Issues Related to Bilingual Education in the US - Capstone Project Example

Under the transitional model, the goal is to ensure that children effectively learn skills in their native language and be competent in transferring these skills effortlessly to a second language after completing the program (Garcia, 2009). The transitional model works to assist learners to transition to an all-English classroom expediently in which proficient English acquisition is the primary goal.Educational institutions also utilize the dual-language immersion model, whereby the primary objective is to ensure that non-native speakers of English achieve bi-literacy, common mostly in Kindergarten through the fifth-grade curriculum.

This model immerses the child in academic content provided in both a native language and English, but the majority of teachings occur, initially, in the native language. Over time, teachings occurring in the native language are superseded by English-based instruction. Teachers do not, under this model, reinforce what was taught in the native language in the second language, but work to intensify concepts that were taught in the native language. The teacher carefully utilizes English throughout learning to give the child a cognitive challenge, but the level of immersion in each language varies as the student begins to manifest a dual language proficiency (Garcia).

The dual immersion model maintains a goal of strengthening socio-cultural advantages in the child by keeping them in classrooms with native English speaking peers while also promoting the benefits of maintaining heritage related to the student’s native language.Bilingual education ensures that a student enlarges various transferrable skills while witnessing that educators place social value on their native language and heritage and are promoted to sustain fluency in their native tongue.

It is expected that once a student becomes literate in their native language, similar approaches to learning can be applied to comprehend a target language. Different bilingual education models have been developed as research shows that minority-language pupils manifest academic disadvantages compared to their majority-language classroom peers (Ruiz-de-Velasco, Fix and Clewell, 2013).