Strategies Behind the Success of Bilingual Education

In the United States, if a child enters the education system without being able to speak English well as their first language, there’s two types of programs they could be placed into. One is known as “English-Only,” in which students are pushed to focus solely on learning English as fast as possible, with no regard as to whether they keep their skills in their original language (and at they often do not). The second type of program is called “Bilingual Education.” In this teaching style, students are encouraged to learn and develop both their native tongue and English, thereby making them bilingual by the time they finish their education.

In countries with more successful education systems, there is only one of these options available to students. The better one: Bilingual Education.

After several surveys across schools in Canada, Mexico, China, Australia and New Zealand, and Western and Central Europe, students who have participated in bilingual language immersion programs have done just as well–if not better–than those in their country who only ever learned the dominant language (Krashen), and certainly fared much better than the students who went through the U.S.’ English-Only program. Here are just a few examples of this success:

In Norway, immigrant children in the bilingual ed program in grades four and five

performed better than controls in math, social sciences, and natural sciences, and their ability to use Norwegian had nearly become equal with that of a native speaker (Ozerk, 1994).

In the Netherlands, immigrant bilingual students outperformed controls in Dutch language, had fewer behavioral problems, and were interacting far more with native Dutch students (Appel, 1988).

In China, there is a full bilingual program for native Korean speakers who wish to learn Mandarin. After completing this program, more of these new Korean/Mandarin speakers were able to obtain higher education degrees than those who only spoke Mandarin (Lin, 1997).

In Sweden, native Finnish speakers in the bilingual program were able to outperform their classmates who only spoke Swedish by the third grade (Lofgren and Ouvinen-Bierstam, 1982).

So what are the strategies these countries are using? The

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Develop published an article for teachers outlying some of the most important components for the successful teaching of bilingual education. One of these components involves creating an “ideal” environment for language acquisition: a place that is non-threatening, and in which certain things throughout the room might prompt random conversation (spontaneous talking, as long as it’s in the language that the students are trying to learn, is highly encouraged) (Malarz). Both of these environmental factors are somewhat lacking in American classrooms, where children often report being afraid of giving the wrong answer, and are discouraged to talk about anything other than the topic at hand.

One of the most important things to remember when approaching bilingual teaching, the article reports, is the motivation of students. Students learn best when they want to learn–when they feel what they’re learning is useful to them and peaks their interest (Malarz). In these successful countries, students are often encouraged to choose topics to study for themselves (as long as it relates to the class, of course), so that they will have greater motivation and attention span when they go about their studies. Despite motivation being key, American students are often deprived of choice within a classroom. Most of the time we’re taught whatever is written in the school’s curriculum, which may or may not have anything to do with our own aspirations. As we all have experienced, this can lead a class being extremely boring, or even annoying when we can’t think of any way it will help us in life after taking it. In other words, it’s not an environment that’s very conducive to learning.

America still has a long way to go before we can rid ourselves of the

English-Only system and these old, ineffective methods of teaching. But other countries have done it, which means it is possible. We’ve done a lot with education reform here, but we can’t stop now. Not until we’re giving our public school students the best education we can. My PLA small group, which will spend the next two months drafting a policy to the Pennsylvania Congress in support of statewide bilingual education in elementary schools, aims to do just that.

Appel, R. 1988. The language education of immigrant workers’ children in The Netherlands. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas and J. Cummins (Eds.) Minority Education: From Shame to Struggle. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. pp. 57-78.

Krashen, Stephen. “Do Other Countries Do Bilingual Education?” UnzWatch. n.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct., 2015.

Lin, J. 1997. Policies and practices of bilingual education for the minorities of China. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 18 (3): 193-205.

Lofgren, H. and Ouvinen-Birgerstam, P. 1982. A bilingual model for the teaching of immigrant children. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 3: 323-331.

Malarz, Lynn. “Bilingual Education: Effective Programing for Language Minority Students.” Curriculum Handbook. ASCD, 2015. Web. 5 Oct., 2015.

Ozerk, K. 1994. Subject matter acquisition and language development. In S. Ozerk (Ed.), University of Olso Pedagogiskforskningsinstitutt, report number 3, pp. 74-128.

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