An Overview of Bilingual Education

3850 Words8 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Advantages of bilingualism in a classroom

Overview of Bilingual Education

Is a second language a necessity in our world today? Should parents push for their child to learn two languages in elementary school? If we live in multicultural neighborhoods, trade with the global marketplace, and want to use all technology resources available, it is necessary to know two languages. Multilingual people and communities seem to have an edge over monolingual competition. This provides people of all ages an incentive to learn a second language (Genesee, 1998). In this research paper English and Spanish will be the languages referred to for bilingual education, although others are offered. The purpose of this paper is to compare the benefits and pitfalls of language immersion programs to the traditional classroom setting and the outcomes they produce.

Bilingual education originating in Canada

Language immersion programs now offered in the United States originated in Canada; they wanted English-speaking citizens to know French. Canadians realized English-speaking students were not acquiring enough French to attain satisfactory grades in school and to find jobs in French speaking parts of Canada. Around 1975 Canada’s first French immersion programs arose, and by the 1980’s such programs began in the United States (Martineau, 2002). Canadian programs are now facing problems with increased amounts of children with backgrounds other than English, which means they need to develop more specialty programs. Language immersion programs have grown in popularity since developing thirty years ago in Canada, but in the past 25 years they have increased rapidly in the United States. This development is due mainly to the melting pot effect in the United States; people from many dif...

... middle of paper ...

...cial education degrees as well. Their main goal is to find the best and most efficient way to teach children with these problems. The instructions for these students were given in English and reinforced in Spanish until the child totally understood it in English.

31. Zehr, M. (2002). Bilingual Education Critic’s Research Sparking Debate. Education Week, 21(25), pp. 5. Retrieved March 12, 2002 from Internet. http://edweek.com/ew/ew_printstory.cfm?slug=25biling.h21

32. This article is about a political science professor named Christine H. Rossel who strongly apposes bilingual education. She debates that immigrant children should only be in English immersion programs for one year and students should leave bilingual education programs after two years. Apparently right now, this is an ongoing debate, and some states have already voted against bilingual education.

Show More
Related

  • Hunger of Memory

    582 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bilingual education offers a completely different world for students of different ethnic background and thus creates a comfort zone limiting the risk-taking factor necessary for the maturation of a child to an adult. Rodriguez argues supporters of bilingualism fail to realize "while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality" (Rodriguez 26). He explains that the imperative "radical self-reformation" required by education is lost by offering bilingual education and such a program suggests a place where the need for a sense of public identity disappears. A bilingual program gives a student the opportunity to be separated from real life and institutes a life that leaves out an essential understanding of the world. Bilingual students do not know the complexities of their world, including emotion, ethics, and logic, because the bilingual program secludes the eager minds to a much simpler, more naïve idea of how the society works, leaving out the confidence of belonging in public. This situation not only limits the education experience for non-English speaking students, but also hinders the further education of English speaking students by erecting a communicat...

    Read More

  • Bilingualism And Bilingual Values, By Maria De La Luz Reyes

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    The technique relies on a holistic approach that adopts instructions that allow students to actively participate in the learning process. This is easier for children that feel that the society appreciates their diversity through bilingualism and biliteracy. The society and parents need to encourage children to take up bilingual classes because they offer a lot of benefit to the society through favoring critical thinking, rationality, and sensitivity to other cultures, empathy, and detached or balanced awareness. However, Sonia Nieto mirrors a society that is made to fake being American and become ashamed of their family. It helps appreciate that it is not by choice that anyone speaks any other language as the first language and that the society and community influence the language of choice. Therefore, bilingualism cannot be detached from any community that freely promotes and accommodate the language spoken by the other community. Children and community members learn each other’s language without disregarding each other favoring effective learning that influences bilingualism and biliteracy in the long

    Read More

  • Language Barrier: Bilingual Education vs. English Immersion

    1234 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jost, Kenneth. “Bilingual education vs. English immersion.” CQ Researecher. 11 December 2009. 19, 1029-1052. Web. 17 Feb. 2011

    Read More

  • Politics and Policies Influencing America’s Education of Bilingual Students

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Civil Rights era fostered a rejuvenation of the movement toward bilingual education. Amid with the desire of the nation to eliminate discrimination, the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 came into being. Certainly this act was at least in part the result of a growing num...

    Read More

  • Bilingual Education and Latino Civil Rights

    1912 Words  | 4 Pages

    While the population of language minority children in the nation makes up a substantial part of the student population, and continues to grow, their educational civil rights have come under increasing scrutiny and attack over the past decade. All students have the right to be provided access to content area knowledge. Bilingual education, or teaching through the native language, is an important technique for providing that right to English language learners. However, the use of this educational technique has been increasingly criticized and eroded over the past ten years. To look at this broad issue, I will examine the history of civil rights for language minority children, the assumptions behind the attack on bilingual education, and suggest responses to safeguard the rights of language minority students.

    Read More

  • Male Pornography and Gender Roles

    1764 Words  | 4 Pages

    This paper was done by Paul J. Wright from Indiana University, Department of Telecommunications. Wright argues that although social scientific research on the effect of consumption of pornography among males may be highly debated, it might not have focused testing the feminist perspective that pornography aggravates sexual aggression against females. He posits that previous research might have addressed the use of pornography amongst males; however, they overlooked the permissive approach to sexual affairs (Wright, 2013).

