Educational Practice in a Multilingual Context - Essay Example

Case Study on Educational Practice in a Multilingual Context This case study is about the social and political contexts of language acquisition basedon the educational experiences of a bilingual person evaluated in the light of theoretical knowledge acquired on the module on multilingual education. This case study serves to demonstrate an understanding of the theoretical issues based on the writer's personal experience. The aim of this case study is to present the writer's account of her experiences in the acquisition of a foreign language and her inability to learn a native language other than her own. The experience is analysed from the perspective of and contains a discussion of the relevant issues related to multilingual education. The writer is a Sri Lankan, born into a Hindu Brahmin family and the eldest of three sisters. Brahmin is the name of the priestly caste, the highest in the Hindu social system. In fact, the word Brahmin translates to "divine" and its role has been defined as one of teacher or advisor. In the Hindu Sri Lankan society, members of the Brahmin caste are tasked with officiating at religious rites and are responsible for studying and teaching the Vedas. The oldest and most developed of the Dravidian languages is Tamil. It is also the primary language of the minority Tamil region in Sri Lanka. However, majority of Sri Lanka is dominated by people who speak Singhalese, which accounts for the fact that this is the nation's official language. All Sri Lankan children are required to learn Singhalese. In the first two years of primary school, Tamil children were taught Singhalese as an additional language, which accounts for the writer being able to understand, read, and write but not speak Singhalese. Thus, this writer calls herself bilingual rather than multilingual because she does not consider herself competent in both productive and receptive skills in Singhalese, unlike what could be said for her proficiencies in both Tamil, her native language, and English, her second acquired language (Porter, 1990). In the central or up country part of Sri Lanka where the writer was born, the Tamil accent is different from the Jaffna Tamil accent spoken in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Jaffna Tamil is regarded as a higher form of the language. The reason for this status-defining characteristic of the language is that in former years, Tamils from the up country were brought to work in the tea plantations of India by the British Empire. When her family moved to Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka in the early 80s, she found it difficult to adjust to the Jaffna Tamil accent. It was so difficult that she felt like she was learning a new language altogether. However, upon her mother's death in the late 80s, she and her family went back to the up country, allowing the writer to switch back to her Tamil up country accent once again. In the school where the writer spent her primary schooling, the medium of instruction was both Tamil and Singhalese. Classes were taught separately in either language, and since she never had friends for whom Singhalese was the primary language, she never learned to speak Singhalese fluently as much as she did Tamil. Over the years, she improved her competence in both productive and receptive skills in Tamil, and until she migrated to England, Tamil was her language for study and communication with friends and family. At an early age, she was reading Tamil children's magazines and books, and by the time she was 8 years old, she was already reading complex historical novels. This not only improved her reading abilities but also encouraged her to read proficiently in front of the whole class with more confidence (Rossell & Baker, 1996). The first encounter of the writer and her sisters with the English language was at home, when their parents preferred to be called using the English words "Daddy" and "Mummy". In Sri Lanka, English was considered a higher status language, and her mother must have thought that this would give the family some added social status. The three girls were educated in a convent school where English was the dominant language and medium of instruction. English was compulsory as a second language from grades three to ten at all primary schools, and even though they were taught only basic grammar and spoken English, the writer enjoyed learning it. What made the experience enjoyable were her personal encounters with two English speakers who exerted a great influence on her fascination with the English language (Willig, 1985). The first was her aunt, who taught her the first English phrase she learned: "come this side". Her aunt used to take her to school, telling her a story or singing a song along the way. One day, her aunt said "Come this side", which the writer did not understand at first. After the aunt explained to her what it meant, she understood, and there followed a series of personal English lessons using simple English sentences on their way to school. The second influence was an English teacher who was very good at encouraging students. The writer, growing more fascinated with each passing day, participated in many English concerts and dramas to increase her proficiency. Until she reached secondary school, the writer had not yet attained an acceptable level of productive skills in English. Whenever she received a letter in English from a childhood friend who emigrated from Sri Lanka to India many years earlier, she could read and understand the letter alright, but she had to ask her father to write the reply in English. Her English was not yet up to the standard to write a complete letter. Neither did she learn to speak or read English fluently, as her English teacher at secondary school played favourites and would call upon the same girl whom the teacher considered the only one who could read English properly to read books in front of the class. In 1992, the writer moved to England as a refugee. With her broken English, she was able to answer the questions of immigration officials after she landed at Heathrow airport without need for an interpreter. However, surviving in a new country with a new language, despite the fact that she was familiar with it, was scary. The reason for her apprehension was her lack of skills in English communication. Her new life in England should have forced her to learn English for her to be able to just about everything outside the home, but having to stay with her (broken) English-speaking aunt and a few Tamil-speaking friends hampered her acquisition of productive knowledge of English. In the first three years of her stay in England her English never really improved much. Shortly after her arrival in England, she began her college studies, grouped in a class with twelve Tamil boys and a Pakistani girl. The writer chose to study Mathematics and Statistics, subjects she was confident with and where she felt that despite her limited English, she could do well. She rarely spoke to any of her teachers, preferring to ask her Tamil friends any question she had during and after lectures. This is typical of the 'silent receptive period' which