Monolingual Students

Today, more than ever, there is an emphasis on high-quality education and its crucial role in the success of the individual and our society. This means that once they graduate, students are expected to have more than just a working knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic. On top of the material that has traditionally filled textbooks, populated lesson plans and crowded standardized tests, students today must be exposed and prepared to communicate and collaborate with individuals across a variety of languages and cultures. Although English is the current language standard for global communication, more than half of people in the world speak two or more languages and the number continues to rise with an “estimated 85 percent of the world’s population [being] multilingual by 2050” (Center for Language and Brain). Put another way, the steadily increasing interconnectedness of the world and all that comes with it puts “monolingual …show more content…
This results, according to the detractors, in both groups of students falling behind academically. While this assessment might be true for the first couple of years, data suggests that “in the long term, the short-term negative effects are more than overturned by the positive effects on test score growth” (Valentino & Reardon, p. 15). This means, if given enough time to develop their language skills, both NES and ELL students have been found to meet or outperform their mainstream peers by fourth or fifth grade. While it might be difficult to usher in a change in perspective to allow students this space to grow, acknowledging the long-term focus of TWI programs is key to recognizing and benefiting from their