Speak en Inglés: ESL Classrooms and Multilingualism

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By Reanna Phillips

America has no official language; This is an important, yet often ignored fact. America has no official language yet only four states have mandated a secondary language in schools (MPI), for all of them, it is two years or less. Most students in America don’t know a second language, and the greatly ignored addendum to that fact is, unless English was not their first language.

ESL classrooms have been around for many years, but gained major traction in the 1960s, with the influx of Cuban immigrants to Florida (Study.com). The United States saw a surge of immigration of Latin America and Korea following the first World War and following that, ESL classrooms were thus inhabited largely by first-generation and second-generation students. The institutionalization of these classrooms meant that students emerged from schooling often being stripped of their mother tongue in order to fit in with the rest of their peers. These classrooms isolate students from their English-speaking peers until they had successfully assimilated and isolate children from their parents- who might never have access to assimilating in the same way.

Of course, the growing importance of English internationally cannot be ignored, but as opposed to most other English-speaking first-world countries, America falls far behind in regard to multilingualism. We make demands that multi-ethnic communities make sacrifices for their own survival, and that begins the moment students enter school.


Works Cited

Alexander, Jeffrey C. The Civil Sphere. Oxford University Press, 2019. 

Manna Project International. “A Foreign Language Education Investigation of the United States 

and Ecuador.” Manna Project International, Manna Project International, 7 Aug. 2020, 

http://www.mannaproject.org/ecuadorblog/2020/8/7/a-foreign-language-education-investi

gation-of-the-united-states-and-ecuador. 

"History of ESL Education in the U.S." Study.com, 24 October 2018, 

study.com/academy/lesson/history-of-esl-education-in-the-us.html


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