Nigeria’s geographical position where she is surrounded by francophone neighbors such as Chad, Republic du Benin and Cameroon calls for a functional knowledge of French. With the knowledge of French, Nigeria and her Francophone neighbors would be able to work together locally and internationally. This however can only be achieved if there is communicative proficiency on the part of the citizens. Without this, Nigeria will be linguistically, politically, educationally and socially isolated from her francophone neighbors. This realization informed certain provisions guiding language study in Nigeria education system.
The learning and use of the foreign language is not only peculiar to Nigeria. It is a worldwide phenomenon. Early bilingual education was advocated by the Renaissance humanists but in more recent times, international organizations are reiterating that position and giving it a broader application. In 1993, a forum of United Nation’s Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) experts hoping to build a world that will be rid of many conflicts tearing it apart proposed that the education of the young people must include exposure to plurality of languages. Learning to communicate in a foreign language has long been recognized as an essential ingredient of a liberal education. Furthermore, in this age of globalization and interdependence that the world is becoming a smaller place and that more and more people are moving around the globe for work and
In a globalized world, English is and has been universal language for communications around the world. For that reason, U.S. has never had an urgency to learn and appreciate foreign languages. Most of school systems treat language classes not important as the core curriculum. According to the current positions on bilingual education, schools in the United States teach languages at exactly the wrong time and exclude children from all the benefits that extend beyond pure communication. It’s extremely important to be bilingually educated to adapt into increasingly globalized world. Moreover, even necessary, for those who should reach out and speak at least one other language. Being bilingual comes with various advantages and immeasurable benefits.
The need for bilingual education is not directly related to the need for the student to have a more pleasant learning experience, but based more on the increasing need for these individuals to learn about their heritage, how they can present themselves to others in different scenarios, and being knowledgeable in both languages at a dual equivalence. The key
Many people are unaware that there are more than six thousand languages in the world today. Imagine if a person could learn to read and write them all, picture the possibilities. It seems like an impossible feat, doesn’t it? Well you guessed it, it is. But it still remains a linguists’ dream to master as many languages as possible in a single lifetime. Language is one of the major systems of communication. So, is trying to learning to learn to write in a different language on a top of a first language a difficult and daunting process for the learner? I for one, strongly believe that a language learner’s first language challenges and hinders his or her ability to learn to write in a different language.
Language is one of the most beautiful techniques that humans have developed. Language allows us to communicate among each other; we can share and understand our and others’ feelings, opinions, and ideas. Because humans are imperfect, we have made language difficult because we have created multiple languages. With lots of language around the world, it is difficult to share, understand, and connect each other feelings, opinions, and ideas. Bilingual students can break this barrier with their culture and schools. Bilingualism breaks the language barrier and opens more opportunities, different views, and better relationship. The world needs to encourage students to learn more languages to give the students become open-minded for the better
Due to the lack of proper knowledge of foreign language and culture, the U.S. has justified war. This is inexcusable. Foreign language education can build avenues to different cultures. It provides the notion of willingness to understand another, which should be key in diplomacy. Still, with the stability and security if the country at stake, politicians make an issue about the fortification of foreign language in public schools. During his 2008 candidacy, President Obama encouraged parents to help their children become bilingual; he was immediately attacked for presenting the idea (Holt). Education in foreign language is not a political issue; both Democrats and Republicans need to make a composite effort to push legislation towards strengthening it (Holt).
My seminar provided an overview of chapter 4- explaining second language learning. During my introduction, key points from each of the 5 perspectives were discussed. The cognitive perspective was given priority as it contained many subcategories within itself. This section also allowed my group mates to connect theory and practice of second language learning. My group mates were able to connect to the noticing hypothesis, processability theory and the three principles of practice through their own personal experiences while learning a second language. The first discussion question asked my group members to evaluate their own understanding of how language learning occurs and compare it with the perspectives we covered. The second discussion question provided them a chance to assess each perspective and think of one weakness and one strength for each. Overall if I were to re-do my seminar, I would like to provide more attention to the other perspectives. I would add more discussion questions in order to stimulate more in-depth discussions. Similarly, adding supplemental information from an outside source to further discussion and connect the theories to pedagogy. Additionally, I would create an activity that focused more on teaching of a second language and how these theories have influenced the current practices used.
