Ability to speak two languages.

It may be acquired early by children in regions where most adults speak two languages (e.g., French and dialectal German in Alsace). Children may also become bilingual by learning languages in two different social settings; for example, British children in British India learned an Indian language from their nurses and family servants. A second language can also be acquired in school. Bilingualism can also refer to the use of two languages in teaching, especially to foster learning in students trying to learn a new language. Advocates of bilingual education in the U.S. argue that it speeds learning in all subjects for children who speak a foreign language at home and prevents them from being marginalized in English-language schools. Detractors counter that it hinders such children from mastering the language of the larger society and limits their opportunities for employment and higher education. bilingualism, ability to use two languages. Fluency in a second language requires skills in listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing, although in practice some of those skills are often considerably less developed than others. Few bilinguals are equally proficient in both languages. However, even when one language is dominant (see language acquisition), performance in the other language may be superior in certain situations-e.g., someone generally stronger in Russian than in English may find it easier to talk about baseball in English. Native speakers of two languages are sometimes called equilingual, or ambilingual, if their mastery of both languages is equal. Some bilinguals are persons who were reared by parents who each spoke a different language or who spoke a language different from the one used in school. In some countries, especially those with two or more official languages, schools encourage bilinguilism by requiring intensive study of a second language. Bilinguals sometimes exhibit code-switching, or switching from one language to the other in the middle of a conversation or even the same sentence; it may be triggered by the use of a word that is similar in both languages. BibliographySee G. Saunders, Bilingual Children (1988); K. Hyltenstam and L. K. Obler, ed., Bilingualism Across the Lifespan (1989) (or polyglossia) A term that refers to a person's ability to communicate in two or more languages. The phenomenon is found commonly in border regions, especially in those whose geographical boundaries change from time to time. South-eastern Poland, for example, was formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, making Austrian the official language for a population whose native language was Polish but which was in contact with neighbouring Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Slovakian communities, and whose religious groups included Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Jewish. Thus church Slavonic, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Yiddish were all likely to be used to varying degrees by inhabitants of the region, in addition to the Slavic languages. The phenomenon is also found in small countries that participate extensively in international relations: the Netherlands and Switzerland are especially well-known examples. In the Netherlands, children characteristically have instruction in Dutch as a first language, begin a second, third, and fourth (English, French, or German) within a few years of each other, and, if they plan to go to university, add several years of Latin and perhaps some Greek. Most highschool graduates can manage to communicate in two foreign languages; fluency in three or four is common among university graduates. Bilingualism is encountered also in small countries experiencing substantial immigration or made up of disparate groups. It is estimated that peoples from more than 90 different language communities have emigrated to Israel since the 1930s. It is encountered in large countries also. In the Soviet Union, as in Iran, China, and India countries comprising people of many different ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds a single 'national' language is inculcated as a unifying device, while the separate groups use their own languages for local communication. Even in a country where the languages share a

common root, such as Italy, the regional variants may be almost mutually unintelligible. In all of these cases people who wish to communicate with others not in their immediate linguistic community are obliged to learn another language. The fact of two languages in a single person is commonplace in most parts of the world, but is still thought of as an oddity in many others. Most English-speaking countries seem to be among the latter group. Bilingualism is actively studied by linguists who are interested in the way that speakers of one language accommodate the impact of another on their own; by sociologists and sociolinguists who trace change in social custom as a function of change in language; by teachers concerned to minimize the interfering effects of one language upon the learning of another; by psychologists who are interested in bilingualism as a natural laboratory for the study of the way the mind represents its knowledge; and of course by many others. The psychological issues are the most pertinent here. One long-standing query has been whether instruction in a second language helps or hinders the student. The question seems not to have been asked when several years of Greek and Latin were customary constituents of the young scholar's programme. It has come to be asked largely following the development of linguistic nationalism. Although first undertaken in the context of educating children in Welsh or Irish, the studies have been extended to the education of many groups in their native language. The findings have been that educating a child in one language interferes with his or her ability to pass examinations in a second, and the interference is greater the more 'minor' the one language and the more elaborate the second. Initially interpreted as evidence that bilingualism interfered with or lessened intellectual capability, the data are now seen as supporting the view that particular skills acquired through one language may not be wholly available for transfer to a second, especially if the two languages are quite different. No evidence has been accumulated to suggest that intelligence is lessened or heightened by instruction in one language or another; what has been shown is that skill in manipulating the dominant symbols of the culture is better acquired one way than another. Languages are said to differ in their ability to express information in one or another area or on one or another topic. The classic examples have to do with the vocabulary for varieties of snow among some Eskimo, and for varieties of camel in Arabic. A considerable philosophy has been built on related observations. The term 'linguistic relativity' marks the view of the linguists E. Sapir and his student B. L. Whorf, which in its dogmatic form is called the SapirWhorf hypothesis: the language one uses controls the way one thinks about the world. This extends well beyond differences in vocabulary items of Eskimo and Arab or of a vintner for wines, or a perfumer for smells, or any other specialized terms or jargon: the claim is that the mind works differently. In this claim Whorf seemed to identify language with thought an equation few linguists, psychologists, or philosophers accept at present and went on to confuse the ability to learn to make a discrimination with the readiness with which it is made. That is, Whorf used lexical and syntactic aspects of a language as evidence for procedures of mind, and in so doing seems to have used faulty reasoning to arrive at a plausible conclusion. The conclusion is that the symbols the mind uses in its activities actually affect the way the mind works. The interaction of symbol systems and mental operations is under present active study. Languages do seem to differ in the ease with which they lend themselves to certain topical areas. Italian and French are rich and subtle in the areas of interpersonal relations, German lends itself easily to metaphysics, English dominates modern science to name a few related languages. The structure of language, it has sometimes been suggested, also influences the way the mind works, perhaps in the way that speaking a particular language tends to shape the face. Whether a language requires many qualifications of the action before the action is named,

