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Language acquisition nature
Language acquisition nature
How do we acquire language
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In this article, Victoria Fierro-Cobas, and Eugenia Chan review patterns of bilingual language development. They discuss common questions such as how a bilingual child does acquires language, and what is the process of developing a second language before age three. Also, they offer general advice about raising a c bilingual child; for example, parents should help their child by using music, rhymes, games, and videos to help him/her not only to learn the language, but also appreciate the culture that he/she is being raised in. In addition, Fierro-Cobas and Chan discuss that a child learning a second language will normally have delays and inaccuracies in syntax that a monolingual child may not have.This article is very useful to my topic, I
Gerda Weissmann Klein is a Holocaust survivor that was born in Bielsko, Holand. She went through the misery of knowing what pain and suffering is. When she was 15, the Germans took over Bielsko and that is when everything started happening. On April nineteenth of 1942, the Jews were asked to move to the ghetto. Then they were forced to work in work camps and Gerda and her parents got separated. Later she went to a concentration camp, a 5 month death march. Stating of what this teenager (now woman) went through, Gerda was very qualified to write this book, knowing what actually happened inside the camps.
In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Story of My Body” Ortiz Cofer represents herself narrative story when she were young. Her autobiography has four headlines these parts are skin, color, size, and looks. Every headline has it is own stories underneath it. Ortiz Cofer’s is expressing her life story about her physical and psychological struggle with her body. Heilbrun’s narrative, “Writing a Woman’s Life” shows that, a woman’s does not have to be an ideal to write a self-autobiography to tell the world something about herself and her life. Ortiz Cofer’s facing a body struggle that is not made by herself, but by people around her. Therefore, every woman is able to write can write an autobiography with no exception.
Memory is both a blessing and a curse; it serves as a reminder of everything, and its meaning is based upon interpretation. In Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies Dedé lives through the memory of her family and her past. She tells the stories of her and her sisters lives leading up to their deaths, and reflects upon those memories throughout her daily life. Dedé lives on for her sisters, without her sisters, but all along carrying them with her throughout her life, never moving on. Dedé lives with the shame, sadness, and regret of all that has happened to her sisters, her marriage, and her family. Dedé’s memories serve as a blessing in her eyes, but are a burden
In the novel Segu, Maryse Conde beautifully constructs personal and in depth images of African history through the use of four main characters that depict the struggles and importance of family in what is now present day Mali. These four characters and also brothers, by the names of Tiekoro, Siga, Naba, and Malobali are faced with a world changing around their beloved city of Bambara with new customs of the Islamic religion and the developing ideas of European commerce and slave trade. These new expansions in Africa become stepping stones for the Troare brothers to face head on and they have brought both victory and heartache for them and their family. These four characters are centralized throughout this novel because they provide the reader with an inside account of what life is like during a time where traditional Africa begins to change due to the forceful injection of conquering settlers and religions. This creates a split between family members, a mixing of cultures, and the loss of one’s traditions in the Bambara society which is a reflection of the (WHAT ARE SOME CHANGES) changes that occur in societies across the world.
It is important to maintain children’s home language as it may help them learn and understand a second language. Barratt-Pugh (2000) discusses the benefits of bilingualism and maintaining it through early childhood settings, also mentions the concerns families have for their children maintaining two languages through schooling. Research within the article states that children who speak more than one language will have a higher level of understanding literacy content, form, genre, as well as understand the differences and translating within both languages. This demonstrates a contrast of strengths and experiences with literacy (linguist...
.... Infants also have the ability to discriminate between languages at an early age so it is clear that if part of a bilingual nursery, languages that are used are done so on a regular basis. This will prevent the infants from losing the ability to hear differences in speech, which occurs as they age. It can also be noted that from a young aged infants become sophisticated in their understanding of their native language.
Imagine being a young girl dreaming of becoming a woman and flying like a super hero over your neighborhood, seeing everything that happens at night. Then, you wake up to realize you are still a young girl sleeping in your room with white “princess” furniture. This is part of the narrator’s dream in the story “Volar” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, but what exactly does this dream mean? Many details can be interpreted by analyzing the character and theme, both by using the reader response approach and the psychological approach made, mostly developed by Sigmond Freud’s theories.
In this summary the author Tanya Barrientos is explaining how hard it is be different. In the beginning of the summary Barrientos explained how people automatically assume that she is Latina. She grew up in an English-speaking world. Her parents are born and raised in Guatemala but she moved to the United States at the age of three. When her parents came to the United States of America they stopped speaking English immediately. Her parents wanted her to read, talk, and write only in English. She felt like she was the only one who needed to learn how to speak Latino, even though she looks like she can already. In the summary she went on saying that she was trying to fit in and become a regular person so other Latinas won’t judge her. All she
The first poem that I chose was by the poet Julia Alvarez titled “Queens, 1963” this told the story of a family that has moved into in Queens, NY. The writer and narrator of this story is from the Dominican Republic. One year has passed for the family to finally settle into the neighborhood. This time an African American family has moved right across the street. The young girl notices how her neighbors have not treated this family with kindness and respect. More police have been seen patrolling through the neighborhood. When reading this poem my initial thoughts were that “Queens, 1963” describes the American people's behavior towards foreigners and their reactions. Alvarez states, “Mr. Scott, the retired plumber, and his plump Midwestern wife, considered moving back home, where white and black got along by staying where they belonged.” (Alvarez, pp 952) It will take another year and another family that will move into their neighborhood, than once the African American family settles in another family will be placed under the same scrutiny.
Barbara Nagy (2013) was, in her case study, focusing on eight bilingual children's (aged between 4 and 11) language development process. The main focus was on three of the most common assumptions people have on bilingualism:
This documentary was interesting on how children learn to speak two or more fluent languages. The idea of this documentary is to introduce children in a class room of only Chinese. By seeing this video we learn of the potentials of children to learn multiple language. Dr. Ling said that he take pride of being monolingual. No everyone in the world is capable of speaking so many languages. He researches what it means to be an educated person in America. There are parents that belief that if their children are leaning Chinese they may compromise the English. Kids learn beyond are expectation. This study shows that if the Chinese teacher does not speak English in class children will have to work harder to be able to learn and communicate. There is new research that reveals that becoming bilingual expends our brain capacity there is an ideal time to become bilingual at age 13.
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,
“Learning a second language not only has cognitive and academic benefits, it also supports a greater sense of openness to, and appreciation for, other cultures” (Tochen, 2009). For many students in the United States, English is not the primary language spoken at home. There are several options for getting these children to reach proficiency in the English Language. However, there is only one model that preserves the child’s first language, while also gaining literacy in English. This model is Bilingual Education. Bilingual education is not new to the United States. It in fact started in 1968 under title VII. However, there is still a lot for the general public, and parents of language learners, to learn about this form of education. Bilingual
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.
As time goes by and as the global community develops, the world grows more and more international, making second or third language acquisition become necessary to the majority. With the growing importance of multiple language ability, more and more parents think of bilingual or multilingual education, which means acquisitions of two or more languages, for their kids. In fact, we do have many reasons showing why multilingual education is important and beneficial, such as aspects of interpersonal relationship, employment, brain health, and so on.