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Immigrants are Learning English at a Faster Rate

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Immigrants are Learning English at a Faster Rate

June 11, 2009 by Jennifer Brandt  
Filed under Civic Participation, Education, Immigration

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‘If you live in America, you need to speak English.’ According to a Los Angeles Times Poll (1998), that was how three out of four voters explained their support for Proposition 227, the ballot initiative that dismantled most bilingual education programs in California.

Non- English speakers are at a disadvantage; thus schools must not fail to teach English to children from minority language backgrounds. Students’ life chances will depend to a large extent on the level of English literacy skills they achieve.
 

As the linguist Einar Haugen (1972) once observed, ‘America’s profusion of tongues has made her a modern Babel, but a Babel in reverse.’ By their third generation in the United States, newcomers have typically adopted English as their usual language and abandoned their mother tongue.
There is no reason to think the historic pattern has changed. Although
the number of minority language speakers has grown dramatically in
recent years, so too has their rate of acculturation. Census figures confirm the paradox. While a language other than English is now spoken at home by
nearly one in five US residents, bilingualism is also on the rise. A century
ago, the proportion of non-English speakers was 4.5 times as large as it is
today, and in certain states the disparity was considerably larger.  As the US population becomes increasingly diverse, linguistic assimilation
seems to be progressing rapidly by historical standards.  The political problem is that the average American has trouble believing all this.  To see chart comparing non- English speakers in 1890 and 1990 click here.

An English-only movement based on these premises came to prominence
in the 1980s. Thus far it has succeeded in legislating English as the
official language of 25 states, although such declarations have been
primarily symbolic, with few legal effects thus far.

To counter the English-only mentality, advocates have coined the slogan English Plus. They argue that the United States remains an underdeveloped country where language skills are concerned. In a global economy, more multilingualism – not less – would clearly advance the national interest.
Some English-speaking parents have been receptive to the ‘bilingual is
beautiful’ pitch. Over the past decade, growing numbers have enrolled
their children in ‘dual immersion’ classrooms alongside minority children
learning English. Yet, despite excellent reports on this method of cultivating
fluency in two languages, probably no more than 20,000 English background
students are participating nationwide. Compare that with the324,000 Canadian Anglophones enrolled in French immersion programs, in a country with one-tenth the population of the USA (Statistics Canada, 2003).

Author: James Crawford

Source: Language Policy Website