Is English A Monolingual Country Essay

Language has clearly become a powerful force in many countries where different communities actually want to split apart on the sole basis on the language they speak. An article about Spain’s language diversity explains how people feel so passionate about their native languages that the country had to create autonomous regions for each of the major languages, and people are still fighting to have their language become the dominant dialect (Berdichevsky 276). This is also seen repeatedly in America’s history where immigrants to the country struggle to keep their languages alive. These immigrants realize the important role that language plays in keeping a community together, and many immigrants from the same country will choose to live by each other in America and are resentful when they are forced to learn English. My own great-grandparents chose to live in an Italian neighborhood in Ohio when they first came from Italy so that their culture would not be lost. This allowed my grandma to learn Italian as well as English, and even though she was going to an English school she was still taught the morals of her culture because she was able to talk with the older Italian people who did not speak English. My grandma says that this has helped her throughout life because even though she lives in America she says, “I respect my Italian heritage,” and that it has helped “build my confidence” (12 April 2003).

Clifford Brown was a very influential composer who made the most of the short life he

The educational system in the United States fails to acknowledge the importance of integrating different cultural components such as first language in the education of minorities. Social institutions like schools tend to neutralize their structures to fit the needs of the dominant groups. For the purpose of this study, the dominant group in the context of linguistic is predicted to have more resources available to succeed academically than the subordinate groups. The achievement gap in our education system has been studied by many in the

Have you ever wondered how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop? Well I have, however one thing I haven’t ever thought about was how many punches it takes to beat someone half to death. In this case, all it took was one punch. After 5 years of being on and off, Rihanna had reason to call an “SOS” when Chris Brown beat her so bad, that she couldn’t even make it to her Grammy performance that week. The couple kept quiet for numerous reasons in regard to their image until it couldn’t be hidden anymore. Chris Brown turned himself into the police for questioning shortly after he had allegedly been in a car accident. Rumors proved to false after a picture of Rihanna’s brutally beaten face was released on TMZ. After questioning and trial, he was released on a $50,000 bail,180 hours of community service and a received a restraining order keeping him from the pop icon, but was that enough? If you do the crime, you should do the time. To this day, Chris Brown has yet to fully repair his image and that is due to the fact of how he went about his situation. In this paper I will be assessing what happened, the image repair strategies Chris Brown took and if the message was effective or not.

In a lot of minority households a lot of people grow up learning different kinds of languages. For example, in filhinho households they learn Tagalog and some of their language has spanish words all the while they are learning english as well. Many

Immigrants and language minority students like English learners are among the fastest growing populations in U.S. public schools. The Urban Institute finds that the share of children enrolled

According to the 2011 census, over 20.8 percent of the United States population spoke another language other than English (www.us-english.org). Language barriers, cultural differences, and immigration have been a part of life in the United States for decades. Language is considered a vital tool in the construction of someone’s identity and an expression of culture. In the last 200 years immigrants have chosen to make the United States their home, but some proceeded with caution by slowly adapting to the English language and culture.

That said, research has shown that many monolingual immigrants learn English best through “structured English immersion” (United States Department of Education 4). While immigrant children benefit from the English-saturated environment of public schools, there is apt to be less uniformity in English exposure for adult immigrants. This paper will look at English exposure for adult Mexican immigrants through a sociological lens and make a proposition as to how one might conduct research to investigate the issue at hand. The hypothesis is that a Mexican immigrant in an area with a high immigrant density whose social network is characterized by high transitivity will tend to form connections with other monolingual people due to

For years, English was the dominant language of the United States. Now, demographers are predicting that in the year 2030, English language scholars will only be approximately 40% of the schools population in the United States. California has already surpassed that amount; 60% to 70% of the students speak a language other than English for their main language. Many think that Hispanics is the fastest growing group, in the United States, but they are actually the second highest, next to the Asian population.

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,

Moreover, the participants had to be fluent in both English and Spanish. The Hispanic parent participants were selected if they had been attending the school district for at least a year and had their “ELL children enrolled in the district’s elementary, middle, and high schools” (Good et al., 2010, p. 325). All the parents’ main language was Spanish.

English and speak English at home than the overall U.S. foreign-born population (DHS, 2014). In 2013, about “69 percent of Mexican immigrants ages 5 and older reported limited English proficiency, compared to 50 percent of the total foreign-born population”(DHS, 2014). Approximately “4 percent of Mexican immigrants spoke only English at home, versus 16 percent of all immigrants”(DHS, 2014). Assimilation has its merits as it encourages immigrants to learn to speak English, the language that is required to succeed in life as well as experience ordinary life in the United States. Without assimilating enough to at least learn English, the predominant language of the United States, immigrants cannot communicate with Americans and will be confined to their ethnic group. Studies show that immigrants that learn and adopt English as their first language are more likely to self identify as being American (Renshon, 2009). Acquiring language skills is a means that helps immigrants become more attached to America’s institutions, to its way of life and its communities. Assimilation not only means learning English, but also developing an appreciation for civil rights, and abiding by laws. Consequently without assimilation, an immigrant will always be “diverse”, and this divisiveness will inevitably destroy America and its prosperity. Diversity in this sense is not strength, but rather a weakness. Unity, values and a shared identity is what defines a country (Huntington, 2004).

Because of the freedoms and opportunities that America gives to its citizens, it has been a beacon of hope for immigrants. When these people come to America, they bring along their culture, beliefs, traditions, and their languages. While many take on the mannerisms of native born Americans, they still hang on to parts of their original culture, which has led to at least 350 different languages being spoken in America today (Castillo, 2015). While Americans are still primarily talking English, Spanish is in second for the most spoken language, with Chinese coming in third. People from all nationalities are streaming into America every day. With this information in mind, some may ask an in legitimate question: Why are not foreign languages bigger

The United states is known for its diversity, which in fact, started from the beginning. It has been very common thing to comprehensive different languages in the modern society. It’s estimated that

Anyone wanting to make a profit in these communities is forced to acknowledge the fact that the language of that community must be accepted. It is just like the rules of supply and demand. There’s a tremendous market in many U.S. areas that speaks mainly Spanish, Korean, etc. Particularly, in the southwest, the main foreign language is Spanish. The single largest foreign-language population in the U.S. is Latin Americans, both native born and not. (Sassen p16) It was not until December of 1996 that the Supreme Court agreed to hear Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona. This was on the issue of whether or not government services must be in English.(Clark p56) Now, considering how long the debate has been at hand, wasn’t 1996 a little late in the game?