美国国家公共电台 NPR Research Shows Spanish Speakers Take Longer To Learn English. Why?

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

A recent study out of Philadelphia tracked young children learning English. Over four years, the researchers saw a big discrepancy¹ among groups of students in how they mastered the language. From member station WHYY in Philadelphia, Avi Wolfman-Arent reports.

AVI WOLFMAN-ARENT, BYLINE²: Here's what the Philadelphia researchers found. Roughly 8 in 10 Chinese students tested as proficient³, but only about 4 in 10 Spanish speakers could say the same.

ILANA UMANSKY: I have never seen any study that has looked at this question and not found this trend.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: Ilana Umansky studies English acquisition⁴ at the University of Oregon, and while she didn't conduct this study, she says what's true in Philly is true all over. Spanish speakers just don't seem to master English as quickly as other groups. But why?

UMANSKY: So we don't have a definitive⁵ answer to this question.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: Researchers do have some theories, though. And to help explain one, let's meet Jose Garcia. Jose left the Dominican Republic when he was 11 years old and moved to New York City.

JOSE GARCIA: There, they speak Spanish. So it wasn't, like, a big challenge for me because, you know, I speak Spanish. I used to hang with my people.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: When Jose went home, he heard Spanish - at school, more Spanish - on television, Spanish.

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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking Spanish).

WOLFMAN-ARENT: It was like he never left his homeland. And his classmates...

GARCIA: They didn't want to learn it as fast because they didn't need to use it. They were speaking Spanish already.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: Jose wanted to learn English, but his first year in America points to one theory researchers have about this language-learning gap. Maybe Spanish speakers are actually hurt by the fact that there are so many of them. Nelson Flores grew up in a heavily Hispanic part of North Philly and could be a poster child for that theory.

NELSON FLORES: But even in a community like that, children learn English.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: Now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, Flores doesn't think Spanish speakers are actually struggling to learn English at all, at least not in the conventional way we think about learning languages.

FLORES: We're not talking about the ability to communicate in English. We're talking about the ability to do grade-level content in English.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: English proficiency⁶ tests measure a lot of things, including whether a student can read or write on grade level. And Flores thinks while a lot of Latino students speak English fine, they struggle to read or write in it, which makes you wonder why.

FLORES: We're really looking at a political and economic problem more than a linguistic⁷ problem, which may sound surprising for me to say that as someone who studies educational linguistics⁸.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: Flores points out a lot of Spanish speakers in Philly and across the country attend segregated⁹ schools in impoverished¹⁰ neighborhoods where we've known for a long time kids tend to struggle.

FLORES: Because of all of these broader challenges that the community confronts¹¹.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: But poverty can't explain everything here. There have been other studies that control for family income and still find Spanish speakers lagging behind. And that brings us to a third theory. UCLA professor Patricia Gandara says you also have to look at the parents of Spanish-speaking kids, especially their education and economic status before arriving in the U.S.

PATRICIA GANDARA: It is vastly, vastly different than that of most Asian students and other language groups.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: Studies show the parents of Asian immigrants are more likely to have a high school or college degree.

GANDARA: So that explains just a great deal of why it is that these children are not able to perform at the same levels as other immigrant kids.

WOLFMAN-ARENT: Does that alone explain the huge language gap in Philly and other cities - maybe. Researchers still don't know for sure. They do know the number of Hispanic students in American schools is ballooning, which means they've got millions of reasons to solve the puzzle. For NPR News, I'm Avi Wolfman-Arent in Philadelphia.

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1 discrepancy   

n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾

参考例句：

• The discrepancy in their ages seemed not to matter.他们之间年龄的差异似乎没有多大关系。
• There was a discrepancy in the two reports of the accident.关于那次事故的两则报道有不一致之处。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 proficient   

adj.熟练的，精通的；n.能手，专家

参考例句：

• She is proficient at swimming.她精通游泳。
• I think I'm quite proficient in both written and spoken English.我认为我在英语读写方面相当熟练。

4 acquisition   

n.取得，学到，养成（习惯），获得的东西

参考例句：

• The children progressed in the acquisition of basic skills.孩子们在掌握基本技术方面取得了进步。
• He devotes his time to the acquisition of knowledge.他把时间都花在求知上。

5 definitive   

adj.确切的，权威性的；最后的，决定性的

参考例句：

• This book is the definitive guide to world cuisine.这本书是世界美食的权威指南。
• No one has come up with a definitive answer as to why this should be so.至于为什么该这样，还没有人给出明确的答复。

6 proficiency   

n.精通，熟练，精练

参考例句：

• He plied his trade and gained proficiency in it.他勤习手艺，技术渐渐达到了十分娴熟的地步。
• How do you think of your proficiency in written and spoken English?你认为你的书面英语和口语熟练程度如何？

7 linguistic   

adj.语言的，语言学的

参考例句：

• She is pursuing her linguistic researches.她在从事语言学的研究。
• The ability to write is a supreme test of linguistic competence.写作能力是对语言能力的最高形式的测试。

8 linguistics   

n.语言学

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。

9 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

10 impoverished   

adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化

参考例句：

• the impoverished areas of the city 这个城市的贫民区
• They were impoverished by a prolonged spell of unemployment. 他们因长期失业而一贫如洗。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 confronts   

面对( confront的第三人称单数 )； 使面对； 使对质； 处理

参考例句：

• My house confronts his. 我的家与他的家对门。
• Extraction of humic substances from sediments is often the first task that confronts the investigator. 从沉积物中萃取腐植物是研究工作者遇到的第一个问题。