Prejudice against plurilinguals by monolinguals?

[Bonsoir]

I live in a plurilingual sort of environment and have done for much of my life. Bringing up my DD bilingually, I have become aware of a great deal of prejudice against bilinguals and plurilingualism by monolinguals. Has anyone else encountered this? Do you think it is fueled by fear? Ignorance? Envy?

It's not actually true that a native speaker can walk the A-level and that there has been neither effort nor attainment. Effort and attainment may have taken place in a different way to the one imagined by Edexcel or whoever, but it sure takes place!

Not that this matters much, but FWIW, I don't think universities automatically discriminate. When I applied for the degree I've just finished, it mattered which languages I spoke and how fluently, because they'd be necessary tools for doing the degree. The same might I think be true if you were doing a degree in (say) anthropology or history or linguistics.

But if you're doing a degree in something like maths, arguably what is most valuable isn't the language itself, but the skills you'd learned in order to master a foreign language. A bilingual child will have capacities a monolingual child won't, but they may not be especially useful ones for studying that maths degree.

Cote - 75% of the DC in my DD's school are plurilingual so it took me a long way to get to the bottom of this! I just couldn't imagine it was really going on! I'm not sure it was as widespread in the early years, either. It seems to get worse the higher the DC go up the school - perhaps there is more to be envious of as the bi/tri/quadrilingual DC get ever more solid skills and leave the monolinguals behind?

Mmm. Not sure that's true, bonsoir. DH has A Level Russian and he said it was a piece of piss. But he is fluent and enjoys reading in Russian - he's not just speaking the odd bit to his parents or whatever.

LRD - I agree that there isn't blanket discrimination against MFLs taken by native speakers. But it does exist.

Tu quoi, bonsoir?

Du was?

You what?

.....No prejudice in RL, btw. An extra language will always be an asset.

When I did the IB the native language speakers had to do X mother tongue language exams, and not X for a second (non native) language. That simplifies things I think.

But I do remember almost 20 years ago this being a problem for people I went to school with who did MFL exam as a easy A level and then the British unis didn't take it into account. So it's not a new thing, which you'd thing International type schools would be aware of by now.

Some of the (very able) English pupils I know who do English as their first MFL in the French bac never having done English formally at school make a hash of it. The syllabus, however dodgy, requires some application.

I think they are aware of it, turkey boots, but don't always have a solution.

Really? Do you know why they struggle - is it they can't work out the grammar, or something? I suppose it's possible English schooling is an advantage there (or was, as I think this is changing). If you've not been taught much grammar in your native language formally, you have to learn to work it out, so applying that logic to your other language is pretty simple.

(Not convinced this is what's going on, but it seems a possible explanation.)

No, grammar isn't examined. There is a weird and often opaque form of reading comprehension that often defeats pupils who aren't used to the cryptic format.

All exams require familiarization with what's expected - even supposedly straightforward ones like IELTS benefit from lots of practice of the exam format.

Ah, ok.

I have rarely encountered prejudices the way you described. I have however encountered the 'oh he is struggling because he is bilingual' and then refusing to look at any other issues.

My dc also had a teacher who told me 'well if he is struggling with english, that's your fault. You choose to speak to him in french (aka my mother tongue ). But tbh she was just bonkers.

If I was asking my dcs, dc1 would say that yes there is some discrimination. My best guess from what he says is that the discrimination doesn't happen because of the bilingualism but because of the biculturalism (is that a word??) ie slight different ways of doing things that raised eyebrows with his friends. dc1 would say he has seen that for himself but also with another child in his class who is also bilingual.

I agree that there is a very straightforward form of prejudice that uses bilingualism as a way of avoiding to bother to look for other, harder to identify/analyze, underlying issues. It's easy for schools/SLTs etc to blame parents bilingualism and absolve themselves of responsibility.

And YY with the fact you need to be familiar with the format etc...
Also having parents from 2 different nationalities doesn't mean you are fluent in both languages as I have seen very often.
It's not unusual to have children who are 'bilingual' in French doing just as well if not as well as their english counterparts who have really worked on their French.
Mainly because speaking a language isn't the same as reading and writing.
And it's still not the same to be able to have a conversation with a friend and to be able to write an essay with the adequate level of vocabulary etc...
On that pov, bilingual children will have to work just as much as their counterparts as it is unlikely they will have the opportunity to use the level of vocabulary needed.

Also having parents from 2 different nationalities doesn't mean you are fluent in both languages as I have seen very often.

Absolutely. Being half-German, half-Italian growing up in London and going to an English school does not teach anyone how to read and write in German and Italian.

But why then call yourself a native speaker? not being familiar with uni admissions etc in the U.K would it make any difference if you did French as MFL but without mentioning that you speak it at home? I'm struggling to understand this as I thought lots of children did MFL apart from English at A'Level.

I'm not sure I quite understand your question. You can be a native speaker of two or three languages.

Ah, I'm with you now. I was taking 'a native speaker' to mean 'someone fluent in the language'.

I do accept there are plenty of people who're not fluent in the language they've spoken with family since they were born. It does seem a pity they wouldn't get credit for working on the language - though I suspect it'd be tricky to establish exactly where each child fell on the fluency level.

I will say, though, this isn't unique to native speakers. I know admissions tutors who'd rather not see (say) Latin and Ancient Greek together if you're doing an unrelated degree, since they are quite similar in terms of the study and exams skills you need. No-one is a 'native speaker' there, but still, the university cares more about how well-prepared you'd be for their course, than how many exams you've sat through.

why disclose you are a native speaker of, say, french to the university if you give them your a level results?

My ds has a serious speech disorder, and when we were trying to get him assessed, we did meet paediatricians and even speech therapists who told us of course he is behind, he has to cope with two languages.

Despite having a speech disorder, he is bilingual, and I am very proud of that.

I think it is very unfair and wrong to assume that "native speakers" never had to work to learn their native language(s). We learn to read and write at school and speaking a language at home but attending school in another language does not mean that reading and writing in the home language is somehow "transferred" from the school language with no work.