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For this assignment, you are being asked to write a short research paper about some form of language policy - looking at issues learned about in class that have had

some impact on you or your ancestors, your language (learning/use) goals, and your current beliefs about issues around some language policy. For example: Should English be the de facto lingua franca of international commerce? What language should be used in education and taught in schools?, How does language planning and policy affect the use of or attitude towards “minority” languages in a given nation/state or other contexts?, How can language policy and planning promote bi- or multilingualism or the maintenance/conservation of heritage languages?, How can language policy and planning cause some languages to be "abandoned" and not be passed down to the next generation? etc.... Connect your experience as a user of one or more languages to concepts covered throughout this course. Think about how your experience as a speaker of a language (or languages) has been formed and about who or what has been part of this formation. You should contextualize your experiences in the larger social setting and explore how these experiences have shaped your own attitudes about language and language policy. To do this, apart from your academic research, I encourage you to interview family members and friends with whom you have grown up. via Turnitin. Requirements: A thesis statement which may connect your personal language experiences to at least one topic as it relates to policy that we have discussed in class. Develop the body of the paper connecting it to your topic and thesis statement develop your thesis and how that relates to at least three concepts covered in class. A well-integrated reference to at least three sources (These should include concepts from the class readings, discussions, and lectures (do not cite lectures as they are not academic sources)). Correct use of terms from class when appropriate (e.g., Speech community, classic language planning, corpus planning, prestige planning, linguistic discrimination, linguicide, mutual intelligibility, overt/covert prestige, diglossia, examples of bottom-up or top-down policies, etc....) The paper should be clearly written, proofread, and no longer than 750 words (references, title page and abstract do not count towards the overall word limit). Note: Your final draft cannot be rewritten. If you have questions about your final paper, it is imperative that you work them out before the due date. Begin thinking about this assignment early on so that you can write an excellent paper Thesis statement The thesis statement is the point (topic) of your paper; it should summarize how your personal experience relates to course concepts. It should be one sentence, clear, concise, and the body of your paper should support and connect to it. You do not need to include your three concepts in the thesis - these can be outlined in the body of your draft and may be introduced in the intro paragraph. Some generic examples: Language policies in my home country growing up affected attitudes about the status of my regional variety motivated me to switch to the standard form after leaving home. My positive attitudes towards my heritage language allowed me to maintain it throughout my adolescence and additive bilingual education has played an important role in this process. My family's language use has been affected by the top-down language policies enacted in my home country, as we have shifted from our heritage language, spoken by my grandparents, to only speaking (insert language). Being part of the Tagalog speech community helped my family to maintain the language despite subtractive bilingual education programs I experience growing up. My school had a subtractive bilingual program, so we switched from Chinese to English medium instruction by the 8th grade. Much like other heritage speakers, I have limited literacy in my heritage language, but I can be mistaken for a monolingual Hindi speaker under the right circumstances. Going to Saturday School helped me become literate in my heritage language despite being schooled in an English-Only environment. References & Use of Terms from Class The references should be to academic sources i.e.: material we read or watch in class, or other academic papers (not Wikipedia or Google). You should cite primary sources Do not cite lecture slides. This can include ANY of the course readings or other academic/scholarly articles or publications. If the reference is a non-academic source, like a video about language attitudes or a blog post, you should justify its use i.e.: “This quote is representative about attitudes towards language policy in the Philippines". You do not need to cite or define the terms we learned in class unless you are referencing a particular reading. By "well-integrated" I mean that the source should be relevant, and it should demonstrate or add information which helps to contextualize or better understand your own experience. The source should support your main and/or sub- points of your paper's thesis. Please meet with us during office hours for clarifications about your final draft. If you are trying to find more information about a language or language variety that you speak, there are many great online resources, including Ethnologue https://www.ethnologue.com (must be logged into UCSD VPN to access), the World Atlas of Languages - https://wals.info/ ' Glottolog - https://glottolog.org ' and