    Read More

  • Benefits of Creating Dual Language Programs

    1319 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dual language is a form of education in which students are taught to read and write in two languages. The majority of dual language programs in the United States teach in English and Spanish, although there are emerging programs that teach in Mandarin, Japanese and Hindi. The programs start of mostly in kindergarten sand 1st grade and continue throughout primary education, in addition some dual language programs depending on the grade continue through middle and high school. Even Hayward’s own Burbank elementary and Winton middle school are offering dual language programs. Each level of teaching uses a different language ratio in which class is instructed the classes start off with a 90:10 ration and later as years pass the ration becomes a steady 50:50 (Lindholm-Leary, Kathryn J,2001). The goals of dual language immersion programs are to get children to become both bi-literate and bilingual, in other words, they will be able to speak and write fluently in two different languages. Dual language programs are becoming more and more common most of them are in public school but there are some beginning to become present private and charter schools. Dual language education should be introduced in all elementary schools beginning in the Kindergarten to boost achievement for English language learners, benefits it will bring to the community, outstanding brain benefits and lastly cost efficiency in education across the United States.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Richard Rodriguez 'A Memoir Of A Bilingual Childhood'

    794 Words  | 2 Pages

    Opinion Editorial By Hassan Abdi In the article written by Richard Rodriguez, Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, he conveys an opinion that Bilingual education doesn’t work. He conveys it through his personal experience. Published by the Phi Beta Kappa to the American Society in 1981, the audience and his message are a broad and important now as it was thirty five years ago. As the amount of children that don’t speak English as their first language continue to rise, bilingual education has become a polarizing topic like most things, and for me, I am neutral on the topic. A form of bilingual education has failed me, but, for most students it benefits in the long term, and it 's not right to dispel one side of the topic to push your own

    Read More

  • Pornography: Exploitation or Expression?

    1180 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today, pornography has different targeted audiences based on various categories of pornography. There are pornographies made that are targeted toward women in which are slow and focused more on the people’s language rather than solely genitally focused. Most pornographies, however, are made specifically for men. These videos contain a large focus on the genitals, the men are portrayed as dominant, and the women please the men taking any measures necessary. According to a study, pornography that was intended for men and women aroused the men who were being studied. Women on the other hand, activated negative affects after watching the pornography intended for men and positive after watching the pornography intended for women (Mosher, 1994). In general, men are the main target of pornographies and women as well as feminists believe that pornography should not characterize women as objects. Also when making this study, it was difficult to find pornography that was made by women, majority of the videos are made by men and produced for

    Read More

  • Ethics of Pornography and Its Negative Affect on Women

    531 Words  | 2 Pages

    A real life example of the link between the onset of pornography in American culture and sexual crimes includes a survey done in 1978, in which 44% of the nine hun...

    Read More

  • The Negative Consequences of Pornography

    601 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fagan, Patrick F. “Adolescent.” The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community. North Carolina Magazine.2010.

    Read More

  • A Language Barrier

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    From my experience, bilingual education was a disadvantage during my childhood. At the age of twelve, I was introduced into a bilingual classroom for the first time. The crowded classroom was a combination of seventh and eighth grade Spanish-speaking students, who ranged from the ages of twelve to fifteen. The idea of bilingual education was to help students who weren’t fluent in the English language. The main focus of bilingual education was to teach English and, at the same time, teach a very basic knowledge of the core curriculum subjects: Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. Unfortunately, bilingual education had academic, psychological, and social disadvantages for me.

    Read More

  • The Complicated Relationship Between Pornography and Feminism

    1494 Words  | 3 Pages

    Pornography and feminism have had quite an odd relationship. Feminist writers such as Gloria Steinem have denounced the sex industry while it has continued to expand exponentially. Due to technological advances such as the internet and cell phones, pornography is easier to access then ever before. Some publications even estimate that gross annual sales for pornographic videos would exceed four billion dollars (Rich 2011: 1). With this much money being invested into an industry that operates in a capitalistic society, it would be ignorant to hope that it would cease to exist. The truth is that pornography is not going anywhere. The issue that feminists from many different strains are debating is if porn is detrimental to women. And if so, how truly immoral is it? In this paper there will be an examination of how the two different radical-feminist theories have dealt with pornography while also discussing why the issue of pornography can be seen as such a confusing topic for feminists as a whole.

    Read More

  • The Logic of Care by Annemarie Mol

    1306 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Logic of Care is a philosophic book. The book is written from a patient perspective. Therefore it is easy to understand and easy to read. This review is written for people working in the health care and for the patient’s movement. It is important that people in the health care start thinking about the choices the patients have to make.

    Read More

  • Benefit Of Bilingual Education Essay

    725 Words  | 2 Pages

    America, a country built on immigration dating back to the early 1600s Mayflower voyage, continues to thrive as a melting pot full of various cultures and ethnicities. In the past, many immigrants came to America due to the offered freedoms and equality, yet today, many naturalized citizens suffer with injustices, including with educational practices. The use of bilingual education, which teaches students in both English and their native language, has become a controversial topic. In 1968, the Bilingual Education Act, which recognized and offered education to students who were lacking English, was passed, yet the topic still seems questionable to some. Bilingual education provides a variety of beneficial attributes to help foreigners by improving their lives as native speakers, with education benefits, health benefits, and future opportunities.

    Read More

More about An Overview of Bilingual Education

Open Document