Bilingual or “Bye-Lingual”? An Analysis and Discussion of Bilingual Education Mode in China and the US

This article compares bilingual education mode in two countries: China and the US. For China, the bilingual education been analysed includes mandarin and ethnic minority languages, Chinese and English. Extant research on bilingual education tends to focus on one country whilst there is a paucity of papers comparing various kinds of bilingual education. In this paper, by using the systematic review method, the differences and similarities of bilingual education mode in these two countries are been discussed and the tensions, as well as opportunities of bilingual education behind these two countries is explored. This paper ends a call for non-English native speaking EFL/ESL teachers to see their first language as an asset for developing bilingual education worldwide.

Indigenous Languages Learning Through Serious Games Based on Second Language Acquisition Theories

When new educational games are developed for teaching languages, a set of ideas or intuitions about how students can gain more knowledge are used; however, few of them are based on a solid theory or substantiated with linguistic research. This chapter presents a brief review about second language acquisition theories; describes the importance of recovering, maintaining, and transmitting indigenous languages; and analyzes efforts made for enhancing bilingual education. Serious games are presented as an alternative for learning indigenous languages, and guidelines to develop serious games implementing second language acquisition theories are proposed. Finally, a discussion about challenges and future trends in recovering, maintaining, and transmitting indigenous languages is presented.

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Develop Linguistic Abilities in Bilingual Education

The traditional methods of language teaching have always had their roots in the grammar-translation method, used in our educational system for more than 500 years. However, the constant search for updating and the desire to improve the language skills of students has led to a succession of different methods and proposals in a few years with the intention of improving the existing ones. The literature on this subject confirms that there is no perfect approach, but it also shows that the communicative one and the interdisciplinarity in the teaching-learning process of second languages brings good results. The author proposes a holistic interdisciplinary activity for the bilingual early childhood classroom, based on the communicative method. Thus, this chapter presents the elaboration of a musical tale, accompanied by a subsequent audiovisual recording, which will help students to learn a second language in real natural contexts.

Bilingual Education From Learner Perspectives

The European Commission call to promote early foreign language learning among citizens in member states has led to a major paradigm shift in national and regional educational systems across Europe. The most extended option to make this shift effective has been applying bilingual education models which involve teaching academic subjects in foreign languages. Among those models, the so-called content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach has been largely implemented in several countries and regions such as Madrid. This chapter gauges students' attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs on bilingual educational programs in Madrid. The findings revealed important issues related to curricular content, methodology and strategies, challenges, and successes of bilingual programs as perceived by students.

Needs of the ‘Bilingual Schools' Program in Andalusia Regarding EFL Classrooms and Language Assistants

Since the implementation of Bilingual Education in Spain, research has focused on studying ways to improve the quality of this educational model. However, although there are aspects that threaten its correct functioning and/or implementation, little has been done to find solutions to those issues. Thus, this chapter presents findings from a research conducted in Seville, Spain, and compare them to those of some current studies in different autonomous communities to conclude that some important issues that have been previously reported but have not been solved are the lack of linguistic and methodological training for the stakeholders and time for coordination or planning, and confusion regarding specific information (roles, functions, procedures, etc.), among others. Most importantly, the chapter concludes that a number of actions should be taken by the regional Board of Education and/or schools to improve the quality of the bilingual education offered in Andalusia.