Literature Review - Research Paper Example

Bilingual Education Literature review Introduction Bilingual education is an English-language School system that teaches in both English and their native language. The process will entail teaching the academic content in two languages. Garcia & Baker (2007) pointed out that the bilingual education aims at teaching English, fostering higher academic attainment, acculturating the immigrants in to the education system. The other aims include preservation of the minority groups’ cultural and linguistic heritage and enabling the English speakers to learn new languages such as Spanish and French. There are two models of bilingual education that include the English immersion and transitional bilingual education. Baker (2011) asserted that the English immersion model avoids the dominant language of the learner while the transitional bilingual model focuses on English as a target language through integrating the limited level of support and instructions to the native language. Walker (1956) asserts that developmental bilingual model approach ensures teachers work with students at their current levels of native languages while at the same time providing the instructions in English so that students can finally attain fluency in English language. According to 2004 statistics, American public schools had 11 million immigrant children and about 5.5 million either did not speak English or had limited English proficiency (Baker, 2011). According to 2007 statistics by Education Weekly, more than 30 percent of English language learners in big states such as New York, Texas and California demonstrated slow progress in learning and this accounted for the high achievement gap (Garcia & Baker, 2007). Bilingual education in the US focuses on the English language learners and it starts with enabling the students develop the native language literacy first and then transferring the skills to learning English (Baker, 2011). Some experts argue that monolingual and bilingual language acquisition is similar since children growing up in an environment where both languages are spoken will acquire the two languages simultaneously (Garcia & Baker, 2007). At the early stage of development, the children may mix words in a single sentence, but will begin to gradually distinguish words. Accordingly, sequential Bilingualism occurs when children utilize knowledge and experiences in their first language to acquire the second language. Bilingualism exhibits numerous advantages such as general reasoning, divergent thinking, concept formation, verbal and linguistic abilities and metalinguistic skills. Bilingual education in the United States Bilingual education in the US has been reformulated and contested with various social, political and economic contexts that have shaped the response by the education policy makers to language diversity in the education system (Clair, 1991, p243). Bilingual education has existed in the US for more than 200 years, but the passage of Title VII amendment to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary education Act (ESEA) Act in 1968 institutionalized federal grants that support bilingual education programs (Crawford, 1989). Accordingly, the US Supreme Court ruled that San Francisco school system was in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by providing English-language instruction for the Chinese-speaking students. All schools started providing bilingual education and Bilingual Education Act thus provided that schools should support the English language learners (Crawford, 1989). The bilingual Education act terminated in 2001 after the enactment of the No Child Left Behind and thus schools are required to take more accountability and students should be tested in English yearly and students are required to take more than one language which is either Spanish or French. President George W Bush signed in to law the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 that aims at supporting bilingual education through imposing penalties for schools that fail to raise the attainments of English language learners (ELLs) (Crawford, 1989). The supporters of bilingual education outline that an increasingly interconnected global world will require communities to communicate with each other and thus American education system should embrace bilingual education (Crawford, 1989). Non-English speaking students are capable of improving the skills in English and will not feel ashamed will using the native languages. In a nutshell, bilingual instructions improve brain activity in problem solving and unprepared native language students may experience stunted cognitive growth. In this case, previous research has suggested that Latinos and African-American students are less likely to complete their high school due to their inability to comprehend English-only instructions (Crawford, 1989). The fundamental difference between the transitional and developmental approaches to language programming for the limited English proficiency (LEP) students is the timing. Bilingual instructions assume that delaying the transition to English is much less costly than delaying the acquisition of other core skills (Baker, 2011). In this case, it is essential to introduce essential topics such as science and mathematics at the most appropriate time even if the instructions are done using the student’s first language. On the other side, English as Second Language (ESL) assumes the opposite thus the benefits of learning English as early as possible outweigh the costs of delaying other core curricula. The curricular skills and language deficits differ with time and thus early training is considered better than later training. The research outlines those students whose transition to English is delayed in order to learn Mathematics and writing in their native languages will inevitably experiences major difficulties while learning English (Planas & Setati, 2009). The question of bilingual students writing