English-Only, Local Language, and Biliteracy Policies Since 1957

Author(s):  
Philomena Osseo-Asare
Keyword(s):  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
J Michael Brick ◽  
Andrew Caporaso ◽  
Douglas Williams ◽  
David Cantor

Decisions on public policy can be affected if important segments of the population are systematically excluded from the data used to drive the decisions. In the US, Spanishspeakers make up an important subgroup that surveys conducted in English-only underrepresent. This subgroup differs in a variety of characteristics and they are less likely to respond to surveys in English-only. These factors lead to nonresponse biases that are problematic for survey estimates. For surveys conducted by mail, one solution is to include both English and Spanish materials in the survey package. For addresses in the US where Spanish-speakers are likely to be living, this approach is effective, but it still may omit some non-English-speakers. Traditionally, including both English and Spanish materials for addresses not identified as likely to have Spanish-speakers was considered problematic due to concerns of a backlash effect. The backlash effect is that predominantly English-speakers might respond at a lower rate because of the inclusion of Spanish materials. Prior research found no evidence of a backlash, but used a twophase approach with a short screener questionnaire to identify the eligible population for an education survey. In this paper, we report on experiments in two surveys that extend the previous research to criminal victimization and health communication single-phase surveys. These experiments test the effect of the inclusion of Spanish language materials for addresses not identified as likely to have Spanish-speakers. Our findings confirm most results of the previous research; however we find no substantial increase in Spanish-only participation when the materials are offered in both languages for addresses that are not likely to have Spanish-speakers. We offer some thoughts on these results and directions for future research, especially with respect to collecting data by the Internet.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 184
Author(s):  
Imron Hadi

Pembelajaran bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa asing yang merupakan representasi kebudayaan memiliki sejumlah kesulitan. Salah satu kesulitan itu berasal dari pengenalan bunyi. Sebuah cara alternatif untuk mengakomodasi masalah tersebut adalah dengan pengenalan bentuk onomatope. Onomatope menyediakan bermacam bunyi tiruan yang berbeda sebagai ikon lintas bahasa dan budaya untuk mengartikulasikan hal yang sama. Onomatope dapat berasal dari berbagai sumber, seperti komik, karikatur, novel, koran dan lain sebagainya. Onomatope dapat memberikan berbagai sudut pandang mengenai identitas kebahasaan dan kebudayaannya, setidaknya dalam bahasa Inggris, Indonesia, dan daerah.AbstrakTeaching English as a foreign language that is a representation of culture has some difficulties. One of the them comes from sounds recognition. An alternative way to accomodate the problem is by acknowledging an onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia provides several different kinds of imitative sound as a cross cultures and language icon to articulate the same thing. Its sources can be taken from comics, caricatures, novels, newspapers, and others. Onomatopoeia could give various perspective of its cultural and language identity in English, Indonesia, and local language.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Ahsanul Husna

AbstracDiscussion Method On Learning Classical Books to Improving ReadingSkills. Essay. Muhammad AhsanulHusna. The yellow book is a classic bookthat written by scholars' salaf, and use arabic language, without harakat(punctuation), without a description of the local language.Compiled inbrownish yellow sheets, containing various scientific disciplines, bothreligious and non-religious, among boarding schools. The method mostclsssical of yellow book learning is known as the Bandongan term, which isto sharpen the yellow text with a beard meaning and written by Arabic Pegonas a local language. Kyai told directly to students, and satri wrote what wassaid by the Kyai. This learning system is a monologue, there is no directdialogue with the santri, except the explanation of Kyai that related with theyellow book that is being read.Key words: Learning Classic Books, Improving Reading SkillsAbstrakMetode Diskusi Dalam Pemebelajaran Kitab Kuning Klasik DalamPeningkatan Keterampilan Membaca. Essay. Muhammad Ahsanul Husna.Kitab kuning adalah kitab klasik yang ditulis oleh para ulama’ salaf, yangdituangkan dalam bahasa Arab, tanpa harakat (tanda baca), tanpa keteranganbahasa lokal. Disusun dalam lembaran-lembaran berwarna kuningkecokelatan, berisi berbagai disiplin ilmu pengetahuan, baik keagamaanmaupun non keagamaan, diajarkan dikalangan pondok pesantren. Medotepembelajaran kitab kuning paling klasik dikenal dengan istilahBandongan,yaitu mengasahi teks kitab kuning dengan makna jenggot bertuliskan ArabPegon dalam ejaan bahasa lokal setempat. Disampaikan secara langsung olehKyai dihadapan para santri, yang menulis apa yang diucapkan oleh Kyai.Sistem pembelajaran ini monolog, tidak terjadi dialog dengan santri secaralangsung, kecuali penjelasan Kyai yang berhubungan dengan teks kitabkuning yang sedang dibaca.Kata Kunci: Pemebelajaran kitab kuning Klasik, Keterampilan Membaca


