Abstract
Bilingualism is the ability to use two or more different languages. Bilingual education is the use of two different languages in classroom instruction. In this education; two or more languages are presented to the students. Different programs and models are used in this education. These programs are often classified as transitional, developmental, or two-way bilingual education, depending on the program’s methods and goals. However, bilingual education faces many challenges while its historical process and so many different strategies are developed instead of classical methods for learners. These are different ways to increase achievement levels of students and develop their relationship with their languages. This research aims to shows that; there are many strategies to develop learning when context and individual differences are used as base in the bilingual education.
Learning Strategies in Bilingual Education
Bilingualism is the ability to use two or more different languages. Languages are learned most promptly during the preschool years. Therefore, children growing up in bilingual homes. Throughout much of the world, bilingualism is not only a term related to children but also for adults. Because without parents contribution, it is cannot mention about a bilingual child. Before this awareness many parents miss the growing bilingual child oppurtunity. “ In the past, immigrants in the United States used English in their homes as soon as possible. In the
The structure of bilingual education programs differs depending on the school, but generally, they are either transitional or maintenance. Maintenance programs provide instruction in both languages to preserve a heritage language by giving proficiency in both languages to the students. Transitional programs eventually transition from both languages to English-only instruction. If one were to enter an English+Spanish program, one would have classes in both English and Spanish, with roughly equal distribution of both. If it were a transition program, the proportion of English would increase until it was English only.
Growing up Mexican-American in the United States can be a challenge itself. Throw in the task, of learning two languages, it made for a very confused little girl. There was often times growing up when I wondered why no one, but my family spoke Spanish. Why everyone at school and all my friends spoke this different language. Sometimes it even seemed like I was two different people.
By referencing “the legal duties to educate…children,” the author establishes a sense of responsibility into the reader to help these kids, further promoting bilingual education (Carsen). This message calls out to everyone to make a difference in kids’ lives, and acting otherwise questions one’s morality. The author also includes a message of Baltazar speaking about her dream of graduating high school. This heartwarming bit of the article persuades readers to advocate for bilingual education. Further reading about other children’s struggle in academics due to language barriers underlines the need for that program.
The definition of bilingualism is fluency in or use of two languages. Martín Espada is the author of the essay “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School” which is about the act of Spanish being a forbidden language in a school full of multicultural children. In the essay, his main argument is the idea that the language of Spanish, or Bilingualism as a whole is interpreted as a burden for a young immigrant. Another author named Richard Rodriguez wrote about his struggle to juggle between his 2 languages, his public language (English) and his private
Language forms a part of culture and identity. Bilingualism is the right to speak multiple languages. Part of bilingualism is keeping and developing a passion for language. In the essay “The New Bathroom Policy at English High School,” Martín Espada suggests the definition of bilingualism and the importance of keeping it. Espada understands the difficulty of continuing to speak Spanish.
In the essay, "Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood", Richard Rodriguez explains his opinion on bilingual education based on his own childhood experience. He provides reasons why it would be retrogressive to permit the non-English speaking children use their family language as the language in school. In defending his positions, he provides three ideas to support his position: • The use of family language impedes child’s social growth. Insistence on using Spanish language at home made Rodriguez and his older sister and brother to be socially disadvantaged at school.
If students begin their bilingual education as early as kindergarten, they are more likely to successfully acquire a second language. Children are like sponges and soak up information easily. Research conducted by Dr. Patricia Kuhl at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington shows that by 8-12 months, if babies are exposed to a second language, they retain the ability to distinguish those foreign sounds. Moreover, through the age of 7 or 8, children are able to learn to speak a second language with fluent grammar and without an accent.
The outcomes of the research will be intended to increase understanding about bilingualism and used as an aid to parents to choose suitable school for the children and to students to decide which university to go to study. The research includes several different methods. This enable the data and information accumulated by one technique to be checked and affirmed by an alternate.
A person who speaks more than one language is described as being bilingual. According to the United States Department of Education, “about 21% of school-age children speak a language other than English at home,” (Lowry, 2011). As Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier describe in, “Two Languages are Better Than One,” children who come into school having a first language besides English, tend to struggle. Usually when a child struggles with a particular subject, they are taken out of the main classroom and brought somewhere for a remedial class. But according to Thomas and Collier, in order to help narrow the gap in comprehension, English learners and English speakers need to be kept together in order to be fully enriched in a successful learning
Increasing development of bilingual education and the evolution of language may be due to the population size, social, political, economical and personal requirements. Numerous researches show that learning a language can improve mental agility, it can strengthen brain, develop communicative abilities of invidividuals and strengthen and improve overall humans´ abilities and skills. The concept of bilingualism should be tackled because of the various definitions that are given to this term. Those definitions seem to share one basic element, which is the use of two given languages by a given speaker. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages or the frequent use (as by a community) of two languages.
The ability to develop foreign language become reduces. Besides the age factor Experience and school environment as well as the teaching. They play an important role in the development of language skills. So the bilingual is necessary: using
Being bilingual has got many advantages. It has been debated that bilingualism has multiple advantages such as cognitive, cultural, academic benefits as well. Cognitive benefit reveals that being bilingual help to facilitate human brain. People who are bilingual have two language systems which are working simultaneously. These systems don’t create hindrance in individual’s performance and ensure brain’s functioning of both cognitive aspects (Bialystok, 1999).
Being bilingual in the era of globalization opens up many doors to the world as well as opportunities to a brighter career and future. The myths and misunderstandings of bilingualism has to be corrected and in order for them to come to an end, since they were proven by scientific researchers that they were nothing more than just myths from the past. Parents, educators along with researchers play an important role in spreading the facts about bilingualism to avoid future confusion especially to many new bilingual families. Aside from that, motivation from parents is the main key for a bilingual child to learn and excel in both languages to achieve a balance in order to be successful in the future. It is also important for the parents to guide and monitor a child’s learning development.
The notion of bilingualism is frequently connected to the idea of code-switching since a person should have ability to speak using two or more than one variety. Researchers have made countless studies describing bilingualism as they create awareness in different ways. To begin with is Bloomfield (1933) who defined bilingualism as having the “native- like control of two languages”. However, Haugen (1953) pinpointed that bilingualism is the ability of a speaker to communicate and understand an additional variety. This is to mean that the concept of bilingualism exist only when an individual of a certain variety has the capability to communicate effectively in an additional variety.