Introduction Bilingual Education Essay

1. General introduction First of all, I would like to start talking about the importance of bilingualism in our society: in a global and changing world like ours, it is fundamental to master foreign languages; and learning a language involves learning how to communicate in that language. In this way, bilingualism can be defined as to be competent in the use of two languages; that means, to be proficient in two different languages. However, it should be present that this concept is complex. More concretely, according to Cohen (1975), bilingual education is the use of two or more languages as a means of instruction in a part of the school curriculum or in all. According to this author, bilingual education will be the teaching “in” two languages and not the teaching “of” two one or another language. And of course, it is important to highlight that several studies suggested that bilingual children show advantages in …show more content…
On the one hand, in Finland, bilingual teachers have to pass a Language Proficiency exam, in which they should achieve, at least, a 5 level out of 6, equivalent to the level C1 of the Common European Framework. Furthermore, when future bilingual teachers are in the university, there exist training associate schools which allow them to choose subject areas related to bilingual education. Besides this, these future teachers have the opportunity to develop their internship in the bilingual program framework. On the other hand, although in Spain exists a specific training for bilingual teachers (this Master’s Degree) it is not a compulsory requisite to teach bilingual subjects. Only a qualification is required: bilingual teachers have to have a C1 level, or even, in some Autonomous Community (such as Andalucía or Aragón) a B2 of the Common European Framework. In short, it can be said that Finnish bilingual teachers are better and highly