Abstract
Crafting and implementing language policies that address the needs of language minority students have always been challenging. The major challenges include addressing such concerns as: How do we address the language needs of minority students, while keeping the academic standards high? Should the role of minority langue be cultural maintenance or the facilitation of instruction through the mother tongue? To what extent does the use of minority language prepare the child for the global world? Through comparative analysis of practices in the United States and Ethiopia, this paper explores the background, approaches, and challenges/controversies in implementing polices that cater for language minority children in the two countries.
Highlights
Teaching language minority children has been an issue debated among educators, policy makers, parents and other stakeholders
By presenting common practices and models in addressing the instructional language practices in the United States and Ethiopia, the article explores the background, approaches, and challenges/controversies in implementing polices that cater for language minority children in the two countries
Minority parents had to pull their children out of schools, and enrollment witnessed a dramatic drop in the areas settled by mixed communities (Hoben, 1995). This practice negates the 1953 United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recommendations that stated “if mixed groups are unavoidable, instruction should be in the language which gives the least hardship to the bulk of the pupils, and special help should be given for those who do not speak the language of instruction”
Summary
Teaching language minority children has been an issue debated among educators, policy makers, parents and other stakeholders. Policies aimed at addressing the needs of language minority students have been challenged from various groups. How do we address the language needs of minority students while keeping the academic standards high? By presenting common practices and models in addressing the instructional language practices in the United States and Ethiopia, the article explores the background, approaches, and challenges/controversies in implementing polices that cater for language minority children in the two countries. It presents the similarities and differences between the practices in the two countries and draws lessons to Ethiopia on how nonnative speakers can learn in multilingual nations
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