Bilingual Education And Bilingualism

More young americans nowadays are being raised in homes speaking non-English, but these students are falling behind in schools where there is not a bilingual program available. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in schools without a bilingual education program, 71% of English speakers are at or above the basic requirements for fourth grade reading while merely 30% of non-English speakers reach this level. 35% of English and 8% of non-English speakers reach proficient reading levels while only 9% of English and 1% of non-English speakers perform at advanced levels. It’s evident that the availability of a bilingual program is crucial to the success of an individual who needs the resources that can be given to them through the use of bilingual education. The percentages of the non-English speaking students previously mentioned could undoubtedly be comparable to those percentages of the English speaking students if the education they were being provided with was cohesive to their comfortability, and the material being taught was in a language they could better understand.

As our nation shifts towards a more culturally diverse population both educators and families have to find a common ground to ensure that English Language Learners are academically successful. All stakeholders must carefully consider the social cultural impact on an ELL education. The process of raising bilingual learners take more than a language a school and a language learned at home. The transition must have a purpose and a goal.

It is important in the United States to have a competitive workforce, and a great way to do that is to have a society of learners that can communicate with people of other cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Although there are efforts for teaching school children other languages, most programs are primitive at best, left to be forgotten before the skills reach the point of relevancy. Dual language programs should be established in the US wherever feasible to give parents, at the very least, the choice to expand the minds of their children. Recent years have seen the inclusion of voluntary language immersion programs in places such as Athens, Georgia, in which students are taught from Kindergarten in two languages. These are steps in the right

In my opinion bilingualism plays a major role in the educational development of children. This is because research has shown that children who are fluent in their home language are more successful in learning a second language. Furthermore, being bilingual offers greater sensitivity to language, more flexibility in thinking and better ear for listening. It also improves a child’s understanding for the native language. Moreover, knowledge of other languages increases a career of opportunities offering several job options.

Bilingualism has shown to strengthen cognitive ability. Bilingualism maintain cultures and self-esteem and build strong communities of families that can effectively contribute back to society. Unfortunately, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 states that it was established to “help ensure that English language learners and immigrant students attain English proficiency and achieve academically” which has a tendency to be interpreted as programs that look more like English Immersion or assimilation which is something that has been proven not to be academically successful. The goal of our current educational policies toward education do not utilize such terms or seem to support cultural maintenance or

While some may think that this is not certain studies have proven otherwise. In The Power of a Bilingual Brain, Jeffery Kluger states that, “Research is increasingly showing that the brains of people who know two or more languages….. Multilingual people, studies show, are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas.”(1) Clearly, a bilingual education places students a step ahead not only in their education careers but, as well as in their daily life’s outside school. Jeffery Kluger discusses how a bilingual brain is not necessarily smarter brain, but is a more flexible and practical brain. Evidently, demonstrating to us one of the many benefits of a bilingual

Before outlining the arguments for and against bilingual education, it is first necessary to provide an overview of the controversy over bilingual education, and its emergence as a national debate. This controversy is basically centered on the question: Should the United States government incorporate the teaching of different languages into the public school system or not? Although it is currently permissible to learn secondary languages such as Spanish, French, German and Latin in public middle schools and high schools in the U.S., such classes have traditionally been geared toward broadening the educational experience for native English-speaking students. Therefore, rather than providing assistance to students whose native languages are not English, classes in American public schools are taught in English, despite the fact that increasing numbers of students in some areas of the U.S. do not speak English as their first language. In 1998, for example, (the most recent year for which statistics were available), statistics indicated that there were some

“Cognitive functions can be defined as cerebral activities that lead to knowledge, encompass reasoning, memory, attention, and language that leads directly to the attainment of information and, thus, knowledge” (What are cognitive functions). Many students at Doulos are unaware of the benefits of knowing two languages. Ironically students also don’t know that their own brain and its skills are improving because of their second language. Doulos teaches classes throughout the whole day in both English and Spanish. Students are regularly changing between languages and their brain is always active with both languages. “This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions” (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). People who are bilingual are capable of switching between tasks more efficiently. “For example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape, they do so more rapidly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when changing strategies on the fly” (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). Students’ cognitive and sensory process skills are more developed due to being bilingual (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). These improvements allow students to better process and understand information in different environments, thus leading to better

Over the years, bilingual education has involved teaching children academics in two different languages so they may become competent learners and be successful at acquiring English. Before 1968, bilingual education was not a required course in American schools, but instead as a voluntary program. This changed in 1981 when a lawsuit was brought against the state of Texas that resulted in the requirement of bilingual education programs in elementary schools as English as a second language (ESL) program, bilingual programs in post-elementary grades through eighth grade, and ESL programs in high school. This type of education has been a hot topic for the state governments of the United States, debating whether to keep in the curriculum of schools. Many asking themselves, why should we to provide bilingual education for these students? What will students gain from this type of education? Studies have shown there are benefits that range from cognitive ability, educational advancement, to employment opportunities with a bilingual education, while the critics label it as a “failed experiment” that costed a whole lot of money and years to maintain a basic foundation in the second language. Although the cost is hefty for this exploration of a new language and is time consuming, the cognitive abilities, educational advancement, and employment opportunities greatly outweigh these opposing factors.

In the history of the United States, we have always embraced the remarkable mix of cultures and languages that come to us from all over the world. One area in which this remains true is education. Bilingual education finds its roots as early as the 17th century, when the first English settlement of Virginia was established, and Polish settlers arrived (Goldenberg, Wagner). “From its colonial beginnings, bilingual education in the United States has existed in one form or another to the present day, with a brief interruption during and right after World War I in the wake of virulent anti-German sentiment and a more general nativist opposition to the use of non-English languages” (Goldenberg, Wagner). The persistence of this method of learning is quite telling as to its effects; if they were not beneficial, the method would no

The continued growth of speakers of languages other than English is reflected in the rapidly increasing students in U.S. schools for whom English is a second language. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (2005) show that the number of school-age children who spoke a language other than English reached almost 10 million in 2004. Such a dramatic increase continually challenges educators to provide effective language programs with quality instruction for students who are culturally and linguistically diverse. Some educators choose to view these challenges as opportunities by offering a dual bilingual program as an educational option for meeting the needs of monolingual speakers.

It is true that in the last 150 years alone, bilingual education has come a long way and has been changed presumably for the better. Though, despite all of the good that has come from this evolution of education, there is still much more to be done. Bilingual education has quite a bit of improvement to be made in order to better benefit ELL students and help guide them through acculturation, rather than force them to assimilate to American society and bear the weight of racism and discriminatory

For language development, there is a popular debate on whether there is an advantage to being a bilingual individual. There is a large amount of evidence that supports both sides of the argument. In terms of bilingual advantage, various studies focus on how bilingual or multilingual individuals outperform individuals on executive control tasks that are either linguistic of non-linguistic in nature. The advantages stem from greater foundations of executive function, such as cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, in bilinguals than in non-bilinguals. Young and older bilingual individuals show a cognitive advantage because they outperform non-bilingual individuals during executive function tasks for enhanced attentional control, conflict

In this literature review I will be discussing studies that are in favor, not in favor, and neutral on bilingual education.

Researchers are continuously investigating methods of advancing human development. Many studies have explored the world of bilingualism and found a few surprising results. The skill of knowing two or more languages has been linked to a variety of cognitive benefits. Knowing more than one language has been proven to impact more than just the linguistic system of cognitive development. This essay will review the positive effects bilinguals experience through early and middle childhood along with adulthood. In addition, with a few of my personal believes and experiences.