The Importance Of Foreign Language In Primary 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

The United States is becoming more and more bilingual every day. It is important for students of the United States of America to keep up with the advancing world. The easiest way to learn a second language is when a person is young. This is why it would be beneficial for schools to start teaching a foreign language in kindergarten and continuing it through twelfth grade. Students are more likely to learn and remember a foreign language if they are introduced to it at a young age. A majority of other countries teach foreign languages to their students throughout their school lives. Most students coming out of high school in other countries are totally

Before discussing the rest of the topics, I want to discuss what I already knew prior to viewing all of the sources. As someone taught by the American education system, I’ve seen how things work, and in America there isn’t a great effort being put forth to teach young children any language besides English. I remember learning the colors and one through ten in Spanish in elementary school, but that was really the most we ever learned

It is important in the United States to have a competitive workforce, and a great way to do that is to have a society of learners that can communicate with people of other cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Although there are efforts for teaching school children other languages, most programs are primitive at best, left to be forgotten before the skills reach the point of relevancy. Dual language programs should be established in the US wherever feasible to give parents, at the very least, the choice to expand the minds of their children. Recent years have seen the inclusion of voluntary language immersion programs in places such as Athens, Georgia, in which students are taught from Kindergarten in two languages. These are steps in the right

“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.

Thus, the parents of these children are relying on America’s public school system; however, this can be a lost cause. Public schools in America are in dire need of help. They find it hard to compete with the more prestigious private schools. Public schools receive less funding than private or charter schools and that results in fewer classes with more students per class. This makes for a difficult learning environment  for students because more students generally means there will be less books in the class to use and the teacher will have a hard time controlling the class, causing a distracting and unproductive environment. Also, most states have implemented certain standards that they mandate all teachers to adhere to; this restricted teaching prevents teachers from using creative methods of teaching to truly give their students knowledge. Perhaps this is the reason why the math and science scores of American students are significantly lower than those in Japan and China; American students are slaves to a public school system that doesn’t teach them to use critical thinking skills to solve problems.

In “language study as a National Imperative, “Colleen Flaherty writes about the language education of the in the U.S. She explains the report, which was written by the American Academy of Arts and sciences (AAAS). The Article was published in Inside Higher Education on February. The Reports explain that foreign language must be required in the school system starting in kindergarten. The Academy of Arts and Sciences or the AAAS believes that Second languages should be required it opens up more opportunities for getting a better job in the future. And also understand the other better like none English Speakers. AAAS also believes it could help economic growth and competitiveness. Flaherty also says the language learner will build a good Skill and improvement with other people around them. According to AAAS Report strongly emphasizes work with schools to promote language classes. Also In the report it says that the government should help teacher’s education and increase the more opportunities.

America has always been a place where people from all over the world have strived to travel in hopes of creating a better and more promising future for themselves. In today’s classrooms, teachers are experiencing the culture and language related effects of that endeavor. With an increasing amount of non-English speakers entering the country each year, the population of students who speak English as a second language or no English at all increases as well. Not only are these students entering with knowledge of another language but they also enter with the history of another culture. These students are taught and raised to love their traditional languages and cultures. To take these aspects away from them in order to make them understand our way of life is not fair nor is it educationally beneficial. Some say foreigners need to assimilate because they are entering our country and by trying to accommodate their tradition, schools will end up hurting American students’ educational progress. This is not found to be true in as many cases as one would think though. By incorporating home or second language and diverse cultural exploration in combination with Standard English and American culture into the classroom, all students will benefit in multiple areas of learning and life.

This is because rather than ostracizing large numbers of the population, the U.S. should embrace the diversity of its people by offering assistance to non-English speaking students. Therefore, although I will argue that secondary languages such as Spanish should be taught in public schools in the U.S., I do not believe that English should be replaced entirely by secondary languages.

A plethora of European nations have found the way to properly educate their citizens, while the United States sits back and hopes methods of the past can solve the problems of the future. Proactivity and reform are absolutely essential to eradicating the national crisis Americans are facing in the realm of secondary

Nearly everyone is required to take at least two years of a foreign language in order to attend college in the United States. But, how much does one really remember from that long ago high school Spanish Class? Imagine how much easier language would be to master, and how much more would be absorbed, if the languages were introduced in Kindergarten. By implementing more bilingual education programs within the United States Education System, children will begin to improve drastically academically, cognitively, and socially; Bilingual Education will also help to improve cultural awareness within both the American Education System and the United States itself.

It is a long going controversy in American education- whether the future leaders of our country should be educated in one, or multiple languages other than English as a standard in every school. Why is the debate so ongoing in the United States? In most other countries, foreign language education is a must in the school system, not a privilege.

According to a study by the University of Phoenix Research Institute, “demand for American workers who speak foreign languages- particularly Spanish and Chinese- will rise over the next decade”(“Rising Demand for Bilingual Workers among Employers”). As the United States continues to diversify, being bilingual or multilingual is becoming a key part to be successful in life. A student’s school education, beginning at the first day of kindergarten, is supposed to build and prepare a student for the future, so why is properly learning a new language not a priority from the start? The teaching of a foreign language should begin elementary school because learning at an earlier age is optimum for an easier and effective learning process and provides significant benefits that can last a lifetime.

A survey done by the Center for Applied Linguistics in 2008 found that "The findings indicate a serious disconnect between the national call to educate world citizens with high-level language skills and the current state of foreign language instruction in schools across the country"(Cal:Research). This is concerning as all of the competition for the U.S. is gaining a step and we 're doing nothing . If the U.S. expects to continue to be competitive in the global market we need to have bilingual citizens. In order to ensure this, we must require a foreign language be learned in high school.

The vast majority of the people residing in the valley, especially in the city of Brownsville, Texas are fluent in both Spanish and English, and therefore considered bilingual. Brownsville has been considered a highly illiterate and poorly educated city, where learning a secondary language such as English, drastically changes those discriminating statistics. The argument is that learning a secondary language indeed supports literacy development from an early age, by reading aloud to children, making them participants of a learning incentive, and family literacy practices. A development in literacy significantly increases reading achievement test scores, helps students become better at grammatical judgment and word recognition, and improves their cognitive development.