Language Education Curriculum, History of

Societal Context of Language Education Curriculum

Education in North America has a long history of focusing on English as the language of instruction and communication in schools. Despite an increasingly diverse population with larger numbers of students speaking non-English languages, English remains the standard language of instruction and communication in North America. The use of other languages was often ignored, commonly discouraged, and sometimes even punished in school contexts as a means of accelerating English language acquisition. These practices reflected commonly held beliefs that adherence to home languages and cultures was detrimental to the development of English language proficiency in immigrant and minority students.

Sink-or-swim approaches to English language instruction for immigrant and minority students, whereby students were expected to complete academic activities alongside native English-speaking classmates without the benefit of instructional support, were commonly accepted during the middle decades of the past century, although gradual and more deliberate instruction to support the nuances of English language acquisition were more widely accepted, and even expected, during later decades. Philosophies of language learning have shifted from a perception that minority students should be expected to participate, and succeed, in existing curriculum developed for mainstream, English-speaking students, to a perception that immigrant and minority students need specialized curriculum to support their acquisition of English and adaptation to North American schooling.

Difficulties of implementing language education curriculum in North America are further exacerbated by a lack of acknowledgment for the value of bilingualism and/or multiculturalism in society. Although European countries have long held general acceptance of the advantages of and possibilities for bilingualism and multilingualism due to their proximity to neighboring countries and the relative ease of travel across national borders, North American societies have held less acceptance toward possibilities for proficiency in multiple languages, opting instead for a focus on English. This trend is especially pronounced in the United States. Canada, while heavily influenced by its historic connection to Britain, has been more open to bilingualism, with its official bilingualism policies, despite the long-standing animosity between some French Canadians in the French-speaking province of Québec and inhabitants of other, English-speaking provinces. Regardless of these tensions, this political context has enabled and supported [Page 528]the development of language immersion as a viable option for second language acquisition to a relatively high level of fluency for students.

Language Education Programs

Earlier language education was heavily influenced by models of instruction based on memorization of grammatical rules and acquisition of semantic, lexical, phonological, and discourse knowledge and less time devoted to the development of sociolin-guistic skills including oral competency or the provision of opportunities to use the target language in authentic situations. More recently, there has been a shift to models of language instruction that include an emphasis on language acquisition for communication in professional and personal situations. With the increasingly diverse population that accompanied increased immigration from non-English speaking countries, a shift in the availability of language programs to reflect this demographic change became necessary.

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