Author(s):  
Seema Rani ◽  
Avadhesh Kumar ◽  
Naresh Kumar

Background: Duplicate content often corrupts the filtering mechanism in online question answering. Moreover, as users are usually more comfortable conversing in their native language questions, transliteration adds to the challenges in detecting duplicate questions. This compromises with the response time and increases the answer overload. Thus, it has now become crucial to build clever, intelligent and semantic filters which semantically match linguistically disparate questions. Objective: Most of the research on duplicate question detection has been done on mono-lingual, majorly English Q&A platforms. The aim is to build a model which extends the cognitive capabilities of machines to interpret, comprehend and learn features for semantic matching in transliterated bi-lingual Hinglish (Hindi + English) data acquired from different Q&A platforms. Method: In the proposed DQDHinglish (Duplicate Question Detection) Model, firstly language transformation (transliteration & translation) is done to convert the bi-lingual transliterated question into a mono-lingual English only text. Next a hybrid of Siamese neural network containing two identical Long-term-Short-memory (LSTM) models and Multi-layer perceptron network is proposed to detect semantically similar question pairs. Manhattan distance function is used as the similarity measure. Result: A dataset was prepared by scrapping 100 question pairs from various social media platforms, such as Quora and TripAdvisor. The performance of the proposed model on the basis of accuracy and F-score. The proposed DQDHinglish achieves a validation accuracy of 82.40%. Conclusion: A deep neural model was introduced to find semantic match between English question and a Hinglish (Hindi + English) question such that similar intent questions can be combined to enable fast and efficient information processing and delivery. A dataset was created and the proposed model was evaluated on the basis of performance accuracy. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first reported study on transliterated Hinglish semantic question matching.


Author(s):  
Andrew Linn ◽  
Anastasiya Bezborodova ◽  
Saida Radjabzade

AbstractThis article presents a practical project to develop a language policy for an English-Medium-Instruction university in Uzbekistan. Although the university is de facto English-only, it presents a complex language ecology, which in turn has led to confusion and disagreement about language use on campus. The project team investigated the experience, views and attitudes of over a thousand people, including faculty, students, administrative and maintenance staff, in order to arrive at a proposed policy which would serve the whole community, based on the principle of tolerance and pragmatism. After outlining the relevant language and educational context and setting out the methods and approach of the underpinning research project, the article goes on to present the key findings. One of the striking findings was an appetite for control and regulation of language behaviours. Language policies in Higher Education invariably fall down at the implementation stage because of a lack of will to follow through on their principles and their specific guidelines. Language policy in international business on the other hand is characterised by a control stage invariably lacking in language planning in education. Uzbekistan is a polity used to control measures following from policy implementation. The article concludes by suggesting that Higher Education in Central Asia may stand a better chance of seeing through language policies around English-Medium Instruction than, for example, in northern Europe, based on the tension between tolerance on the one hand and control on the other.


Author(s):  
Hui Chang ◽  
Lilong Xu

Abstract Chinese allows both gapped and gapless topic constructions without their usage being restricted to specific contexts, while English only allows gapped topic constructions which are used in certain contexts. In other words, Chinese uses ‘topic prominence’, whereas English does not. The contrast between English and Chinese topic constructions poses a learnability problem for Chinese learners of English. This paper uses an empirical study investigating first language (L1) transfer in the case of Chinese learners of English and the extent to which they are able to unlearn topic prominence as they progress in second language (L2) English. Results of an acceptability judgment test indicate that Chinese learners of English initially transfer Chinese topic prominence into their English, then gradually unlearn Chinese topic prominence as their English proficiency improves, and finally unlearn Chinese topic prominence successfully. The results support the Full Transfer Theory (Schwartz, Bonnie & Rex Sprouse. 1996. L2 cognitive states and the Full Transfer/Full Access model. Second Language Research 12. 40–72) and the Variational Learning Model (Yang, Charles. 2004. Universal Grammar, statistics or both? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8. 451–456), but contradict the proposal that the topic prominence can never be transferred but may be unlearned from the beginning in Chinese speakers’ acquisition of English (Zheng, Chao. 2001. Nominal Constructions Beyond IP and Their Initial Restructuring in L2 Acquisition. Guangzhou: Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Ph.D. dissertation). In addition, the type of topic constructions that is used and whether or not a comma is added after the topic have an effect on learners’ transfer and unlearning of topic prominence. It is proposed that the specification of Agr(eement) and T(ense) as well as the presence of expletive subjects in English input can trigger the unlearning of topic prominence for Chinese learners of English.


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