North American English Dialects - https://aschmann.net/AmEng/. Tips for Interviewing family members/friends: Interviews (though not required) should help to add context to your paper's thesis. If you decide to use interviews, please come up with some questions ahead of time and use the same set with each person. You should submit your questions (not the actual interview) as an appendix in your final paper (the appendix goes at the very end of the paper after the reference list). Please meet with us if you have any queries about the interview or paper format (interview questions and references do not count towards the overall word limit) Style and clarity Use of APA style is required for paper, title page, and references. Although you should include a title page, an abstract is optional. If you need writing assistance, please seek help from the Teaching & Learning Commons. All papers are to be word-processed, proofread, and solely the work of the author (references, title page and abstract do not count towards the overall word limit). - Though the paper need not be written in a very formal register, please conform to Standard Academic English. The writing should be clear and proofread – Please seek help from the Teaching & Learning Commons for help on your final draft or have one of your peers read your final draft and comment on it. Three topics from the course I'm mentioning in my paper: By focusing on the case of Portuguese language learning, my paper sheds light on broader issues related to language policy, language planning, language bilingualism, and the preservation of linguistic diversity within educational systems. Thesis: Through a combination of language education and transmission, and cultural/linguistic integration programs within education systems, the reversing language shift model can help promote language bilingualism and help ensure the continued vitality of the Portuguese language across generations. The Portuguese language for me is a form of culture and identity which is why the preservation of the Portuguese language in my culture is important. Language policy, such as the reversing language shift model, is essential in promoting maintenance of heritage languages, in my case Portuguese. In my experience, public schools usually only offer a limited number of heritage languages such as French and Spanish, yet the population of public schools is made up of more multilingual speakers that speak other languages than just French and Spanish. Public schools need to advocate for a larger variety of languages that they offer to be inclusive of other languages so that people can preserve their languages and in essence their culture. Schools that advocate for a larger variety of languages and implement them into education systems see more connection to their culture and heritage. This paper examines the challenges encountered in attempting to learn Portuguese without adequate learning resources in public schooling, analyzing how the improvement of language policy policies such as language planning can influence and promote the reversing language shift model and promoting language bilingualism. This paper touches upon the improvement of language planning within education systems that can influence and promote the use of the reversing language shift model and promote language bilingualism specifically for Portuguese language speakers by promoting language education and transmission, and cultural and linguistic integration programs./n INTL101 - Cult & Society/International Perspective Language Policy Essay - Final paper For this assignment, you are being asked to write a short research paper about some form of language policy - looking at issues learned about in class that have had some impact on you or your ancestors, your language (learning/use) goals, and your current beliefs about issues around some language policy. For example: Should English be the de facto lingua franca of international commerce? What language should be used in education and taught in schools?, How does language planning and policy affect the use of or attitude towards “minority" languages in a given nation/state or other contexts?, How can language policy and planning promote bi- or multilingualism or the maintenance/conservation of heritage languages?, How can language policy and planning cause some languages to be "abandoned" and not be passed down to the next generation? etc…….. Connect your experience as a user of one or more languages to concepts covered throughout this course. Think about how your experience as a speaker of a language (or languages) has been formed and about who or what has been part of this formation. You should contextualize your experiences in the larger social setting and explore how these experiences have shaped your own attitudes about language and language policy. To do this, apart from your academic research, I encourage you to interview family members and friends with whom you have grown up. Final draft via TurnItIn. Requirements: 1. A thesis statement which may connect your personal language experiences to at least ONE topic as it relates to policy that we have discussed in class. 2. Develop the body of the paper connecting it to your topic and thesis statement - develop your thesis and how that relates to at least THREE concepts covered in class. 3. A well-integrated reference to at least THREE sources (These should include concepts from the class readings, discussions, and lectures (do not cite lectures as they are not academic sources)). 