Bilingual Education Essay

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Bilingual education program models The following are several different types of bilingual education program models: Transitional Bilingual Education. This involves education in a child's native language, typically for no more than three years, to ensure that students do not fall behind in content areas like mathematics, science, and social studies while they are learning English. Research has shown that many of the skills learned in the native language can be transferred easily to the second language later. The goal is to help students transition to mainstream, English-only classrooms as quickly as possible, and the linguistic goal of such programs is English acquisition only. In a transitional bilingual program, the student's primary language is used as a vehicle to develop literacy skills and acquire academic knowledge. It is used to develop literacy and academic skills in the primary language Two-Way or Dual Language Immersion Bilingual Education. These programs are designed to help native and non-native English speakers become bilingual and biliterate. The two-way bilingual immersion program has 90% of the instructions in grade K-1 in minority language which is less supported by the broader society and 10% in the majority language . This proportion gradually changes in the majority language until the curriculum is equally divided in both the language by 5th grade. The two-way bilingual immersion program is based on the principle of clear curriculum separation of the two languages of instruction. Teachers do not repeat or translate the subject matter in second language but strengthen concepts taught in one language across the two languages in a spiral curriculum in order to provide cognitive challenge(Thomas & Collier. 1997). The languages of instructions are alternated by theme or content area. This type of immersion is required to develop the dual
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