Policy and practice in the education of bilingual children - Essay Example

Policy and practice in the education of bilingual children Introduction The processing of cognition has consequences that come about due to bilingualism or multilingualism. Therefore, all perennial questions concerning bilingualism revolve around the relationship and connection between two different languages in the same mind (Harris, 2005:382). Most tutors tend to wonder whether if multilingualism has two forms of separate systems responsible for language processing or it is a single combined system. Ideally, issues regarding whether one language aids or interferes with the other are not clear but this paper will consider addressing this issue with relevance to cognition (Hammers and Blanc, 2003:65). The complexity of the system consisting of two languages may have either losses or benefits on some areas rather than mind. This means that monolinguals and bilinguals may think differently (Krueger, Lam, and Wilson, 2006:1201). With that in mind, this paper will evaluate the competing views of the relationship between multilingualism or bilingualism and cognition, subject based practical skills, and thinking skills as well as identify theories and strategies capable of supporting education of bilingualism children. Evaluation of the competitive views Studies concerning psychology reveal that the term “cognitive” is becoming a confusing element when discussing this topic. With reference to linguists, linguistics is an arm of cognitive psychology (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:181). This is because, it concerns human mind. However, you should be able to note that the faculty of language is entirely different from the rest of the faculties that concern human mind. This reveals that, the faculty of language is distinct from cognition. Furthermore, linguistics differentiates the abstract of knowledge commonly referred to as “competence” and the process of “cognition” that facilitates the actual comprehension and production of a speech often termed as the “performance” (Lorentz and Weber, 2008:121). Often, psychologists explore the aspects concerning the relationship between the rest of the human mind (cognition) and language. Interestingly, some models related to language competence such as the parameter setting tend to treat language as a separate knack of human mind. Further, these models seek to develop a difference wherein language competence becomes a distinct aspect from language performance (Harris, 2005:385). Fact-findings tell us that the manner in which an individual defines the relationship between cognitive processing and bilingualism depends on the approach and the ideology of the person asking the question. The common general manner in which people ask this question uses the normal approach whereby it is standard for people to be “monolinguals” (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:185). Supposedly, this approach lies on the norm that human beings should only know one language but deviating from a single language comes with a cost. Contrary to this approach is the multilingualism view, which views that human beings have knowledge of more than one language (Lorentz, 2008:77). In this arena, the monolingual approach has deficiencies since it lacks the natural human heritage whereby people know more than a single language. What is unclear is the overall level of loss that monolinguals have for having knowledge of only one language as well as in their remaining mental processes (Hammers and Blanc, 2003:101). Evaluation of the competing views of the relationship between bilingualism or multilingualism and cognition show that people who know more than one language, possess deficiencies in knowledge and understand in their second language (Panton, 2003:39). Research findings make it clear that, perhaps, it is blindingly obvious in such cases that, people who use their second language are less efficient in it (Harris, 2005:388). While compared to monolinguals, monolinguals are more critical and efficient in their native languages since their knowledge is both intense and deep or they have experience in it (Lorentz and Weber, 2008:128). It is deducible that second language users are after all just learners and they can only be comparable to native speakers fairly. English teachers often ascertain that 80 percent of all English language learners are beginners at some point hence when compared to native speakers, their speed and accuracy bears tangible difference (Krueger, Lam, and Wilson, 2006:1203). Second language learners are therefore lower in speed and milder in accuracy while native speakers are fast and accurate. Assessing the research evidence in which these evaluated relationships base we find that it is imperative to mention the problem vexed on the links that exist between and among thinking, cognition, and language (Krueger, Lam, and Wilson, 2006:1207). Researchers strays this area of knowledge and language into some categories and give it the name Sapir Whorf hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, supposedly, people could choose to perceive and think of the world in diverse ways instead of simply talking about it differently. This could give a different impression about the world people as well (Paradise, 2003:351). For instance, research evidence obtained from a particular language of Malaysian people reflects that that Malaysian tribe has more than one way of recognizing the degree of saltines in cooking (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:189). They use impressions portraying similes in cases where they want to tell the degree of some things. For example, they can use different words to mean the same thing only that the degree of comparative words is variable. With reference to these similes, research evidence put across that these people are bale to distinguish clearly things at much ease than when doing it in English. This means that children’s first