I wonder if this would be true for Native languages

[Cathy Wheaton]

I couldn't agree more! That is a part of language we need to work on in our 
communities, we need more Cree spoken in our homes and for that to become 
more prevalent! It is so important and yet I hear language institutions 
focused on schools to revive language while forgetting how important home 
language usage is for the whole community!

-----Original Message----- 
From: James Crippen
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 6:07 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] I wonder if this would be true for Native languages

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 22:42, Rudy Troike <rtroike at email.arizona.edu> 
wrote:
> Re Andrew's question:
>
>  Yes, dual language instruction would surely work, IF Native-language
> curricula were developed paralleling usual content in regular English-only
> classes.

I beg to differ, at least for highly endangered or extinct languages.
I won’t generalize about other situations because I’m not familiar
with them.

People who do 12 years of primary and secondary schooling in the well
known kinds of dual language programs for big languages (e.g. French
or Spanish) do not necessarily graduate with fluency in the ‘foreign’
language if their parents do not also speak it at home. In such cases,
though they may be adequate in paper testing, the students’ speech is
typically heavily influenced by the local majority language (e.g.
English) and they often have impractical gaps in their mental lexica,
among other assorted handicaps. There is a good bit of documentation
on this in the second language acquisition research community, as I
recall from my classes in second language acquisition and
bilingualism. Students do have the chance to dramatically improve
their fluency by spending time somewhere that the language is spoken
by the majority. But in the case of endangered languages, there *is*
no place to go where the majority speaks the language. So the
situations aren’t parallel and really shouldn’t be equated.

Instead of focusing on schools and education, the first place that
endangered languages need to be supported is in the home. No amount of
schooling will replace real-life use at home. If education in the
language is an adjunct to home use then success is vastly improved,
but the converse is not true at all. Space must be made for the
language to exist in real life, outside of institutions, before people
should worry about institutional use. If you look at the few
successful language revitalization programs for highly endangered or
extinct languages, they’ve all begun in private homes among families,
not in schools.

There’s a dangerous temptation to somehow make schooling into the
saviour for highly endangered languages. I think this is partly
because it obviates personal responsibilities and provides a
convenient scapegoat for failure in the guise of ‘the institution’,
‘the administration’, ‘the bureaucracy’, or worst of all ‘those
teachers’. Depending solely on education institutions to solve
language decline just seems to make things worse, not better, because
it encourages people to *not* take an active role in keeping the
language alive. “I don’t have to worry anymore because they’re
teaching it in school.” On the other hand, if children and teachers
are supported by enthusiastic and engaged parents who immerse their
children in the language at home, then it seems that success can
almost be guaranteed. So language revitalization should start at home,
not at school. Education programs modelled on bilingual education for
big languages should only be put in place once there are a reasonable
number of families with young children who are already fluent.
Institutions should support home use, not the other way around.

If people are concerned about educational programs, these should
instead first be targeted at adults who can have kids and make homes
where the language can be spoken with their children. The children
need to start with a natural, ordinary environment where their
language can be nurtured by their own parents and families. Think
small, not big. Revitalization is not a huge change in the world done
all at once by legislative or administrative actions, it’s a long,
involved series of small changes done at home and in the neighbourhood
that most people never notice happening.