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I can not disagree more with this measure. As a chemistry and physics teacher, many of my ESL students have serious difficulty with the terminology of science. How many hard science terms did anyone learn when taking a foriegn language? Not many I'll wager.
I recently served in the Peace Corps in the Republic of Georgia (pre Russian invasion). Georgia has a non Latin alphabet, 7 verb tenses, and a word order that boggles the mind. Were it not for my language teachers teaching in BOTH Georgian and English, I would not have been able to get around or communicate.
Nothing is more frustrating that not being able to communicate and I always remember when I am teaching today, all the times I just nodded when I really didn't understand what was being said to me in Georgian.
Forcing kids to sink or swim will cause many of them to withdrawl to their native language and give up on English, thus regulating them to second class citizens.

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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