language is more important than the second one (Lorentz, 2008:91). This is because, they can easily understand, mention, distinguish, and do many other language related things with much ease than they can do while using their second language where in Malaysia is either second or third language. Additionally, findings maintain that monolinguals find their native language richer in vocabularies and their perception towards taste for their native language being more imperative than any other language (Harris, 2005:391). There is also the aspect tongue transfiguration whereby in children it is continuous activity while in adults it is memory process (Paradise, 2003:359). Subject based practical skills With respect to practical skills based on a subject, it is agreeable that children of monolingual language are more efficient in terms of speed and accuracy when compared to bilinguals. Actually, monolinguals are 100 percent efficient in language capacity (Panton, 2003:39). On the other end, bilinguals may have just a particular percentage; let us say 5 percent of knowledge in another language. A critical outlook in to this spectrum shows that a bilingual child is additively high in terms of element than a monolingual child since his or her language capacity totals to 105 percent while that of a monolingual is only 100 percent (The National Strategies, 2011:2). Subject based on practical skills show that knowledge of a second language acts as an advantage rather a created problem. This is due to the idea that learning more than one language increases the language knowledge from a normal capacity to a conferrable state that has benefits instead of problems. Due to subject based practical skills, sources opine that children develop Meta linguistic awareness with reference to a number of virtues ascribed to second language learning in an educational policy (Panton, 2003:45). Through education policy, children learn and sharpen their individual awareness of nature of a language. According to the United Kingdom’s National Criteria for General Certificate of Education, one of the main attributes of Modern Languages is to develop awareness based on the nature of a language and its learning as an end by itself (Hammers and Blanc, 2003:125). Following the idea that learning a second language comes along with numerous cognitive advantages brought up an area of Meta linguistic awareness. In this case, researchers and linguistics seek to create awareness about a language independently irrespective of the message it is conveying. Nevertheless, one should be in a position to understand that the aspects of language incorporated in this spectrum has limit with respect to linguists view (Harris, 2005:394). Linguists view point out that this limitation comes about due to partly limited range of used tasks that comprise of three main categories. They are the tasks involved in phonological awareness produced by the sound system of the language, tasks involved when judging the underlying grammatical ability of a person’s knowledge of a particular language, and the tasks involved while testing the underlying ability of a person to distinguish between the language and meaning (Lorentz, 2008:116). This is ideally the awareness regarding arbitrariness of words in a language. Referring to contributions made by these tasks, tutors revealed that university students who posses knowledge of more than one language were able to produce sequences of sounds that are absent in their first language. On the other end, monolingual students could not produce these sound sequences mainly because they are unavailable in their native language yet they do not know any additional language (Harris, 2005:399). Deductions made from this experiment point out that Meta linguistic and phonology awareness is important to children since it helps define combination of sequences either available or absent in monolinguals and bilinguals. Extensive research seeking to evaluate the awareness created by Meta linguistics and grammar established that people who know any language postulate three stages of language awareness (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:191). In the first ‘context’ stage, speakers may be in a position to say that a certain sentence is grammatically incorrect. In the second ‘correction’ stage, they may have possible ways of describing why the sentence is incorrect and in the third ‘explanation’, they may be able to set forth ways in which the sentence is grammatically incorrect (Lorentz and Weber, 2008:132). While basing on practical skills of a subject, documented evidence reveal that the model of acquiring knowledge of a language in children recognizes two different ways or dimensions that contribute to language proficiency. In this arena, children between four and half to height years take the model of control process whereby they seek to find means of selecting what information to use and how to analyze their knowledge (Harris, 2005:401). By way of analyzing knowledge, they seek to choose what language to represent in their minds. From this observation, it is considerable for bilingual or multilingual children to learn language and cognition via arbitrariness of sings. This method is appropriate for these children because, in the future, without arbitrary connection of letters and words that join to form a word then bring out a sensual meaning, it will be hard for them to understand qualities of an object as well as its name (Paradise, 2003:365). Qualities and names form the biggest portion of understanding at least one language. In order to increase the level of benefits that bilingual or multilingual children gain from their knowledge of more than one language, it is considerable and appropriate to introduce the application of terms of efficiency (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:196). As stated earlier, bilingual and multilingual children have less speed and accuracy in their second language since they lack plenty of