Temple University Billinguallism in Schools and Society Essay

Directions: Choose three of the six scenarios below and write a 250-300 word response to each one, explaining how you would address the concerns of the person involved in light of what you have learned from our readings, class discussions, and assignments so far this term. You must explicitly reference at least three concepts, terms, or concrete pieces of information from our course materials to support the position you take on the issue in each essay.

Please clearly indicate which scenario you are writing about before beginning the essay text. You may submit your own new document to Canvas based on the questions below, or insert text within the attached document.

Each of your three essays must therefore contain the following elements:

• Your position on the issue raised in the scenario
• Support for your position based on three related pieces of information from our course readings, discussions, or other class materials (videos, etc.).

In many cases, there is more than one valid position to take on the issues involved. You will not be graded on whether your position is “correct,” but only whether it is well-supported based on the facts/information you provide. You will not receive full credit if your position on the issue is unclear, or if your supporting information is inaccurate or vague.

Scenarios for mid-term questions. How would you respond to the concerns of the people involved in the following situations?

1. Immigrant parents of U.S. citizen children who are worried that using their family language in the home will hurt their children’s development in English
2. A school district superintendent who is concerned about pushback from parents if she implements a voluntary 2-way immersion program that would match children of immigrants (15% of the student population) with native-English speaking students.
3. A Native American community leader who is uncertain about how best to ensure that the language of his community is passed on to subsequent generations, without hurting their economic opportunities in an English-dominant society.
4. A teenager from a minority language community whose use of the community language and the majority language is highly influenced by grammar and vocabulary from the other. She sees her language skills in both languages as “contaminated” and feels that she doesn’t fully belong in either community.
5. A music producer who believes that in order for the young Korean pop music group that he is managing to be a commercial success, they must sing their songs in English.
6. A politician wants to gain support from a minority language community without alienating support from the majority language community. She is not sure whether to use the minority language community’s language in an address to them.