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Date of Award
2016
Rights
Access perpetually restricted to EWU users with an active EWU NetID
Document Type
Thesis: EWU Only
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA) in English: Teaching English as a Second Language
Department
English
Abstract
"Children of immigrant parents often believe that English is the main language they need to speak and when both parents speak a different language than the dominant one of the community; typically the child speaks both the dominant language of the new country and the parents' language (Sorace & Ladd, 2004). Obied and Macleroy (2010) said that a child's bilingualism is likely even when the parents only use the HL but when children are called upon to be translators for their parents in their interactions with the school. This furthers their belief that English is more important. Those children often believe that their native or heritage language (HL) is less important than English but studies have found that those new English language learners (ELLs) should be helped to believe that their native and new language are equally important. Additionally, this study's 122 respondents wanted their children to remember their HL and be proficient in English as well. Thus, early childhood educators dealing with students who speak English as a new language should learn the pragmatics and semantics of the home language of the student and his or her parents in order to fully develop a more meaningful relationship because that makes second language learning more successful"--Leaf iv.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Alofii, Omnia, "Bilingualism of Arab children in the U.S.: a survey of parents and teachers" (2016). EWU Masters Thesis Collection. 395.
https://dc.ewu.edu/theses/395
