The Importance Of Bilingual Education

Although some parents have a limited awareness of the scope of their children’s bilingual education program (Lee, 1999; Sheffer, 2003), parents whose children are enrolled in two-way dual language programs tend to have high levels of involvement (Cloud et al., 2000). In my school district, parents play a critical role in program planning and sustainability. Based on parent meeting attendance held in the month of September in my school, parents of students in the dual language programs were committed to the bilingual and bicultural benefits afforded to their children. Parents are encouraged to volunteer in classrooms and to extend the learning process from school to home. Teachers’ comments indicated that parents understood that program participation …show more content…
It is the prerogative of each district to select a specific educational approach. A district may use any educational approach that is recognized as sound by some experts in the field, or an approach that is recognized as a legitimate educational approach(Civil Rights Policy, 1991). If schools can be able to provide resourceful environments to their English Language Learners, these students can excel themselves academically, linguistically, socially, culturally etc. which ensures better performance on tests, and transfer of learning to situations outside of the …show more content…
In the past, it appeared that dual language programs that used students’ native language for instruction, did not retard or impede children’s acquisition of English or their English academic achievement. This type of program helped students to excel academically and linguistically in both the first and the second languages. My parents and teachers supported to become fluent balanced bilingual and maintained this balanced bilingualism throughout life growing up speaking the native language of my parents in the home while speaking English at school led to bilingualism that serves me well in my current position. This program helped me to develop cognitive skills in content subjects taught in the native language, and at the same time, it helped to develop language skills of the second language, English. Such an approach eased the transition between the first language to the second, without having lost ground in content subjects, but it also strengthened the students ' cognitive and language