BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN MULTICULTURALISM AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The needs of the 21st century demand a citizenry that is culturally sensitive and internationally focused, with an orientation toward the future rather than the past. Every child is born with a language acquisition device having innate properties that plays a role in acquiring knowledge of language. As Whorfian hypothesis goes, it is the conceptual categorization of the world that is determined by the structure of the language. According to C. Andrade, the Cultural Anthropologist, ‘the cultures have consensual domains having cognitive schemas that are inter-subjectively shared by social groups.’(as quoted in Manjali, 1998). These are throughout and forever reconstituted by cultural blending and children learning a second or a foreign language have to deal with the absence of similar cognitive domains. The article reviews research on the level for learning a language, the assets of multiculturalism and second language acquisition, the problems that arise from lack of recognition for other languages and cultures, the ways to change current language education, and the integration of international language policies.