Speaking In Tongues Summary

Extension: Reflection on Speaking in Tongues Documentary and Multilingual Education Activity In this mono-linguistic culture, especially in Nebraska where it is predominantly white, many colleagues in the class have never heard of the concept of bilingualism until we viewed a documentary called Speaking in Tongues by California Visions. The film featured four students, Durrell, Kelly, Jason, and Julian from four different public schools in San Francisco area. Durell is an African-American second-grader who learns Mandarin. Kelly is a Chinese-American who learns Cantonese, the language of her parents'. Jason learns both English and Spanish in his middle school, and Julian is a Caucasian 8th grader who learns Cantonese. These four students
We raised this problem in one of the class meetings as a group discussion. One person questioned if teachers should be proficient in both languages in order to teach in bilingual schools, or does he or she only needs to know the basic in one language and be proficient in the other. Personally, I would prefer teachers who are proficient in both languages, because they should receive pedagogical trainings before teaching any subject. Since these trainings are most likely to be in English, a teacher should know English in order to successfully teach students other languages utilizing the techniques that they have obtained in their
I myself used to be one of the teachers there. These classes are only an hour to an hour and a half each week. The only time students get to utilize the language is in the class or at home. Parents often speak to their children in Vietnamese, and they would respond back using simple vocabularies such as “yes" or “not". If the response requires more explanation, kids would automatically switch to English. When I talk to these students, most of them share that they are able to listen in Vietnamese, but speaking it is a challenge for them. Many of them express their concern in being fluent in the language as the effort of preserving their mother tongue. If language is the barrier between children and parents, then how can they share the emotions or feelings that require even more descriptive