Bilingualism Paper

“Our culture, our traditions, our languages are the foundations upon which we build our identity.” - Unknown. The concept of bilingualism represents several different ideas, two writers share their personal stories about learning being immersed into the English culture and learning the language. They both share their views of what Bilingualism means to them personally and make arguments about the importance of the concept.

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.

Bilingualism is the ability to communicate in two different languages. Bilingual education is the use of two different languages in classroom instruction. According to the Encyclopedia of Children’s Health, and many other researchers, “languages are learned the easiest during a child’s youngest years. Therefore, when a child is growing up in a bilingual home or is receiving bilingual education, can easily speak both languages. Children who grow up in a household where two languages are spoken, usually acquire both languages simultaneously. Although their ability quality and skill of each language may be somewhat slower than a child that is

As your child grows up in a bilingual environment, they may occasionally mix the two languages up, but not because they don’t know any better.

This paper historically analyzes the implementation, changes and practices of bilingual education programs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I will begin by providing a short historical background on the initiation of bilingual education programs on a national level with the passing of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 and its’ reauthorizations in 1974,1978, 1984, and 1988. This act was key to providing the framework to build a school system that would later adapt the inclusion of languages other than English. I will specifically focus on Milwaukee, as it is pegged to be one of the most segregated cities in the nation. By focusing on this city, we can examine how the flux of populations, social strain and social wants affected the implementation of

An ongoing battle of culture, freedom, and language occurs in America today. The battle is commonly called Bilingualism. The dictionary definition: being able to speak multiple languages. Though, when you dig deeper, you discover the hunger of differing tongues. Many people believe bilingualism should have a certain role in the public and education. One of these figures is Martin Espada, who believe that bilingualism is also respecting one's culture. He believes that more effort be put into understanding different cultures and languages. An opposing figure to this is poet and author, Richard Rodriguez, who believes bilingualism should not be emphasized in the public

(2006)). In his article Kluger (2013) suggests that a person who learns two languages as a child might have a cognitive advantage. According to him, a bilingual brain may not be more intelligent, but it is more adaptable. He says people start learning languages earlier than delivery. The baby can hear her/his mother’s voice before birth, and when they are born they are already familiar with the language. He mentions that one study found that if a baby’s mother is monolingual, the baby only sucked his pacifier more vigorously when he heard English, while the baby with a bilingual mother sucked harder when they heard either language spoken by the parent. Vigorous sucking indicates the child is stimulated. These findings show that babies can figure out they are hearing different languages. Also, when they hear these languages their responses are different.

When it comes to bilingual development the brain of a child needs to adjust if he/she masters a second language during middle childhood. However, If a child at a young age learns to speak two different languages there are no differences in the brain, whereas if the older the child the more differences the brain will show. While children learn a second language the left side which is the language side becomes thicker and the right side gets thinner. Therefore, bilingual children's knowledge of Spanish doesn't improve since they mostly focus on English when they start kindergarten.

Bilingual education is an academic approach followed by some instructors, which is using the native language for new English learners for instructions. Within the international context, bilingual education has become a necessity due to the high number of immigration, colonialism and the great number of local languages (Yushau & Bokhari, 2005). This approach in instruction has reflected back positively or negatively in many dimensions such as social, psychological, and pedagogical. However, bilingual instruction is an effective way of teaching English as a second language, in case of well implementation it can be seen as an educational advantage. This literature covers a wide variety of opinions that revolves around a topic that researchers find it controversial, this review will highlight the major question and findings which emerge in

