Describe The Benefits Of Bilingual Education To Learners
The Long-Term Benefits of Bilingual Education to Learners
The need for bilingual education is highly in demand in the 21st century. The proficiency in more than language is greatly needed in the educational setting as well as in the business setting. The global interdependence and mass communication more often require the skills to speak in more than one language in order to become efficient and effective communicator. In the United States and even in other countries, the bilingual education has been started to carry out in the curriculum in schools and universities. Based on the 2000 US census, there are more than 9.7 million children who can speak other languages aside from English language at home. These language-minority children are increasing in number in the country. The record revealed that from 1990 to 2000, the number of children who can speak two languages or more in school and even at homes increased by 55 percent.
(http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1788/Bilingual-Education.html)
Indeed, bilingual education provides two languages for the students as their media of instruction, it even helps people all over the world to develop their educational attainment, improve their economic condition, expand their social network as well as increase their professional achievements. Furthermore, bilingual education must be adapted with great understanding, experience and practice. Many scholars believe that students can not comprehend their lessons unless they know how to speak and understand the language of instruction in the school. Jim Cummins of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto said that children’s native language must first be developed in order to ensure that they have the capacity and flexibility to maximize their second language as a medium of instruction used in schools and universities. Interdependence theory suggests too that the growth and development stage of students in a second language can succeed by mastering their native language first. Apparently, the students must have high level of proficiency on both native and second language in order to optimize the benefits of bilingual education system. More than that, it is estimated that there are 60 or 75 percent bilingual education system from all parts of the world. Possibly, it has been implemented in different methods for majority and/or minority language populations; likewise, there may be different educational and linguistic goals in different countries.
Another case is in Canada, education programs are designed for native Canadian speakers as the language for majority is the English language. And, in order to become proficient in a minority language (French), heritage-language programs are implemented to assist native speakers of indigenous and immigrant languages to be proficient in English language. Whereas, in Israel, bilingual education programs helps both the Arabic-and Hebrew-speaking populations to become bilingual speakers, as well as the bilingual educators are also teaching Hebrew to immigrants from around the world. Apart from that, in Ireland, bilingual education is being implemented to restore the native language. As a matter of fact, there are many South American countries, such as Peru and Ecuador that have large populations of indigenous people that have more than languages which are spoken by people in their countries.
(http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1788/Bilingual-Education.html)
Moreover, bilingual education has many benefits such as promoting and building universal knowledge and excellent communication skills among students in school and in their profession in the future. The students become more proficient in different languages; various cultures have high level of learning performance based on the bilingual- curriculum. This is also the main reason why a lot of Asian people, students and adults, and even professionals have been doing their best effort to learn the English language as a Second Language, since it is already required in their countries to speak the English language proficiently whether in school or in the professional setting. Learning the English language today is very crucial for anyone’s promotion in one company. For example, the Koreans and Japanese even go to different countries to learn efficiently and effectively the English language. Though, for some, it is hard in the beginning, but they are wiling to learn it in the long term, in order to develop their English language eloquence. For the past decades, these nations were all centered in their own culture and languages, but as years passed, they already realized that their own country and people must adapt also the universal language.
(http://www.nysut.org/endingthegap_8779.htm)
In the final note, bilingual language helps students to become more competitive in their everyday interrelationship with other people and with other nations as well. It helps them to become more competitive with other foreign students too. More importantly, bilingual education helps a lot of people from all parts of the world to adapt effectively the advancements brought about by globalization.
(http://www.nysut.org/endingthegap_8779.htm)
References:
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1788/Bilingual-Education.html
http://www.nysut.org/endingthegap_8779.htm
http://www.nysut.org/endingthegap_8779.htm
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