* 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
As a matter of fact, multilingualism is usually an unavoidable reality in most countries where English is used as a second language. In Nigeria, for instance, due to colonial origin, every educated person, or any other person who regularly interacts with people from other ethnic groups usually speak two languages: his mother’s tongue (ethnic language) and English. That’s why different ethnic groups in the country have found in English a common means of communication and identity.
Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 2009, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 31–41 © Centre for Language Studies National University of Singapore
During the years of language acquisition, the brain stores linguistic information but it also adapts to the grammatical predictabilities of language. (Sakai, 2005) It is classified under Cognitive Psychology and this development builds and enhances a child’s communication skills in their schooling careers. However, if children attend parallel medium schooling, they are likely never to learn and use one language. They will be able to speak and write in both languages which is a positive aspect but they may never have the full vocabulary or grammar rules as they are too busy learning both languages instead of concentrating fully on one. The positive aspects of multilingualism outweighs the negatives as being bilingual broadens one’s opportunities in schooling, especially in tertiary education, as well as one day when they are in search of jobs. A person is that much more employable and more likely to be successful if they are able to participate and communicate effectively in a growing and changing work environment.
According to Risager (1989) there are three main objectives which have been linked to the culture in foreign language learning. Firstly, it talks about the learner’s cognitive development and its focus is on providing information about the countries where the language has been spoken. Secondly, it talks about the learner’s development of foreign language skills. Here the main concern is on the cultural contexts, it gives the information to the learners about the foreign language culture so that it will help them to communicate in an effective way in different cultural contexts. Thirdly, its focus is on the cultural and social issues in foreign language learning. Here the main concern lies toward the attitudes of the learners. It shows that how learners
Learning a language is about not only grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. It is also a process of achieving the ability to communicate with people from other cultures, and the best way to improve that is to learn about culture and traditions of other countries. The knowledge of the conventions, customs, beliefs, and systems of meaning of another country, is indisputably an integral part of foreign language learning, and some researchers have seen it as their goal to incorporate the teaching of culture into the foreign language curriculum.
A second or foreign language learner needs to gain knowledge in and about the target language. In order to do that , one needs to know how to build morphemes into words and words into sentences (linguistic or grammatical competence). Yet, this knowledge is not the end of learning a language. While grammatical competence may be the essence of learning a new language; on its own, it is not enough. A learner also needs to know how to use that knowledge appropriately in a social context. One needs to know about speech act,(e.g., requesting, suggesting, arguing, etc.) and politeness (sociolinguistic or pragmatic competence). In addition to these competencies, other components are also required. A learner needs to know how to produce a largely cohesive and coherent text, either in writing or in speaking (discourse competence). As a learner might not understand the total underlying system of a language, s/he needs to know how to repair the breakdown of a conversation (strategic competence).
The second language(L2) learners often struggle to identify possible grammars in their second languages. In particular, they fail to form a sentence with an appropriate functional morpheme (Lardiere, 1998; White, 2003). A functional morpheme refers to a morpheme which performs some kind of grammatical function, playing a role in lexical change. It consists of the function words in the language such as definite markers. The inflection of a definite marker, in other words, definiteness, distinguishes a nominal phrase (NP) between identifiable and non-identifiable. That is, whether or not, a referent is identifiable or previously introduced in the discourse. In addition to identifiability, definiteness is expected to incorporate other notion,
In today’s society, it is essential that one knows more than one language to be very well qualified in acquiring jobs. However, learning a new language is not an easy task. One must be dedicated and be fully immersed to be fluent at it later on. There are certain grammatical rules that exists in one language but not in the others. Grammatical gender, for an example, is present in various languages around the world, including German. In the other hand, there is the English language which does not possess the use of gender grammar, specifically definitive article “the” and indefinite articles “a/an” in English, and “der/die/das” and “ein/einer/ein” in German. Der/ein is the gender grammar for masculine words, die/einer for feminine, and das/ein for neutral. However, these article could change depending if the sentence is describing the noun being presented is either genitive, dative, or accusative, turning them to either des/dem/den or eines/einem/einen. Despite such complex article rule, German and English are both Indo-European languages that have several cognate words, which could be beneficial for English speakers learning the language.Another interesting idea is whether bilinguals of English and Tagalog, which is an Austronesian language, would have such limitation in being fluent to the third language because of the article rules. It would be interesting to see if