Language Loss or Learning to Speak English at Any Cost
I remember growing up hearing Spanish in my home. My parents preferred Spanish and could barely speak any English. My father worked in a milk processing plant and didn't really have to use English and my mother was a cleaning woman in a business skyscraper in downtown Houston. Spanish was my first language. By the time I was in the third grade, I thought it was natural that my parents spoke to me in Spanish and I answered in English. All of my friends did the same thing. We all could understand the aunts and uncles and grandparents who used Spanish in the family gatherings, but the younger crowd used English to identify with the inner city community where I grew up. I lived in a tight community where you grew up with the same people and attended kindergarten to high school together. Although I remember that I had many friends who started out with me, there weren't too many left by the time I graduated from high school. There weren't too many of us who went on to college either.
This language loss, attrition, or learning to speak English at any cost was typical and is still a phenomenon among minority language children across the United States. Children enter preschool programs or kindergarten classrooms speaking a home language (L1) and then within months are speaking a simple form of English (L2) and refusing to speak their native language. These children still understand the home language, but begin to lose the ability to communicate with their mother, father, and significant others in the home. The children or siblings, if they're in school, begin to speak English among themselves and may not communicate the important life events and participate in the family gatherings because they no longer can actively ask questions of the elders, or give opinions about family crisis. Something more is lost than a native language when children can't speak to parents and important family members. There's a loss of history, identity, image, and self.
Languages are rich in their essence of how life is perceived. Through our native language we express our feelings, dislikes, love, beauty and what is acceptable and unacceptable among community members. When a child loses this ability to express or maybe has never learned to express these emotions and thoughts in the native language, the home language, there is a loss of expression that may not ever be replaced by the second language. There are beliefs that can only come from the home and these are expressed through language.
So, if so many children go through language loss, what's the big deal? Several things make it an important issue:
- Early exposure of English to preschool minority language children is detrimental to the cognitive and language development of these children;
- The identification of language impairments among Hispanic children in the middle grades becomes the norm because of language loss and inadequate development of English, and;
- The excessive drop out rate of Hispanic students and the increased numbers of an underclass becomes a national issue.
Clinicians must encourage the use of the home language not only for children in special education but for all children who are L2 learners. The exclusion of the home language from the educational process is detrimental to a child's cognitive development. Cummins (1984) proposed the threshold and the developmental interdependence hypotheses to help explain why we need to maintain the home language. The threshold hypothesis proposes a minimum level of linguistic competence that a child must attain in order to avoid cognitive deficits. If there is a low competence in L1 it is likely that a similar low level will be present in L2. Parents should provide sufficient maintenance and support for the home language in order to obtain a similar level of competency in the second language. Children who enter preschool have not fully developed their language abilities in L1. Wong-Fillmore (1992) and Ramirez, Yuen, Ramey, Pasta, & Billings (1991) have stated that children who develop first-language knowledge and skills fully during the preschool years often make the transition to schooling in English more easily and effectively than children who do not maintain the home language. Wong-Fillmore (1992) suggests that preschoolers lose the ability to speak L1 faster than children who are older. Development of that first language is so important that when there is no native language program available for the child, I've suggested to the parent to keep the child at home. Programming for the child can then be much like early intervention programs used with birth to three years. The second hypothesis, Developmental interdependence hypothesis assumes that if the outside environment provides sufficient stimuli for maintenance of L1, then intensive exposure to L2 in the school leads to rapid bilingual development with no detrimental effects to the first language. Therefore, if the child is in an English-only classroom, the parents can be instructed to provide the child's language needs in the home language. The parents' involvement with language intervention becomes critical to the development of English and cognition. Monolingual clinicians can help children maintain their L1 by working with parents through interpreters and regular meetings with families concerning the child's classroom weaknesses and strengths. The inappropriate suggestion that parents speak English to the child, to stop speaking the home language, is detrimental to the child and the family.
So, now you have a referral for an Hispanic child who is in grade 3. The teacher referral states that the child is not understanding, is having difficulty with the curriculum, appears to be confused, day dreams, appears disorganized and is unable to stay on task. He's a nice child but he's functioning at the lower level of the class. These are common characteristics of the child who has lost L1 and has not acquired L2 at a level that allows him to benefit from the curriculum. Part of the answer here is that the teacher may be speaking to a classroom of monolingual English speaking children and the L2 learners are desperately trying to keep up with the teacher's communication patterns. Observing the teacher is the first task for the clinician. Making the necessary adjustments and teaching modifications are the next tasks.
Differentiating this child from a language-impaired child will mean looking at past records and also obtaining a language history from the parents. The child's file should be a rich source of information about the child's history and experiences with English and his L1. Some questions to ask would be: Did this child have any problems with school before the 3rd grade? Did the child receive any services in the home language? Was there any special service provided to assist English language development? Has the parent noted a loss or lack of use of the home language in the past 3 years since entering kindergarten? Never ask a monolingual L1 parent whether the child has a good ability in English because they usually can't make that judgement. They may be hearing only the siblings speaking to each other and their form of English may be fossilized. If there is no indication that the child had any difficulties before this initial referral it's likely that you have a child who has lost the ability to speak L1 and not acquired adequate L2. Additionally, the parent will typically be an excellent informant concerning their child's language development because the parent will have already compared this child to all of the other children from the same background and community.
The drop out rate for Hispanics nationally averages about 50 percent. This varies with the group, Cuban-Americans have a lower drop out rate than Puerto Rican- and Mexican-Americans. The average means that the drop out rate is higher in some school districts. New Mexico leads with drop out rates ranging from 30 percent to 80 percent. From those 50 percent left to finish high school, only approximately 5 percent of this group will finish college. This means that a large population is not receiving an education.
What's the answer? Definitely not putting these children in speech/language services. Too many clinicians believe that any child who has language needs should be in therapy. But with the growing numbers of these children in classrooms and the increased possibility of litigation because of an inaccurate diagnosis, it would behoove the clinician to remember that it is illegal to place a child in special education because of language and cultural differences. The answer really lies with a more effective educational system that advocates for bilingual education and educating minority language children rather than crusading to teach these children English. There is a difference. Teaching English is not educating children. An education allows students to learn to think, problem solve, and eventually become contributing members of the society. Educating minority language children may mean bilingual education or it may mean better and stronger parent programs that will help parents become partners in educating their children in the home language while the school maintains the English curriculum. There has to be a concerted effort by professionals, not only clinicians, but educators also.
References
- Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education: Issues in assessment and pedagogy. San Diego: College-Hill Press.
- Ortiz, . & Maldonado-Colon, E. (1986). Reducing inappropriate referrals of language minority students in special education. In A. C. Willig & H. F. Greenberg (Eds.), Bilingualism and learning disabilities (pp. 37-52). New York: American Library.
- Ramirez, J. D., Yuen, S. D., Ramey, D. R., Pasta, D. J., & Billings, D. K. (1991). Final report: Longitudinal study of structured immersion strategy, early-exit, and late-exit transitional bilingual education programs for language-minority children. Executive summary. San Mateo, CA: Aguirre International.
