Week 14

Language Planning and Policy

Language planning and policy apply directly to education and the US has a great responsibility to meet the needs of all children of all languages in the classroom. Along with different languages in the classroom these students are going to come from different homes that speak different Englishes. Teachers in these classrooms have big decisions to make about how do accommodate these students who come into the classroom with different language backgrounds. In a single classroom there can be multiple languages and there is no way a teacher can be fluent in 25-30 languages. Because there is no official or national language in America

Bilingual education is fascinating to me as a non-bilingual ESL pre-service teacher. The goal of these classes is to cultivate bilingualism and not just teach in English and that is a big concern of mine if I were in that position. In any classroom nurturing both the children’s home language and English is a big goal. All teachers should be up to date about ESL teachings and always be stepping back in the classroom asking themselves if they are doing enough for the ESL students. A big part of cultivating bilingualism not only takes place in the classroom but also at home. The language climate at home, how parents and children feel about language and how they support it makes a big difference in the classroom.

To me, family language policies are particularly interesting because I grew up in a home that only spoke English, so my parents never had to make these decisions about what languages to speak at home. Bilingualism is a great goal to strive for and I understand why parents push bilingualism so much. It is not just about communicating with family members, even though that is a good reason, it is about connecting with the past of the family and feeling a sense of self when becoming competent in the child’s first language.

Beliefs and ideas about language differ from family to family. Both the children’s environment and how the child is being raised comes into play in bilingualism. With both parents working, after school activities, number of children, babysitters, reasons for raising the child bilingual and other daily stresses bilingualism may be hard to achieve, even if it is a high priority for the parents. Internal and external reasons for bilingualism do affect the success of bilingualism.