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Effects of bilingualism in the classroom
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In the short story “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez, he explains how he grew up in a bilingual household and used Spanish as his “family’s language”. (Rodriguez 225) His childhood experiences made him realize that it is a challenge to learn English as a Spanish speaker. Therefore, he is against children using their family’s language in school or in a public society. It is an academic enrichment (Kim Potowski) for children to know two or more languages. Students are successful and prepared to face the challenges ahead of them (Potowski). Being bilingual is not a disadvantage to society or to education. In 2016, people see that being a bilingual speaker is more of an advantage to children than people did in the time that Richard Rodriguez wrote his memoir. In Richard Rodriguez’s memoir he explains how children who speak another language, excluding english, do not receive the best education, as in today, being a bilingual speaker is an academic enrichment (Potowski). In today’s time, language is an advantage for both children and adults. It is an advantage for children because they can communicate with more people and can be more open-minded towards different people and would grow up with better communication skills. Bilingualism at a young age also has many advantages for children's …show more content…
Being bilingual will help students be more successful. In the time that Richard Rodriguez wrote “Aria”, the Chicano Movement was going on and he saw being bilingual in a different view. People saw being bilingual as non-beneficial due to the little diversity and the little mindedness of people in the United States. Now, people see being bilingual as one of the biggest advantages there could be. The United States now has more diversity and people are more open-minded. Spanish being one of the most spoken language in the United States is no longer a private language and belongs in a public
Similar Themes in Richard Rodriguez' Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood and Carmen Tafolla's In Memory of Richi
Richard Rodriguez uses many rhetorical strategies in his essay, “Aria: Memoirs of a Bilingual Childhood” to convey the differences between his native Spanish and the English spoken around him. Diction, pathos and anecdote elucidate the differences between native English speakers and his parents, effectively giving the reader a clear impression of how Rodriguez experiences life as a bilingual child.
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
Richard Rodriguez offers an alternate yet equally profound truth: While our heritage and culture may remain forever tied to and expressed in our native or "home" language, only through the dominant language of our country (English in most cases) can we achieve a place in society that gives us a feeling that we belong amongst everyone else. The only way we can truly become a part of our community and fit in is to dominate the current spoken language. In the United States, the dominant language is Standard English. In this excerpt from "Aria," a chapter in his autobiography entitled "Hunger of Memory": The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez discusses public and private languages, and agrees that his achievements in English separated him from his Spanish family and culture but also brought him "the belief, the calming assurance that [he] belonged in public." We as human beings want to feel we belong. We search for that place in society where we are most comfortable all our lives. One should consider the benefits of mastering the dominant language of the society they live in, but should also take into account the harm of taking your native language for granted. I will attempt to explore both of these considerations and examine Rodriguez place in life now, by stating the facts of who is now by the childhood decisions that were made.
The essay starts off by talking about a common belief shared by many parents now about how students miss out on “a great deal by not being taught their family’s language”(Rodriguez 525). But the author states that this isn’t always true especially considering the children who are socially disadvantaged in any way, they more than likely consider their native tongue or the language used at home to be just that a private language that should only be used around or with the family, he also highlights how odd it was that his childhood classmates
Bilingual education offers a completely different world for students of different ethnic background and thus creates a comfort zone limiting the risk-taking factor necessary for the maturation of a child to an adult. Rodriguez argues supporters of bilingualism fail to realize "while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality" (Rodriguez 26). He explains that the imperative "radical self-reformation" required by education is lost by offering bilingual education and such a program suggests a place where the need for a sense of public identity disappears. A bilingual program gives a student the opportunity to be separated from real life and institutes a life that leaves out an essential understanding of the world. Bilingual students do not know the complexities of their world, including emotion, ethics, and logic, because the bilingual program secludes the eager minds to a much simpler, more naïve idea of how the society works, leaving out the confidence of belonging in public. This situation not only limits the education experience for non-English speaking students, but also hinders the further education of English speaking students by erecting a communicat...
The technique relies on a holistic approach that adopts instructions that allow students to actively participate in the learning process. This is easier for children that feel that the society appreciates their diversity through bilingualism and biliteracy. The society and parents need to encourage children to take up bilingual classes because they offer a lot of benefit to the society through favoring critical thinking, rationality, and sensitivity to other cultures, empathy, and detached or balanced awareness. However, Sonia Nieto mirrors a society that is made to fake being American and become ashamed of their family. It helps appreciate that it is not by choice that anyone speaks any other language as the first language and that the society and community influence the language of choice. Therefore, bilingualism cannot be detached from any community that freely promotes and accommodate the language spoken by the other community. Children and community members learn each other’s language without disregarding each other favoring effective learning that influences bilingualism and biliteracy in the long
The variety of language is something many cultures have, some say, having a second language opens up doors, but the hardship you go through makes you think otherwise. As a person who is bilingual like myself there could be a lot of pros and cons, but in this story by Gloria Anzaldua that’s what helped her shape her personal identity. It not only does that amount your power, but brings shame through your journey into fitting into society.
