Bilingual Education

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I am an SED Master student in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program. I finished my first two-year undergraduate study in China, and last two-year undergraduate study at Colorado State University of Pueblo. Both of my undergraduate majors were English. My first language is Chinese and English is my second language. When I studied in China, teachers tried to teach English in dual language way, they spoke English and Chinese in the class. However, when I studied at the CSU-Pueblo, teachers taught in a full-immersion way. I plan to use my own experience of both dual-language and full-immersion approaches，and the degree I will earn in SED for preparing to teach English as a second language in college in China.

In the United States, the number of students who speak English as a second language has been increased dramatically. Also, in other countries which people speak English as a second language, such as China, Brazil, and so on, they have a higher requirement for English proficiency for students. As for parents, on the one hand, they want their children to have a high English proficiency; on the other hand, they worry that their children will forget their native langue when children have a high English proficiency. As for schools, teachers face the challenges to find the effective way to develop a high level of proficiency in their students’ native language as well as in their second language.

A few findings from the research on this topic:

• Premature transition into the all-English program can lead to unnecessary constraints on student’s cognitive growth (Gersten &Woodward, 1995).

• In Lopez and Tashakkori’s (2006) research for fifth grade, the results showed that students in Two-way Bilingual Education were satisfied with their language proficiencies and they had a more positive attitude toward the bilingualism than students in Transitional Bilingual Education.

• In Gersten and Woodward’s (1996) research, the results showed 79%of bilingual immersion teacher in elementary schools felt that their program motivated students to learn English, while only 36% of transitional teachers thought their program motivated students to study English.

Even most study for the elementary school suggested that bilingual students had a better performance than transitional bilingual education students, Cziko (1992) pointed that it was possible that transitional bilingual education students would continue to catch up perhaps surpass the bilingual students. Thus, parents and schools could begin students’ bilingual education with a Two-way Bilingual approach in elementary school. Then, when students get the higher achievement both in their native language and English, they can change the approach to the Transitional Bilingual or full-immersion education. In other words, parents and teachers should choose different teaching approaches based on the students’ level of native language and second language in different stages.

References

Cziko. G. A. (1992). The evaluation of bilingual education. Education Research, 21(2), 10-15.

Gersten, R., & Woodward, J. (1995). A longitudinal study of transitional and immersion bilingual education programs in one district. Elementary School Journal, 95(3), 223-39.

López, M., & Tashakkori, A. (2006). Differential outcomes of two bilingual education programs on English language learners. Bilingual Research Journal, 30(1), 123-145.