Free Essay Example: Macro and Microlinguistics in Saudi Arabia

Bilingualism is the situation where people in a particular community or a section of the society understand and use more than one language. In many cases, bilingualism occurs when a certain nation uses more than one language for communication in various practices. In this case, bilingual education involves the practice of teaching the students or conducting lessons in both native as the primary language and foreign language as the second language ("Bilingual Education - What Is the Definition? | Renaissance"). Many studies that have been carried out reveal that when students are thought in their native language, it becomes easy for them to transfer the skills to the foreign language later. The aim of this bilingualism programs at school is mainly to help a student in their transition to the English-only or the mainstream classes in an easy and more convenient way. Mostly the goal of such bilingual programs is to achieve English acquisition and proficiency. The native language or primary language is used in such cases as an instrument of developing students' skills and help them acquire more knowledge in academic. This study, therefore, will evaluate the Saudi Arabian context which is very critical in understanding the impact of bilingualism in primary schools. We will, therefore, start by understanding the macro and micro aspects of bilingualism in a society in order to understand its impact. When we talk about the macro assessment, we focus on the society bilinguals or national bilingualism while micro assessments bilingualism focuses on the utilization of different languages at school as a form of communication and infractions.

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The main native and foreign languages in Saudi Arabia

The main native language in Saudi Arabia is Arabic. More than 90%of Saudi Arabia population use Arabic in their day to day activities. It is the official language recognized by the government of Saudi Arabia Kingdom. The second most widely spoken native language in Saudi Arabia is Najdi, it is spoken by approximately 50% of the population in Saudi Arabia mainly from the central region of the country (Landed, and Landed). Hijaz is the third most spoken language with a population of approximately 37% mainly from the west region of the country speaks this language. The others like Gulf from the coastal region, Egyptian, Sudanese, and many other Mainor languages of Saudi Arabia are spoken in low quantities. The most popular foreign language in Saudi Arabia in English, although there are also some French and German languages that are thought in small quantities. English is used in Saudi Arabia mostly for business purposes.

Introduction of English language at primary school in Saudi Arabia

English was first introduced in Saudi Arabia education in 1927 in secondary school but it was without a specific syllabus. In 1953, a syllabus was introduced that recognized English as one of the languages to be studied in Saudi Arabia (Al-Subahi, 1989). Over the years the need of using English in Saudi Arabia increased. Many students needed to travel overseas to go and extend their studies and this prompted the authorities to introduce the English language to the intermediate level of education in order to the proficiency of this language. This was due to the fact that learning a language at an earlier age is easier than learning at an older age (Alkhuzay, 2018). This was emphasized by Chiswick & Miller, (2007 who said that proficiency of spoken English decreases as someone gets old. Latter English was introduced to primary school as one of the languages used to study most of the subjects. Even though it is important to introduce English at an early stage, studies reveal that students can easily acquire knowledge and skills when using their native languages in primary schools and that is why students are introduced in a sequence of grades, until; when they are ready to transition to English-only classes. Another main aspect that affects the introduction of English at an early stage in the religious believes, where many people in Saudi Arabia believe that the introduction of English at an early stage will affect the culture and the behavior of most children at an early stage.

The linguistic education policy in Saudi Arabia

Education policy in Saudi Arabia was structured in such a way that it can meet the objective and the goals of the nation. According to the (Ministry of Education, 1970) policy, the main objective of introducing English in Saudi Arabia was to make people believe in Allah and the teachings of prophet Mohamad (PBUH), to help learners achieve Islamic visualization of humans, life, and the universe so that every individual can conduct their personal task without interruption from maybe the external sources, to teach the Muslim how to depend on their creativity, guide their moral life, and depend on their faith to be productive. This ministry of education policy had many other goals but all of these goals aim at aligning the students to the Islamic faith to strengthen their religion. The policy was improved in (Ministry of Education, Policy of English, 2002) where one of the main objective of Education in the kingdom was to provide students of all levels of education with the proficiency in English so that they can easily acquire knowledge and skills in fields of arts, science, and new inventions and also transfer the same knowledge and science to other communities, in their effort of spreading the Islamic faith and give services to the humanity. Another policy (MoE, General Director of Curriculum, 2002) was introduced to prepare the children of KSA to use English which had been widely used in the world exhibiting the Muslims' role on human activities and civilization by gaining knowledge in science and arts which are written in this language. And this was therefore supposed to be done in a way that it would not promote other moral that will their religious beliefs and their customs. There were also many other policies that were introduced in order to increase the use of English language in all level of education in Saudi Arabia.

The impact of introducing English at primary schools in Saudi Arabia

The main focus of this study was to investigate the impact of bilingualism at the primary school level and we chose Arabic as the native language and English as the foreign language. Saudi Arabia through their ministry of education introduce English as their second language in 2005, but there were some people who were opposed to this idea arguing that introducing English at such an early stage will have direct implications in Saudi Arabia culture and tradition (Al-Ahmari, 1992; Al-Naser, 1991; AlShammary, 1989). There are also those who opposed this language for religious reasons arguing that other languages that are not Arabic represent other religions as Arabic is the language of Quran (Al-Shammary, 1989). However, the idea behind this argument is the impact of the foreign languages on the acquisition process of the first language. Studies reveal that most of those who are opposed to the introduction of a foreign language have a worry that it may affect the proficiency of their native language and that it can prevent them from properly developing it (Al-Thaferi, 1999; AlShammary, 1989). These scholars claim that foreign language should not be introduced to learners at an early stage until they are Adults and are fully proficient in the native language to avoid such effects. Most of them believe that the priority at the early stage of learning should be their native language to prevent disturbance from the second language.

Description and Justification of the Bilingual Program

Many practitioners and language educationalist have described language learning context in a society as either additive or subtractive bilingual dichotomy. Additive bilingual can be defined as the language enrichment where the students can add another language as their skills and thus providing great and profitable experience in their learning. These experience include; economic development, cognitive, education, and socialization on the other hand subtractive bilingualism is the instance where students are forced to abandon their native language and adopt a foreign or a certain national language. Normally there are challenges that come with subtractive bilingualism which include; psychological disorder, scholastic underachievement, and second language underachievement. (Yousif et al. 2014, p.311) has explained that these consequences are brought about by a negative relationship between language and thought. In some cases, students are forced to learn a foreign language quickly and forcing them to abandon their native language hence this makes them lose their critical linguistic makeup which is the basis of their early conceptual development. Therefore this program features the importance of early bilingualism in primary schools and it will tend to support the additive bilingualism.

This dual language program is a very beneficial to Saudi Arabia education and the society as the students will have the opportunity to understand more than one language which them more capability of acquiring more knowledge and skills in science, mathematics, and arts. It also boosts the communication skills of most students as they will understand not only how to communicate in Arabic but also in other foreign languages such as English. Introducing foreign language at an early stage of life gives students a positive attitude on this language. This has been proven in many studies where it has revealed that students can easily understand, comprehend and have high proficiency in a certain language(foreign) at an early stage of life than when he/she grows old (Al-Wassia, Hamed, Al-Wassia, Alafari, & Jamjoom (2015, s10. When a foreign language is introduced to a primary school student he/she easily develop a high self-esteem than when this language in introduced later in secondary education. An advantage of this program is that it does not replace the native language and the students always get the opportunity of using both languages at school. This, therefore, will result in high-level attainment in the second language; it prevents psychosocial disorder and many other disorders that may be caused by the stress that is brought about by the use of English-only classes. This bilingual program is very important as it improves student-student interaction, student-teacher interaction and as well between the students and the language monitories who mostly are foreigners from other nationalities studying in Saudi Arabia. This program is an important instructional material that can meet the objective of any learning scenario and this is very beneficial to Saudi Arabia community which has in the recent past accommodated many English speakers.

This language does not replace the native language and therefore the minority students in most schools are not affected by the attitude and the perception of their peers and the teachers. However, these students are positively influenced by the majority peers status awareness. The implementation of this program will help the majority students and the minority students to work together but in a unique and more independent way on different tasks at school and at the same time having same objectives thereby influencing positive attitude on different tasks. This will, therefore, earn the education system what we call cooperative learning that is very essential them in bilingual programs. Studies have shown that having cooperative learning at schools have produced significantly produced more positive results when especially they are based on the given operating principles (Payne & Almansour, 2014, p.339).