Bilingual Education

Running Head : Bilingual Education

Bilingual Education

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Introduction

Bilinguals use different languages depending on the setting and the addressee . Children often use the heritage language with older relatives whereas they use English with contemporaries . Church services may be in the heritage language , but Sunday school is often conducted in English because the younger generation is typically not fluent enough in the heritage language

Limited use of a language is particularly harmful for the development of those heritage languages that are highly contextual . Development of the

br nuances of these languages depends on opportunity to use them in different contexts . Japanese , for example , uses very different terms when the speakers are of different age and social standing . Children who are not exposed to the language in different situations and different speakers do not learn the full range of the language . A Japanese student recalled moving back to Japan and being unwilling to speak to her school principal for fear of using improper language . Korean children in the United States report abandoning Korean after adults scolded them for not being addressed using the proper form of the language

Bilinguals , when communicating with other bilinguals , frequently alternate languages . Such code switching is more common in oral than in written language . A number of linguistic constraints determine when and how the switch occurs (Romaine , 1995 . The syntax , morphology , and lexicon of the languages play a role on possible switches . Code switching occurs at the discourse , sentence , or word level in the communication between bilinguals . A person may be talking to somebody in one language but switch to a different one when switching s or when a different person joins the conversation . Bilingual mothers and teachers often employ code switching to call children 's attention

Basically , Children from linguistically and culturally diverse environments share learning , communication , and motivational styles that are at discrepancy with those of the mainstream culture . Language and culture of children emerge to play a significant role in the ways children communicate with and relay to others and in their methods of perceiving , thinking , and problem solving . Individual differences in cognitive functioning are due not to distinctions in intelligence , but rather , to personality appearances inherent in the sociocultural system .Oral and written language development of bilingual learners is affected in many ways by their linguistic context . The sociolinguistic categories of languages influence the way languages are regarded in our society and the relative status they hold in comparison to English . It is not surprising that Standard English predominates in schools and other situations , given its status as world , national , and official language

The type of languages students speak and the type of writing system used by the languages will influence the ease of acquisition of English . The greater the difference , the more likely that families and school will neglect the development of the heritage language . Often these students develop limited oral language skills in their heritage language whereas they become fluent and monoliterate in English

The function and amount of...