ESL Cause and Effect - Essay Example

Those native in a country expect that immigrants should get integrated into the society. One of the ways this is expected to be achieved, is by having those individuals learning the language of the country and with respect to America, students are required to study English (Kessler& Quinn, 1982). Thus it was thought necessary that the way to assimilate different culture is through making English the uniform language of instruction. The assimilationist orientation was institutionalized by reducing public funding to private and church associated schools and banning bilingual programs in public schools.

Bilingual textbooks were burnt with teachers were fired, taken to court, and convicted for clearing up concepts in childrens own native languages. Language minority students display low accomplishment in English only classrooms. When compared with the national norms, they are behind in every subject areas. In addition to losing their native languages, these students exhibit low achievement in English only classrooms. When compared with the national norms, they lag behind in all subject areas.

A large number of them eventually drop out or are pushed out of school (Kessler& Quinn, 1982). Classrooms are full of students representing diverse cultural, ethnic, and national origins. They speak one of the many different immigrant languages back home, and have diverse religious, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds. This means that different approaches would be required but this becomes quite difficult. School failure of language minority students is was attributed to childrens supposed inadequate intellectual, cognitive, and linguistic abilities.

It was widely believed that knowing two languages resulted in mental confusion, subdued cognitive and academic development, and led to low achievement of language minority students. Another commonly held belief was that some ethnic groups were genetically