EDUCATION THEORIES

Education Theories



Education Theories

Introduction

Bilingualism is the ability to use, or the regular use of, two languages with advanced proficiency and nearly equal fluency in each language. Bilingualism is broadly classified into simultaneous bilingualism, in which a person introduced to two languages concurrently, and sequential bilingualism, in which a person introduced to a second language after having been introduced to a first language by the nature of the acquisition process (Hull and Schultz 2002, Pp. 141). Simultaneous bilingualism refers to childhood bilingualism as a result of exposure to two languages in roughly the same degree from birth or early childhood.

There are many definitions of bilingualism, some of them are wrong and others based on myths. A person does not have to speak two languages with equal fluency to say who is bilingual and is particularly common that can be expressed in both languages with some ease and without noticed an accent that betrays. But, even if realize one of the two languages is dominant, only feel emotionally comfortable in one of them and only the dominant language may make creative work worthwhile. The person might be able to write business letters in either language without much difficulty, but will be difficult to literature. May be versed in both languages but only one of them establish the true poetry hatch that is where the mysteries of the soul (McWilliams 1998, Pp. 189). In learning a language is not easy to achieve this dimension.

In the field of study of second-language learning, the definition of bilingualism, as in almost all conceptualizations of terms, has not been left to create dichotomies. Among the most popular are the dichotomies given by leading researchers in this field such as:

A.Coordinated vs. Compound bilingualism

B.Early vs. late bilingualism

C.Simultaneous vs. Successive bilingualism

D.Additive vs. subtractive bilingualism

E.People vs. Elitist Bilingualism

The first three refer to individual characteristics while the last two related to characteristics of social groups. Thus, we see that these distinctions lead to the study of aspects of bilingualism. Similarly, the research perspective depends on the nature of the discipline that deals. For example, psycholinguistics focuses their attention mainly to the mental and cognitive properties of bilingual people. Sociolinguists have become more interested in categorizing social groups based on the language settings in relation to dominance, prestige and other sociological and institutional characteristics (Issa and Williams 2010, Pp. 36).

However, no definition of bilingualism is sufficiently broad to cover all cases of people we call 'bilingual'. In the definitions given is that can be placed on a continuum from a 'native control of two or more languages' to' minimal possession of communication skills in a second language or foreign language. “Obviously, the first excludes the majority of individuals' bilingual 'and introduces the problem of the definition of' native control.” As most scholars prefer, the second field as a starting point from which a variety of bilingual skills can be developed. However, in this paper we will discuss the varying advantages of bilingualism (social, cognitive as well as individual) in a global context and ...