Hmong Vs. Native Language In Schools

Teachers are forcing kids away from taking specific classes due to bias opinions, which is why for many schools in the United States language is not looked at as a priority. Picture growing up in a small town, in Maine, which in the data table from Shin and Kominski’s report showed to be a state with the least amount of citizens that spoke a language other than English as their primary language, shows that for some people language is hard to see has being important. In High School some have found a passion in language but don’t receive the proper curriculum that would allow them to succeed. Instead of introducing language in High School, our school systems should focus on adding it into the curriculum that is taught in elementary school and middle school. By starting when you are young, the time you are graduating high school you can speak at least one other language and classify yourself as bilingual. Dianne Steinbach explained it as, “Something that many of us took for granted when we were younger people is now disappearing” (First Speakers:Restoring). Since there is such a large increase in language diversity

When it comes to literacy, you have to first keep in mind where the Hispanic person is born. Birthplace is a major factor. When a student is born outside of the U.S., they have more Spanish skills than English unlike someone who was born in the U.S. They speak Spanish in their homes, but they also learn a lot of English everyday also while living in the United States. Of course someone who was born in the U.S. will have higher English literacy as opposed to someone who wasn't. The Hispanics who are immigrants are at a disadvantage, especially when it comes to socio-economics and education. Together, socio-economics background and education are closely related to literacy just as much as it is to bilingual. Hispanics have to coordinate work with learning English, while also being able to be there for their children.(Ortiz, 150)

More young americans nowadays are being raised in homes speaking non-English, but these students are falling behind in schools where there is not a bilingual program available. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in schools without a bilingual education program, 71% of English speakers are at or above the basic requirements for fourth grade reading while merely 30% of non-English speakers reach this level. 35% of English and 8% of non-English speakers reach proficient reading levels while only 9% of English and 1% of non-English speakers perform at advanced levels. It’s evident that the availability of a bilingual program is crucial to the success of an individual who needs the resources that can be given to them through the use of bilingual education. The percentages of the non-English speaking students previously mentioned could undoubtedly be comparable to those percentages of the English speaking students if the education they were being provided with was cohesive to their comfortability, and the material being taught was in a language they could better understand.

In the article, Speak Spanish, You’re in America!: El Huracan over language and Culture, Juan Gonzalez, a journalist and broadcaster of the daily show, Democracy Now, describes how bilingualism has impacted the United States’ modern education system. He describes an amendment that would constitute English as the official in the United States, which he believes can be a potential threat to the educational system. Gonzalez suggests that instead of having an amendment that constitutes English as the national language, American schools should implement Spanish to highlight the importance of being bilingualism in the American educational system. A constitutional amendment declaring English as the national language would be damaging to bilingual students because it would limit their capability of communicating in English or their native language, and therefore they have would fall behind in classes and will not succeed in the American educational system. To highlight the importance of bilingualism, even more the educational system should implement a variety of languages.

For a period of time I was an ESOL (English as a second language) classroom teacher. This meant part my class was native English speakers and the rest was native Spanish speakers. All of my little first graders had an entire year of culture appreciation and learning to be patient with one another. They learned about holidays which they both celebrated and holidays they did not have in common. When certain Spanish speaking students would get tired of finding the correct English words they would speak in Spanish.

“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 greatest concern of mandating “English only” schools in California for example is that 80 percent of the population of students is Latino. Miner further explains, “Good bilingual programs are about more than learning a language, it should be about respect for diversity and multiculturalism (Bilingual Education, 1999).”

According to Gleason and Ratner (2013), “In the United States, the proportion of children who are raised learning more than one language is estimated to be about 20 percent, with Spanish becoming the most common second language (Gleason & Ratner, 2013, p. 75). My interview this week was with a teacher, Mrs. T, who teaches young English learners. Mrs. T teaches children who are in the first grade. Because the school has a growing Hispanic population, the native language of the children she teaches is Spanish. The interview took place in her classroom during the last hour of the school day. I observed as she worked with one of her students in particular who seems to

Many students who are English language learners come from a background were in their household they speak another language rather than English. This is why it is very hard for them to adapt when they are entering a school. According to the 1968 Bilingual Education Act, this act mentioned how English Language Learners faced problems and how they came up with educational programs to help students who were Spanish speaking students (Stewner-Manzanares, 1988, P.1). The Bilingual Education Act was put in place and with this act they wanted the federal government to deliver programs that would help students who were Spanish speakers (Stewner-Manzanares, 1988,

Kan and Kohnert (2005) investigated the lexical-sematic development of preschool bilinguals at a Hmong-English preschool. Nineteen typically developing, native Hmong speakers ranging in ages from 3-5 participated in this study. The researchers decided to measure the lexical-sematic development of their participants using picture naming and picture identification tasks. They selected items from the English version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI; Fenson et al., 1993). Two bilingual preschool teachers from the school chose items from the inventory they felt were culturally relevant to the preschoolers they taught. The researchers selected 100 nouns from the teacher selected tasks to use in their measure. Then they taught the teachers to administer the measure because neither of the researchers spoke Hmong. The researchers used procedural reliability to ensure bilingual preschool teachers could administer Hmong tasks without error. Pui Fong Kan observed during the administration of these tasks. She conducted the

Lor (2010) examined the impact of minority teachers, especially Hmong teachers, have on student achievement. Lor (2010) provided a background of Hmong teachers, as well as, a history of the Hmong culture dated back during the Vietnam war. Lor’s (2010) research methods consist of interview questions pertaining to participants’ life experiences, school experiences, college years, teaching practices and philosophies. In conclusion, participants’ teaching practices comprise of inspiring students’ learning and achievement beyond the classroom.

Diverse cultures within the United States are rapidly developing and growing and the educational sector is the number one target to ensure that English –learners are receiving adequate education. Within the educational sector there are administrators and teachers who are involved in students lives on a daily basis to ensure that education is equal. In order to achieve the vital objective of equality, socio-cultural influences on ELL students, bilingualism and home language use, parental and community resources, and partnerships between families and schools all have to be considered to provide an opportunity for equal education.

The sudents in Texas will benefit tremendously from learning spanish in school and should be required to take it. Weather children want to speak spanish or not, they should be required to because 22% of the population speaks it jobs pay more for those who are bilingal, and will allow them to communicate with a more variety of people. Schools should require spanish for many reasons, but mainly for the reason that it will benefit the children’s lives in the long run especially in

Children gain great academics from learning Spanish in school. Many people are to limit what young non graduated students learn and impede them from being capable of learning Spanish. Why would they stop them from learning? Parents think that America should be an English only speaking country and wouldn’t appreciate a foreign language to be involved. I believe it makes you more intelligent in various ways. I say that for the sake of children learning Spanish at such a young age gives them a huge advantage in college. “ Studies on language development, however, show that the more exposure young children have to all languages actually gives them a distinct

and there isn’t a clear answer to which side holds the better ideas. While the research should be very dependable, I don’t always think it is. Often, studies don’t have a big enough sample size and are dictated by the bias in only one geographical area, or even limited to just one classroom. I also think the instructors are also biased by their own views on non-English speakers. I was stunned by the statistic 82.5% of teachers polled in that study (Reeves 2006) thought that English should be made the United States’ official language. If these teachers hold that belief, it directly correlated to their views on how classroom instruction should be structured. They would be more likely to believe that student’s native languages should not be