ability, which monolingual speakers can achieve only through effortful learning and training. Switching from one language to the other can be interpreted as an indication of the speaker’s fluency (Korth 3). In some cases, the languages are only spoken in specific places. If a child speaks
Society has raised false beliefs or misinforms people when it comes to educating a bilingual child. People have a lack of information about language acquisition and how the brain is a powerful organ with the ability to learn multiple languages. Today 's adults have different opinions when is time to make the decision if they should raise their children in a bilingual home or not, and at the end they do not know what to do. The advances in science have given us more information on early childhood and how children are capable of learning in different ways. Also, has proven how a young child can learn two or more languages at the same time. However, a question that has been asked by parents multiple times is what are the benefits of raising a
This study was designed in order to analyse how long it takes for a child to start communicating verbally in a second language, and what happens in the process of learning English as an additional language (EAL). Also, it speculates whether the educational system is well prepared to include bilingual children into the class and appropriately care for their special educational needs. There is a lot of existing literature in bilingual development in early year settings, however, it is somehow innovative the fact that the author decided to further look into the educational system and the way it welcomes the bilingual children into education institutions. The need to explore this topic, according to the author, comes from a lack of studies that
Growing up as a child in a military family, I had the fortunate experience of living in many places in the United States and abroad. With each new living adventure, we often met new families who were of mixed backgrounds and many of the new friends I made had one parent that was American and another that was of non-American or non-English speaking nationality. As such, these new friends were often bilingual. I often pondered what it would be like to live in a household where more than one language was spoken and found myself intrigued by that prospect. By the time I reached middle school though, the duty stations were all located in the United States and the majority
First, it is important to identify two main types of bilingual education; transitional and maintenance. Transitional means the primary focus is on learning the dominant language, while drifting apart from the minority language. On the other hand, maintenance deals with maintaining and developing the L1 while also trying to learn the dominant language (Hidden Curriculum, 2014). The main focus of maintenance is to help the child maintain their cultural identity while also trying to help them learn the minority language while living in a society that is prevalent in that specific language (Hidden Curriculum, 2014). Now that we have had the chance to talk about bilingual education and talk about two important aspects of bilingual education