4. Correct use of terms from class when appropriate (e.g., Speech community, classic language planning, corpus planning, prestige planning, linguistic discrimination, linguicide, mutual intelligibility, overt/covert prestige, diglossia, examples of bottom-up or top-down policies, etc……..) 5. The paper should be clearly written, proofread, and no longer than 750 words (references, title page and abstract do not count towards the overall word limit). Note: Your final draft cannot be rewritten. If you have questions about your final paper, it is imperative that you work them out before the due date. Begin thinking about this assignment early on so that you can write an excellent paper Thesis statement The thesis statement is the point (topic) of your paper; it should summarize how your personal experience relates to course concepts. It should be one sentence, clear, concise, and the body of your paper should support and connect to it. You do not need to include your three concepts in the thesis – these can be outlined in the body of your draft and may be introduced in the intro paragraph. Some generic examples: ● • - Language policies in my home country growing up affected attitudes about the status of my regional variety motivated me to switch to the standard form after leaving home. My positive attitudes towards my heritage language allowed me to maintain it throughout my adolescence and additive bilingual education has played an important role in this process. • My family's language use has been affected by the top-down language policies enacted in my home country, as we have shifted from our heritage language, spoken by my grandparents, to only speaking (insert language). INTL101 McIntosh (updated 2023/01/27) 1 • Being part of the Tagalog speech community helped my family to maintain the language despite subtractive bilingual education programs I experience growing up. • My school had a subtractive bilingual program, so we switched from Chinese to English medium instruction by the 8th grade. Much like other heritage speakers, I have limited literacy in my heritage language, but I can be mistaken for a monolingual Hindi speaker under the right circumstances. Going to Saturday School helped me become literate in my heritage language despite being schooled in an English-Only environment. References & Use of Terms from Class - The references should be to academic sources i.e.: material we read or watch in class, or other academic papers (not Wikipedia or Google). You should cite primary sources Do not cite lecture slides. This can include ANY of the course readings or other academic/scholarly articles or publications. If the reference is a non-academic source, like a video about language attitudes or a blog post, you should justify its use i.e.: "This quote is representative about attitudes towards language policy in the Philippines". You do not need to cite or define the terms we learned in class unless you are referencing a particular reading. By "well-integrated” I mean that the source should be relevant, and it should demonstrate or add information which helps to contextualize or better understand your own experience. The source should support your main and/or sub- points of your paper's thesis. Please meet with us during office hours for clarifications about your final draft. If you are trying to find more information about a language or language variety that you speak, there are many great online resources, including Ethnologue https://www.ethnologue.com (must be logged into UCSD VPN to access), the World Atlas of Languages - https://wals.info/, Glottolog - https://glottolog.org, and North American English Dialects - https://aschmann.net/AmEng/. Tips for Interviewing family members/friends: Interviews (though not required) should help to add context to your paper's thesis. If you decide to use interviews, please come up with some questions ahead of time and use the same set with each person. You should submit your questions (not the actual interview) as an appendix in your final paper (the appendix goes at the very end of the paper after the reference list). Please meet with us if you have any queries about the interview or paper format (interview questions and references do not count towards the overall word limit) Style and clarity Use of APA style is required for paper, title page, and references. Although you should include a title page, an abstract is optional. If you need writing assistance, please seek help from the Teaching & Learning Commons. All papers are to be word-processed, proofread, and solely the work of the author (references, title page and abstract do not count towards the overall word limit). Though the paper need not be written in a very formal register, please conform to Standard Academic English. The writing should be clear and proofread – Please seek help from the Teaching & Learning Commons for help on your final draft or have one of your peers read your final draft and comment on it. Easy to reference links: APA 7th edition Google Docs template APA 7th edition format guidelines - Purdue Owl INTL101-McIntosh (updated 2023/01/27) 2/n 18 Language policy in the family Stephen J. Caldas Introduction: Family as start and end of language policy All meaningful language policy is ultimately played out in the home. Except for perhaps a medical doctor or midwife, the first words a child hears upon entering this world are those of his or her mother, and, to a generally lesser extent, father. This reality is reflected in the expression ‘mother tongue'. Unless the child is immediately whisked away to the