2 questions for Dr. Kang:
1.
How did you
work with your son at home on learning both languages?
2.
Is your son
stronger in one language over the other? If so, do you know why that is based
on your research?
Kang’s
article talked about how Spanish-speaking English language learning students do
not need to be spoken to in English at home to acquire the English language,
but to stay proficient in Spanish, they needed to speak it at home and at
school. I found this really interested and I have observed it myself in a
classroom. My current clinical classroom is a kindergarten ELL classroom and I
was just talking to my cooperating teacher about this subject. Some of my
students are not spoken to in English at home because their parents or families
do not know or speak English, but are still fully capable of speaking it at
school. However, my teacher allows them to speak in Spanish at school because
they need to continue using their native language in order for it to stay with
them. Most of them time, they use Spanish when they do not know how to say the
English word for it. Even though they are not spoken to in English at home,
they are spoken to in English almost 100% of the time they are in their
school/classroom which is 7 hours out of their day, five days a week.
It is interesting to read about whether
families decide to keep their cultures alive with their children or not.
Especially when it comes to language, it is difficult to decide and figure out
what language they will speak at home and at school. It is a difficult decision
to make for a child and for a family because you as a family have to work on
the child’s language acquisition with them no matter what language they are
going to use. You want to be a supportive parent and help your child acquire
two languages when it comes down to a situation where your native language is
not the primary language spoken in the country you live in. I think there are
many important factors families have to think about when becoming a bilingual
home.
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