has received attention in classrooms since it has been perceived as the best way of allowing the students to communicate own ideas and develop writing skills in the natural approach. According to this approach, the belief is that progressive educators desire to assist students to develop critical thinking skills, become independent learners and exploit their full potential (Morton & Harper, 2007, p 722). Reyes outlines that bilingual problems exist among second language writers since language instruction is conducted in English only thus preventing the students with inadequate English language proficiency from capitalizing on their native-language skills and prior experiences. The students experience problems in sentence structure, punctuation, syntax and capitalization since some of the aspects of English language differ from other Languages such as Spanish. For instance, Spanish requires inverted question mark after interrogative sentences while English language requires only one exclamatory mark at the end of the sentence. In addition, the English language requires capitalization for names of days, proper adjectives and months unlike the Spanish language that does not require such capitalization (Baker, 2011). The process approach thus concludes that written product is less important as students with limited English proficiency do not learn the mechanics of the language thus average teacher who is ill-equipped to evaluate the work of non-native English speaking students can conclude that it is awkward and filled with errors. In this case, the process approach of writing and assessments makes unfair conclusions since one may reach erroneous conclusion on the intellectual potential of the non-native English learners (Reyes, 1991). Reyes investigated the unique problems of second language writers and found that process approach to writing in English exacerbates their deficiencies in surface features such as the punctuation and capitalization (Baker, 2011). The researcher investigated the writing of Spanish/English bilingual students in Southwestern school district by providing the students with pre-and post writing tests about a ‘picture’. The research found that students make mistakes on syntax, capitalization and punctuation and thus assessing the literacy skills of diverse students is complex. In this case, Reyes concluded that teachers should be fair in their assessments and thus bilingual consultants were more placed to examine the samples fairly and objectively. Collins (1998) investigated the career education for bilingual students on attitudinal effects and found out that cultural dimension must be considered in academic instruction. The research findings articulated that education and career education goals should be culture-specific to individual students and field sensitivity (Baker, 2011). Bilingual children often outperform monolingual children in cognitive control functions thus have a bilingual advantage when exercising cognitive and attention flexibility. However, the children from higher social and economic background demonstrate faster and less-error-prone performance compared with children from low social and economic backgrounds. The research points out those parents play a critical role in directing their children’s visuospatial processing, memory and cognitive functioning (Morton & Harper, 2007). The recent research on bilingual studies emphasized on the need to focus on identity development as teachers should understand the learner’s identity development from the bilingual programs, foreign and second language classrooms (Hannun, 1978). The students have differing cultural identities and thus students learn the other cultural norms through socialization. Social interactions with parents, peers and teachers facilitate the bilingual learning process and thus social connection with teachers is a major determinant of the bilingual learning success (Fieldings & Harbon, 2013). The opponents of bilingual education assert that many parents are not committed to maintaining the native non-English language when their children can gain meaningful education using English-language skills. Accordingly, English language is much needed in obtaining jobs and pursuing higher education opportunities (Baker, 2011). The opponents further argue that bilingual education is costly in comparison to classes that based on the dominant language only. Another argument advanced by the opponents is that bilingual education allows the minority language students to resists assimilation and learning of the dominant English language and thus it hinders a cohesive society since the minorities are unwilling to give up their language and culture (Baker, 2011). The programs that are designed by the federal government to assist the immigrants to assimilate in to the American culture isolate the immigrants and limit their learning efforts. Some critics argue that the standardized tests that are currently used to assess as disabled are inadequate since they fail to reflect the minority children’s linguistic and cognitive abilities and not their cultural experiences (Baker, 2011). Zavala & Mims (1983) criticized the traditional approaches of assessment since of intelligence since they place the minorities in an environment perceived to be equal to their learning ability (p 480). The special education placement for minorities limits the educational and vocational opportunities of minorities provides them with lower expectations. Zavala and Mims (1983) conducted study tests for early language development to determine the language development for children aged between 8 to 12 years such as word ordering, grammatic comprehension, sentence combining and characteristics and reported performance differences (Zavala & Mims, 1983. Education policy makers do not expect the majority of the students to be predominantly English speaking since Hispanics represent the largest growing population in the United States (Baker, 2011). Linguistic diversity