Bilingualism In Spain Essay

In Spain, linguistically and culturally diverse children are thaught using an immersion methodology and with some special programs where they learn the official language of the country with the help of specialised teachers; so they do not learn in their mother tongue. Is this methodology the most apropiate one? As I see it, Spain provides an appropiate education for this students for many reasons: first of all, they are integrated in the rest of the class, so children are more open-minded with other cultures and religions; in addition, the learn a second language through social interacction, in real situations. Furthemore, this methodology has not any negative consequence in their mother tongue because according with the information found in the article of Navarro Romero, B., (2009) about Fleta’s (2006) contribution, children from age 5 have finished the adquisition process of L1, and compulsory education starts when children are 6. It’s true that this immersion could also have some “negative effects” because they grow up in other culture and they adopt some parts of it, …show more content…
Keith E. Nelson & Hillsdale, NJ (1985) reflect the input of the research of Elizabeth Peal and Wallace Lambert (1962) about advantages of bilingualism in cognitive habilities: “Bilingual children performed significantly higher than monolinguals on tests of both verbal and nonverbal abilities; […] Overall, bilinguals were found to have a more diversified pattern of abilities than their monolingual peers.” (page 322). Personally, it strikes me that nobody could doubt about the advantages of being a bilingual person. Moreover, according with the thesis Caño, Gómez, B., (2014), Larsen-Freeman (1991) emphasises that bilingualism besides give us a new language, it also prepares us to the learning of a third