care of others, he or she is immersed in the linguistic amniotic fluid of the mother tongue for many years after birth. Since most children do not begin schooling until ages 5 or 6 (if they are afforded elementary schooling at all, which is not the case for many children in third world countries), the child's near total exposure to only the home language (or languages) takes place during the most important linguistically forma- tive years of one's life (Döpke 2000). The child quickly becomes 'fluent' in his or her mother-tongue, and it is this home tongue (or tongues) with which the child will speak with the least amount of effort for the rest of his or her life What is family language policy? For the vast majority of families, the family language policy is not con- sciously planned, but rather has essentially been predetermined by his- tory and circumstances beyond the family's control. It is ‘invisible' (Pakir 1994, 2003). The ‘default' home language policy for most is to always speak the native tongue of the mother, who bears the brunt of childrear- ing (Thompson 1991), or the mother and father, in the case of parents who are bilingual, or who each speak different languages to the child. In short, the vast majority of parents do not strategically plot and plan family language policy. As will be shown in this chapter, governments, 352 STEPHEN J. CALDAS using legal and regulatory means, try to influence the linguistic choices of their citizens. However, where government policies run contrary to the interests of families, and/or ignore the sociolinguistic realities of the societies they are trying to influence, they have little practical effect on the ‘invisible' family language policy (Seidlhofer 2003; Spolsky and Shohamy 1999b). As noted by King, Fogle and Terry (2008: 907), the new field of family language policy focuses more on the visible ‘explicit and overt planning in relation to language use within the home among family members' in contrast to the explicit language planning of governments. For example, making the explicit decision to rear bilingual children, once considered the purview of the elite class (Lambert 1975), is becoming more and more commonplace among the ‘non-elites' (Barron-Hauwaert 2004; King and Fogle 2006a: 696). Planning and plotting to rear children who speak two or more languages is an increasingly mainstream, middle-class prac- tice somewhat along the lines of parents who want to provide as much enrichment to their children as possible (Barron-Hauwaert 2004; Curdt- Christiansen 2009; King and Fogle 2006a). In other words, for some par- ents, adding a second or third language to a child's linguistic repertoire is seen as giving an important advantage and enhanced social capital to their children (Curdt-Christiansen 2009), much like offering them years of private music lessons, summer camp experiences, or advanced math tutoring. Only a relatively small percentage of all families probably make overt, explicit choices on which languages to speak in the home, and strategize as to how to rear their children to speak more than one language. The sociolinguistic reality is that family language policies lie along a con- tinuum ranging from the highly planned and orchestrated, to the invis- ible, laissez-faire practices of most families. Somewhere in between are found the pragmatically inspired language strategies employed by fam- ilies in sociolinguistic contexts that confront them with real choices that have real consequences for their children. Why a family language policy? So, what motivates parents to make explicit choices about which lan- guages to speak in the home? In a study by King and Fogel (2006a), par- ents often made vague references to research that suggested bilingual children had some sort of cognitive advantage. Other parents want to maintain the heritage language of the family, culture or ancestral country of origin, like Russian among immigrant families in Israel (Kopeliovich 2009) or Māori among New Zealand's indigenous inhabit- ants (Te Puni Kōkiri 2006a). Cajun parents in Louisiana decided not to speak to their children in French, and spare them the social humiliation Language policy in the family to which the parents had been subjected (Caldas 2006). Still other par- ents want to confer a positive economic advantage on their children, like the Chinese immigrants in Montreal, Canada (Curdt-Christiansen 2009). Government efforts to influence family language policy range from the highly successful, as was the case with promoting Hebrew and French in Israel and Quebec, respectively, to the dismal failure of the Louisiana government to promote the speaking of Cajun French in Louisiana. This chapter considers each of the cases mentioned above in more detail, as they represent important sociolinguistic contexts that influence family language policies. One thing is certain: for endangered languages like Cajun and Creole in Louisiana, if communities and families do not adopt proactive policies to promote the speaking of these languages amongst the young, the languages and associated cultures will be lost forever. The case of language extinction occurred most recently with the death of the last speaker of the Bo language, one of the Great Andamanese languages that had been spoken for millennia on the Andaman Islands off the east coast of India (Harmeet Shah Singh 2010). There was no one left with whom the last, elderly speaker of Bo could converse. Rearing bilingual children Rearing children bilingually is perhaps the most commonly practised family language