Significant Aspects of Bilingual Education and Benefits of Bilingualism - Essay Example

Bilingual Education & Bilingualism Since centuries, language has remained one of the most imperative factors that distinguish humans from other creatures on the planet. In addition, it is an observation that language is the fundamental source of distinction between people representing different regions, cultures, and cults. Moreover, one of the significant factors of huge importance of language is its consideration for evaluating literacy level of an individual that makes it an essential requisite from early childhood period. Due to such significance, researchers and scholars (Baker, pp. 6-9) have been putting enormous efforts to evaluate the effectiveness and role of language learning in other aspects of human lives, such as social, economic, educational, and individual. In this regard, scholars have indicated that language plays a significant role in different aspects of human lives, and a crucial factor that indicates the literacy, as well as moral level of an individual. Besides language learning, bilingual education has remained a controversial issue in education sector of various countries, especially the United States due to varying outcomes of researches related to it. However, majority of researches (Crawford, pp. 23-25) have indicated positive outcomes of learning a second language that provides enormous benefits to individuals. Moreover, analysis of the literature (Baker, pp. 7-22) related to bilingual education has indicated that researches focusing on learning of English as a second language have shown benefits at a greater extent as compared with studies focusing other languages. In brief, it is a fact that English language brings a number of economic, as well as academic opportunities for an individual, and thus, it has now become an essential requisite to learn English language, especially after globalization that has inclined education systems to change their curriculum in English language due to its international acceptance. Although there is no doubt in the importance and significance of English language as a second language, however, there are some factors that cause hindrances in acquiring benefits of bilingual education that needs discussion and analysis, and will be very efficient during the creation of an efficient bilingual education program. One of the major issues in this regard is empowering students with skills of second language while maintaining the preservation of native language. Although bilingual education and being bilingual provides many benefits, however, inefficient bilingual education systems results in lack of native language skills that puts the benefits of bilingualism in a corner. In this regard, in order to create an effective bilingual education system, it is very important to ensure that individuals do not overlook the importance of native language. Few studies (Baker, pp. 8-14) have indicated that education systems often ignore the native language that hangs the individual between the two languages, and the student remains inefficient in both languages while acquiring average skills on both languages that is an unfortunate fact. Moreover, analysis (Rhodes, pp. 17-38) has pointed out that bilingualism ensures economic and societal success in the future. However, timing is a crucial factor that decides the effectiveness of bilingualism and majority of scholars have emphasized the consideration of a second language at an early age as facts indicate that mind of a young individual has higher capability of learning and grasping new language as compared to an older individual. Case studies have indicated that a majority of schools allows young children to learn in their native language, and as soon as they enter third/fourth grade, children observes a paradigm shift in their curriculum that becomes English-only curriculum that results in lack of efficacy of such students in their native language, as well as confrontations in learning second language. Although majority of young children continue to speak their native language at homes, however, scholars believe that such practice does not equip students with literal and academic skills and they only have the speaking skills that is inadequate for transfer of native language skills to the future generations. Moreover, it is an observation that there has been a misconception in the term of bilingualism as a majority of individuals has associated it with only speaking skills rather than grammatical and analytical skills. Thus, an individual focuses more on speaking skills that put his career in jeopardy in situations where environments require academic and analytical skills of the language. In this regard, it has now become very imperative to alter the approach of bilingual education to benefit from its cognitive, academic, societal, and economic advantages. The current approach of most of the education systems is early exit approach that uses native language during early childhood, and then arranges early exit of native language by changing the entire curriculum in English language. Experts (Brisk, pp. 21-26) have indicated that although bilingualism is imperative, however, primary language has its own significance and overlooking the primary language will result in insignificant outcomes that have been the issue in some of the researches associated with bilingual education and bilingualism. Thus, education systems should focus on both native, as well as English language in their curriculum in order to allow an individual to become bilingual. For such purpose, native language should remain the primary language of children’s curriculum while education systems should keep English language as a foreign or second language from the early childhood rather than introducing it during the middle grades. In the result, children from an early age are able to learn their native language in terms of its analytics, grammar, and sentence structure, and at the same time, they learn the same critical skills of English language in their foreign language or bilingual education classes that is the true approach of bilingualism. In order to understand this approach, consideration of a case study will provide significant understanding. In this regard, John is a student of sixth grade who speak French as a native language at his home. Like in majority of education systems, John learnt his curriculum in French during his early childhood; however, as soon as he entered fourth grade, he confronted an entirely new curriculum in the English language, as his school knew the significance of English language on international platform (Dewaele, pp. 53-68). However, in the result, John remained verbally literate in French language while not knowing the critical grammatical and structural aspects of his native language. As he confronted a new language curriculum at a later age, he confronted problems in learning English language skills that resulted in his status as a limited English proficient student. Analysis (Baker, pp. 8) indicates that this student is not a bilingual due lack of efficacy in both languages, and case study showed that in the senior grades, he remained verbally efficient in both languages, but continued to confront problems in understanding sentence structures and acquiring analytical skills of the languages. A