Transcription
Hello students. I wanted to clarify the final essay project. So I'm making this video. It's a four-paragraph essay. As I told you, as of March 1st, 2025, English has become the official language by the current administration. And this is an important topic. We used to study this topic with the options of: should English be the official language or not? But now English is the official language.
Now I gave a scenario here. For example, there are immigrant families coming to the United States and they have children. They might have children ages, let's say 10, age 4. Let's say the Fernandez family comes to the United States, and they go to public schools or private schools. There are options: totally ESL, where they are totally immersed in learning English; ESL only; or dual immersion bilingual education. We discussed and learned about the benefits of bilingual education through King and McKay and the book chapter.
Now, here in this essay, you need to make a decision. As we read and as you've summarized and discussed, if English only is the official language, there will not be much funding towards bilingual education. But if English should not be the official language, there would be more funds and services provided to non-native speakers. So you need to make a decision. Should an immigrant family, for example, a Hispanic family, send their children to an ESL-only school, with only ESL students? They will be fully immersed in ESL. Then they will learn English and, of course, they'll learn math, social studies, and other classes. Or should they send their children, if there's a possibility, to bilingual education, dual education—for example, Spanish-English or French-English, whatever their home language is?
So I would like you to use this outline to write a four-paragraph essay. Use this outline; follow this outline to write the essay. It's not complicated. You can write some general comments about immigrants, globalization, moving to a new culture, and what it means to move to a new culture. Mention the education acculturation; this is important not only for children but for young adults and parents as well. Then you need to write a thesis statement. I've started some examples here. You need to state the reasons. You need to decide which side you support. Will you be supporting whether they should go to regular schools with total ESL, or should they attend bilingual education schools? And then you need to give two or three good reasons. I would like you to compose a first body paragraph with two good reasons from "Does English need to be the official language," and some other King, McKay, or some other sources. But these should connect to the main text; I'm sure you understand the connection between this decision and "Does English need to be the official language"—the ideas there. Then, in body paragraph two, there are opposing viewpoints in the Context database. I uploaded some articles from this database; you can go to that database in the library database. "Bilingual education is necessary" is an opposing viewpoints article, so that's supporting bilingual education. There's another article I found: "Bilingual education is a failure." So I would like you to entertain one; choose depending on your decision. You're not going to support two points of view. Remember, you're going to make a decision in the beginning and write your essay based on that decision—whether this school or that school. Then compose your second body paragraph providing ideas from that article. Include some critical thoughts. What is it based on that decision? What would be the benefit for the culture, for the society, for the immigrant society, for the general American society? You need to write a conclusion as suggested here; you have written enough essays so you know how to write a conclusion. So this is what I wanted to tell you about. You can go to Opposing Viewpoints in Context also to find some other articles, but I already found some, and you can use those ideas there. Thank you very much. So this is a short video that I would like you to listen to, watch, and make clear that you understand what it is about. Thank you. Okay, let's see.