Foreign Language

The Implications of Spanish

as the Second Language in the United States

Adrian Lucas

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[Name of Instructor]

[Date]

The Implications of Spanish

as the Second Language in the United States

The United States is the world 's fourth largest Spanish-speaking country . This ranking should not come as a surprise to anyone According to Renan Alemendarez Coello (qtd . in Hochmuth , it is not that hard to find someone who speaks either limited English or no English at all on the street today . Indeed , recent demographic studies

and observations that have been made by researchers have implied that Spanish is the second most widely used language in the country , next to English . This is because as of the year 2000 , Mexican immigrants make up 27 .6 of the million immigrants coming from other Spanish-speaking nations and countless of unaccounted illegal migrants entering the country in the U S . - Mexico b and Americans learning Spanish through formal education (Carreira 334 Lipski 14 Huntington 26 U . S . English Foundation 15 . In certain and territories of the country such as Miami and Puerto Rico , Spanish has become the primary language used not just in homes , but in business and politics (Castro Lipski 29-31 . In fact in the 1984 national elections Jones had reported to Senator Quentin N Burdick that in Texas alone 283 ,000 voters from 1 ,012 precincts in the states were Hispanics covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act which mandated that elections be conducted in a language aside from English in for the minority would be able to exercise in their right to vote (1-2 . Even more recently , the Democratic Party 's presidential candidate debate held in September 2003 was done both in English and Spanish (Lipski 30

While the evidence mentioned establishes Spanish as the second language of the United States , these proof that Spanish is flourishing in the country today has given a growing rise of concern among many Americans about its implications . Many have begun to fear that the proliferation of Spanish in the country would cause the nation to be divided and would even hinder the country from progressing (Hochmuth Lipski 30

One significant issue currently faced by the country today that has been linked to the growth of the Spanish language in the country is the growing academic achievement gap between Hispanics and Caucasians . In a recent study made by Rumberger and Anguiano in 1998 in 120 kindergarten schools in California , they have attributed that the academic achievement gap is caused by two factors namely the socio-economic status of the family of the student and the English proficiency of the student (17 . These two factors are interlinked with each other . Since Hispanic immigrants are not fluent or do not speak English efficiently they are unable to find employment to be able to uplift their socio-economic status (Hochmuth Lipski 34 . Because of this , they are unable to provide their children the skills needed in to be able to perform competently once they...