Emergent Bilinguals: At-Risk of What? 3 Strategies to Support Emergent Bilinguals
Art: “New Money” by Jeena Ann Kidambi
Emergent Bilinguals: At-Risk of What? 3 Strategies to Support Emergent Bilinguals
Students who speak another language at home and come into our school systems ready to develop proficiency in English – emergent bilinguals – are often labeled at risk. But what are they at risk for?
Are they at risk of making more money as adults since bilingual individuals tend to earn more than monolingual individuals? According to R.L.G. (2014), bilingual adults, on average, earn nearly $75,000 more over their lifetimes than monolingual English speakers. A recent Forbes article states that multilingual individuals earn 19% more than monolingual individuals and are more likely to receive raises. As more and more businesses need multilingual individuals, language skills make bilingual individuals more competitive in the job market, as well as provide more opportunities for employment abroad (Bower, 2023).
Are bilingual individuals at risk of having more resilient brains than monolingual individuals? According to researchers, bilingual adults show symptoms of Alzheimer’s up to 5 years after monolingual adults in spite of similar brain destruction. Bilingual adults also tend to recover faster from stroke and show less signs of aphasia after traumatic brain injuries. Bilingual individuals also show greater executive function.
Are bilingual individuals at risk of being able to talk to more people than monolingual individuals? The 8 billion people in this world speak more than 7,000 languages. The more languages any one of us speaks, the more people we can engage with… the more cultures we can experience… and the more countries we can freely explore and learn from.
So what are our emergent bilinguals at risk for? Emergent bilinguals are at risk of us not providing the education that they need. In order to ensure that our emergent bilinguals receive the education they need, here are three key features of education that emergent bilinguals (and any student learning an additional language) should experience:
- Access to Grade-Level Content. Every student, regardless of language proficiency, should have access to grade-level content in every language in which they are taught. This does not mean to throw grade-level work at students without scaffolds, but it does mean that students need to be exposed to grade-level work with the appropriate supports.
- Scaffolds and Supports. Every student should be provided entry points to access grade level content. Text engineering, visuals, sentence stems, slower speech, and total physical response are just some of the strategies that can be used to support students regardless of the program or language that they are learning.
- Oracy. Every student learning language should be given the opportunity to build oral language skills. In fact, for students learning language, oracy precedes literacy. Students should practice language using sentence stems, talk about experiences, and explain content. Oracy should be factored in before, during, and after reading.
By incorporating best practices for emergent bilinguals, we can ensure that they have the skills to have success in college, career, and life.
Author: Aradhana Mudambi
Dr. Aradhana Mudambi is the founder and Chief Advocate for Students at Language and Equity Education Solutions LLC, a consulting firm that supports schools and school districts to build and improve their multilingual programming, especially their Dual Language Education programs. Through Language and Equity, she provides professional development, consulting, and coaching. For the past few years, Dr. Mudambi has run her popular blog, Social Justice and Education. She has taught several courses such as Intercultural Communications, TESOL Methods, and Assessments for Bilingual Students at Eastern Connecticut State University. Furthermore, she serves as the Director of Multilingual Education at Framingham Public Schools in Massachusetts where she oversees Dual Language programs in Spanish and Portuguese. Additionally, she worked as the Director of Bilingual Education at Windham Public Schools, not only overseeing and restructuring Windham’s Two-Way Dual Language program, Compañeros, but also founding and building Dos Ríos, New England’s first One-Way Dual Language program. Dr. Mudambi has served as a building leader, a Dual Language teacher, an ESOL teacher, and a Spanish teacher. She has worked in India, Mexico, France, England, and The United States. You can reach Dr. Mudambi at arm977@mail.harvard.edu.