petmoosie | Why should children study their native language in a formal setting?

The advantages of children studying their native language in a formal setting are many-fold. I will limit this example to native Spanish-speakers in an English-speaking school and country. These advantages fall into three categories: facility with language, translation and interpretation, and preservation and extension of culture.

Foreign language-learning is often a route of exposure to grammar. In order to explain the grammatical structures of the language to be acquired, the native-language structures are usually examined. This is common in middle-school, high-school and adult second-language learning, but in the case of immersing a primary-school-aged child in the target language, this is not normally done. In that case, teachers usually regard formal study of grammar as too complicated and rely on the well-proven ability of children to extrapolate grammar rules from language examples.

In our county, as in many others, when English is taught as a second language, the students are usually a mixed assemblage of speakers of various languages. In that situation, the teacher can't take advantage of knowledge of the native language's grammatical structure to facilitate the learning of English grammar. Even in situations where all the English learners share a native language, the teacher is often not trained to take advantage of the native language.

Vocabulary is important to a rich understanding of the world and the way people act in it. A rich vocabulary allows for precision in thought and a fineness of distinction in categories that is useful in many disciplines. For example, the sciences have specific jargon to allow for precise and efficient communication of ideas and results. Many standardized tests rely on vocabulary tests to probe facility with the use of language. The study of an other language aids in the enriching of vocabulary. In particular, the study of a Romance language aids with more complicated words in English, which are often derived from French.

Vocabulary has been shown to enrich thought. The process of making the fine distinctions to use sophisticated vocabulary correctly improves the thought patterns of the person using that vocabulary. Therefore, ensuring that students develop their vocabulary skills is important in education. These advantages are more easily reached in the native language, because much of the beginning vocabulary in English is redundant to vocabulary already acquired in the native language.

There is a demand for translation and interpretation services in the U.S. for several reasons. Businesses and governments in the U.S. want to reach immigrant communities within the U.S. Businesses are involved in international trade and need to market their goods in another language. The federal government needs to have language specialists to conduct diplomacy and to facilitate warfare with other countries. The federal government also needs to maintain the ability to conduct diplomacy and facilitate warfare even when relations with another country are minimal, so the government needs to keep a bank of specialists even when demand is very low. Businesses, government and researchers need to have access to information from other countries, which is not always available in translation.

Children who are native speakers of another language usually will not be able to translate and interpret well unless they are given further formal training in their native language. This will allow them to learn the specialized vocabulary for different fields and the reading comprehension skills to understand business or diplomatic documents.

Preservation and enrichment of the native heritage is another use of further education in the native language. This allows the sharing of specific traditions that one family may not observe with the larger community of immigrants from that heritage. The sharing of a cultural base of stories, songs and books is useful for full mastery of the language.

The parents of the immigrant child often can not provide all the language necessary for the optimal development of the native language of the child. They may not remember childhood stories, legends and myths. They may not be educated in the formal grammar of their native language and may not be able to use its diplomatic or business-specific vocabulary. Traditions and the cultural base usually require a larger community for expression than just one family. For example, the tradition of "Día de la Muerte" in Mexico requires access to graveyards, preferably those graveyards where the family's ancestors are buried. This would be more difficult to achieve if there was not a Hispanic community available to educate the dominant English-speaking community about this tradition.

In our community, some of the Spanish-speaking parents are illiterate in Spanish. A formal class in Spanish for their children would allow the child to access resources in Spanish, such as Spanish books, that the parents are not able to access themselves. And the Spanish-speaking parents are spending a great deal of their time in America learning to survive in America, and therefore have less time to spend educating their children in the finer points of the Spanish language and Hispanic heritage. In summary, a formal class in Spanish for native-speaking children would be beneficial for those children in a myriad of ways.