or whether it is named first and then qualified; whether disparate items are stuck together to make new composites or whether features are analysed out and put into contrast; whether word order is a fixed or a free variable these and other questions have been related to 'national character' and to mental activity. The topics are rich in speculation and poor in data. They attract the psychologist's attention because of their relation to the topic of representation. Psychologists not only study the fact of behavioural change as a function of experience, but also try to give a plausible account of the means by which behaviour is controlled. Since what a person knows somehow affects what he or she does, some formalism is sought by the psychologist to accommodate the knowledge. That is, how knowledge is represented in mind and how best to represent it can be taken as important aspects of the psychologist's study. In this respect bilingual individuals are interesting test cases, for they can learn something through one of their languages and be tested for the knowledge through another; changes in performance as a function of changes in language can then sometimes be used to make plausible inferences about the mental operations underlying the behaviour. The findings suggest that knowledge is often situational and specific and that something learned through one language is not known to the person generally but is available to him or her only through that language. Recent evidence on the effects of stroke and related cerebral accidents upon language performance tends to bear out the supposition that knowledge and skill may be interfered with selectively, according to interference with the means by which the knowledge or skill were acquired.

References: Bakken, R. (1994): Acculturation in Buildings and Farmsteads in Coon Valley, Wisconsin from 1850 to 1930. In M. N. Nelson (ed.): Material Culture and Peoples Art Among the Norwegians in America. Northfield, Minnesota Chomsky, N. (1986): Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. Westport, London Clyne, M. (1967): Tranceference and Triggering: Observations on the Language Assimilation of postwar German-Speaking Migrants in Australia. The Hague Clyne, M. (1987): Constraints on code switching: how universal are they? Linguistics 25 Di Sciullo, A. M., P. Muysken, R. Singh (1986): Government and code-mixing. Journal of Linguistics 22 Halmari, H. (1993): Structural relations and Finnish-English code switching. Linguistics 31 Hasselmo, N. (1974): Amerikasvenska : en bok om sprkutvecklingen i Svensk-Amerika. Skrifter utgivna av Svenska sprknmnden 51. Lund Haugen, E. (1969) [1953]: The Norwegian Language in America. (2. ed.) Bloomington, London Ibarra, R. A. (1976): Ethnicity Genuine and Spurious: A Study of a Norwegian Community in Rural Wisconsin. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Ibarra, R. A., A. Strickon (1989): The Norwegian-American Diary-Tobacco Strategy in Southwestern Wisconsin. In Norwegian-American Studies and Record, Vol. 32. NorwegianAmerican historical assosiation. Northfield

