Bilingual people are those who speak more than two languages, since birth or at their daycare level, till maturity. Bilingual education in America was dated back one hundred and fifty years ago, where non-native English speakers were not allowed to learn any language other than getting to learn the English language. This oppression on the English speakers was noted to be creating anxiety in the congress house citing national unity and cohesion being disintegrated as their basis of the argument to dismantle it (Baker, 2011). However, the federal and state law currently recognizes and tends to protect the bilingual education, since it integrates non-native English speakers into classes.
English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in the USA has been adopted in private schools, terming it as English as a Second Language (ESL), whereby most of them teach French, Spanish and Mandarin. But this has not been the case in California, Massachusetts and Colorado among other states, which have banned the bilingual program, claiming that children cannot learn foreign languages and diverse cultures concurrently.
Is the need for bilingual education a cohesive perspective, in addressing the diverse views of different language speakers in the American context, a solution to the mistrust, especially that is based on the financial well-being?
On the other hand, major challenges have faced the development of bilingual languages such as racism. Different people from different races get a challenge when learning other languages, whereby some races were considered an inferior, leading learners capability to develop language much more difficult than anticipated (Baker, 2011). In addition, discrimination against learners and stereotyping create an atmosphere that leads to learners unsatisfactory in doing the bilingual language effectively.
In America, factors that are not limited to ethnicity, gender, race and socioeconomic classes have affected Bilingual Education in America. This has notably been a fairly profound issue more especially in the media today. The majority of states with high populations of Latino are in the lead of bilingual promotion, irrespective of it being vital to every United States community in houses with students whose are not English language natives. The diversity of gender practices in the United States is noted to be one of the greatest qualities, though due to socioeconomic classes, the public tends to be uneasy about accepting the diverse cultures into "Anglo-Saxon," which is the mainstream culture.
As a result of a blend of these factors, underestimation of Latinos has been high in the United States evident in both social status and the educational arena. With tests in the United States, mainly been done in English a discrepancy gets to be furthered especially to students who are not natives in English Speakers Language. The non-native speakers under-perform in tests, as they cannot properly comprehend the questions. As a foreseen impact, majority perceives this as a discrimination form, because of lacking a language in the United States that is considered official.
In addressing the need for bilingual language, citizens in America who are not monolingual need to be suusred that the well-being of the nation is not affected financially. The assurance should be though creating avenues for proper bilingual education timeline, proper legislation, creating of suitable and enticing imagery on the need for bilingual language as a backbone for development.
The state of language preference in a location gets to be influenced by a nexus of factors. The factors could include technology, cultural integration, political will, and even social classes. In United States, lack of official language has posed for long, a threat to bilingualism. However, in scenarios where bilingual language takes position in the United States, better and advanced communication will be attained. Such scenarios create confidence to monolingual speakers as communication tends to be comprehensive, with a common language of communication attracting the diverse language speakers. Therefore, in this perception, the amount of controversy, based on Bilingual Education will reduce with a majority of the population agreeing to the submersion.
The taking of English as a Second Language, among the monolingual speakers, creates confidence in learners making them develop the trust, which gets to be based on the financial perspective that develops mistrust between the monolingual and bilinguals, in America. The bilingual education therefore plays a central function in national cohesion in the United States.
For bilingual especially the English Language Learners(ELL) there are numerous advantages. First, the individual gets to develop the ability of learning new words with ease, with an advancement in categorizing words without difficulty, solving problems with no trouble among other language learning technicalities. Currently the number of bilingual speakers is projected to be on the increase in the coming years (Baker, 2011).
References
Baker, C. (2011). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. Multilingual matters.
