I was shocked to learn that there is such a notable refugee population within the parameters of CPS. It caused me to wonder how many other students who are from refugee families are present in the greater-Cincinnati area. In addition, I was interested to learn that research confirms that it takes 2-3 years for a child to master a language socially and approximately 7 years to master a language academically. How does this affect students in terms of higher education and opportunities?
Then, there is the group of students who have no mastery of any single language because they hear one language at home but learn English at school. This presents both literacy issues and communication issues both at home and in the world outside of home. How then do you help students to be successful? By extension, how do you help their families to gain a better level of success in terms of advantageous acculturation? Would a school's ESL, ELL, LEP programs only be enhanced if there was an available education component accessible to the parents? Is there research that would show the ROI for such an investment?
When I was getting my TESOL degree, we learned that speaking, reading and writing in the home language is hugely beneficial as it fosters cognitive ability - understanding text, language structure, questioning, critical thinking. These cognitive skills will ultimately transfer into a second language. The problem arises when parents don't develop those skills in the home language - limiting their children's input to low-level, broken words and phrases. Now there the child faces more than a language barrier. We need to help people understand that development of the native language is NOT hindering the child - it just may take time for the positive effects to become apparent in English.
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