Milroy, L. (1987): Observing & Analysung Natural Languages. A Critical Account of Sociolinguistic Method. Language in Society 12. Oxford, England Moen, P. (1988): The English Pronunciation of Norwegian-Americans in Four Midwestern States. American Studies in Scandinavia 20 Mougeon, R., E. Beniak, D. Valois (1985): Variation in the phonological integration of loanwords in a bilingual speech community. Centre for Franco-Ontarian Studies. Ontario Institute of Education. Toronto Mougeon, R., E. Beniak (1989):Language contact and linguistic change: The case of Wellard French. In N. C. Dorian (ed.): Investigating obsolescence. Studies in language contraction and death. Studies in the social and Cultural Foundations of Language No. 7. Cambridge Munch, P. A. (1954): Segregation and Assimilation of Norwegian settlements in Wisconsin. In Norwegian-American Studies and Record, Vol. 18. Norwegian-American historical assosiation. Northfield Myers Scotton, C. (1990): Codeswitching and borrowing: Interpersonal and macrolevel meaning. In R. Jacobson (ed.): Codeswitching as a Worldwide Phenomenon. New York Otheguy, R., O. Garca, M. Fernndez (1989): Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish: an intergenerational study. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 79. Pfaff, C. (1979): Constraints on Language Mixing: Intrasentential Code-Switching and Borrowing in Spanish/English. Language 55 Poplack, S. (1980): Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English y termin en espaol: toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18 Poplack, S., D. Sankoff (1984): Borrowing: the syncrony of integration. Linguistics 22 Poplack, S., D. Sankoff, C. Miller (1988): The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation. Linguistics 26 Poplack, S., S. Wheeler, A. Westwood (1989): Distinguishing language contact phenomena: evidence from Finnish-English bilingualism. In K. Hyltenstam & L. K. Obler (eds.): Bilingualism across the Lifespan. Aspects of Acquisition, Maturity, and Loss. Cambridge Romaine, S (1995): Bilingualism. Language in Society 13. Oxford, Cambridge Schatz, H. F. (1989): Code-Switching or borrowing? English elements in the Dutch of DutchAmerican Immigrants. ITL: review of applied linguistics. 83-4 Soares, C, F. Grosjean (1984): Bilinguals in a monolingual and a bilingual speech mode: the effect on lexical access. Memory and Cognition 12

Appendix: The History of Bilingual Education In 1968 Congress for the first time endorsed funding for bilingual education through the Bilingual Education Act. This was significant because up until this time, students were discouraged from speaking non-English languages. Backed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court followed Congress's lead and ruled in Lau v. Nichols (1974) there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education. Politicians and educators hoped to ensure that no student would fall behind academically because of a poor command of English. Bilingual education continues to be controversial. Many critics argue that the approach keeps students in a cycle of native language dependency that ultimately inhibits significant progress in English language acquisition. Proponents reason that if students first learn to read in the language in which they are fluent, they can then transfer the skills to English and develop stronger literacy in the long term. However, the controversy extends beyond educational issues and into politics and immigration sentiments. While proponents of bilingual education concede that often teachers are not trained sufficiently to teach in bilingual settings and that inadequate funding exists for the programs, many ballot initiatives calling for English-only schooling reflect anti-immigrant or white only attitudes. Complicating the debate is the range of programs that fall under the definition of bilingual education. English immersion refers to instruction that is entirely in English. In this case the monolingual classroom. In English as a Second Language Classes (ESL), students work strictly on English skills for one period a day among students who may or may not speak their native language. Transitional bilingual education students spend the majority of their time learning in their native language, but spend a certain amount of the day developing English skills. The aim is to increase use of the majority language in the classroom while proportionately decreasing the use of the home language (Baker, 2001). Two-way bilingual or dual immersion bilingual education is instruction divided equally in two languages. This approach is intended for equal numbers of language minority and language majority students in the same classroom, with the ultimate goal of students becoming proficient in both languages. A growing movement within the debate argues to give families more control over deciding the placement of their children. Under most policies, parents are permitted to pull their children out of bilingual education only after the students are in such classes; schools are not required to seek the parent's approval before making placements. Schools are increasingly required to provide descriptions of program options and seek parental approval of students' placements in advance. However, proposals concerning parents rights to choose often draw some of the strongest criticism. Opponents fear that the school system will not make information easily available to immigrant parents, especially those who speak little or no English, negating any informed parental choice. Baker, C. (2001). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (3rd ed.). Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters.

Discussion Questions

What does Ines believe about bilingual education? How is this supported by the research? What does Ms. Chesin believe about bilingual education? How is this supported by the research? How does the bilingual structure of the school affect Ines' choice? What strengths does Ines bring as a parent to this placement dilemma? What issues does Ines face? What are her needs? Does Ms. Chesin support Nina and Ines? How could she support them more? How does the school communicate with parents about issues of bilingual education? How do Ines and Ms. Chesin communicate? If Ms. Chesin were aware of the homework situation, what could she suggest to help Ines? What school structures impede or facilitate Ines in helping Nina with homework?

Resources for Bilingual Education and Family Involvement Ada, A. F. (1988). The Pajaro Valley experience. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas & J. Cummins (Eds.), Minority education. North Somerset, England: Multilingual Matters. Allexsaht-Snider, M. (1995). Teachers' perspective on their work with families in a bilingual community. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 9(2), 8595. Calderon, M. (1997). Staff development in multilingual multicultural schools. New York: ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED410368) Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. North Somerset, England: Multilingual Matters Fueyo, V. (1997). Teaching language-minority students: Using research to inform practice. Equity & Excellence in Education, 30, 1626. Soto, L. D. (1997). Language, culture and power: Bilingual families and the struggle for quality education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Harvard Graduate School of Education. (2002). Tongue tied: Bilingual education in the nation of immigrants. Retrieved April, 2002, fromValdes, G. (1996). Con respeto: Bridging the distances between culturally diverse families and schools. New York: Teachers College Press.