ARAB-AMERICAN BILINGUALISM
Attached is a paper I recently completed for a human development course at
the university. I thought it might be interesting to share.
Even though my college concentration is in finance, I was required to choose
any topic in human development for one course. I chose the topic of
bilingualism (speaking dual languages) because as parents, we kept wondering
why our Arab-American children sometimes lag in the ability to speak Arabic
but can perfectly speak English, while other bilingual children, such as
American-Chinese, can perfectly speak both languages, and while some other
Arab-American children are only monolingual and can only speak either Arabic
or English proficiently.
The paper is relatively long but easy to read, and it is not required to be
read in full. Paper is divided into three segments - Breadth, Depth and
Application components. Pages 6 to 28 (Breadth component) discusses general
language acquisition theories by twentieth century classical theorists such
as Chomsky, Piaget, and Skinner. Note: language can be associated with long
running debates between the theories of intellectualism (human intelligence)
and empiricism (behavioral sciences), which has been ongoing throughout the
past centuries (Hume, Locke, Socrates, etc. ), but this falls beyond the
scope of this paper. Pages 30 to 39 can be skipped because it includes short
summaries of recent journal articles synthesized for this paper. You can
begin reading from page 39 (Depth component) since it focuses on the topic
of bilingualism in general. From page 63 (Application component), the paper
focuses on Arab-Americans in the United States, followed by recommending an
academic guide that can be used in school and at home in order to improve
the ability of our children to speak and appreciate the Arabic language.
Labels: arab, education, personal, united states