Atl Assignment

A questionnaire was given to a group of Hispanics born outside of the United States that contained four sections: background, simple skills like signing your name, literacy stimulation skills like reading, and finally oral. (Ortiz,P.152) When it came to the results, Hispanics born in the United States had a little higher level of literacy of 284.0 as compared to foreign-born Hispanics who had a 240.4. But when it came to English proficiency, native-born Hispanics and Foreign-born Hispanics were neck and neck at 3.6 on a scale from 1 to 5.(Ortiz,

“Hispanics in general have a strong work ethic and are willing to work hard and long to provide for their families” (Allison & Bencomo, 2015. p.58). Therefore, encouraging traditional morals and teaching children about the history of the culture is of great importance in Hispanic families (Allison & Bencomo, 2015. p.59). “Spanish is the primary language spoken in Hispanic immigrant families” (Allison & Bencomo, 2015. p. 59); however, English speaking family members will help with translation and communication when

“Language is power. If you cannot understand or be understood you have no power. You are at the mercy of everyone.” – (Rudat, 1994, Stow, Dodd 356) Should Americans be required to learn Spanish as a second language? The construction of our nation stands on documents written in English, however English is not our official language nor has it ever been. America is a “melting pot” in which English is the most prominent language, followed closely by Spanish. Requiring Americans to learn Spanish is a great controversy; I strongly believe that it should be a requirement, because it improves academic achievements, career success, and cultural and social understanding. The controversy has great counter arguments such as the double standard Americans are held to, and further division of the country. Regarding the counterarguments, I still firmly believe that it should be a requirement because the integration of a second language in our schools is more beneficial to our country’s success as a whole.

The study found that bilingual students (in the bilingual school) spent 47% of class time speaking Spanish, the traditional schooling group only spent 25% of class time speaking Spanish, always to other Mexican American students. When looking at the students outside of the classroom bilingual schooled students 63% of their time speaking Spanish to their Mexican American peers. Traditionally schooled children spent 64% of their time speaking English to their Mexican American peers. Prior to the beginning of the study both groups of children reported themselves as speaking Spanish more than English, however according to parental reports Traditional schooled students were reported to use more English than Spanish at the end of the first grade while the Bilingual students were reported to be using more Spanish than English by the end of the first grade. The results of the study found that the language spoken by the parents does not have considerable statistical influence on which language the child uses more, or even whether or the child is in a bilingual or is traditionally schooled. Perhaps most surprising is the finding that traditionally schooled children still result in speaking more English than Spanish with their Mexican-American peers when compared to their counterparts in the bilingual programs. Perhaps because

Maria is hardworking and responsible for her age and credits that to her Guatemalan culture. She is also very smart which she says is due to the fact that her parents only except “A’s” and expect her to work hard for her grades. Halle et al. (2011) discusses the fact that even though they may be behind in math and reading, dual language learners that live in a Spanish only speaking home have more social-emotional competencies as young as kindergarten.

In her article, “Teach Them Spanish Early, Too”, Carlene Carmichael argues that in California young Americans are not being taught Spanish as their second language. Carmichael supports her argument by saying that young Americans should have the chance to learn the basic Spanish language, learn together with other children that speak Spanish as their first language, and have the opportunity to apply for jobs that need both languages. Her purpose is to tell people that young Americans should learn Spanish in order to have the opportunity to apply for jobs that require people to speak English and Spanish.

Many young Latinos have to deal with issues of identity as a result of being educated in two cultures. However, this is a problem in decline, as the "pride of being Latino" continues to grow. The parents of the first generation are learning to function in their new country, have a higher disposable income and enjoy pampering their children with products, goods and leisure items that they could not enjoy his childhood. Given that 89% of these children born in the US and primary education courses in the country, their non-Latino counterparts school will determine not only your choice and language use, but also their orientation with respect to cultural values.

Bilingualism is a very common trait in the Rio Grande Valley, but not in all parts of the United States. The need to learn other languages aside from English is often overlooked in other parts of the U.S. I often asked myself what is it that motivates people in this region to speak more that one language. I wanted to shed some light on my questions about raising bilingual children in today’s society. My interview subject has three children (now adults) that are all bilingual, and proficient in English and Spanish. We agreed that for the sake of the participant’s privacy I would give her a pseudo name to be used in this research. The family of five has a very typical Rio Grande Valley background. The parents are originally from Mexico, and came to live in the United States in their early teens. The Lopez’s

The level of the English language by Latinos descendants is growing, they usually prefer to speak Spanish only at home, to be exact, are 3.4 million children (Hakimzadeh & Cohn, 2007), but nevertheless, Most latinos belive that if they do not have a good English, things would difficult to them, principally at work and it could be a reason why the new generation prefer English outside and Spanish in their house; even so, in a study of 2013 was found that only 2% of the latinos community speak a decent English (Gonzalez Barrera & Hugo Lopez, 2013)

I dedicated my undergraduate summers to aiding the Mexican-American community in the United States. As a lead research assistant for Project SEED at the University of Texas, my responsibility was to further the project’s goal of understanding the social, emotional, and educational development of “child brokers” in families of Mexican descent. These children often carry the responsibility and the stress of communicating for their parents. My fluency in Spanish allowed me to conduct surveys directly with the participants, and this experience taught me how important an American education and bilingual reforms are to the children of these

For me, as an Australian immigrant, with little experience or contact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the most meaningful aspects are understanding the Aboriginal terms of reference (ATR), protocols and deeper meaning of the Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country. Readings and videos, such as First Contact (Sharkey & Weekley, 2016), highlights the Aboriginal people as first Australians and traditional owns of the land, the protocols regarding Aboriginal people and their knowledge, experience and values. Also, I realised the importance of a clear understanding and application of the ATR because it is a holistic approach with set principles, core values and processes that encompasses the cultural knowledge, understanding

We’ve allowed a natural approach to language instruction to dominate our schools, hoping our English learners 
“will just figure it out.” (SCOE, 2009) This approach suggested by Kevin Clark proposes that teachers explicitly teach ELL by giving them a set of skills. Teacher will have to teach students not just vocabulary, but the sound system of language, the words and their word parts and meanings, and also rules for structuring sentences grammatically. Teaching students from this perspective can support a deeper understanding of the language. When the

The second language learner that I have chosen to assess in my case study is an international student from Korea who is now attending year 11 and does the ESL course at my school, the Hills Grammar School. I will refer to my student with the name ‘John’ for confidentiality reasons.

According to “Language, Public Policy, and Schooling”, Eugene E. Garcia, Ann-Marie Wiese, and Delis Cuellar state that 70 percent of Latino children and 9 percent of non-Latino children speak a language other than English at home. (p.144) Children acquire the first language exposed to them. Therefore, not all children know English when entering schools in the United States. Consequently, schools have to create transitional programs that allow and/or help children learn to read and write in English. This is done, because all classes in the U.S. are taught in the most common language of the country (English). Since learning English as a second language is seen all over the United States, governments in the national, state, and local levels can

The learner I have chosen has a general level of education from her native country, having attended nursery, primary and secondary schools. In her period of education in secondary school, she managed studied the English language for approximately 5 years.