TEDtalk "No Child Left Monolingual" comparison NLHS
Week Three Compulsory Blog Post: UIC Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language in Bilingual and Multilingual Contexts
November 6, 2022
This blog post is a compulsory post for my language acquisition class about a TEDtalk by Kim Potowski related to topics of multilingualism, language ideologies and immigration in the USA, in particular with reference to “bilingual” transitional programs for immigrant children.
“No Child Left Monolingual” is a TED Talk completed by Kim Potowski. She begins the lecture talking about how most of the world is bilingual or multilingual. However, in the United States of America that is not the case. Her idea is how to make the future USA with “no child left monolingual”. In this talk she discusses several studies from censuses, educators, and scientists on two myths about learning another language, to refute them. She talks about the classism behind the need to learn another language and the problems in the US with trying to sign up for ESL classes. She compares this to how historically, languages have been lost generationally in this country. Kim also discusses three education techniques that are used in the United States, and which one has been found to be the best practice. She ends her TEDtalk with what steps we as a nation can take to ensure that future generations are not left monolingual as well as what to do if you are monolingual.
I work in a public high school in the United States in core curriculum classes with Spanish speaking immigrants ensuring that there is clear communication between the teachers and students. I am able to relate this information to my experiences and observations at this school. Most of the students whom I work with are recent arrivals in the US. This school district does have several different language techniques used in all of the different schools, the classes that I am working in are sheltered classes. Meaning this school is a 100% English speaking school and the students are as Kim Potowski put it “lucky enough” to have some sort of bilingual support in the classes.
For a comparison, the different styles of schooling that the district I work in has for the non-English speaking students; there is both year-round schooling and the traditional ten-month schooling. There are bilingual schools grades K-8, although the goal is not for the students to be in bilingual classes all 8 years. They are actually only allowed (mandated by the state) to be in these classes for 30 months. If they do not have mastery of English after 30 months, then they can apply with the state for an extension. Services that these students may be approved for with the extension include ESL programs, sheltered English programs, English immersion programs, and other language development programs. This is where the high school which is all English comes in with sheltered classes.
Kim Potowski introduces two myths among many people in the US that “multilingualism is damaging to society” and “multilingualism is damaging to individuals”. She explains how both of these are inaccurate with several statistics and studies conducted in the United States, Mexico, and Italy. Most of the information that she gives is on Spanish speaking immigrants as that is the majority that she is surrounded by in Chicago. I also am comparing this to Spanish speaking immigrants in the US as that is who I work directly with. Living in the US, you can definitely see that English is the norm and in general there is not much appreciation for other languages (depending on where exactly you are, each state and city vastly varies).
The speaker explained some numbers from a census, saying that there is a question on the census that says “if you speak another language at home, how well do you feel you speak English? "of the 19.7% of the population who speak a non-English language at home, 75% of them said they feel they speak English well or very well. This is important because for some reason people believe that immigrants are not or do not want to learn English. With these statistics we can see that this is clearly a misconception.
Kim Potowski reiterates that the United States is an interesting country because there is no national language, but you do need English to succeed in the US, as well as most legal documents must be written in English. There is some classism behind this because it costs a lot of time and money to be able to afford to learn another language. Kim connected this to the idea that generationally, heritage languages have been lost at a very quick rate in the United States. That this has been a phenomenon here since the 19th century in a wave of mass migration. This loss used to be at a rate that grandparents could not communicate with their grandchildren. However now, this change is only one generation - parents with their children. This is more proof that immigrants are learning English and at record rates.
I can personally relate to this in the sense that all four of my grandparents' heritage languages are not English, and I do not speak any of those four languages proficiently. Most of my grandparents had the perspective that they wanted to become “American” and that meant speaking English at home. Although I would say two of my grandparents were bilingual and the other two were multilingual, they did not see the value in learning additional languages.
Kim Potowski revoked the second myth by saying that multilingualism cannot be damaging to learners and that this has been repeatedly scientifically proven incorrect. She referred to her studies in Mexico and Italy. She said that they are good examples of comparison because for the first time both of these countries are experiencing an influx of immigrants returning to their home country. In return, in Mexico, these children are facing educational issues as their academic proficiency in their heritage language is not enough to succeed, and their classmates and families make fun of them for not being Mexican enough. In Italy, she observed school in a neighborhood that has a large Ecuadorian population and there were two practices that she really appreciated. The first was that every week all the students had to learn a word in one of their classmates native language. This practice allows linguistic appreciation for all of the kids. The second practice that she believes to be very effective was that there was an afterschool program in Spanish in attempt to retain Spanish.
