Language Attrition : Language And Language

In most cases, some people think that it is not important for them that several languages die out every year because they believe that if there are fewer languages in the world that means they need not to learn so many languages at all and their life will be easier to have a communication with foreign people. While others do not think so, which sound reasonable but ironical based on the fickle situation in society and history. Because for me, despite the adventure of being entitled as ‘absolutist’, I will consistently support that it is significant to prevent the truth that several languages die out every year.

Within the past ten years, the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) has doubled. An increase of more than 2 million ELL students in the U.S schools, left professionals within the field of education with no choice but to face the challenge of understanding cultural differences. In addition to this, educators must understand how these differences affect students’ language development, learning style, academic achievement and most importantly, his or her performance on standardized tests. These differences must be understood, valued and respected by all service providers, especially those who are involved in the decision making process concerning the placement of students in special educational programs. (Roseberry-McKibbin, 2014).

This means that language itself is not just a form of communication, but also a means of connecting to the culture shared between the adolescents and other Vietnamese people in the community. Vietnamese parents tend to enforce the acquisition of the Vietnamese language upon their children because they experience the phenomena of language loyalty and language maintenance. Language loyalty is “the tendency to remain loyal to the community language” (Danesi, 2016, p. 100), while language maintenance is “the tendency to maintain the language” (p. 100). According to Stoessel, these two factors are “critical for the survival of a minority language” (p. 100). Applying it to the participants in the case study, the minority language would be Vietnamese since the

This leads to the idea of the disastrous impacts of “killing” your language. The author discusses this principle as being denied the right to speak within in your country. However, I would like to take this principle one-step farther. Research shows that mastery of other languages demands mastery of the regional language. We see this is apparent in our own Public School system, with English speakers teaching students foreign languages and dialects in the regional language. Thus, in order to shift to a more modernized, globalized world we must start within our own regional culture. Society must understand that mastery of the mother tongue is a prerequisite for creative expression in other languages. (Adichie)

Language loss is also seen in second language learners as they gain proficiency in the second language and start to use their first language less often. Skills and rules of the first language start to fade with time. This particularly happens when ELL children are enrolled in regular schools rather than schools where instruction from teachers and social interaction occurs in English (Roseberry-McKibbin, 2014).

In the article “America’s Foreign Language Deficit” by David Skorton explains how learning another language can have many effects. The author, David Skorton, claims that by having the next American generation learning a foreign language, it will prepare them for success in the future. This is a logical claim. First, as the author points out, “[America] need[s] diplomats, intelligence and foreign policy experts, politicians… who are proficient in languages other than English” (Skorton). For example, the military often needs people who can speak a different language for many different reasons, such as having an important meeting with another country. In addition, American businesses need to know how to communicate with other businesses outside

The reason for a language’s death having little importance is that it is just a tool for communication. Any tool can be replaced. For example, “The very thing that made it a mistake for the missionaries to try to stop people from speaking Native American languages…makes it a mistake to care whether people continue to speak (it’s not as if English is worse).” (Michaels, 2006) English became the tool for communication, replacing the Native American languages. This happens to places where a new language is introduced, and begins to grow more popular compared to the native language, for some type of need. This leads to the dominating language to become the lingua franca.

In Vanishing Voices by Russ Rymer, the author gives readers an in depth overview of the significant loss in the number of languages over the years. “One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?” he asks. A major argument Rymer includes in his essay is that languages are seeming to “compete” with one another. Parents children who speak tribal languages encourage their children to break away and learn to speak major languages such as English, Spanish, or

Language is the being of the Yupiit Nation. Yup’ik is broken into several dialects that differ throughout northeastern Siberia and Alaska. Speakers of different Yup’ik dialects do not have similarities allowing for the understanding of each other. A loss of a language would essentially result in the loss the history, the identity, and the culture of the Yupiit

According to Paterson and Rentein ancient languages to mankind as it is the way history is trying to communicate with the future; also it grants us with the source of the origins from where languages embark on. There are various research carried out every year for the extinction of different languages from different part of the world which usually giving us a big number of extinct languages. The effect of this can be clearly seen on the academic clique which is a major topic of argument these days, but on the other hand some argues that it’s a natural thing is happening as we move forward in life. All individual are known for the language he or she speaks that represents individual from which region, which state or which country he belongs to therefore loss of a language will lead to identity crisis of the speaker. With the loss of academic knowledge there is also a loss of culture; different communities have different culture which is passed to the next generation majorly through their native languages so with the loss of languages there is loss of history, traditional songs and poetry. All kind of forms which are reliant on the language

As a bilingual, speaking English requires a lot of sacrifices because in order to speak the language correctly you are going to have to erase your accent. Erasing your accent requires you to forget about your roots, but isn’t bettering someone’s accent by erasing his roots an act of war or a violation of the first amendment? Should people be able to use the dialect they choose? Three articles have their own answer for these questions. The article “The Students’ Right to their Own Language” by the Conference on College Composition talks about how the CCC affirms that the student should have the right to their own language. This article also argues that many English teachers are not prepared to be language teachers and are unwilling and unready

In her article, Mainstreaming English Language Learners: Does it Promote or Hinder Literacy Development?, author Esther Somé-Guiébré, discusses the impact on literacy development when English language learners (ELL) are placed in mainstream classrooms. In this study, she followed two ELL students who are native French speaking African immigrants in the fifth grade in American schools. One of the students was a recent immigrant, only arriving five months ago, and the second was in her third year of schooling in America. The major concepts Somé-Guiébré highlights are the content knowledge exposure, lack of collaboration between ELL and mainstream teachers, as well as the limited interaction between teachers and their ELL students.

I agree with all of your points. How could you take away someone’s language? I think we all believe that English would be our nation’s official language, but what if it was Spanish? Everyone that wants one language that only speaks English would be very confused, and that is how immigrants and native speakers of other languages feel with English. Taking away their language would be confusing like other languages are to us, and I think we need to learn other languages to understand how confusing just English would be for them.

When discussing about “In other words”, Bialystok and Hakuta state that there is some thought that children who may appear to be learning a second languge very quickly at a vey young age (before the age of 5). They further state that accompanied by the loss of their first language, have really replaced the first language with the second language.

* In the educational field, the teaching learning cycle is a model used in contemporary teaching in both school and adult educational settings. Rothery (1996 in Derewianka & Jones 2012, pg 43) who originally developed the model used this to aim at disadvantaged children for teaching literacy and writing in the KLA (Key learning areas) who were from socially disadvantaged areas. Over time the model has been phased across other areas of the English language such as listening, speaking, reading as well as writing. The key involvement of the teacher also known as ‘expert other’ in the teaching learning cycle is guiding the learner to understand key concepts in academic literacy through use of scaffolding strategies to transform students