Imagine one day, you are taking the train to school or work and you observe a female toddler speaking to her parent in a native tongue, and then to her sibling in English. You become perplexed by her ability to rapidly switch between languages, and begin to think of how this is possible. Language makes up an extraordinary part of human abilities and contributes greatly to the usage of different parts of our brain. Being a resident of New York City, most of us know at least five individuals who are either bilingual or multilingual. This ability to switch between languages and reconfigure the brain has always been fascinating, being that I am monolingual, and I have always been intrigued by this development. We know most of our friends and families are bilingual because someone in their immediate family speaks the native language fluently. According to Buchweitz et al, bilingualism is a “multi-dimensional human phenomenon” that can be studied by how often someone uses the language and their capacity to develop this skill (Buchweitz & Prat, 2013). The main issues that this paper will be focusing on are as follows: the effects of bilingualism on the functioning and structure of the brain in correlation to the different aspects of processing language in a neural network, and how age of acquisition can affect the proficiency of language. The structure of the brain helps us understand the “architecture of language networks”, while the function shows us how these networks are

Bilingualism is the ability to communicate in two different languages. A person can become bilingual many ways: learning at home, at school, or in the community. The methods of learning are often simultaneous acquisition and sequential acquisition, meaning a person learns one language first and then learns another afterwards. With children, they often learn one language at home first, and then go to school and learn English through that setting. In the United States, currently 20% of school-age speak a language other than English at home (Reetzke, Lam, Xie, Sheng, & Chandrasekaran, 2016). Furthermore, 69% of sequential bilingual children are Spanish-English speakers (Bedore & Peña, 2008). Children who speak the mainstream language at home, may then learn a second language due to immersion programs like attending classes or schools that teach second languages, which is also called elective bilingualism.

Simultaneous acquisition of bilingualism and multilingualism means a person starts learning two or more languages from birth. After the child is born, they start to hear the languages spoken at home. As an example, my cousin married an Italian. Their son at home experiences a bilingual influences as his mother speaks English to him and the father speaks Italian to him. During the weekend, the child stays in the grandparents’ house. The grandparents speak Chinese to him. In this fashion, he is learning three languages simultaneously. So, his first languages are English, Italian and Chinese. He knows which language is appropriate when he talks to different people. When his grandmother came to visit from Italy, he spoke Italian to her. He is four years old and attends school. The teacher only speaks English. Since he spends additional time learning English, therefore his fluency in English is advanced over the other two languages he speaks.

Bilingualism refers to speaking two languages fluently, where one is a native language and the other is a secondary language either learned through family, school or by other means. It is not true that introducing a new language to children will affect their language development and delay. Instead, it has the benefits of improving cognitive and literacy skills, which means that children will become smarter when they are bilingual. Nonetheless, the languages should be spoken constantly and need an equal amount of exposure to the children. If not, the children’s brain will be damaged. This will cause lack of confidence if one language is exposed more than other. Furthermore, speaking two languages improves the development of the brain structure. In the present day, I believe that every individual child is either bilingual or monolingual. It is because many families moved to a foreign land where the language is different, so their children have no choice but to learn a new language. In addition, the children can also be exposed to a new language in numerous ways. For example, they can be taught by watching TV shows, cartoons in a different language from their mother tongue. In my opinion, children will learn a new language faster when they watch cartoons. It is because the children will copy what they see on the TV, and absorb the information into their brain. Furthermore, children can learn a language through play. When children play with adults and other children, they will

“Bilinguality is the psychological state of an individual who has access to more than one linguistic code as a means of social communication; the degree of access will vary along a number of dimensions which are psychological, cognitive, psycholinguistics, social psychological, social, sociological, sociolinguistics, sociocultural and linguistic” (Hamers, Blanc 2000:6)

During the years of language acquisition, the brain stores linguistic information but it also adapts to the grammatical predictabilities of language. (Sakai, 2005) It is classified under Cognitive Psychology and this development builds and enhances a child’s communication skills in their schooling careers. However, if children attend parallel medium schooling, they are likely never to learn and use one language. They will be able to speak and write in both languages which is a positive aspect but they may never have the full vocabulary or grammar rules as they are too busy learning both languages instead of concentrating fully on one. The positive aspects of multilingualism outweighs the negatives as being bilingual broadens one’s opportunities in schooling, especially in tertiary education, as well as one day when they are in search of jobs. A person is that much more employable and more likely to be successful if they are able to participate and communicate effectively in a growing and changing work environment.