In the article, “Public and Private Language”, Richard Rodriguez argues that bilingual education delays learning a “public language” and developing a public identity”. I can relate to Richard’s story because my family and me moved to America when I was young and we also had the same struggle learning a new language. I agreed with Rodriguez when he expressed that he didn’t feel like a true American until he mastered the English language because English is the first and main language in America.
In Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, the author Richard Rodriguez argues that since there is a lack of bilingual education taught in American schools, many students face a loss of intimacy to their native language, leaving them identifiable-less. He makes this claim by expressing that although native language can cause divisions in communication, it is the basis structure to a person.
When visiting just about any school across America, students who attend come from all over the globe. This raises the question across America about bilingual education. This can create many challenges in and out of the classroom. The classroom should be a safe place for all students regardless of what native language they speak. In the essay Lost in translation written by Eva Hoffman, describes a foreign student who tries hard to fit in. Instead, Eva begins to feel angry, hurt and confused because people laugh at her. In Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education by Elizabeth R. Howard, Julie Sugarman, Donna Christian Center for Applied Linguistics Kathryn J. Lindholm-Leary San José State University David Rogers Dual Language Education of New Mexico. Guiding principles gives great ideas to educators to stop kids from making other students feel the way that Eva felt. After reading several articles about bilingual education, it is evident that all children in school should learn English but never lose their native language. When all the students speak one language, students will be less likely to make fun of each other. A good educator should learn enough foreign languages to aid them in effective communication in their classroom although; if an educator does not speak a foreign language, they should recruit within the classroom students to be peer mentors. However, a teacher should be willing to listen and encourage the students. Above all a good educator should be a good role model to their students by respecting their heritage and their language.
From my experience, bilingual education was a disadvantage during my childhood. At the age of twelve, I was introduced into a bilingual classroom for the first time. The crowded classroom was a combination of seventh and eighth grade Spanish-speaking students, who ranged from the ages of twelve to fifteen. The idea of bilingual education was to help students who weren’t fluent in the English language. The main focus of bilingual education was to teach English and, at the same time, teach a very basic knowledge of the core curriculum subjects: Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. Unfortunately, bilingual education had academic, psychological, and social disadvantages for me.
Green and Campbell (2006, p.6) emphasise the need for a child’s classroom and outside life to have a certain amount of relevance for the child to grow in learning. Classrooms include children with various backgrounds and home languages as well as different disabilities, disorders, talents and skills. There are consequences and downfalls to ignoring a child’s cultural resources such as a second language and different experiences. Bilingualism is made unusual and not utilised as a resource when educators do not allow their bilingual children to incorporate their extended language skills into their classroom learning (Adoniou, 2014). A child’s learning potential is effected when their second language is not utilised and if they are not able to reach into that knowledge and ability to communicate in more than one way. A child’s identity and who they are is ignored when they are unable to communicate in a way that is meaningful to them, which can also cause social and emotional issues for the child (Adoniou, 2014). The transferability of literacy from school to the “real” world is crucially important but often lost when the diversity of the home, community and sociocultural status is misunderstood and not integrated into a child’s classroom experience (Cairney, 2016,
Language has pioneered many interracial relationships and historical milestones. Language is a necessity for basic communication and cultural diversity. Being multilingual is a skill proven influential to a successful future. Due to rapid globalization, countries all over the world are stressing the importance of learning a second, or even third, language. With the exception of time and lack of resources, adults have very few widely applicable disadvantages to learning multiple languages. However, language learning as a child presents more complications. Some of those include not having enough funding at the elementary school level to introduce a program for secondary language, academic overload for the youth, stress for both the parent and student parties, and the mixing of languages. Not all of these complications are true in any or all situations, however, and the absence of them provides multitudes of opportunity for future career and academic success. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the parents or the education legislation to decide whether they encourage the learning of a secondary language at the young age necessary for retention. “The general consensus is that it takes between five to seven years for an individual to achieve advanced fluency,” therefore the younger a child begins to learn, the more likely they are to benefit to the maximum potential (Robertson). Keeping the language learning in high school or beginning the process earlier is a greatly controversial discussion that is important to address because of the topic’s already lengthy suspension.
In 2009, teachers of a New Jersey school banned foreign languages and stated, “any language other than English will not be tolerated" (Debaron 1). This situation was soon no longer allowed. While over ten percent of the total adolescent education systems contain emergent bilinguals, a whopping sixty percent of those students are educated in only English (Bale). Maria Estela Brisk, a Boston College Education professor, believes, “schools has wasted much energy in the search for a "perfect" model and the best way to learn English” when they could just focus on proving “quality education” to every student in the system (1). Teacher’s main priority should consist of effectively teaching their students to prepare them for the future, but currently there are a lack of certified bilingual education teachers. When students are taught more in different ways, they can educationally benefit their cognitive abilities, involving the brain with “mathematics, problem solving, logic and memory”, can be improved to create an overall better student. Even by learning another language at a earlier age can contribute to __________. Learning another language will be