Bilingual Children’s Mother Tongue: Why it is important for education?
Jim Cummins is a professor from Toronto who works at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Cummins is one of the best authorities on bilingual education and second language acquisitions. He had invented the acronyms BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) used to help teachers to know what level have their students.
At the text Bilingual Children’s Mother Tongue: Why it is important for education?, Cummins explain the difficulties and problems of bilingual learning in some countries. He said as some of the more nationalist supporters defend the teaching in mother tongue because they can’t see the positive
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Here, in Spain, there is bilingualism in different autonomous communities, on account of two official languages, but in the case of the region of Valencia with the Valencian Language, we have a phenomenon called diglossia. Diglossia occurs when one of the two languages has a higher prestige or superior social privileges. It’s true that, by law, all official documents, as well as any information of interest of any public institution should appear in both languages, but in terms of the social sphere, the Valencian is in decline. According to the official data of the Concierge of Culture, Education and Science (1990) and the data provided by surveys on the use of the Valencian (1992 and 1995), the linguistic situation is dominance of Spanish in communication between groups. Data inform us also that the Valencian is especially used in the family group and with friends, against the greater use of Spanish in the workplace and other communicative situations. Briz (2001). But actually, according to Gómez Molina (1998), beliefs have changed and thus also the attitudes. Linguistic tolerance, bilingualism additive, cohabitation and coexistence of the Valencian and Spanish, rather than subtractive, is the prevailing attitude of bilingual users and monolinguals in Valencian Community. Hence the importance which suggests the author that families and areas dominated by a minority language are established strong bases that defend this type of languages that do not disappear, as well as from schools and institutions. Recovered from: