"College is where many first-generation students first encounter Norman English as a daily lived language. Wealthier children absorb Norman English at the dinner table; first-gen students arrive with less of it. AI can generate Norman prose on demand, but it can't provide the embodied immersion that elite colleges sell. Spanish dual immersion from preschool through high school could give all children early Norman exposure."
"When I was in ninth grade, my mom decided she wanted me to be fully literate in Spanish, and so I spent a year with my aunt and her family in Saltillo, Mexico. The dollars that my mom had made stretch to send me to parochial school in Oakland, California, stretched even further in Saltillo. There I was placed alongside expat children of the local GM plant managers and the local elite. It was full immersion in Spanish for one year."
"When I got back to high school in the U.S., there were so many words that I knew naturally-words like penultimate or remunerative. I sailed through high school. In my second year of college, I went to São Paulo for two years, fully immersed in Portuguese. This jiggled my Spanish and my English, stretching sounds and combinations in new directions. Words traveled across all three languages, and many of those words helped me when I got to graduate school."
"The data bore it out. Steele and colleagues' evaluation of Portland's dual-language immersion lottery found that everyone benefited, with a larger benefit for those in Spanish programs. College is the first place many people get fully immer"
Many first-generation students encounter Norman English as a daily lived language in college. Wealthier children often absorb Norman English earlier through family routines such as dinner-table conversation, while first-generation students arrive with less exposure. AI can generate Norman prose on demand, but it cannot supply the embodied immersion that elite colleges market. Early, structured exposure could reduce these gaps. Spanish dual immersion from preschool through high school could give all children early Norman exposure, supporting literacy development before college. Dual-language immersion programs show measurable benefits, including larger gains for students in Spanish programs, based on lottery evaluation data from Portland.
#norman-english #first-generation-students #language-immersion #dual-language-education #ai-and-education
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]