in the US is essential due to the high number of immigrants and Bilingualism will curb the high dropout rates among the minority groups. The goals of bilingual education should include cognitive development, affective development, linguistic growth and cultural enrichment (Blanco, 1977). According to Blanco, the primary goals of bilingual education should be cognitive and affective development rather than understanding the cultural realms or linguistic growth (Blanco, 1977). In this case, education policy makers must focus their efforts in improving the quality of education through teaching children the concepts, knowledge and skills while not necessary using English or a second language. However, the critics of Blanco point out that linguistic goal should be primary since the programs should teach English as soon as possible and integrate the children in the mainstream instruction methods (Blanco, 1977). The transition to the mainstream English instructions and maintenance of the native culture are both important and thus transitional linguistic and cultural goal will use native language and culture of the student to the extent that is necessary to acquire English language (Blanco, 1977). These programs are not based on the student’s native language and thus students are not taught to write or read in the native language. In the modern globalized education systems, English-language acquisition is also emphasized alongside maintenance of cultural diversity since students are also encouraged to remain literate in their native language and develop bilingual skills even in their adults (Baker, 2011). Second-language acquisition is continuous, interactive, and developmental since it is acquired when the students interact with the surrounding environment. The affective factors that determine the rate of acquisition include the attitudes, social-economic variables, environment and motivation of the learner (Blanco, 1977). The students actively acquire the language and students construct their own rules in language acquisition. The acquisition rate varies from one individual to another and learning occurs best in a non-anxious environment (Baker, 2011). The ability to use language occurs before knowledge to verbalize the language and learning environment should focus on the meaning rather than the form. The educators must ensure that language acquisition facilitates cognitive growth, linguistic growth and cultural diversity awareness in order to improve the access and quality of education (Baker, 2011). Summary Bilingualism exhibits numerous advantages such as general reasoning, divergent thinking, concept formation, verbal and linguistic abilities and metalinguistic skills. The educators should integrate strategically planned opportunities for interaction with English language and focus on the listening and speaking activities before the writing activities the educators must focus efforts in conducting direct teaching of target language elements such as vocabulary, syntax, and grammar and support the students with primary language in a targeted way. The transitional bilingual education provides most students (non-English) first language with increasing proportions of English instructions over time thus preparing for all-English classrooms while developmental bilingual education seeks to develop the student’s first language and English speaking skills concurrently with the ultimate objective of ensuring that students attain fluency in both languages. The research suggests that bilingual education should not be an isolated educational program and should be integrated in the larger quality education framework in order to improve the access and quality of education for the language-minority communities. The bilingual education should be supported as part of the culture and values of language-minority communities and thus should be isolated from the immigrants or language rights. The central weakness of existing studies on bilingual education is that they do not separate the benefits accrued from children growing up in bilingual household. The aim of bilingual education should be to promote equal opportunities for academic achievement and bilingual intellectual resources should be paramount of future progress. The federal government should develop society’s cultural and linguistic resources since it provides the society with the ability to work together and solve problems facing the society. Reference List: Baker, C. (2011). Foundations of bilingual Education and Bilingualism. New York, NY: Multilingual Matters. Blanco, G. (1977). Bilingual Education: Current Perspectives. Arlington, AL: Center for Applied Linguistics. Clair, R.N. (1991). The Politics of Failure in Bilingual Education, Bilingual Review, Vol. 16, No 2/3 (May-December 1991), pp. 241-246. Collins, E.T. (1981). Career education for bilingual students: attitudinal effect, Bilingual review, 8, 14-19. Crawford, J. (1989). Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Bilingual Education Services. Fieldings, R & Harbon, L. (2013). Examining bilingual and bicultural identity in young students, American Council on teaching of foreign languages, 46, 527-544. Garcia, O & Baker, C. (2007). Bilingual Education: an introductory reader. New York, NY: Multilingual reader. Hannun, T. (1978). Attitudes of Bilingual students toward Spanish, Hispania, 61, 90-94. Morton, B & Harper, S.N. (2007). What did Simon say? Revisiting the bilingual advantage, developmental science, 10, 719-726. Planas, N & Setati, M. (2009). Bilingual students using their languages in the learning of Mathematics, Mathematics education research journal, 21, 36-59. Reyes, M.L. (1991). Bilingual student writers: a question of fair evaluation, The English Journal, 80, 16-23. Walker, L.J. (1956). Students need to be Bilingual, Taylor & Francis, 30, 554-555. Zavala, J & Mims, J. (1983). ‘Identification of learning disabled bilingual Hispanic students’, Learning disability quarterly, 6, 479-488. Read More