Multilingualism and the English-Plus Policy in Education

Abstract

Language plays a significant role in making education universally available, hence the language policy in education is becoming more important than ever. This paper is to examine the multilingualism and the language policies in America, including the debates of English as the official language (or the English-Only policy) and the multilingual policy in education. America has its root on multilingual or polyglot heritage, so multilingualism is now an inseparable part of America. In the context of multilingualism, the monolingual policy like English as the official language is neither plausible nor retainable. As the majority of the population is multilingual, language policy should be centered on the multilingual speakers as the norm, not on the monolingual speakers. In this paper, we suggest that instead of the monolingual English-Only policy, the bilingualism encompassing the term ‘multilingualism’ is the best route which we can follow as a language policy in education. More specifically, we propose the English-Plus policy aiming at bilingual fluency in both English and those other languages that are constitutive of the multilingualism.