Maria Ramirez, daughter of immigrant parents who came to the United States from Mexico, insists that, had her school given students opportunities to maintain their native languages, it could have made a tremendous difference for her family. Even as she delights in the news that she has been named the bilingual teacher of the year by the National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE), Ramirez ponders what might have been for her six brothers.
"Our first language was Spanish, it's what we spoke at home," explains Ramirez. "At school, we were asked to always speak English. We were not encouraged to speak Spanish." While the lack of support kindled her competitive spirit, Ramirez says, it had the opposite effect on her brothers. As a result, only two of her six brothers finished high school; none of them pursued higher education of the sort Ramirez chose. Today she is a 2nd grade bilingual teacher at Alsup Elementary School in Commerce City, Colo.
Ramirez' experiences convinced her that if schools and teachers don't help students maintain their first language, they, in effect, tell these students that they aren't valued. "My language is part of who I am. If you take that away," says Ramirez, "you don't respect my whole person."
Ramirez' is a story shared by many students in the United States whose native languages are not English. The emphasis on English language development in U.S. public schools has precluded these students from maintaining fluency in their heritage languages, say experts.
"The attitude in the United States has historically been, lose the native language as soon as possible,'" says Marty Abbott, foreign language coordinator for Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.
"We're one of the few countries in the world that doesn't value bilingualism," agrees Deborah Short, TESOL/ESL Standards project director at the Center for Applied Linguistics. "We have quite a wealth of resources in immigrant students, but we try to trample their expertise, erase it."
There may now be a shift, however, in how educators cultivate the language resources that abound in our diverse student population. Recently released national standards for foreign language learning recognize the benefits of bilingualism and the need to help students recover their language if they've become English dominant. Soon-to-be-released standards for ESL instruction also support the belief that students should be given opportunities to maintain and develop their native language.
For several decades, public schools in the United States have been emphatically monolingual. As the student population grows more diverse, however, the question of how to assimilate non-English speakers into the U.S. educational system becomes more complicated. The debate can become heated.
Some educators continue to favor the so-called submersion approach—mainstreaming immigrant children into English-only classrooms. Advocates contend that this "sink or swim" method, used almost exclusively in U.S. schools for years, encourages students to master English quickly because they want to keep up with their English-speaking peers.
Critics challenge this approach, claiming instead that non-English speaking students who receive no assistance in the classroom often become so frustrated, the chances of their enjoying a successful academic experience are slim. These experts advocate transitional bilingual education programs in which students receive part of the curriculum in their native language, arguing that research shows that non-English speaking students schooled in their first language acquire the new language more readily.
Still, more and more experts are concluding that transitional bilingual education programs, while preferable to the submersion model, are short-sighted in this age of global competitiveness. What's needed, these experts say, is a comprehensive effort to develop fully what have been, to date, untapped foreign language resources. In this effort, foreign language teachers and ESL educators have a common purpose: to help students cultivate their native language.
The Language Edge
"If you ask John Q. Public' if it's important for Americans to learn a foreign language his answer is yes,'" says Ronald Walton, deputy director of the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC). But, he adds, these same people don't see a need to help immigrant students develop their native language.
College-bound students, however, see the need. Enrollment patterns in higher education show that an increasing number of students with home languages other than English are signing up for courses in their native languages, eager to turn their linguistic advantages into economic assets.
Guadalupe Valdes, professor of Spanish and Portuguese and professor of education at Stanford University, identifies as "heritage language learners" those older students who have received all their schooling in English and are now ready to study their first language as an academic subject. "Many of these students say, I speak the language with my grandmother, but I never used it intellectually. I never learned to write it,'" Valdes explains. And, now, many of them want to use their native languages in entrepreneurial ventures.
Take, for example, the Korean-American business major who eventually wants to conduct business in Korea. Although she can use Korean informally, she needs to understand how to use the language in more formal contexts, such as in giving presentations or in writing sales reports; she needs to understand the discourse of the Korean business world.
Valdes, who represented heritage language learners on the task force that developed the new standards for foreign language learning, points out that most heritage language learners are secondary or post-secondary students trying to "recover" the language they lost as they became proficient in English, many through traditional bilingual education programs. In spite of the first few years in which these students received instruction in their native language, "after more than nine years of English-only education they become English dominant," Valdes explains. If they read and write in their native language, they "write like 3rd graders. They go into heritage language programs because they want to use two languages academically and professionally."
Shifting the Emphasis
Although it's important to give all students at all education levels opportunities to develop their native languages, some educators, like Paquita Holland, wonder, why wait?
Holland is the principal at Oyster Elementary School in Washington, D.C., which has offered a two-way Spanish immersion program since 1971. In the Oyster model, two teachers are in the classroom every day, one to guide native English speakers as they learn Spanish and the other to assist native Spanish speakers as they master English. In the course of covering the curriculum, teachers and students use both languages equally, with half of the curriculum taught in Spanish and the other half taught in English.
"If you really want to make an impact, don't do transitional ESL," says Holland. Create, instead, "an educational setting in which the languages children bring to the school are celebrated and shared." The program at Oyster is based on balance, says Holland, a balance in which neither language dominates, and each language is considered valuable. "Never does the language minority child feel as though he or she has to give up something. The children here become as bilingual and biliteral as possible."
Holland says high test scores attest to the effectiveness of two-way immersion programs offered at the elementary level. As a result, Holland sees no need to delay foreign language instruction until high school.
Yet, as ideal as the Oyster model may be, there are some caveats. First, it's an expensive program. The per-pupil cost at Oyster is higher than at any other school in the District of Columbia. Second, the Oyster model can be successful only so long as the student population is relatively homogeneous. "We teach content in two languages, so the school population has to be mainly English-dominant and Spanish-dominant," explains Holland. In other schools and districts, where many different languages are represented among the student population, such a program would be very difficult, if not impossible, to administer.
It's these factors—expense and feasibility—that prompt some educators and policymakers to insist that families and communities bear the responsibility for helping students preserve their first language (see Issue, p. 7). Walton understands this argument. Indeed, he believes foreign language educators should call upon the linguistic abilities of community members to better serve students. "The Vietnamese community, for example, can help students retain their Vietnamese when that language is not offered at the school," he explains. The only obstacle Walton sees is a reluctance by schools to award credit for such nontraditional courses, taught by noncredentialed teachers. Walton brushes such concerns aside. Teachers, he says, can arrange for students to demonstrate their proficiency. "Why demand seat time' when it's possible for students to learn the language elsewhere?"
Other experts agree with Walton and conclude that those who understand the benefits of preserving language resources need to become more vocal advocates for the research that supports their position. "We have to become more savvy in talking to policymakers and community leaders," says Short, who maintains that most people don't know the benefits of bilingualism.
Those policymakers and community leaders should talk to Ramirez. Being bilingual, she says, will "open more doors" for English-speaking students. She cites her own experiences as evidence. Upon graduating from college, Ramirez says that, unlike her monolingual colleagues, she was offered a job "on the spot" because she is bilingual.
