Realist Ethnography

Speaking two or more languages is like a country having an atomic bomb during a war. The first situation is advantageous to a person and the second situation is advantageous to a country. “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” is a memoir of Richard Rodriguez’s bilingual childhood and it was originally published in Hunger of Memory in 1981. In Rodriguez’s memoir, he discusses why he disagrees with bilingual education. His audience is bilingual or anyone that has an opinion towards bilingual education. The purpose in Rodriguez’s memoir is to inform people of the effects of bilingual education and persuade bilingual educators why bilingual education shouldn’t exist.

First, it is important to identify two main types of bilingual education; transitional and maintenance. Transitional means the primary focus is on learning the dominant language, while drifting apart from the minority language. On the other hand, maintenance deals with maintaining and developing the L1 while also trying to learn the dominant language (Hidden Curriculum, 2014). The main focus of maintenance is to help the child maintain their cultural identity while also trying to help them learn the minority language while living in a society that is prevalent in that specific language (Hidden Curriculum, 2014). Now that we have had the chance to talk about bilingual education and talk about two important aspects of bilingual education

Growing up as a successive/sequential bilingual, and my hands-on experience as an ESL teacher, bilingualism has been always in my area of interest. After coming to the USA in October 2015, I had the chance to work with BAWDI (Bangladesh American Women Development Initiative), a Paterson-based organization where I met bilinguals of different age groups coming from the diverse socio-economic background. The variation in their L1 and L2 language proficiency made me more interested in this area. My interactions with them helped me to gather some fascinating data about bilingual phenomenon i.e. attitudes of parents towards bilingualism, what factors contribute to subtractive and additive bilingualism, how age affects language variation and so

For the Purpose of this study EAL will be used to describe any child with English as an Additional Language. Information from the January 2012 schools census found that over one million children in the United Kingdom now speak another language in addition to English. It also found that there are over three hundred and sixty languages spoken in primary schools. These children can range from beginner speakers of English, such as refugees or asylum seekers, to those who are advanced speakers of English who have grown up at home with both English and another language being spoken (Webster, 2011)

Cultural Diversity has lead schools to promote dual language and bilingual programs for ELL students. However, raising bilingual children according to Marsha Rosenberg is not something that simply happens. Parents must carefully consider how they will raise their children in their new culture. Unfortunately, many parents often forget that neglecting their primary language in the process of raising their children will only hurt them in the long run. However, what they fail to understand is that our current society insists on developing diverse learners, who can speak two or more languages and are diverse (Gensee, n.d). Therefore, in order to raise bilingual students they parents must provide the children with rich experiences at home as well as in a variety of settings (Broekhuizen, n.d.). Furthermore, families need to maintain a close family unity and sense of belonging when dealing with the bilingual issue at home.

This essay will demonstrate the research that is implemented on children with bilingual ability; discussing three main issues in bilingualism which is: the maintaining children’s first language, social and cognitive benefits, also why bilingualism should be in cooperated into school programming/curriculum.

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

We learned in our text that the development of language is a complicated process that involves phonemes, morphemes, syntactic development among several other factors (Siegler, DeLoache, Eisenberg & Saffran, 2014, p. 218). Proper and effective development of these language skills has been shown to have a critical learning period that enables successful fluency of a language; this period usually occurs between the ages of 5 and puberty (Siegler et al., 2014, p. 220). I believe that this critical period is the backbone of the argument against bilingual education. Proponents of this argument believe that the sooner a child is immersed in the new language, the better off they will be with regards to mechanics and use of that language.

As this research was based on the Cross- Sectional design, only the information relevant to the age group the child belongs has been stated. The history of each subject’s language development from birth has not been discussed. The names of the participants have been changed to maintain their anonymity. All other details are accurate and factual.

Once the song was fully memorized I practiced it with the recording accompaniment. I learned when to come in from the piano intro and how long to wait after the different phrases and sections. There were no dynamics for the voice part, so I added them in where I saw fit based on the phrases and lyrics, and was highly influenced by a recording sung by Cecilia Bartoli at the Berliner Philharmoniker with Daniel Barenboim.

This paper will be revisiting the article PreK-3rd; Challenging common myths about young English language learners written by Linda Espinosa. In this article Espinosa provides us with some common myths that people believe about dual language programs and the effects that it has on children. Therefore, in my previous reflection paper two myths were chosen which were myths one and six. Thus the two myths are “myth 1: Learning Two Languages During the Early Childhood Years Will Overwhelm, Confuse, and/ or Delay Acquisition of English (Espinosa pg. 5).” The second myth is “myth 6: Native English Speakers May Experience Academic and Language Delays in Dual Language Programs (Espinosa pg. 15).” In the previous reflection paper, I discussed the two myths based off of my prior knowledge. Thus since the course is coming to an end, I will be stating if my opinion has changed or remained the same towards these two myths. Therefore, this paper will be providing more evidences that was been provided for us throughout the quarter.

This situation also supports the statement of Lyon(1996) that children become bilingual across the world in many communities and this can play a major part in the families into which they are born, and in their later lives at school. Bilingualism occurs within complex, multi-layered context, but from the child’s point of view the family is where it all begins.

Children acquire language since they were born. They communicate with their parents. Furthermore, children and parents interact with each other using a language that we often call the first language or mother tongue. At an early age, children are only learning one language that is the mother tongue. By age and speech development, children improve to acquire a second language from the school or the environment around them. In terms of speed of langgauge acquisition, children are factorized by both the child and the child’s learning environment. Therefore, it is important to understand how children acquire second language. This paper is provided

Why should people nowadays see languages as a big prize? A person speaks more languages have more opportunities are skewed to him because he benefits the profit comparing to a person who speaks only one standard language. It is time for globalization and its effects on children for speaking other languages as a must. In two articles “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” by Richard Rodriguez and “Whose Voice Is It Anyway?” by Victor Villanueva, the two authors both expressed their opinions on native language and how the assimilation impacts a child. However, Rodriguez believed that the assimilation was beneficial for him as he had grown up in the English-speaking world and he disliked bilingual education which created many controversy.

The first research question that serves, as a focus for this study, is whether the older bilingual children can achieve higher relative interlocutor sensitivity and reach a discourse separation, which is closer to the pattern of their bilingual community? The second research question is whether