is natural in the process of learning a second language. It was therefore not a sign of learning difficulties in the first/early stages (Cummins & Corson, 1997). However, although she was very competent in these two subjects back in Sri Lanka, she barely passed the examinations in these subjects in England because her English was not good enough to get the higher grades required by the college. Perhaps, it was proof that children take up to two years to develop basic interpersonal communication skills, and from five to seven years to acquire the full range of literacy skills or the cognitive academic language proficiency demanded of students in college to cope with the demands of GCSE (Cummins, 1989 cited in Baker, 2006). After this initial shock, she began by widening the domains for developing English fluency, using her Basic English to communicate with English speakers at shops, whilst using public transport, or at college classes and functions. It was not easy, because she learned the usual way that communication is not only about translating words into English and putting them together; the words have to be said in a nice way. Once, she tried buying flowers at a florist and said in a tone that the seller found too arrogant: "I want those pink flowers." The florist replied angrily: "Ask me nicely!" Confused, the writer left the shop. She was neither shouting nor screaming. All she wanted was to buy some flowers. She never realised until later that her manner was not appropriate. Analysing the incident, she realised that differences in sentence division and grammatical patterns between Tamil and English made for a large difference in communication effectiveness. In Tamil, such a demand would be understood as an eager appreciation of beauty. In English, the same words came out like kidnapping flowers. It was a confusing and humiliating experience, but as she told her friends about it, she learned to speak with more grace and in context. It was the first lesson amongst many as she learned to speak English in the way children do: being asked to say "Please" and "Thank you!" and learning to define and vary the tones in which she spoke English words, but until she started working, her knowledge of English was still rather limited (Collier & Thomas, 1989). The writer was employed as a Bilingual Teaching Assistant in 2002. She got the job because she was proficient in Tamil and improving in English proficiency. At work, she used both English and Tamil to help children learn. Slowly and gradually, her productive and receptive knowledge of English improved at a faster and more stable pace especially after she started working on her degree. She had also gotten married to a northern Sri Lankan. Whilst also a bilingual speaker, his productive skills in English are not as good as hers, and whilst he is competent in all four skills in the Tamil language, he continues to be a circumstantial bilingual speaker, someone who learned English out of necessity when he came over to England as an immigrant or ascendant bilingual (Baker, 2006). They have two children, a son who is eleven and a daughter who is eight, both born in England and who can communicate very well in Tamil and English. Her son is a consecutive bilingual, hearing and speaking Tamil until he started his schooling after which he studied English. Her daughter is a simultaneous bilingual, learning and speaking Tamil and English as she was growing up. She would hear questions in Tamil and answer in English. They have cousins in Germany who spoke only Tamil and German, so if they wanted to communicate, they would all use Tamil, their common language. This only encouraged the children to use Tamil more than ever. They are now speaking Tamil to one another. Parents should be encouraged to share language and literacy in speaking and listening as well as in reading and writing (Cummins, 1999; Baker, 1985). This is valuable in learning a first or home language as in learning English, and both children are attending community language classes on weekends where they are growing in proficiency in their Tamil reading and writing skills. Recently, the children were reading a story to their grandfather, who spoke only Tamil, communicating with their mother in English and Tamil, and answering questions in Tamil and English depending on who was doing the asking. Their proficiency in both Tamil and English is a form of compound bilingualism that is marked by language switching (Greene, 1998; Willig, 1985). Lastly, even the writer has become a compound bilingual, able to switch between Tamil and English when talking to her colleagues, her children and their cousins, and to her husband and to her father. From time to time, however, although she could switch from one to the other, it does not always happen as planned. When emotionally aroused, she can switch from English to Tamil, unconsciously, as she recently did when an attendant's fault caused an accident whilst the writer was on vacation in Switzerland. In this sense, it was an advantage, for she realised what the staffs would have done to her if they only understood how she cast doubts on their parentage. She also finds herself able to switch from one Tamil accent to another without hesitation. These examples show that, at times when a word needs to be stressed, the speaker substitutes unintentionally a familiar (Tamil) word for an unfamiliar (English) word (Baker, 2006). She has become a balanced bilingual, someone proficient in both English and Tamil but in different domains, fluent in two domain languages, able to use either depending on the context. At work, English is her dominant language, whilst at home and in social life, it is Tamil. She is happy to stay that way. Bibliography Baker, C. (1985) Review of two articles by K. Baker & A.A. de Kanter and B. MacDonald, C. Adelman, S. Kushner, & R. Walker. British Educational Research Journal, 11 (1), p. 78-79. Baker, C. (2006) Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. Bangor: Multilingual Matters. Collier, V. P. & Thomas, W. P. (1989) How quickly can immigrants become proficient in school English Journal of Educational Issues of Language Minority Students, 5, p. 26-39. Cummins, J. & Corson, D. (1997) "Bilingual education," Vol. 5 in International Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cummins, J. (1989) Empowering minority students. Sacramento, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. Cummins, J. (1999) "Research, ethics, and public discourse: The debate on bilingual education." Presentation at the National Conference of the American Association of Higher Education, March 22, 1999, Washington, D.C. Greene, J. P. (1998) A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of bilingual education. Claremont, CA: Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. Porter, R. P. (1990) Forked tongue: The politics of bilingual education. New York: Basic Books. Rossell, C. & Baker, R. (1996) The educational effectiveness of bilingual education. Research in the Teaching of English, 30(1), p. 7-74. Willig, A.C. (1985) A meta-analysis of selected studies on the effectiveness of bilingual education. Review of Educational Research, 55, p. 269-317. Read More