Sunday 12 December 2010

Bilingual Education

Bilingual education is one of teaching types nowadays. According to Wikipedia, bilingual education involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in accordance with the program model. In my opinion, there are several types of bilingual education, three of which are crucial. These are transactional bilingual education, dual language programs and two way or dual language immersion.

The first type is the transitional bilingual education. This type involves education in a child's native language, typically for no more than three years, to ensure that students do not fall behind in content areas like math, science, and social studies while they are learning English. The goal is to help students transition to mainstream, English-only classrooms as quickly as possible, and the linguistic goal of such programs is English acquisition only. These programs are designed to help native and non-native English speakers become bilingual and biliterate.

The second type is two way or the dual language immersion bilingual. This type of education is designed to help native and non-native English speakers become bilingual and biliterate. Ideally in such programs in a U.S. context, half of the students will be native speakers of English and half of the students will be native speakers of a minority language such as Spanish. Dual Language programs are less common in US schools, although research indicates they are extremely effective in helping students learn English well and aiding the long-term performance of English learners in school. Native English speakers benefit by learning a second language.

The last type is the dual language program. In this program, student has to study in two different ways. These are variety of academic subjects and native language literacy. A variety of academic subjects are taught in the students' second language, with specially trained bilingual teachers who can understand students when they ask questions in their native language, but always answer in the second language. Then, native language literacy classes improve students' writing and higher-order language skills in their first language. Research has shown that many of the skills learned in the native language can be transferred easily to the second language later. In this type of program, the native language classes do not teach academic subjects. The second-language classes are content-based, rather than grammar-based, so students learn all of their academic subjects in the second language.

Based on my explanation above, we can conclude that three important types of bilingual education are transitional bilingual education, two way or dual language immersion, and dual language. For students and teachers, it is better if they are able to choose the best type of bilingual education to apply in their class. If they do not find the best type for their bilingual education, automatically they can not have enjoy bilingual education in class, so they must work together and help each other. That’s why choose the best type of bilingual education will help students to make them understand the subject that related to bilingual education itself. 

Written by
Diska Fatima Virgiyanti
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