Bilingual Education

Bilingual Education

Bilingual Education

Introduction

Bilingual Education can be defined as to utilize the means of education in which more than one medium of language is being used to teach non-language subjects. Bilingual education is beneficial for child's first language and development of English as a second language mostly. In Australia education is mainly given in English but now the initiatives are taken by the government to use the bilingual education. Because as we know that education is best understandable in one's mother tongue. No doubt English has its own importance because it is a source of international communication. But it is very necessary to first clear the initial concepts, and they can be done when education is given in the mother tongue. Further details of topic or a subject, as a child passes through the secondary classes should be in English so that he or she can easily understand and communicate with other people of the world, and can get information and education if he or she wants.

Discussion

Bilingualism and multilingualism mean that an individual has the ability to understand and converse in more than one language. But this understanding has various degrees. It may be an individual characteristic or the characteristic that individual possesses in his in a certain social group, a particular community, or in a specific region or country. An individual may be more fluent in one language than the other, or he may make use of only a single language while not using his skills to converse in other languages. The first distinction in the degree of bilingualism is that the possession of dual or more languages as an individual and on the basis of social group. The maintenance, restoration or shift in language by an individual may be influenced by his attitude towards a particular group or society. Therefore in ordered to fully understand the topic, it is essential to draw a clear difference between an individual's ability for a language and his use of the language. There are various terminologies to describe the dimensions of bilingualism. The dimension of “ability” refers to the productive competence or the ability to actively write and speak a language and the “receptive ability” or the ability to read and understand a language. The dimension of “use” refers to the place of learning and using the language which may be home, school or workplace of an individual. The dimension of “balance of two languages” refers to the dominance of one language over the other as possessed by an individual. The dimension of “age” refers to the native language learned at childhood and the second languages learned later. The dimension of “development” refers to the acquisition of second language causing a decline in the use of other language causing language attrition. The dimension of “culture” refers to the individual's inclination towards another culture as a result of his understanding of the other culture due to possession of a second language. The dimension of “context” refers to the learning of second language by an ...