Art Un ticle I.1 ited Sta In the ates News - Woodring College of ...

What Does This Mean for Students with Exceptionalities?To understand how all of this information applies to students with or suspected as havingdisabilities, we now return to the fallacies introduced at the beginning of this chapter.1) Fallacy: Students with exceptionalities cannot learn two (or more) languages.The reality is that many CLD with disabilities must learn a second language. If a child withdisabilities speaks a home language other than English, she must acquire a second language toparticipate in the school environment. Although research does suggest that some children mayacquire a second language more slowly, especially if they exhibited language difficulties in theirnative language (Kessler, 1984), this should not dissuade educators from assisting their students’second language acquisition as much as possible. Therefore, the real question becomes, shouldthe language of instruction for CLD students with disabilities be the student’s first or secondlanguage. Studies suggest that, just as for students without disabilities, a second language is bestacquired from a firm and well-developed first language foundation (Perozzi, 1985; Perozzi &Sanchez, 1992). This research suggests that grammatical forms are most quickly and accuratelyacquired in English when they have first been taught in the student’s native language. Thissupports a bilingual approach to special education with CLD students.2) Fallacy: Parents of CLD students, with and without exceptionalities, should speak with theirchildren at home in English.This advice, although popular, is incorrect for several reasons. As discussed above, students willbest acquire a second language if their first language is well-established. Second, asking parentswho may not be able to provide an adequate language model in English to restrict the use of theirmore proficient language is absurd. Parents will neither be able to stimulate their child’slanguage development nor will they be able to communicate easily for social purposes with theirchild. Wong Fillmore (1991b, p. 343) makes the following poignant observation:When parents are unable to talk to their children, they cannot easily convey to them their values,beliefs, understandings, or wisdom about how to cope with their experiences. They cannot teachthem about the meaning of work, or about personal responsibility, or what it means to be a moralor ethical person in a world with too many choices and too few guideposts to follow. What is lostare the bits of advice, the consejos parents should be able to offer children in their everydayinteractions with them. Talk is a crucial link between parents and children: It is how parentsimpart their cultures to their children and enable them to become the kind of men and womenthey want them to be. When parents lose the means for socializing and influencing their children,rifts develop and families lose the intimacy that comes from shared beliefs and understandings.3) Fallacy: Acquiring more than one language is “difficult” and can lead to academic problems.Cummins’ additive bilingualism enrichment principle and the research on the cognitive benefitsof bilingualism clearly suggest that bilingualism is not a burden for students. In fact, in manyparts of the world, it is a common part of daily life. When fluently bilingual parents areencouraged to raise their children monolingually, as in the case of a 1995 child custody case inwhich Texas State District Judge, Samuel C. Kaiser equated raising the child of a bilingualmother in a Spanish-speaking home as tantamount to child abuse, beliefs about bilingualism as acognitive deficit are reinforced. Regardless of the cognitive benefits, bilingualism is of socialbenefit in our global village and can only have positive outcomes when students leave school andseek employment.4) Fallacy: Some bilingual students don’t speak any language to a real extent and are“semilingual.”© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved90