Article published in:
Multilingualism and Language Diversity in Urban Areas: Acquisition, identities, space, educationEdited by Peter Siemund, Ingrid Gogolin, Monika Edith Schulz and Julia Davydova
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 1] 2013
► pp. 349–368
Measuring success when English isn’t your native language
Perspectives from Canada
Because of the power and international status of English, and because of real or perceived pressures to ‘assimilate’ persons from non-English speaking cultural backgrounds, educators in English-dominant countries are likely to have a primary focus on the academic achievement of learners based on monolingual (English) standards and benchmarks. ‘Success’ in educational contexts is likely to reflect the common sense view “the more English, as early as possible, the better the outcome”, which, while intuitively logical, is not supported by the best available research on the acquisition of English by K-12 English language learners. In fact, the research of language acquisition scholars strongly suggests that monolingually-normed approaches to pedagogy and assessment with linguistically diverse student populations in North America are detrimental to their academic achievement.
Keywords: bilingual education, Canadian Official Languages Act, English language acquisition, English language learners, global English, monoglot ideology, standard language, trilingualism
Published online: 31 May 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/hsld.1.18ric
https://doi.org/10.1075/hsld.1.18ric