Week 5 Post 1

While reading chapter 9, one section that I found to be very interesting is the section about learning two languages. It is a fact that language-minority children suffer if they do not speak the majority language well. Children who are not proficient in English tend to have lower school achievement, diminished self-esteem, inadequate employment, etc. Having fluency in another language is always an asset and children who are fluent in English generally do not have these problems in the United States. I was intrigued by the fact that some scholars believe that children need to become proficient in only one language and others believe that everyone should speak at least two languages. The "English advocates" believe that children should only speak English and that children who are taught two languages might become confused. It could lead to the children being semilingual and not bilingual. Neuroscience has found that young bilingual children site both languages in the same areas of the brain yet manage to keep them separate. On the other hand, the brains of those who learn a second language in adulthood usually show different activation sites for each language. In addition, pronunciation is hard to master after childhood but mispronunciation during childhood does not impair fluency in a language because young children are more receptive than expressive which means that they hear better than they talk. I really enjoyed learning about the idea of learning about two languages as a child. It is a topic that I have never learned about in depth but it is something that I am now very interested in.