policy among parents who make explicit language decisions for their children. King and Fogle (2006a) studied twenty-four families who had adopted a bilingual family language policy, and dis- covered three major influences on these parents' language strategies. These influences included information contained in the popular press (and to a much lesser extent research), the experiences of other extended family members, and their own personal experiences with languages. By far the most important factor which framed the parents' family lan- guage policy was the personal experiences of the parents. According to a study by Barron-Hauwaert (2004), the most important source of infor- mation on how to rear bilingual children came from books - though not always authoritative ones on bilingualism. Even though these parents might not have been able to point to specific scientific studies to justify their strategies, they were able to distill out some important findings of linguistic research. For example, many parents indicated that they had gleaned the salient finding that the earlier they began their bilingual family language policy, the better. If parents want children who speak with native-like fluency, then this belief is correct, since the window of opportunity to speak like a native may close as early as age six (Ellis 1995). Also, a common characteristic of the King and Fogle families was that they had a pioneering spirit and were bucking the ‘negative' child- rearing examples of family and friends (2006a: 703). - 353 354 STEPHEN J. CALDAS Though some families may explicitly devise an initial bilingual strat- egy, family language policies are rarely rigid. Rather, they likely evolve with the changing dynamics of family life, are adjusted to account for their perceived effectiveness, or are ‘negotiated between family mem- bers (Barron-Hauwaert 2004; Caldas 2006; Lanza 2004). The language policy a family may start out with is not always the policy that they end up with, in part because the initial idea might not prove effective, or at some point social pressures intervene to make the initially appropriate choice counterproductive, as Caldas (2006) discovered with adolescents. Barron-Hauwaert (2004) noted that about twenty per cent of the families in her study changed their initial bilingual strategies over time. This growing desire of some parents to explicitly rear bilingual chil- dren is in part evidenced by the burgeoning interest in dual-language programmes (also known as 'two-way immersion' programmes), where children from majority and minority language backgrounds are educated together in each others' languages (Lindholm-Leary 2001). Especially in the United States, middle-class parents are becoming increasing assertive about having their children educated bilingually, and they are increas- ingly dissatisfied by traditional language approaches used by schools which are not effective (Montague 2000). Likewise, minority language families in the United States and elsewhere are increasingly strident in their demands that schools maintain and further their children's heri- tage language skills, in addition to teaching them English. One-parent-one-language family language policy One of the most common language policies employed by parents desir- ing to expressly rear bilingual children is the ‘One-parent-one-language' strategy (Barron-Hauwaert 2004; Döpke 1992). This strategy involves each parent speaking in only one language to the child, typically the parent’s native tongue. This approach was first championed by French linguist Maurice Grammont in a book he published in 1902 as the optimal way to rear bilingual children who would not mix up their two languages. Jules Ronjat (1913) methodically and successfully applied Grammont's method in one of the first scientifically documented family projects to rear a bilingual child from birth. Ronjat spoke only French to his son, while the child's mother spoke only German. One reason for the continued popularity of this approach is the non-research based notion that such a strategy helps keep the child from becoming linguistically confused (Eisenberg, Murkoff and Hathoway 1989) or that language delay is the result of this confusion (King and Fogle 2006b). There is no solid evidence that language confusion or language delay is caused by rearing children to be bilingual, regardless of the family strategy used (Lanza 1992; King and Fogle 2006b). Language policy in the family The author of this chapter and his wife implemented the one- parent-one-language strategy in their own home for the first year and a half of their oldest child's life, but in the pragmatic spirit of flexibility mentioned earlier, changed the strategy and both began speaking only the minority language - French - in their Louisiana and Quebec homes (Caldas 2006). We felt that our infant son, who was developmentally late to begin speaking any language, was exposed to too much English in his daily routine in Louisiana. Indeed, our identical twin girls who fol- lowed two years later (and to whom we only spoke French) were even more delayed in their speaking. However, all three children ultimately spoke both languages fluently and with very little language confusion (but with perfectly normal code-switching). Romaine (1995) noted that a common outcome in families who employ the one-parent-one-language approach is children who can understand both languages, but only speak the majority language of the community in which they live. These children have a sort of passive bilingualism, which means