vocabularies. As a result, introducing a comparable terms of application can increase their ability to develop speed and accuracy in their second language just as in their first language. Thinking skills Sensibly, the impacts of bilingualism in terms of cognitive processing are subject to questions of roundabouts and swings. This is because, the small cost exerted by bilingual deficit on the aspects language processing are an offset of the slight gains on the other part of cognitive processes and does not mention all the other gains present in the lives of bilingual people (Paradise, 2003:370). Whilst the common norm of multilingual view which holds that human beings should know more than one language, it is precisely imperative to attribute that garnering the statistics of language knowledge might be hard (Panton, 2003:59). Mainly, this view contents so because most around the world know more than just a single language. Ideally, the overall suspense in this sense is that bilinguals or multilingual children thinking skills have additive elements, Meta linguistic awareness, and cognitive flexibility. In countries where there are many different languages, thinking skills of people are also diverse (Harris, 2005:408). In classifying the categories of an individual’s thinking skills, evidence from research asserts that in the sense of vast majority, it is impossible to measure the bilingual competence by use of monolingual standards. This follows the notion that, norm and choice of bilingual competence, which sets up the fact related to thinking skills of an individual, has its background rooted in the preconceptions of nature, language, and human beings as well as their society. For example, in some places such as England, one can identify an outsider as one who speaks more than one language while in other places like Cameroon an outsider may be an individual speaking only one language. What brings about their difference in identification is the idea of level of thinking capacity of a person influenced by a number of factors such as society, language, competence, and monolingual standards (The National Strategies, 2011:4). Courteously, thinking skills of a bilingual child is a cognitive process that stipulates irrelevancy of praise and judgment. This entails that, the process of cognition of second language users is whatever it is and as such, it needs no praise or condemnation relative to native speakers (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:200). Researchers ended up agreeing that thinking skills and capability of monolinguals and bilinguals is linkable feature of language and if compared in terms of race, class, and/or sex, one should do so by using differences rather than deficiency terms (Harris, 2005:413). Study carried out in Foreign Language in the Elementary School shown that children in Canada taking immersion programs scored higher marks when tested on thinking skills with reference to ‘unusual uses’ of creativity compared to monolinguals. This indicated that, apart from the common cognitive advantages that bilinguals have over monolinguals, there are other benefits enjoyed by the former while the latter sticks to confinement of one language (Panton and Corona, 2007:270). In multilingualism, children score higher grades than monolinguals when tested on standards of divergent thinking. In their major, they portray a cognitive degree of fluency, a mastered value for flexibility, and standardized element of originality despite the fact that people only have one native language. When researchers performed a test to test the IQ of monolinguals and bilinguals by use of verbal and non verbal performance tests, they observed that the thinking skills and capacity of bilinguals appeared more diversified when compared to that of monolinguals (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:208). These set mental abilities also depict how suitable and efficient are thinking skills of bilinguals with reference to the object of constancy. Different researchers found out that, five year olds are better at naming, efficient in constancy, and good at using names only if they are bilinguals. In addition to the aspect of thinking skills brought forward by monolinguals and bilingual tests, it is deducible that, with regard to the measures used in conceptual development, bilinguals are good at analogical reasoning as well as creativity (Lorentz and Weber, 2008:135). Conclusion This paper finds it meaningless to compare things like the double system of bilinguals or multilingual children with the single system attributed to monolinguals in terms of constancy and efficiency (US Census Bureau Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000, 2003:24). Whilst a number of findings may see bits of gains or losses in special areas, the overall system used in second language is more complex and involves greater range of functions (Hammers and Blanc, 2003:145). Hence, the ability to use more than one language may outweigh the losses or payoffs present in other areas of cognition with reference to the overall benefits or advantages that it can bring to the society as a whole or to an individual (Heaton, Taylor, and Manly, 2003:210). Bibliography Hammers, J and Blanc, M. (2003) Bilinguality and bilingualism. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, MA. Harris, G. (2005) Cultural considerations in the use of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—fourth edition (WISC-IV) In: Prifitera A, Saklofske DH, Weiss LG, editors. WISC-IV clinical use and interpretation: Scientist-practitioner perspectives. Elsevier Academic Press: Burlingtonn, MA. pp. 382–413. Heaton, K. Taylor, J., and Manly, J. (2003) Demographic effects and use of demographically corrected norms with the WAIS-III and WMS-III. In: Tulsky DS, Saklofske DH, et al., editors. Clinical interpretation of the WAIS-III and WMS-III. Academic: San Diego, CA. pp. 181–210. Krueger, K. 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