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Raising Children as Multilinguals in the U.S. Context: Perspectives from a Parent and Educator
Multicultural Perspectives ( IF 0.5 ) Pub Date : 2018-10-02 , DOI: 10.1080/15210960.2018.1527157
Jayoung Choi 1
Affiliation  

I am raising a five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter as trilinguals in a multilingual household where we speak Korean, Farsi, and English. We have consistently maintained a one-parent-one-language (OPOL) policy in which I only speak Korean to my children while two other caregivers, my partner and mother-in-law, exclusively speak Farsi to them. Promoting my children’s proficiency in home languages in an English-dominant society, the United States, has been my priority. As a successive multilingual, having learned English and Farsi after acquiring my first language of Korean, and as a professor and scholar of language and literacy education, I am well aware of the multiple benefits of multilingualism (Bialystok, 2011). Although my children have not been formally assessed, I can say that they have sufficient speaking skills in both Korean and Farsi appropriate to their ages; they are often praised by others, both multiand mono-lingual adults, for these skills. However, concerns have also been a frequent reaction to their developing trilingual abilities. Some intimate family members, friends, neighbors, and school personnel have commented on the confusion that my children must experience because of them acquiring three different languages simultaneously, the urgency in mastering English, and the shortlived nature of home languages once school starts in the United States. These common assumptions have troubled me. I know very well that these remarks collectively reflect a deep-seated ideology prevalent in schools, communities, and society at large; an ideology that still operates within a monolingual frame of mind and within a static and monolithic view of languaging (Garc ıa & Wei, 2015). I find such perspectives disturbing because they deprive multilingual children and families like mine of the right to draw on all of their linguistic repertoires, gradually making them become English-only speakers at the expense of losing their home languages (Olsen, 2008; Wong Fillmore, 1991). I have been particularly protective of my children’s home languages due to my own experience of once favoring English over my first language (Choi, 2014) and of teaching and researching Korean American students, many of whom forget their home language during precollege years in the United States (Choi, 2015; Choi & Yi, 2012). In this essay I unearth the common assumptions that I have encountered while raising multilingual Correspondence should be sent to Jayoung Choi, Kennesaw State University, 580 Parliament Garden Way, Kennesaw, GA 30144. E-mail: Jayoung.choi@kennesaw.edu

中文翻译:

在美国背景下将孩子培养成多语种:父母和教育者的观点

我在一个会说韩语、波斯语和英语的多语言家庭中抚养一个五岁的儿子和两岁的女儿,他们会说三种语言。我们一直坚持一对一语言 (OPOL) 政策,其中我只对我的孩子说韩语,而另外两名看护人,我的伴侣和岳母,只对他们说波斯语。在以英语为主导的美国社会,提高我孩子的母语熟练程度一直是我的首要任务。作为一个连续的多语言者,在学习了我的第一语言韩语后学习了英语和波斯语,作为语言和识字教育的教授和学者,我非常清楚多语言的多重好处(Bialystok,2011)。虽然我的孩子还没有被正式评估,我可以说他们有足够的韩语和波斯语口语能力,适合他们的年龄;他们经常因这些技能而受到其他人的称赞,包括使用多种语言和单语的成年人。然而,人们对他们发展三语能力的担忧也经常出现。一些亲密的家庭成员、朋友、邻居和学校工作人员评论了我的孩子必须经历的困惑,因为他们同时学习三种不同的语言,掌握英语的紧迫性,以及一旦在美国开学,家庭语言的短暂性状态。这些常见的假设让我感到困扰。我很清楚,这些言论共同反映了一种在学校、社区和整个社会中普遍存在的根深蒂固的意识形态;一种仍然在单一语言的思维框架内以及在静态和单一的语言观点中运作的意识形态(Garc ıa & Wei,2015)。我发现这种观点令人不安,因为它们剥夺了像我这样的多语言儿童和家庭使用所有语言曲目的权利,逐渐使他们以失去母语为代价成为只讲英语的人(奥尔森,2008 年;Wong Fillmore, 1991)。我一直特别保护我孩子的母语,因为我自己曾经更喜欢英语而不是我的母语 (Choi, 2014) 以及教授和研究韩裔美国学生的经验,其中许多人在美国大学预科期间忘记了他们的母语国家(Choi,2015 年;Choi 和 Yi,2012 年)。
更新日期:2018-10-02
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