Second language acquisition (fwd)

[Margaret Fleck]

Barbara Pearson wrote:

> 1. I think a good part of the animus against minority language
> programs in the U.S. is directed against programs that delay
> the introduction of English till 2nd and 3rd grade. 

It's also important to realize that bad schools can make almost
any approach perform badly.   California, one of the big
battlegrounds on this topic, has a range of issues with the
quality of its public schools, which could easily have sabotaged
the actual performance of its bilingual programs, helping lead
to their unpopularity.

Another source of variation would be availability of materials in
the minority language.    If I can believe the numbers I just
found on the internet, there are maybe 31 million Spanish speakers
in the US alone, about 500,000 Welsh speakers, but the total Cree
population is barely enough to support a small high school.  In addition
to the basic textbooks, a switched-on school kid is going to need

     -- popular cultural materials (e.g. Pokemon and Harry Potter
        books and movies)
     -- library and classroom enrichment materials (e.g. books on
        spiders, medieval knights, digital photography) which is
        a big feature even in my son's first grade class
     -- textbooks and off-site courses for advanced subjects (e.g.
        calculus, computer programming), and non-academic subjects
        (e.g. music, car repair, driver's ed)
     -- internet resources

All this stuff is readily available in Spanish.   A lot can probably
be found in Welsh.  I really wonder how much is going to be available
in, say, Cree.   Worrying about sufficient exposure to L2 may be
a moot point if decent-quality L1 instruction requires significant
use of L2 resources anyhow.

Margaret
    (Margaret Fleck, U. Illinois)