![]() Intolerant responses to bilinguals using their wide language resources instead of just using English, are further indication of monolingual bias. One of the main objections was that he (and other monolingual English speakers) couldn’t understand te reo Māori, so despite it being an official language, it should not be used. This means that we favour using just one language (English), and can be suspicious about and uncomfortable with people using other languages.Īn example of monolingual bias is a recent debate, raised by former Prime Minister Don Brash, about the level of te reo Māori used on State-owned Radio National. So New Zealanders tend towards monolingual bias because most of us are monolingual. The majority of bilinguals in New Zealand (60%) are migrants bringing their home languages into the community, rather than native English speakers learning additional languages. In New Zealand, being monolingual is the norm over 80 percent of New Zealanders speak only one language (English) according to 2013 Census figures. While bilingualism is common in many parts of the world, it is much less common amongst those of us who speak English as our first language. Monolingual bias is particularly common in the English speaking world, the result of the international spread and dominant position of English as a (or perhaps ‘the’) world language. This snippet of data from a Year 5/6 class in a multicultural primary classroom is just one piece of evidence of monolingual bias (that is, a bias in favour of using just one language – English) that may be limiting the development of linguistic diversity in New Zealand schools. So Sonia (Year 5) told Song Min during class when Song Min was talking to a Korean classmate in his home language. “No speaking Korean – I’ll tell the teacher and you’ll be in trouble.” Dr Jae Major, Victoria University of Wellington
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