1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, it seems to be a fact that bilingualism plays a vital role in worldwide education. It is due to the necessity of communication among people from all countries in the world so that as Madrid and Hughes (2011: 351) point out “there are more bilingual than monolingual citizens” and the number of bilingual people is going to increase considerably during the next years. Consequently, in the last few years there has been a growing interest in foreign language learning and teaching due to bilingual education has become understood as a real priority in schools around the world.
In all European countries, English has become the main language for communication among non-native English speakers, which may explain the categorization of “lingua franca” that many experts have given to this …show more content…
In Spain, bilingual education has been gaining importance in recent years. In fact, in 1996 new curricular project was carried out in collaboration with The Ministry of Education and the British Council. It highlighted the necessity of introducing Spanish students in bilingual education so that the results obtained from that research were positive proving that students take advantage of bilingual education in several aspects.
Unfortunately, many of the old curriculum designs in Spanish schools did not pay enough attention to the communicative aspect of the language, although in the last decades the situation has advanced in a significant way. As a consequence, it could be said that the educational system concerning teaching a second language was obsolete in the sense of focusing on grammar rather than lexical items for
Nowadays, it seems to be a fact that bilingualism plays a vital role in worldwide education. It is due to the necessity of communication among people from all countries in the world so that as Madrid and Hughes (2011: 351) point out “there are more bilingual than monolingual citizens” and the number of bilingual people is going to increase considerably during the next years. Consequently, in the last few years there has been a growing interest in foreign language learning and teaching due to bilingual education has become understood as a real priority in schools around the world.
In all European countries, English has become the main language for communication among non-native English speakers, which may explain the categorization of “lingua franca” that many experts have given to this …show more content…
In Spain, bilingual education has been gaining importance in recent years. In fact, in 1996 new curricular project was carried out in collaboration with The Ministry of Education and the British Council. It highlighted the necessity of introducing Spanish students in bilingual education so that the results obtained from that research were positive proving that students take advantage of bilingual education in several aspects.
Unfortunately, many of the old curriculum designs in Spanish schools did not pay enough attention to the communicative aspect of the language, although in the last decades the situation has advanced in a significant way. As a consequence, it could be said that the educational system concerning teaching a second language was obsolete in the sense of focusing on grammar rather than lexical items for