Bilingualism In Education

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In National Education Blueprint, one of the key attributes needed by every student to be globally competitive is bilingual proficiency. Bilingualism simply means some functions in two languages, and on the other hand, it means a high level of proficiency in the two languages (Modares, 2004). Generally, the person who is able to speak two languages, like Bahasa Malaysia and English, or Chinese and Japanese, is called bilingual. Student may become bilingual either by learning a second language after acquiring the first language or by acquiring two languages at the same time. However, bilingualism is one of the critical issues in the field of studying of language which is dealt with by the most linguists. Bilingualism is a reality that is occurred …show more content…

Student’s motivation, as defined by Gardner (1982), is composed of three elements; effort (the time spent studying and the drive of the learner), desire (the yearning to become proficient in the language) and affect (the emotional reactions of the learning towards studying). Thus, it can be related to the teacher’s roles and strategy in teaching second language. It is essential for the learners to learn and teachers are responsible to facilitate learning besides awaken curiosity and inspire creativity in learners (Wright, 1982). In other words, learning strategies play very vital roles on learners’ understanding information and if the teachers not being aware of learning strategies and how to apply them correctly, this may lead to the learner’s failure in acquiring the second language and automatically, the learner’s motivation to learn will be diminished. To be taken into consideration, every task in the language learning environment needs special learning strategy, and when the appropriate strategy can be deployed, learning will happen effectively (Rahimi, Riazi and Saif, 2008). For example, teacher must know on how to approach or correct the problematic learners in order to capture or maintain their attention and motivation to correct their mistakes without degrading their motivation to learn better and humiliating them in front of the others. This is called as a strategic knowledge which refers to the information about what strategies are likely to be effective in achieving the learning goal (Flavell, 1979). In other words, strategic knowledge is general knowledge about the nature and utility of strategies which includes the information about the strategies as such, why they are useful and specific knowledge about when and how to use them (Wenden,

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