Eth 125 Week7 Checkpoint

Julia Robins
Axia On-Line
Eth/125

  For the purpose of this paper I located four separate articles on The Official Language Movement. Each article had many opinions, often it was difficult to realize which side of the debate the writer was on because there are so many pros and cons involving such a difficult topic.
  The first article I researched was “Impact of the English Language Movement on Consumer Protection Regulation”. This article took me through the entire history of The Official Language Movement. There are laws in many states across America that declares English as the “official” state language. This article compares these laws to having no more significance than the state’s choice of its “official” bird or state song (Bender S.W., 1996). These state laws affect politics and education nationwide by requiring English in specific situations such as testing for occupational licenses (Bender S.W., 1996).
  * The second article I researched was “A Global Prospective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education”. Often the use of multiple languages in education is attributed to factors such as the linguistic heterogeneity of a specific county or region, social or religious attitudes, or the desire to promote national identity (Tucker G.R., 1999). I read about a study in this article known as A Comprehensive review of Research on the use of First and Second Languages in Education, carried out for The World Bank (Dutcher, 1994). A few of the points concluded are:
  * Success in school depends upon the child’s mastery of cognitive/academic language, which is very different from the social languages at home.
  * Individuals must easily develop literacy skills in a familiar language.
  * Children learn a second language in different ways depending upon their culture and their individual personality.
The same study concluded some common threads of successful bilingual programs in education. They are as follows:
  * Parental and community support and... [continues]

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