Lesson Plan: During Covid-19 Children Return to Their Mother Tongue
II. While Reading Activities
Word Inference
mother tongue |ˈˌməT͟Hər ˈtəNG| noun the language that a person has grown up speaking from early childhood.
reshuffle verb |rēˈSHəfəl| [with object] put in a new order; rearrange: genetic constituents are constantly reshuffled into individual organisms.
quarantine |ˈkwôrənˌtēn| noun a state, period, or place of isolation in which people or animals that have arrived from elsewhere or been exposed to infectious or contagious disease are placed: many animals die in quarantine.
enthusiasm |inˈTH(y)o͞ozēˌazəmenˈTH(y)o͞ozēˌazəm| noun intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval: her energy and enthusiasm for life | few expressed enthusiasm about the current leaders.
unique |yo͞oˈnēk| adjective being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else: the situation was unique in modern politics | original and unique designs.
coexist |ˌkōəɡˈzist| verb [no object] exist at the same time or in the same place: traditional and modern values coexist in Africa.
multilingual |ˌməltēˈliNGɡwəlˌməltīˈliNGɡwəl| adjective in or using several languages: a multilingual dictionary.
ancestral |anˈsestrəl| adjective [attributive] of, belonging to, inherited from, or denoting an ancestor or ancestors: the family’s ancestral home | the only records of the ancestral forms are their fossils.
hierarchy |ˈhī(ə)ˌrärkē| noun (plural hierarchies) an arrangement or classification of things according to relative importance or inclusiveness: a taxonomic hierarchy of phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species.
reassure |ˌrēəˈSHo͝or| verb [with object] say or do something to remove the doubts and fears of someone: he understood her feelings and tried to reassure her | [with object and clause] : Joachim reassured him that he was needed | (as adjective reassuring) : Gina gave her a reassuring smile.
Source: New Oxford American Dictionary
Grammar Focus: Word -Recognition
The parents in these families spoke more than 40 different mother tongues, including French, Spanish, Hindi,Urdu, Kirundi and Zulu.Before the lockdown, the children tended to use the dominant languages: English in Britain and Ireland, and Norwegian in Norway (plus English, thanks to television, computer games and other media).
Identify The Speakers
- Ludovica Serratrice, Ph.D., a professor specializing in multilingualism at the University of Reading in Britain. “They’re put into this little hothouse of less English, more other languages.”
- Elisabet García González, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo who led the Norwegian survey.
- “When you think about living in a different country and raising your child in your native language, some people think, ‘Oh, it’s the most natural thing and it’s easy,’ because it’s your native language. And that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
- Dr. Elizabeth Lanza, a professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo, who supervised the Norwegian survey, observed the shift in her own family. “…not all respondents saw their native tongue strengthen. Some even said it was suffering because they were home-schooling the children in Norwegian.”
- Yi Ting Huang, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at the University of Maryland. “Language is a living marker of history and cultural identity,linking immigrant families to their place of origin.”
- Joshua Hartshorne, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College.
- “I don’t know that we’ve had recent historical precedent for a child’s world to be shrunk down to just the immediate family for months at a time.”
- Medadi Ssentanda, Ph.D., is a lecturer in African languages at Makerere University in Uganda, and a specialist in mother tongue education. “More than 42 Indigenous languages are spoken in Uganda, but formal education is delivered in English, a legacy of colonialism…Dr. Ssentanda has observed that the local language — Luganda — in his own neighborhood has gained strength during lockdown.
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