The Advantages of Bilingual Education

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.

Bilingual education has been a debatable subject since its conception during the case of Lau vs. Nichols, in the early 1970’s. However, in that case, the court only ruling was that the children’s

Around 1959, bilingual education took flight in the United States. Starting in Miami and quickly making its way San Francisco, bilingual education soon led to the Bilingual Education Act, which promoted “No Child Left Behind”. Only twenty years later, the act acquired the attention of high schools around the country. Nonetheless, bilingual education is not always taken to be the cure-all for acclimating immigrants to the United States. In his article “Aria: A Memoir of Bilingual Childhood”, Richard Rodriguez argues that students should not take part in bilingual education by explaining how it takes away individuality and a sense of family through the use of ethos, diction, and imagery; Rodriguez also uses parallelism and ethos to point out how a bilingual childhood can help students feel connected to society.

Many people still debate the benefits of bilingual education. Even if the program were supported, there would be no way to insure that it has successfully achieved its goal. “The problem with this method (bilingual education) is that there is no objective way to measure whether a child has learned enough English to be placed in class where academic instruction is entirely in English. As a result, some children have been kept in native language classes for six years” (Hayakawa 577). Not only is there no way to measure if a student is ready to be out of the program, those students who were stuck in the program for several years infers the feeling of being out-casted. Children complain of systematically being segregated from their English-speaking peers being put in to the bilingual

Around 1959, bilingual education took flight in the United States. Starting in Miami and quickly making its way San Francisco, bilingual education soon led to the Bilingual Education Act which promoted “No Child Left Behind”. Only twenty years later, the act acquired the attention of high schools around the country. Nonetheless, bilingual education is not always taken to be the cure-all for acclimating immigrants to the United States. In his article “Aria: A Memoir of Bilingual Childhood”, Richard Rodriguez argues that students should not take part in bilingual education by explaining how it takes away individuality and a sense of family through use of ethos, diction, and imagery; Rodriguez also uses

Speaking two or more languages is like a country having an atomic bomb during a war. The first situation is advantageous to a person and the second situation is advantageous to a country. “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” is a memoir of Richard Rodriguez’s bilingual childhood and it was originally published in Hunger of Memory in 1981. In Rodriguez’s memoir, he discusses why he disagrees with bilingual education. His audience is bilingual or anyone that has an opinion towards bilingual education. The purpose in Rodriguez’s memoir is to inform people of the effects of bilingual education and persuade bilingual educators why bilingual education shouldn’t exist.

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

Bilingualism is a subject that has triggered trillion of debates worldwide. There are those who argue that no specific period of time that is designated to learn a certain language. They stress that anybody can learn a new language at whatever age. Others do argue that using bilinguals is prepositioning the child on a wrong footing on how to learn the first language and the second language. Whether this people have a point or not is the major point of writing this paper.

Bilinguals are often praised by employers for their multi-language skills. With the push for children and adults to become bilingual there is an increase of teaching all around the world. While many are raised bilingual there are still some places that lack in the teachings. The advocators for bilingualism show that the teaching is truly worth it because of all of the benefits in becoming bilingual. While it is clear that there are benefits in regards to communication skills those are not the only benefit that can come from a bilingual education. When using the word bilingualism, people primarily think of language, whether it be basic vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension, or communication in general. Not only does bilingualism help for communication, and understanding, but it also helps exercise the brain and improve mental skills. Bilingual learners experience many mental benefits over their lifetimes which are not present in their monolingual counterparts. These benefits range from executive control functions, task dominance, and the offset of Alzheimer’s. However, like everything there are a few down sides to a being bilingual while they rarely affect young learners. Nonetheless, bilingualism can help improve brain capacity and skill just by learning another language. The skills gained in bilingualism are pertinent for everyday life and can help improve achievement in daily life, relative to monolinguals.

For years now, English as a Second Language has been a question of debate whether or not it should part of a public school’s curriculum. The weaknesses and advantages in ESL have been exposed, its weaknesses revealed. The advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism can be seen throughout “Aria,” a memoir that originally came from Hunger of Memory written in 1981 by the Mexican-American author, Richard Rodriguez. He provides a solid argument against bilingual education, dedicated to those who support bilingual education and those who are against it. The purpose of Rodriguez’s memoir is to inform the readers of the adverse effects bilingual education has on an individual.

Bilingual education is an academic approach followed by some instructors, which is using the native language for new English learners for instructions. Within the international context, bilingual education has become a necessity due to the high number of immigration, colonialism and the great number of local languages (Yushau & Bokhari, 2005). This approach in instruction has reflected back positively or negatively in many dimensions such as social, psychological, and pedagogical. However, bilingual instruction is an effective way of teaching English as a second language, in case of well implementation it can be seen as an educational advantage. This literature covers a wide variety of opinions that revolve around a topic that researchers find it controversial, this review will highlight the major

Dual Language education is increasing throughout the United States giving students at a young age an advantage over their monolingual peers. Different research studies resulted in a major success by proving that "bilingual children outperform monolinguals in a wide array of cognitive and language-based tasks" (Wallstrum 16). Dual language immersion is defined as fifty percent of the non-English is used for the instructional part of the day, and the other fifty percent is spoken in English. The purpose of these immersion schools is to promote fluency in the foreign language while also performing at their grade level in that language.

Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert published a monograph titled “The Relation of Bilingualism to Intelligence” in 1962. They directed research in Montreal with 10-year-old children where they analyzed the performances of monolinguals to bilingual speakers of French and English on standardized tests of intelligence. Before this study was conducted, bilingualism was thought of negatively because there was concern around bilingual children and the disadvantages of learning two languages at once. Some disadvantages included lower intelligence, a “language handicap”, poor linguistic capabilities, more grammatical errors, reduced vocabulary, among numerous other factors researchers believed to be true. Peal and Lambert’s discoveries were the first research study that contradicted the negative opinions noted previously in research and underlined the positive effects of bilingualism in relation to cognitive development. Studies after Peal and Lambert’s continued to show that bilingualism has more positive, beneficial outcomes rather than focus on the negative ones. These positive outcomes include better cognitive control abilities, improved executive functioning, and protection against cognitive decline. Therefore, knowing two languages is greater than knowing just one.

Underlining the importance of the bilingual education in United States there are many different types of educational programs that exist for emergent bilinguals. The historical concept of these programs shows the shift from a focus on the home language and toward English-only instruction.

All throughout its history, bilingual education has been a controversial topic. Bilingual education is the act of teaching topics in school in a student’s native language and reinforcing those concepts in English or vice versa, thus helping to improve both languages. This idea with nothing commensurate to it was borne to give those who did not have the resources to succeed another option has elicited vehement objections from many. In spite of the fact that points for both sides of the argument can be made, and have been heavily debated, many have reached the overall consensus that bilingual education has shown to improve one’s second language- which is backed by countless studies. Although many may tumultuously argue that there are not enough resources to provide everyone with this opportunity, with more government funding, bilingual education can benefit many, even those outside the intended audience. When it comes to bilingual education - as seen when applied on a