Adult Language Education in a Multilingual Situation: The Post-Soviet Immigrants in Israel
Adult Education in Israel, Vol. 8, pp. 40-65, 2005
26 Pages Posted: 8 Apr 2005
Abstract
The issues related to language education in the trilingual situation are discussed in this study, referring to the experience of the post-Soviet Jewish intelligentsia in Israel.
While most immigrants to Israel since 1989 from the former USSR are of Jewish origin, their mother-tongue is neither Hebrew nor Yiddish, but Russian. In Israel, integration into the labor market requires Soviet immigrants to master both Hebrew and English, this despite the fact that the immigrant population is large enough demographically to support the continuous use of the Russian language.
The prevailing view in Israel held that immigrants could learn a new language better if they stopped using their former language. It was also believed that the use of foreign languages threatened the Hebrew language and the national identity. Most post-Soviet immigrants have rejected such thinking and for the present, continue to retain their native language and culture.
When their learning occurs simultaneously with their entering a new language community, the immigrants become more sensitive to the cultural and social implications of multilingualism. Appropriate ways should be found to bridge the host society's expectations from the newcomers with the immigrants' own orientations towards their language education and re-socialization. Educators and policy makers need to be sensitive to how language policy and implementation in the immigrants' country of origin differ from those in the host society.
Keywords: Language, sociolinguistics, immigrants, Russian, Hebrew
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