Literature Review On Bilingual Education

By saying Bilingual Education Cummins (2008) means the usage of two or more languages in the classroom for instruction. This means that languages are used to teach and learn. The aim of the study is to describe the interdependent character of the languages used in bilingual classrooms and to make the picture clearer on how teachers and students use this practice (bilingual pedagogy) in classroom.

According to Lier (2008) ecological approach supposes the development of a new language with the development of the already existing one. Greese and Martin (2003, 2008) consider classrooms as ecological Microsystems which define the choice and the policy of the languages used. By studying the language ecology we discover diversity in a particular

Cummins (2005) states that instruction should be done only using target language, and translation between the two languages should not be allowed. On the one hand, many researchers like Zentella (1981), Shin (2005), Setati, Adler, Reed and Bapoo (2002) state the negative effects of the usage of two languages in the classroom. While on the other hand, researchers like Lin (2005), Martin (2005) and Arthur & Martin (2006) bring different arguments to state the useful character of bilingual classrooms such as better learning process, safe practice for the students, participation, etc.

Different researchers give different explanations to the term “bilingualism”. Baker (2003), for instance, describes it with diglossia stating that each language has different social functions. Greese and Blackledge (2008) use “separate bilingualism” to show only the usage of the target language in the classroom. Garcia (2007) uses the term “translanguaging” to describe codeswitching but without stating its diglosic function

In the first extract, the head teacher uses both languages to speak to the diverse audience, to convey the message about school openings and closings. In the second extract from another Gujarati class in another school bilingualism is viewed as an instructional strategy intended to clarify the pedagogic task, where teacher gives students a pair work and students are clarifying the task with teacher before getting down to work. In the third extract, the use of both languages is the interactional pattern between the teacher using English, while the student insisting on Gujarati. In the fourth extract, bilingualism, observed and interviewed from the Mandarin school in the Chinese case study where the teacher does storytelling, is intended for engaging students, clarifying the conveyed message that is not achievable through the L2 and for questioning and challenging the story. The fifth extract comes from the same Chinese school, where the aim of bilingualism is to make a bilingual label quest, where translation method performs a strategy of accomplishing one task before passing to another one. In the sixth and the last extract, the use of both languages comes from the Cantonese complementary school that presents another bilingual label quest, which is student-initiated, focusing on key