Languages in the Big Apple

There’s been a huge controversy in New York lately over the founding of Khalil Gibran International Academy, an Arabic public charter school.

Initially the brainchild of Principal Debbie Almontaser, KGIA was intended to provide students in grades 6-12 with a multicultural environment for native Arabic speakers as well as children who wanted to learn Arabic. By graduation, students would be fluent in both Arabic and English and have a solid background of Arab culture and history. Critics are calling the plan a city-funded Islamic institution.

On August 10th, the Post reported that out of 44 registered students, only seven were enrolled, six of whom already spoke Arabic. They also reported the multicultural ambtitions of Almontaser had failed, as 75% of the student body identified themselves as “black”. What that means, exactly, is left unclear. Five black people and one quarter-black person?

Critics were all too pleased when Almontaser publicly defended “Intifada NYC” t-shirts, made by a group known as Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, explaining that “‘intifada’ means ’shaking off’ and the shirts represented women ’shaking off’ oppression. She later condemned the T-shirt message’s connection to Palestinian terrorism.”

The t-shirt controversy eventually forced Almontaser to step down as principal; she has been replaced by Danielle Salzberg, an Orthodox Jewish woman with past ties to the Zionist movement.

The school is scheduled to open in Brooklyn in mid-September — we’ll see what happens.

In American universities, most introductory foreign language classes are taught in English, under the assumption that an explicit understanding of the language’s grammar is essential before the language itself can be picked up.

In many other countries, in fact most of Western Europe, the opposite approach is taken: classes are taught entirely in the foreign language, with the hope that as the language itself is absorbed by students, so will its grammar. The argument between teaching grammar explicitly or implicitly is an interesting one.

In this article by ESL teacher Larry M. Lynch, both methods are examined.

In the argument for explicitly-taught grammar, Lynch explains that for “Logical-Mathematical and Verbal-Linguistic intelligence learners,” understanding a foreign language in terms of its structural foundation is the basis for fluency. Once the structure is learned, students can more easily fill in vocabulary and idiomatic gaps because of their comprehension of the linguistic foundation.

On the other hand, implicitly-taught grammar calls for more “natural, communicative situations”. This view aims to teach foreign tongues in the same way that mother tongues are learned — complete immersion. This exposure often proves more effective in sharpening the ear of the student, and making him/her more comfortable in conversing. In this method, the words come first, and the structural rules fall into place later.

So, which method is better? In considering the arguments alone, there’s something to be said for both. But if you look at evidence, the implicit-teaching might well be more successful. Native English speakers can often write very well in foreign languages because we’ve had so much grammar drilled into us from the beginning of our education, but when it comes to speaking, we sort of choke. Likewise, foreigners in America (or any English-speaking country) tend to speak more fluidly and with less apprehension, perhaps because they’ve practiced the oral aspects of English much more than we do foreign languages in our classrooms.

Is it because we learned grammar first? Possibly, however, it could also be the stigma we attach to speaking French in France, or Italian in Italy, or whatever language in wherever — we worry about our accent, our feminine/masculine endings, etc., to the point where conversations become terrifying.

Lynch responds to the question rather equivocally:

“Although it is essential to teach elements of language and develop communicative abilities in our students, there is no one best way to introduce and provide practice in them.”

In the mid-19th century, experts at the helm of the somewhat new field of linguistics formally banned all research pertaining to the origin of language. They considered it pointless.

But recently the topic has come into vogue, due in part to the fact that after linguistics had its heyday in the middle of the twentieth century, the only way to keep going forward in the field was to look back. Also, with the advancements in neuroscience, psychology, and genetics, looking for the origin of language became a more palatable endeavor.

This search is relayed in Christine Kenneally’s new book, The First Word, which provides an overview of the “hardest problem in science today.”

She begins, of course, with Noam Chomsky, who saw the human brain as unique among living things in its ability to create an unlimited number of sentences through an unlimited number of word combinations. From there she brings us to today, a post-Chomsky era of linguistics with many new theories on the relationship between language and the brain, while simultaneously introducing us to the ideas of today’s prominent linguists, such as Simon Kirby, and other forms of evidence being studied by linguists, such as Koko the communicative gorilla.

If you’ve ever been a babysitter, you’ve surely heard of the Baby Einstein series of books, toys, and DVDs. This scam company (owned by Disney) claims to enhance a baby’s mental maturity by exposing her early on to a multitude of high-calibre art, music, and literature. Exposure to the Dead-White-Man Canon can never start too soon — there’s a Van Gogh series, a Mozart series, and, ridiculously, even a Shakespeare series.

And now, A Small World In Saugus, a company based in Santa Clarita, California, is following suit by opening a language school for infants. That’s right, little babies who don’t even speak English yet can get perk up their college application resumes before they learn how to walk by enrolling to learn French, Spanish, Chinese, or Italian.

Tara-Anne Johnson, the owner of A Small World in Saugus, assures cynics that the classes are specially formatted to suit even the youngest students’ (six months old) attention spans (I wasn’t aware that six month-olds had attention spans). The unique curriculum is made up of songs, visual and tactile learning aids, games, and structured group-work — which sounds pretty much like every other foreign language class in American schools — and is taught by native speakers who take a three-day training course for accreditation.

The results? Though no long-term studies have concluded anything that suggests starting a second language before you’ve got a first is beneficial, the school spews off the expected hoopla — “better SAT scores,” “more job opportunities,” “higher scores in math and science,” etc.

So, what to make of it all? Ultimately, the start-early argument probably is valid — it can’t hurt, at least — but what makes this ’school’ so creepy and fraudulent is their transparent marketing: Johnson reminds parents that if their kids “come in at 6 months old and stay for three months, are they going to remember it when they’re 8 years old? Probably not. The longer they’re in it, the more they’ll retain.”

Of course.