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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1210

Part of Session 130: Language in Multilingual Cities (Other abstracts in this session)

Public and private language maintenance education programs in Chicago, Illinois

Authors: Potowski, Kimberly
Submitted by: Potowski, Kimberly (University of Illinois at Chicago, United States of America)

Chicago, Illinois is a multiethnic city of nearly 3 million with a rich cultural and linguistic heritage. Of the 410,000 students enrolled in Chicago Public Schools, nearly 170,000 enter school with knowledge of a language other than English. While 86% of these are Spanish speakers – and most people know that Chicago ranked in the U.S. 2010 Census as the fourth largest Latino city in the U.S. – fewer realize that it is home to the second largest Polish-speaking community in the world after Warsaw (Nowicka McLees & Dziwirek 2010), that it has a longstanding Lithuanian community (Tamosiunaite 2012) and that its public schools offer programs in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Urdu, to heritage speaking youth.

This presentation reviews several recent public and private educational initiatives in Chicago that seek to promote linguistic diversity.  These include the Chicago Public Schools’ Bilingual Education and World Language Commission (2010), which is promoting the establishment of dual language and heritage language programs, centralization of world language and international studies programs, and a high school newcomer center, as well as several private Saturday school options for heritage speakers of Chinese, Greek, Lithuanian, and Polish.  It analyzes these programs within discourses related to immigration and as an example of a “reason[…] for optimism”(Wiley 2010:266) regarding potential national policies that embrace societal multilingualism.

References:

Chicago Public Schools.  (2010).  Language education: Preparing Chicago Public Schools students for a global community.  A report of the Bilingual Education and World Language Commission.

Nowicka McLees, B. and Dziwirek, Katarzyna.  (2010).  Polish in the U.S. In Potowski, K. (Ed.), Language diversity in the U.S. Cambridge University Press.

Tamosiunaite, Aurelija.  (2012). The role of Saturday schools in Lithuanian language maintenance in the United States.  Submitted manuscript.

Wiley, Terrence.  (2010).  Language policy in the USA. In Potowski, K. (Ed.), Language diversity in the U.S. Cambridge University Press.