Volume 6 Number 2
January 1967

Yvonne J. Weaver

EACH YEAR an increasing number of students are graduated from grammar and high schools in the Southwest using language patterns which are a detriment to them in an English speaking world. A formidable crop of youngsters is emerging who normally speak in sentences such as, "My fodder she has many horse," "I see the a ret birt," and "I want some pencil." These children are graduated from school systems which spend a great deal of money and time in consideration and purchase of language materials. They are graduated from school systems which are concerned with the language development of their students. And they are graduated from school systems which employ normally proficient, dedicated teachers. Yet these same school systems are producing children who speak with practically none of the proficiency which could be expected of them. Why?

When we examine some of the programs in use by the schools, indications of the causes behind this sort of language development are found. Most reservation children do not enter school as native English speakers, and they must approach learning English as the learning of a foreign language. One of the chief goals of language teaching is to enable the learner to produce the sound system of the target language with native or near native faithfulness. If we deviate too far from this goal the communication function of language is thwarted. When the sounds of a language are omitted or distorted beyond a certain tolerance it is impossible to understand what is being said.

What then of the English as a Second Language Programs which receive a good deal of emphasis in most of these school systems? While most of these programs are basically sound, it is worthwhile to remember that many commercial TESL programs are constructed with a Spanish-English bias, and that they approach language study with this bias. Generally included in the materials of the schools' curriculum are TESL texts, which are conceived in the linguistic method. The authors of these texts advocate the mastery of the sound system of a target language through: (1) Facilitating the auditory discrimination of phonemes of the target language which are foreign to the native language of the learner in either position or formation, and (2) Practicing these sounds in context until the learner can reproduce them adequately.

A typical exercise designed to facilitate the auditory discrimination and production of difficult English sounds is the following. Children are asked to listen to the [æ] sound that they hear in "Adams" among a list of words that the teacher will read to them. As the teacher says the words "Anderson," "morning," "live," "Albert," "years," "afternoon," "old," "Jackson," "name," "Adams," and "you," the children are to write down the words which contain the [æ] sound (see Note 2). The [æ] is one of the sounds which is difficult for many non-native English speaking children to hear and produce, but for which non-native English speaking children? This sound appears to be particularly difficult for Spanish speaking children. The [æ] presents little difficulty for Navajo speaking children.

This exercise demonstrates but one aspect of the Spanish-English bias of most nationally used "English as a Second Language" programs. Because of this bias the programs approach the English sound system by emphasizing sounds which are difficult for Spanish speakers. Navajo children could spend their time more effectively mastering sounds which present difficulties to Navajo speakers.

The problems incurred while trying to teach Navajo children the English sound system through the media of materials designed with a Spanish-English bias are magnified when we try to teach Navajo children English structure through the use of these same materials. Whereas the first goal of language learning is the mastery of the sound system of the target language, the second goal is mastery of the basic sentence structure of that language. Here again Navajo speakers encounter certain difficulties. Some of these difficulties are shared with other non-native speaking groups, and some of these difficulties are peculiar to the Navajo.

A partial list of difficulties which the Navajo are likely to encounter is the following:

We have said that most of the English as a second language programs in national use are constructed with a Spanish-English bias. A sample comparison of the causes of difficulties encountered by Navajo speakers with causes of difficulties encountered by Spanish speakers learning English is enlightening. The following sentences compare the way the three languages convey number, gender, and article. An "X" is marked over each meaning indicator as it appears in each of the three languages.

In the English sentence indication of number appears in the adjective, noun and verb. The Spanish sentence indicates number by all of the devices employed in the English sentence, and in the article as well. A direct translation of the English word order is acceptable to native Spanish speakers. The Navajo sentence indicates number only in the adjective and verb. The noun is not used as a device to convey number. Word order of the Navajo sentence differs significantly from that of either English or Spanish.

In the English sentence indication of gender appears in the noun and pronoun, and could at times be implied by the adjective. Spanish indicates gender not only in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, but in articles as well. Spanish also assigns gender to inanimate objects, a custom which English normally does not employ. "La pelota" indicates gender of the ball. When the word order of the Spanish and English sentences are compared here, only the placement of the indirect object is different. In the Navajo sentence, gender is indicated only in the noun, and the Navajo word order could not be transferred readily to the English sentence.

In the English sentence the articles are used to indicate following nouns. The articles also indicate that the noun has or has not been previously identified. In the Spanish sentence, the articles indicate not only that a noun follows and that it has or has not been previously identified, but the articles also indicate both the number and gender of the following noun. The English word order of the sentence would be acceptable to the native Spanish speaker. In the Navajo sentence there are no words which are comparable to the articles and their uses as they are employed in both the English and the Spanish language.

Spanish indicates gender of inanimate objects. The Navajo student would not be able to employ the word order of his native language in the English sentence without achieving a very stilted, foreign effect.

An initial examination of the comparison drawn between these three languages, English, Spanish and Navajo, shows clearly that many of the difficulties encountered by the Navajo student present little or no difficulty to the Spanish student attempting to learn English. When presented to the Spanish student, they are simplifications rather than complications of his native system. In aspects such as employment of meaning devices and word order, Spanish and English are quite similar. Since English and Spanish are both members of the Indo-European family of languages, this similarity is to be expected and is not surprising. Navajo, an Athabascan language, can be expected to differ from English in great extremes, and it does.

What are some indications of this comparison? First, it is clear that a language program designed to teach students whose native language is relatively close to the target language would differ significantly from a program designed to teach students whose native language differs from the target language to the extremes. This is true even though the underlying linguistic principles of both language programs are identical.

Second, it is evident that neither the English nor the Navajo languages can be reordered to eliminate or modify these differences, and that since English is the target language, language teaching must be approached through the aspect of English structure. While the sound system or structure of English cannot be changed so that it is more compatible with the sound system and structure of Navajo, as is the case with English and Spanish, a program can be developed which offers compensation for these differences. Areas wherein the Navajo and English systems differ greatly must be programmed with care; they should be extended and given greater emphasis in the language program.

The factors mentioned above are by no means all inclusive in regard to the retarded language development of many Indian students, but they do merit careful consideration by those people who are concerned with the education and language development of these pupils.

1. Bryngelson, Bryng and Galaspy, Esther, Improving Articulation, Scott-Foresman & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1962, p. 20.

2. Rojas, Pauline M., American English Series, Books 1 & 2, D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1955, pp. 5-6.

Bryngelson, Bryng and Galaspy, Esther, Improving Articulation, Scott-Foresman & Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1962.

Fries, Charles C., Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1945.

Mitchell, George, Dine Bizaad, unpublished work, Navajo Demonstration School, Lukachukai, Arizona, 1966.

Rojas, Pauline M., American English Series, Books 1 & 2, D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1955.