Language Diversity and Education by Carlos J. Ovando, the author makes the point that the language diversity present in the United States has significant implications for all teachers and all students. He emphasizes the importance of both a person's first language and the dominant language in a culture. He notes the complexity of learning a second language: in addition to the cognitive mastery of vocabulary and grammar involved, fluency in a language involves discourse (structure of paragraphs and larger chunks of written language); appropriateness (adjusting language to the social setting); paralinguistics (body language, gestures, volume, pitch, etc.); and pragmatics (cultural norms involving language, subtle conversation skills). Even though ESL students may seem to be learning English rapidly, those language skills may be largely social and inadequate t the cognitive demands made on it in a classroom.
Ovando gave examples of true dialects in the United States -- creoles, or combinations of several languages developed so people of two or more languages could communicate. They include Gullah, French Creole and Hawaiian Creole. 175 Native American languages have survived. In Anchorage, Alaska, the students speak more than 100 languages as first languages.
This article was most interesting for the detailed explanation of the truly multi-language nature of America's schools. Obviously when one city may have students who speak any of 100 languages other than English, the schools cannot expect to be able to hire teachers fluent in all those languages as well as English, so broader strategies are needed. Ovanda suggests adopting a policy of "constructive pluralism" as a starting point. In this view the student is not criticized for being linguistically different, and the teacher adopts a problem-solving frame of mind rather than making judgments. This approach would combat the view that Black English is inferior because of its use, for instance, of double negatives. Those opposed to this view may feel that "Americans should speak English," but teachers should be able to look past a political stance and teach all the students in their classrooms in the best ways possible.
