Bilingual Education In America

Bilingual Education in the United States of America

Context The United States of America, for the longest time, is known as a country composed of diverse ethnicities or people. Migrants come year by year and add on to the mix of this cultural blend of a country. There is actually no official language for the country but it English is commonly accepted as the de facto national language. Despite a relatively ignorable population of people coming from non-English backgrounds, education is primarily conducted in the English language. However, the issue at hand is not primarily at the cultural limitation but the fact that “monolingualism” is still the standard that is practiced in most schools in America.

Introduction

In an article entitled “6

In an experiment conducted by Jennifer Steele from the American University, Students assigned of the former are said to outperform their monolingual peers by 10 percent in reading comprehension. Steele also adds that it is not reading but also in subjects like math or science. She explains the improvement from “metalingustic awareness” or how learning more than one language increases awareness in how languages work overall. Another explanation comes from Gigi Luk from Harvard. From an experiment she conducted on 100 fourth grade students in Massachusetts, test results from a reading test differed from language experiences It was concluded that those whose native language was not English actually scored higher. Luk claims that foreign-language students think of these quizzes as puzzles so that despite having weaker vocabulary, utilize a different approach in order to reach their

They reiterate the advantages and mention how that even if there is a negative effect, it would be negligible to what the positives can offer.

I believe that the article has an indeed bias or at the least shifts entirely on the positive side of things. It should also be noted that the source isn’t as popular as more mainstream media sources. However, I think the part that thing about the essay that should be examined more is the context given in each paragraph and sources utilized. Some points barely had much to offer and sources for each benefit only had two, one, or even no sources to back up claims. Universities from where these scholars conduct their research also sound nice but it also could be abused. The credibility is put to question and it is furthermore suspicious with how brief the explanations are on the experiments undertaken. On a more hands on level, I think the two points on reading ability and school performance are better off being merged together. The former even mentions other subjects such as mathematics and science which ultimately disregards the heading of the