that they can understand both languages, but generally speak only one of them (Döpke 1992; Yamamoto 1995). Thus, a second strategy which some parents follow (whether by design or necessity) is to speak only the minority language in the home, a strategy which ultim- ately worked extremely well in the case of the author's family, once we abandoned the one-parent-one-language strategy. In short, passive bilingualism may result because the child is not exposed to enough of one of the two household languages, or is not put into situations where they must speak the minority language (Caldas 2006). There is research evidence that the one-parent-one-language approach is effective in producing bilingual children, but parents need to be very consistent in their application of the approach, and they must interact frequently and constantly with their children in their desig- nated language (Bain and Yu 1980). Pearson, Fernandez, Lewedeg and Oller (1997) found that to produce balanced bilinguals, a child needs from 40-60 per cent exposure to both languages. Lanza (1997) spoke of a ‘Bilingual-Monolingual Interaction Strategy' which was a much more flexible and situational response to the one- parent-one-language approach. This might involve one parent strictly enforcing the speaking of only one language with the child, while the second parent might speak both languages with the child. Lanza noted that there were several techniques which parents employed to signal to their child to switch back to the parental language. These include the parent pretending not to understand the child's utterance, pretending to guess the child's utterance, repeating the child's utterance in the appro- priate tongue, and answering the child's utterance in the target tongue. According to Barron-Hauwaert's study (2004), most parents employing the one-parent-one-language were not even aware that they were code- switching with their children (shifting from speaking their mother tongue 355/n Beyond Yellow English Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of Asian Pacific America Edited by Angela Reyes Adrienne Lo OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2009 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnamn Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond yellow English : toward a linguistic anthropology of Asian Pacific America / edited by Angela Reyes, Adrienne Lo. p. cm. - (Oxford studies in sociolinguistics) - Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-532735-9; 978-0-19-532736-6 (pbk.) t. Sociolinguistics-United States, 2. Asian Americans-Languages. 3. Asian Americans-Ethnic identity. 4. Asian Americans and mass media. 5. Language and education-United States. I. Reyes, Angela, 1970– II. Lo, Adrienne P40.45.USB49 2008 306.4408995'073-dc22 2008006542 9 8 7 6 54321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Trading Tongues Loss of Heritage Languages in the United States Leanne Hinton 20 There seems to be a belief in the United States, expressed often by politicians and the People cite experiences with taxi drivers who have a hard time communicating in English, or get upset at restaurants upon hearing people at another table talking in some other lan- guage. They fear that English, and English hegemony, is somehow being endangered. However, nothing could be further from the truth. According to the 1990 U.S. Census, some 97 percent of the American population knows English "very well" or "well.” And as we will see here, young immigrants or children born to immigrants not only learn English well, but often lose their heritage language in the bargain. While there was a time when immigrant families could expect language shift in three generations (first generation monolingual in the heritage language, second generation bilingual, third generation monolingual in English), nowadays there is a much speeded-up shift to English, so fast that children lose the ability to communicate effectively with their own parents. This chapter is based on a set of about 250 "linguistic autobiographies" I have collected from Asian American college students, done over the last several years in a class at the University of California at Berkeley. The heart of this chapter is the quotes from the autobiographies themselves. In this self-reporting mode, we see the human side of language shift, rather than the political. We will see the hopes parents have for their children to grow up bilingual, and the family difficulties that develop as children instead forget or reject their heritage language as they learn English. We will see also the remorse felt by the students later on over the loss of their heritage language, and their efforts to reclaim it as they get older. 331 332 TRADING TONGUES Parental Goals Immigrant parents have relatives, friends, a lifetime of associations and customs in their home country, and perhaps generations of family history there. They may even intend to return someday. Often, the families see their arrival in the United States not as an abandonment of their old country but rather as a process of making a bridge between the two countries. The language of their country may be the language the family has spoken since time immemorial. Typically, the parents want their children to adapt to the United States, but at the same time retain the knowledge and values of the old country as well: Our family was the first one famong our kin] to leave the mainland of South Korea. The day we left for United States, everybody was pretty emotional at the airport, but I remember one single thing