Bilingualism

Bilingualism

A multilingual person, in the broadest definition, is anyone who can communicate in more than one language, be it active (through speaking and writing) or passive (through listening and reading). More specifically, the terms bilingual and trilingual are used to describe comparable situations in which two or three languages are involved, respectively. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingualism)

I chose this theme because I have always found it rather interesting and engaging when a person is fluent in two or more languages. For me it is even more interesting than for someone else, as I am a teacher of the English language. In this essay I am going to focus on bilingualism in adolescents and tolerance among the speakers of different languages.

I might say that I am a natural trilingual because all these three languages (Latvian, Russian and English) came to me more or less naturally. Growing up in a bilingual country, where the Latvian and the Russian languages were used simultaneously it was no problem for me to acquire both languages in the same level. In the end of the 80’s I was already an adolescent keen on new information and ideas. The only problem was that everything was in the English language – music, literature, magazines, articles, TV programs etc. So I had no other choice but to acquire that language. Step by step I started understanding the language and thus became trilingual.

Now let us look at the present situation in Latvia. The official language of the country is the Latvian language and the Russian language is not forced onto the pupils anymore. Thus it is only their choice and motivation that could influence their willingness to learn a second language. I have to mention one more important factor: as the Russian language is not the official language individuals are not surrounded by it anymore, consequently natural acquisition of the language is restricted if not completely lost. Nowadays a lot of parents are in favor of the English language and so their children in schools take up the above mentioned language. One could argue that now they could become bilinguals (the Latvian language and the English language) but they do not notice several problems. Yes, we live in the age of information and we have access to almost everything in the world, but if they (children) have to choose between the easiest way (in the Latvian language) and the hardest (the English language) self-evidently they will choose the easiest way. One more problem is that we are not surrounded by English speaking people (as some years ago we were surrounded by Russian speaking people) and that not all adolescents are able to go abroad and immerse themselves in different cultures. Moreover, not all families have access to the internet and respectively to the free information in the English language. So, let us draw some conclusions about the present situation in Latvia. The Latvian language is the official language of the country; respectively most of the people (who are not prejudiced towards it) know it or will know it. The Russian language is not the official language anymore; respectively it is learned only by those who use it in their families and those who feel an intrinsic need for it. The English language is the most popular international language, thus also in Latvia, but not all learners of the language will be proficient or fluent because we lack the natural environment of the language and strange to say but a big part of students are not intrinsically motivated to acquire the language.

Nowadays a very important factor in the acquisition of the language is motivation. If students are not intrinsically motivated to learn the language then it is very difficult to get them interested and willing to spend some extra time with a strange and foreign language. They become more or less interested when they come closer to the finishing of school and start realizing that the English language is only one of the necessary prerequisites