Bilingualism

BILINGUALISM: Individual and Social

1. Yes, there are monolingual countries in the world where it is usual for people in the same country to speak two or more languages.
Bilingualism is asociety and individual concern. In society we consider what languages are spoken in a country, by whom, for what purposes and what effect bilingualism has on the economic and social lives of ethnicgroups.
The individual, we investigate how best to teach languages, what differences age make and what kind of interference a first language can have on learning a second.
2. “The USA is a monolingualcountry” is true despite being a society with many immigrants, stable bilingualism is not a feature of these communities. Rather, monolinguals are more dominant in the US society. Only the elderly,very young children and recent immigrants speak their mother tongue, besides English. There is a prevalent switch to dominance in English in the school children and young adults, rather than theirmother. Often, when the second generation parents become more comfortable using English, the third generation will then become monolingual in English. This is seen even within groups where there is a wideavailability to bilingual education services.
3. During the first waves of immigration children were expected to learn English on their own. Those were able to use the schools as a springboardto a better life. Those who couldn’t learn English they had to work to bring money into the house to help support their families. However they had night school education. Also their children English-speaking were assimilating de American culture.
Nowadays we have bilingual education for children who are immigrants. Until they learn in language enough they have to go to learn English speakingclasses. Language retention is used when people lose their language of their culture their family ties can be weakened and with them often their religious ties and their ethnic identity and community....