How Myths about Language Affect Education: What Every Teacher Should Know

3. Myths about Second Language Acquisition

56 CHAPTER 3 Myths about Second Language Acquisition Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. —Dave Barry, 1988 Few Americans are proficient in a second language, yet they seem to criticize ELLs for not learning English quickly. This criticism is not only ironic, it also demonstrates a plethora of misunderstandings about second language acquisition. This chapter will clarify some of these misconceptions and show how policies or viewpoints based on these misconceptions do a disservice to ELLs. The misconceptions discussed in this chapter are: 1. Recent immigrants to the United States learn English more slowly than previous generations of immigrants. 2. Young L2 learners should be completely immersed in English. 3. Smart people are better second language learners. 4. Grammar has no place in second language instruction. 5. Listening and reading are the easiest skills to acquire in a second language. 57 Myths about Second Language Acquisition uMisconception: Recent immigrants to the United States learn English more slowly than previous generations of immigrants. Truth: Today’s immigrants are learning English as a second language at the same rate as previous generations of immigrants . The complaint that recent immigrants are not learning English quickly enough is common. As Guadalupe Valdes, an ESL researcher, notes,“In the current context in which anti-immigrant sentiment is strong, newly arrived children are routinely accused by the general public of not wanting to learn English and of failing to profit from the education that the state is giving to them at great costs”(2001,p.12).Survey research from 2006 conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Pressshows that 58 percent of Americans think that today’s immigrants are learning English too slowly. A sampling of editorial pages and posting on blogs indicates this prevailing national sentiment that immigrants and many Americans believe immigrants are even refusing to learn: Culturally we have shifted from an integrating, English-speaking American citizenship focused model of immigration to an acceptance of foreign habits (which are going to include corruption), foreign loyalties (illustrated by the waving of foreign flags by many of the marchers,some with attitudes of contempt) and the insistence (not necessarily by immigrants) on creating non–English speaking legal and educational structures. —Gingrich, National Review Online, 2006 Those who hold views like these often criticize recent immigrants because they believe that they are lazy or stubborn when it comes to 58 HOW MYTHS ABOUT LANGUAGE AFFECT EDUCATION learning English.This attitude affects teachers and school systems because some members of the public will object to ESL teaching programs; they feel ESL programs (for adults and children) are “coddling” the immigrants and diverting educational resources away from native Englishspeaking students. However, Lucy Tse (2001) documents in her book Why Don’t They Learn English? Separating Fact from Fallacy in the U.S. Language Debate that the reality is that immigrants today are learning English at the same rate as previous generations of immigrants and that sound ESL programs and strategies help the language acquisition process and do not diminish resources for other students. The assumption that past generations learned quickly is just that, an assumption. If previous generations of immigrants learned English so quickly, why did ethnic enclaves (Chinatown, Germantown) spring into existence? They came into existence at least in part due to the difficulty of learning English and the availability of a comfort zone in their own language enclave. Research like Tse’s demonstrates that, contrary to popular opinion, immigrants are learning English as quickly today and that by providing ESL services, school systems assist in the language acquisition process. Part of the reason for the false perception that immigrants today are taking longer to learn English is due to the three generation rule.When immigrants arrive in the country, the adults (first generation) rarely learn the language with native-like proficiency, although there may be exceptions. The children of these immigrants, second generation, are bilingual in the language of their parents and that of their new country. The third generation is typically monolingual in the language of the country.The case of Spanish-speaking immigrants illustrates the public’s seeming frustration with immigrants and the acquisition of English. The pattern is as stable today as in...