Week 12

In chapter 4, it is discussed that students in Singapore spend half of their time in primary school on language learning.  I think it's very interesting that bilingualism is so popular in non-primarily English speaking countries.  Although I don't think that English will ever become the only language learned, I think that it's very important for people of other nations to know English, since it is used so frequently in the world.  There may be a lot of languages that become lost, but I don't think that all other languages can completely disappear.  For example, I know that in Ireland for a while, Gaelic was on its way to becoming extinct.  However, Gaelic began to be taught in schools, in order for a younger generation to begin learning it, and also, in order to become a teacher or policeman, or any government job in Ireland, one must be able to speak Gaelic.  Besides this fact, I think it is beneficial for children of a young age to learn more than one language.  We have discussed in one of my other classes that there may be a possible critical learning period for languages, and to some extent, I think this is true. If children are exposed to language in half the time that they are in school, they will have a much high chance of becoming fluent in that language, or know it enough to be able to communicate efficiently.

Week 12

Chapter 2 discussed the layers of concentric circles in the English language, which help understand the different levels of language acquisition. The inner circle included students who spoke English as their primary language, the outer circle was made up of those who spoke it as their second language in a multilingual context, and the expanding circle was made up of those who studied English as a foreign language.  However, this does not include different dialects within the language.  The differences between learning English as a second language in Britain as opposed to the US were also discussed.  In Britain, students do not get pulled out of a classroom for extra help.  In my opinion, I think that if a student needs extra help, they should get it.  It shouldn't be seen as anything negative if a student get pulled out of a room for ELL, because other students get pulled out all the time like for math or reading.  If a student is struggling in learning something, it does not benefit anyone to leave that student in the classroom struggling, and I think that it is worse for that student to feel uncomfortable in the classroom than to simply get taken out with a certified math, reading, or ELL teacher, and work with them.