Educating Language Minority Students in South Korea: Multilingual Sustainability and Linguistic Human Rights

In the context of globalization, the landscape of language in Korea has changed dramatically in the last three decades because of the influx of marriage migrants and foreign workers. The growing number of immigrant and international marriages has led to the emergence of new linguistic minorities in Korea who have multicultural and multilingual backgrounds, and they challenge Korea’s long-lasting tradition of linguistic homogeneity and purity. Language related education for this newly emerging group of language minority students, whose number has increased dramatically since the late-1990s, has become a salient issue. This paper critically analyzes the current education policies and programs designed for the newly emerging group of language minority students, and examines the prospects for sustainable development of these students in Korea. In particular, it focuses on the underlying ideology of linguistic nationalism and assimilationist integration regime embedded in various education policy initiatives and reforms, which require language minority students to forgo their multilingual background and forcibly embrace linguistic homogeneity. The paper elaborates on alternative educational programs that could enable language minority students to achieve sustainable development and progress.

Bilingualism and Biliteracy

Internationally, there has been growing commitment to bilingual education among policymakers, educators, and researchers. Bilingualism and biliteracy are not uncommon, as more than half the world’s population speaks and learns to read more than one language. Growing globalization in commerce and immigration have motivated countries across the globe to adopt policies promoting bilingual education. Bilingual education reflects any curriculum that strategically uses two or more languages in instruction. These programs reflect one of two primary goals: supporting language-minority students in the acquisition of language, literacy skills, and academic content in the dominant language of the community; or enabling students to develop language, literacy, and academic skills in an additional language. Although most programs serving language-minority students are subtractive in nature, using the home language to serve language and academic achievement in the majority language, dual-language immersion programs are growing in popularity. Dual-language immersion programs and immersion programs serving language-majority students reflect additive approaches to bilingual education, and their students have been found to perform as well as or better than their monolingual peers. Becoming biliterate requires students to develop skill in engaging with and making sense of texts in two languages that vary both orally and in their writing systems. Developing word-level and text-level skills in two languages involves a common set of cognitive processes that may transfer across languages. Instructional practices promoting language, literacy, and academic achievement in both languages include high-quality literacy instruction, translanguaging within classrooms, content-based instruction, and fostering responsive classroom climates that value linguistically diverse students and their home cultures.

Å føle seg angrepet intellektuelt Språkkartlegging av minoritetsspråklige elever i videregående opplæring

Denne artikkelen omhandler språkkartlegging av nyankomne minoritetsspråklige elever i videregående opplæring i Norge. Den tar utgangspunkt i elevenes negative reaksjoner på at norskkompetansen deres skulle kartlegges andreåret på videregående, og undersøker hvordan egenskaper ved selve kartleggingsverktøyet som brukes, og sider ved kartleggingspraksisen ved skolen, kan belyse elevenes opplevelse. Studien som ligger til grunn har et etnografisk design med deltakende observasjon, uformelle samtaler og mer formaliserte intervju som konkrete metoder. Det teoretiske rammeverket er kritisk sosiolingvistisk testteori og -forskning (Shohamy, 2013), og distinksjonen mellom riktighet (eng. «fairness») og rettferdighet (eng. «justice») i kartlegging står særlig sentralt i analysen (McNamara & Ryan, 2011). Analysen viser at elevene reagerer både på konsekvensene og intensjonene med kartlegginga, og opplever den som devaluerende og annengjørende. Videre finner vi at kartlegginga kjennetegnes av mangel på både riktighet og rettferdighet: Det er vesentlige svakheter ved verktøyet når det brukes med denne elevgruppa, og det er vesentlige svakheter ved skolens fortolkning og bruk av kartlegginga. Vi fortolker disse funna som uttrykk for mangler på systemnivå når det gjelder opplæringa for minoritetsspråklige elever, og som uttrykk for selvfølgeliggjorte forståelser av språk og språkopplæring i det norske utdanningssystemet. Diskusjonen fokuserer på hvordan språklige ideologier som enspråklighetsideologi, nativespeakerism (Ortega, 2019) og grafosentrisme (Blommaert, 2004) virker sammen – og på uheldige måter – i denne opplæringskonteksten. Nøkkelord: språkkartlegging, nyankomne elever, språklige ideologier, enspråklighetsideologi, nativespeakerism, grafosentrisme. To feel intellectually attacked. Language Assessment for Newly Arrived Students in Upper Secondary School. AbstractThis article explores language assessment for newly arrived adolescent students in upper secondary school in Norway. Its starting point is the students’ negative reactions to having their Norwegian skills assessed in the beginning of their second year in upper secondary school, and it highlights aspects of the assessment tool itself and of the school’s assessment practice to illuminate the students’ reactions. The study has an ethnographic design with participant observation, informal conversations and more formalized interviews as concrete methods. Theoretically, it draws on critical sociolinguistic test theory and research (Shohamy, 2013). Following McNamara and Ryan (2011), the distinction between «fairness» and «justice» in language assessment is particularly central in the analysis. The analysis shows that the students react negatively both to the consequences and the intentions of the assessment, experiencing it as both devaluating and othering. Furthermore, we find that the assessment is characterized by lack of both fairness and justice: the assessment tool has severe weaknesses when used with newly arrived language minority students, and the interpretation and use of the assessment results are not in the best interest of the students. We interpret these findings as an expression of systemic shortcomings in the education for language minority students, and as an expression of naturalized perceptions of language competence and second language teaching and learning in the Norwegian education system. The discussion highlights how powerful language ideologies like the monolingual bias, nativespeakerism (Ortega, 2019) and graphocentrism (Blommaert, 2004) work together – and in detrimental ways – in this educational context. Keywords: language assessment, newly arrived students, language ideology, monolingual bias, nativespeakerism, graphocentrism.