huge number of students are confronting similar issues and in the result, failing in their classes due to ineffectiveness in their analytical skills of the language, and subsequently, they confront problems in their academic and professional lives. In this regard, early exit program is a failure in the bilingual education system, and thus, importance of both primary and secondary languages will ensure enormous benefits for individuals socially, academically, economically, and professionally. An efficient bilingual education system should allow students to learn their foundation subjects in their primary language while system should offer opportunities of acquiring English language skills in foreign language classes. In this way, one can ensure preservation of native language in analytical and structural manner while equipping students with English language skills in a critical manner. In addition, once students acquire required skills in their native language, they can then switch to English language entirely that will then make them a bilingual individual prepared to benefit from advantages of the system. Majority of scholars and educators (Romaine, pp. 31-37) consider the abovementioned approach as the efficient methodology of establishing a bilingual education system that has many advantages. In cognitive terms, studies have indicated efficient thinking patterns of bilingual individuals, as compared with their monolingual counterparts. In addition, bilingual individuals usually have the ability to interpret a subject, object, or a concept in more than one word that is a significant cognitive benefit. Due to such higher capability, bilinguals are more flexible in adjusting to new places that make them favorite candidate during employment opportunities. Few experts (Corson, pp. 20-26) have associated bilingualism with intellectual development of individuals, and being bilingual at an early age ensures noteworthy benefits intellectually. Academically, due to wider range of words and thinking patterns, bilingual students have the more chances of acquiring better results academically. While monolingual students explain a concept in single range of words, bilingual students explain it in varying manner, resulting in their higher performance in assessments (Brisk, pp. 21-22). Moreover, individuals becoming bilingual at an early age are able to learn other languages easily, as compared to monolingual individuals that confront difficulties in learning and remembering three to four languages at a later period (Baker, pp. 8-11). Other than academic advantage, bilingualism offers economic benefits as well due to higher probability of acquiring employment for bilingual individuals. Individuals equip with analytical skills of more than one language possess more chances of getting an employment, as compared with their monolingual candidates. Analysis of the literature has indicated that bilingual individuals find jobs in a huge number of sectors, such as tourism, public relations, translation, teaching, foreign diplomacy, banking, etc that indicates huge economic benefits for bilinguals. However, in order to acquire all such advantages of bilingual education, education systems should consider the adequate approach of encouraging achievement of English language skills as a foreign language while promoting individuals to preserve their native language that will be an efficient methodology to ensure conservation of different and diverse world languages on a global scale. In another case study (Baker, pp. 8-17), Abraham, an 11-year old student received education of core curriculum in his mother tongue, Spanish; however, his school provided him skills of English language from the early age by offering foreign language classes. Analysis of the study indicated that Abraham showed higher performance in examination as compared to students of his age group that were monolingual or came from the early exit program. In this regard, bilingualism does not mean oral efficiency of two languages, or higher fluency of a single language and average skills on the other skills; however, it means promotion of native language in an individual while equipping that individual with proficiency of another language (Baker, pp. 7-8). From this definition of bilingualism, it is evident that early exit program will not provide positive outcomes, and thus, educators and scholars (Rhodes, pp. 49-56) should take considerable steps to ensure provision of effective bilingual education opportunities that will then provide abovementioned societal, educational, economic, and personal advantages in a significant manner. Additionally, establishment of such model of bilingual education will require a higher amount of bilingual faculty that can focus on both primary, as well as secondary language skills of individuals, and particularly, from an early childhood period. Besides availability of bilingual faculty, it will be imperative for communities to give importance to native language, as focus on only one language either native or secondary language will result in ineffectiveness (Walters, pp. 27-34). Moreover, educational institutions should create appropriate plans for the provision of bilingual education in a sequential manner by arranging acquisition of English language skills gradually by beginning with elementary level and accelerating and increasing the level based on performances of the students. It is observation that lack of appropriate plans often results in ineffective performance and efficacy of bilingual students. Just as students receive higher education of core subjects, educational institutions may organize second language classes in a similar manner that will fulfill the objective and mandate of bilingualism in efficient manner. In conclusion, the paper has discussed some of the significant aspects of bilingual education and bilingualism while analyzing some of the noteworthy benefits of the bilingualism, and scrutinizing evidence and case studies that enabled analysis of the issues that hinder the process of bilingualism. Although few researches have indicated insignificant outcomes of bilingual education system due to frequency of early exit program that is a huge misconception in terms of bilingualism, however, bilingualism does offer huge number of societal, academic, cognitive, and economic advantages. In this globalized era, it has now become essential and imperative for individuals to acquire skills of more than one language, and thus, bilingualism will become a significant component of educational curriculum in the future. Finally, it is an expectation that the paper will be beneficial for students, teachers, and professionals in better understanding of the topic. Works Cited Baker, Colin. Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education. Multilingual matters, 1998. Baker, Colin. Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. Multilingual matters, 2006. Brisk, Maria. Bilingual education. Routledge, 2006. Corson, David. Bilingual education. Springer, 1997. Crawford, James. Bilingual education. Crane Publishing, 1989. Dewaele, Jean-Marc. Bilingualism. Multilingual matters, 2003. Rhodes, Robert L. Assessing culturally and linguistically diverse students. Guilford Press, 2005. Romaine, Suzanne. Bilingualism. Wiley-Blackwell, 1995. Walters, Joel. Bilingualism. Routledge, 2005. Read More