The speaker, Kim, then returns back to the US and claims that this shows plenty of evidence that people are learning English and proposes the question: what could we do as a nation to help? Should we involve legislation? This idea is immediately shot down by the comment that legislation does absolutely nothing to support language learning. She said that in 2006 there was a study conducted in 12 states that offer free ESL classes and it was found that 60% of those courses had an extremely long wait list (several months to several years).
She then proposed the idea that the United States should not want to continue to be a monolingual country, but rather an “English plus” country. She said that this would have several benefits generationally, internationally, in communication matters, global commerce, international diplomacy, and more.
The second myth that Kim Potowski refuted was the belief that multilingualism is damaging to individuals. When in fact there are several studies proving that bilingualism and multilingualism is very advantageous. In terms of children performing better in all subject areas, cognitive skills, and a delay in dementia.
Kim discusses different systems in US school systems for non-English speaking children. There are essentially three options; all English, bilingual education, and two way immersion. She explains that all English means that the day is 100% instructed in English and that the student will be lucky if there is any kind of support for them. She explained that bilingual education usually doesn't truly have a goal of all students graduating bilingual, rather using the heritage language as a crutch and then moving the non-english speaking students to the mainstream courses after about three years. The third technique, two way immersion, is a majority (80-90%) of the day spent in the heritage language and then as the students get older they can move to closer to 50-50. These classes are usually made up of half children who need to learn English, and half of the students already speak English and their parents want them to be immersed in another language to pick it up. Kim explained that a study conducted in California and later all over the US showed that students in the two way immersion program had the best success not only in learning English but also in all core curriculum classes. Claiming this is because the more quality education a student receives in their heritage language the better they will be able to do in all other content areas.
This proposed the question, what about the English speaking kids? Does their English suffer when they are immersed in another language? The quick answer that Kim gave was no. She added that in some cases it proved that these children displayed higher scores than their peers in English- only programs. They essentially gained fluency in another language at no cost to their English.
I can relate this to some of the students I work with whose first language is neither English nor Spanish, but as they are placed in sheltered english classes and the only support is people who speak English and Spanish and the majority of their classmates heritage language is Spanish, they actually learn Spanish rather quickly and significantly faster than they learn English. The majority of students I work with speak Spanish, although some of my student’s first language is Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and several different languages indigenous to Latin America. I have two students who are native Portuguese speakers.
In informal conversations I asked them questions about learning Spanish here in Connecticut. One has told me that they do not mind the fact that they learned Spanish before English, they found it rather easy and closely related to Portuguese. They said that no matter what they would have learned Spanish as all of their friends speak Spanish. Whereas, my second student resents that they have learned Spanish so quickly from the academic and social pressure and wishes that they had learned English in such a manner. They told me that they actually wish that rather being put in sheltered classes with primarily Spanish speaking students that they had been placed in all English classes with no support. They said that initially they struggled with the support because the language support is in Spanish and English, not in Portuguese. This is due to the resources available to the school.
Other misconceptions that Kim discussed in this TEDtalk were when people claim you shouldn’t be speaking your heritage language to your kids” and that “code switching shows a lazy or confused behavior”. She refuted both of these by saying since the beginning of time, people have been speaking several languages, our brains are wired to be able to speak several different languages. She also said that code switching actually shows great skills in both of the languages because it demonstrates that the speaker is proficient enough in both languages to not break any grammar rules of either language while using the two.
She also talked about how there are a lot of immigrant families in the US that bring their children to Saturday school in order to practice their heritage language. That as a child, these kids resent their parents for forcing them to spend their Saturdays in more school. However, as adults they are grateful that their parents allowed them to learn another language organically.
My mother used to go to Greek School when she was growing up in my grandfather’s attempt to hold on to his heritage language, culture, and religious beliefs. She resented her parents so much for making her the “weird kid”, she did not send my siblings nor I to a similar program. In contrast, now as adults, my siblings and I resent that she did not send us to Greek School as we could have learned another language - one of our familial languages.
Kim ends the talk with what steps can we take as a nation to leave no child monolingual? Her advice was; if you speak another language, to begin talking to the kids in your family in that language and not to worry about your level in the language because it is probably enough to instill some syntax and some vocabulary in their sponge brains. She reiterated that we also have media to use as a great tool. The importance of reading to children in their heritage language, and some commercial techniques of bribing kids with screen time in another language rather than English.
Lastly, with advice on what to do if you are unfortunately a monolingual. The first commercial advice was to marry a bilingual person, take classes, get a nanny, and finally we have a lot of media at our disposal in every language.
Works Cited:
Public Schools, New London. Bilingual & ESOL / Home, Blackboard Inc. , 2002, https://www.newlondon.org/Domain/32.
No child left monolingual: Kim Potowski at TEDxUofIChicago. (n.d.). Www.youtube.com. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://youtu.be/pSs1uCnLbaQ
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