Subject: english only

i found the remarks of johanna rubba in a recent issue ( 6 . 967 ) to be very worthwhile and to the point . i would like to add a couple of points . in the vast majority of immigrants to the united states , the typical pattern of language acquisition is : the first generation may or may not learn english ; the second generation learns english natively and the parents ' language to varying degrees of proficiency ; the third generation learns only english - - and this is without any legislative intervention . there are strong pedagogical and psycholinguistic reasons for bilingual education programs for school-age immigrants and unassimilated children of immigrants . it is far easier to ` ` learn to read ' ' ( in the general sense , not in the sense of learning to read a particular language ) in one 's native language , and then learn to read the second language , than it is to learn to read ( in the second language ) and to learn the second language at the same time . - stuart luppescu | university of chicago | a foreign language is ` ` a weapon in sl70 @ cicero . spc . uchicago . edu | in the struggle for life . ' ' : mj8 $ hcrf ` h ~ $ nic | - - karl marx
