Chapter four talked about the
importance of lesson planning and how it affects the notion of language
politicking within historical and social circumstances. It is important to
understand the dynamics of language planning because it affects all of us in
several ways. The government is involved in the decision-making when it comes
to deciding on the variety of a language and also when choosing the national
and official language. Once a language is chosen, it goes through corpus
planning, which is the script, grammar, spelling, and so forth, of a language.
Regardless of which form of English is adopted, the government is involved in
the language planning and policy activity of it all. As future educators we
should be aware of their decisions because they have a direct implications for
education.
Chapter Four also talked gave
various terms such as the difference between national language and official
language. A national language represents the national identity of a
country. The official language is a language that is given unique legal
status in the country. For example, it used for government administration and
law, media, and as a language of education.
Furthermore, it introduced us to
language planning and language policy.
It is important to understand the differences between the
two terms.
Language policy “refers to the more general linguistic,
political, and social goals underlying the actual language planning process,”
(Deumert, 2000, p. 2000) whereas Language planning “refers to all conscious
effort that aim at changing the linguistic behavior or a speech community,”
(Huagen, 1987, p. 627 in Deumert, 200, p. 384).
Within language planning, there are various distinctions
that have to be made such as making “decisions about the status of the
language, determining a new language-in-education policy, and coining a new
word.”
Furthermore, language planning goes far beyond these points
and “has a direct bearing on matters of identity, economic opportunity and
social status power, human rights, and so forth,” (91)
Language politicking captures the worldliness of language in
the context of language planning and policy activity, it displays how both language
and power are intertwined. The chapter gave to examples, which were Singapore
and United States. Singapore is very multilingual. They have multilingualism at
the national level and “English-knowing” bilingualism at the individual level.
Higher levels of government control the language in education planning. On the
other hand, the United States has no centrally controlled language policies.
Its dominant language is English. One of the debates that has been an issue
lately has been bilingualism. Discussions pertaining to the question of what
form of bilingual education is adequate and what the role of languages other
than English should take in education and society.
As a future bilingual elementary education teacher, I think
that bilingualism is important and necessary for various reasons. It is very
beneficial for the students because they are perfecting their first language
while also learning English at the same time. Research shows that the more a
student knows in their first language the more that he/she will succeed in
their second language. Reason being is that they have the concepts of the words
down in the L1 so it will make it easier for them to understand it in their L2.
Furthermore, bilingualism will not hinder, or “impede” the students’ proficiency
in English.
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