Yvonne's Tips For Teacher Blog

Yvonne's Tips For Teacher Blog

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Post 114: Should Bilingual Education be a language enhancement class or a language remedical class?

Post 114: Should Bilingual Education be a foreign language enhancement  class or a foreign language remedial class?

Ovando states, "The remaining differences between programmed models boils down to the social perception of program, is viewed by school staff, students and community, and the social consequences of its design. When the underlying goal is to fix the students were perceived as having a problem, the program generates separates the students of the mainstream and works on remediation. The consequence is usually that seems receive less access to the standard curriculum, and the social status quo is maintained under achieving rates continue in the next generation.  If the focus is on academic enrichment for all students, intellectually challenging, interdisciplinary discovery learning that respects and values linguistic and cultural life experience , the program becomes one that is perceived positively by the community, and students are academically successful and deeply engaged in the learning process." (29)
Therefore, if the ESL/Bilingual class is perceived as a 'remedial' class, then the students in that class are viewed as 'dummies'. In remedial ESL class, the objective is to mainstream ESL students into monolingual English classes as soon as possible without regard to helping the immigrant student retain/learn about his L1 or his L1 culture. The phenomenon where the ESL student loses his L1 while gaining his L2 English is called Subtractive Bilingualism.

On the other hand, in the Dual Language Bilingual Program, you have two sets of students. You have a set of majority language students who want to learn the immigrant's L2 and a set of language minority students who want to learn the majority language, English. Both sets of students serve as tutors or experts of their culture for the other set of students. In a Dual Language Bilingual Program, the majority language students teach the immigrant students about English and American culture while the immigrant students teach the language majority students their first language. There is an even exchange of culture, mores, food and language between students, and students learn to respect each other's cultures. Americans learn more about immigrant culture while the immigrants get to retain their heritage, language and develop a respect for their own L1 culture. When language and culture acquisition is not viewed as remedial, but as a language enhancement class, then you have Additive Bilingualism, where the language minority student finds pride in teaching others about his native culture. Out of all the bilingual models we have studied thus far, the Dual Language Bilingual Model is by far the strongest and the most positive.

Ovando, Carlos and Combs, Mary Carol.  Bilingual and ESL Classrooms: Teaching in Multicultural Contexts. Sixth Edition.


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