i Title page BILINGUALS IN AMERICA STRENGTHS AND CHALLENGES by Alexandra Gouirand A Project Submitted to the Faculty of The Evergreen State College In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Master in Teaching 2009 ii APPROVAL PAGE This Project for the Master in Teaching degree by Alexandra Gouirand has been approved for The Evergreen State College by Terry Ford Ph D Member of the Faculty June 2009 iii PREFACE A different language is a different vision of life Federico Fellini Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow Oliver Wendell Holmes iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper would not exist without the help of the Master in Teaching faculty at The Evergreen State College Masao who let me go my own way even when he knew I would fail George who helped me see old things from a brand new perspective and Terry who demanded that I do no less than my best Thanks also to my parents Persis and Jean Pierre Gouirand without whose perseverance I would not have the luck and the privilege of being bilingual Thank you especially to David Hyde whose patience bad jokes and occasional nudges made the process of writing this easier v ABSTRACT This paper examines the challenges that bilingual students face as they make their way through the American public school system An examination of the history of the treatment of immigrants in public schools shows that deculturalization was the primary aim of education during the 19th century and continued until Nixon signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act thus providing bilingual students with education better tailored to their needs Currently as part of the No Child Left Behind Act bilingual programs are being replaced with English only instruction Next this paper examined the relationship between cognitive development and bilingualism establishing that such a relationship exists albeit under specific circumstances Finally questions of identity culture and language choice were examined even English dominant bilingual students prefer to receive some instruction in their home language language choice is more a result of language status than of proficiency and bilingual students do better when they receive culturally relevant instruction vi TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE i APPROVAL PAGE ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale 1 Statement of Purpose 2 Definition of Terms 3 Limitations 4 Summary 4 CHAPTER TWO HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 6 Introduction 6 Immigration and Education Policy 7 Bilingualism and Civil Rights 8 English only policies 9 Consequences of English only policies 10 No Child Left Behind 11 Summary 14 CHAPTER THREE CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 15 Introduction 15 The effect of bilingualism on cognitive skills 15 vii Teaching LEP students 46 Culture identity and language choice 73 Summary 126 CHAPTER FOUR CONCLUSION 127 Introduction 127 Summary of Findings 132 Classroom Implications 143 Suggestions for Further Research 145 Summary 147 REFERENCES 149 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Rationale America is a land of immigrants Even before it became a nation people from all over the world were coming here The reasons people chose to come here were myriad some were mercenary others religious Zinn 2005 Finally some people were brought here against their will or under false pretenses to be enslaved or indentured Most people however came to the New World because they felt that this land offered opportunities that were lacking in their birth countries The United States continues to attract many immigrants although the main reason people choose to come here today is more economic in nature Cohen Kennedy 2000 In 2003 the last year for which data are available 33 million people over 11 percent of the U S population were foreign born Larsen 2004 While less than nine percent of foreign born residents were under 18 years at the time of the study Larsen noted that the small proportion of foreign born in the youngest age group occurred because most of the children of foreign born parents were born in the United State and thus are natives p 3 Because of the circumstances of its foundation the United States does not have an official language The fact that English is the de facto official language is an accident of fate a result of the fact that British immigrants tended to be wealthier and thus more powerful than the rest I could just as easily have been writing this in German or French 2 In 2003 the last year for which data are available over 48 million people living in the U S sixteen percent of the U S population spoke a language other than English at home U S Census Bureau 2006 It is not unreasonable to infer that some of these people also speak English and are therefore bilingual Bilingual students come with needs as varied as their backgrounds Students who come from immigrant communities are much more likely than their native born peers to live under the poverty line they are more likely to drop out of high school and their families earnings tend to be lower Larsen 2004 Many American public schools are ill equipped to address the specific needs of bilingual and limited English proficient LEP students As a result the latter receive a haphazard education some skip grades and others repeat them some receive ESL instruction while others are placed directly into mainstream classrooms others yet receive instruction in both English and their home language To further complicate matters LEP and bilingual students are the first victims of budget cuts English only proponents have successfully eviscerated many bilingual education programs and the No Child Left Behind Act NCLB cuts the funding of schools that need it most Statement of Purpose Based on the premises above namely that the American population is increasingly non English speaking while the American school system continues to struggle with meeting the changing population this paper s aim is to examine the strengths needs and challenges of bilingual and LEP students who attend 3 American public schools In order to achieve this it will address the following topics first this paper will make the argument that there is a positive correlation between cognitive development and bilingualism but only when there is a high level of proficiency in both languages as demonstrated through productive skill second it will survey common existing systems to teach bilingual and LEP students and argue that methods that encourage language maintenance
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