my aunt shouted down the airport corridor, “[Korean letters]!" It meant, “Don't forget Korean!” (K-9)] Learning English The most frequent experience of the students has been that they knew little or no English when they started school in the United States. At the age of ten, my family on my mother's side immigrated to America and this is when I learned my second language. Going to school made me feel deaf, mute, and blind. I could understand nothing that was going on around me, (C-6) Although I did know some useful phrases, such as, "Could you prease point to the bathroom?" and "Sorry, I don't speake any Engrish," besides those handy phrases, I survived the first few months by utilizing the art of hand gestures and various body language. (K-9) I was not able to communicate well at first. Smiling was the best language for me to show other Americans. Whenever I didn't understand, I smiled. I felt stupid, but I didn't look bad. (K-18) Language Shock The students entering school without knowing English often undergo shock and depression. I started as an eighth grader in a junior high school and soon my burning desire and hope of a brilliant novel life (in America] began to fade away. I faced an unexpected obstacle of miscommunication between my fellow students and teachers. Back in Korea, I and my friends thought that after living in the U.S. for only [a few] months, you would be perfectly fluent in English. ... But soon I found out that several years EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 333 of studying English is needed to speak it fluently. Unprepared to meet the dilemma, I was quite depressed and in a condition of despair for the beginning year.... I used to be very active and popular in my school in Korea and here I was nothing. (K-6) I got my very first impression of the American culture and language at third grade. I went to an elementary school where there were virtually no Asians and predomi- nately whites. At first, I was excited to see kids with blond hair and pale-colored skin like those people in the movies. However, my excitement didn't last long as I began to realize that there was no way I could communicate with them because I spoke no English at all. I began to dread going to school the few months in America. I was so miserable because all the kids looked at me as if I was a monkey in the zoo. I didn't have any friends at all because nobody spoke Chinese. How I longed to go back to Taiwan and to see familiar faces and to hear my native language being spoken. I never expected so much difficulties in assimilating into a brand new culture with a brand new language. (C-64) 1992 English as a Second Language Virtually no one who wrote these autobiographies had ever been in a bilingual edu- cation program, showing that despite all the controversy about bilingual education in the United States, true bilingual education programs are a rare breed, at least for Asian Americans. For some children, however, ESL (English as a Second Language) classes were available in school. Thirteen years ago, my family and I escaped from communist Vietnam and arrived at Michigan, USA. At that moment, we found ourselves lost in a new environment where no one spoke Chinese, the only language that we knew. It was a tremendously hard task to communicate with anyone. Fortunately, our church sponsor felt it neces- sary for my sister, brother, and I to be enrolled in school to learn English, the impos- sible foreign language then. The administrators gave me a program, English As A Second Language, to aid me in learning English. I was gradually acquainted with this peculiar language, and within one year, my attendance at school allowed me to communicate in English a little. (C-8) The general impression one gets from the autobiographies is that there is a hodgepodge of approaches to teaching English. Many schools were inadequately prepared for the students who needed to learn English, and some bizarre solutions were offered at times: When I started kindergarten, I did not know how to speak the English language. I didn't even know my own name in English. (Pretty sad, huh?). ... The only [classes] offered to non-English speakers were ESL for Spanish speakers and Sign Language for the deaf. Since I couldn't be put in the ESL classes, I was taught sign language. That was the only way I knew how to communicate with all the white people who talked so differently than myself. Gradually I began to learn English from my class- mates. (K-39)/nThree topics from the course I'm mentioning in my paper: By focusing on the case of Portuguese language learning, my paper sheds light on broader issues related to language policy, language planning, language bilingualism, and the preservation of linguistic diversity within educational systems. examines the challenges encountered in attempting to learn Portuguese without adequate learning resources in public schooling, analyzing how the improvement of language policy policies such as language planning can influence and promote the reversing language shift model and promoting language bilingualism. This paper touches upon the improvement of language planning within education systems that can influence and promote the use of the reversing language shift model and promote language bilingualism specifically for Portuguese language speakers by promoting language education and transmission, and cultural and linguistic integration programs. Student note Choose one topic but try to mention all three throughout the essay.

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