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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quehubo who wrote (105133)	2/28/2009 1:55:24 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 542970

catesol.org What we see in children is that they can talk in a language after about 2 years, but academic proficiency- the ability to read, write, and be taught in that language- takes 6-9. That's not to say some kids aren't geniuses- but it really helps if the child already has academic proficiency in another language. You, for example, were educated already in English- thus all those structures you had in place to construct meaning in English, could transfer to your new language. I deal with some students who were never able to read or write any language before trying to learn English. I find that they can't spell in Spanish (or write, or read), any better than they can in English (which is to say that can't do any of it at all). This is the hardest situation to deal with. It's probably going to take those folks about 9 years to get on track- since they basically have to put the structures in place the rest of us started building in kindergarten when we began reading and writing. And we desperately need to educate them in both Spanish and English- to support their already acquired native verbal language- but there's hostility towards that, because people are ignorant about the nature of language acquisition, and other people abused the process and found it easier never to teach English at all. So we've got a mish mash of a system, and a lot of people who don't understand what's needed in bilingual education.