In an increasingly intercultural world, the monolingual American norm is no longer an adequate option for American students. The research studies have continued to show the myriad of benefits of becoming bilingual at a tender age. In this paper, I wish to draw attention to the current, growing trend of dual language Immersion programs. Early childhood is a critical period for a child’s linguistic and cognitive development. Despite the well-documented benefits of multilingualism, the current educational practices in the United States reflects the deeply held belief that English should be the sole language of instruction. This belief was codified into law in the state of California via the 1998 passage of Proposition 227, which banned bilingual
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There were good reasons Proposition 227 passed. Bilingual education is more expensive and the state suffered continual shortages of qualified bilingual teachers. Worse, bilingual education was often shoddily executed [8]. It's important to consider the academic studies that have shown slightly better results for bilingual classes, but those studies involved top-notch programs with outstanding teachers. California's public schools seldom came close to the model, and before Proposition 227, thousands of students graduated high school without ever having mastered …show more content…
Since this research was based in a mainstream public school district in the American Midwest, it serves to provide a scientific basis that foreign language teachers in similar districts can reference to support and protect an important benefit of a FLES program. Students are afforded being able to communicate in a foreign language without exacting a cost in terms of academic achievement, as measured by standardized tests in English. The benefits of bilingualism go beyond years as a student in academia. Aside from social, cultural and economic benefits in an increasingly competitive job market recent behavioral data have shown that lifelong bilingualism can maintain youthful cognitive control abilities in aging.
In one particular neurology study, across two experiments using different subjects, older adult bilinguals switched between perceptual tasks significantly faster than their monolingual peers. Experiment 2 revealed that older adult bilinguals showed a pattern of fMRI results similar to the younger adult groups: they outperformed monolingual older adults while requiring less activation in several frontal brain regions linked with effortful
There were good reasons Proposition 227 passed. Bilingual education is more expensive and the state suffered continual shortages of qualified bilingual teachers. Worse, bilingual education was often shoddily executed [8]. It's important to consider the academic studies that have shown slightly better results for bilingual classes, but those studies involved top-notch programs with outstanding teachers. California's public schools seldom came close to the model, and before Proposition 227, thousands of students graduated high school without ever having mastered …show more content…
Since this research was based in a mainstream public school district in the American Midwest, it serves to provide a scientific basis that foreign language teachers in similar districts can reference to support and protect an important benefit of a FLES program. Students are afforded being able to communicate in a foreign language without exacting a cost in terms of academic achievement, as measured by standardized tests in English. The benefits of bilingualism go beyond years as a student in academia. Aside from social, cultural and economic benefits in an increasingly competitive job market recent behavioral data have shown that lifelong bilingualism can maintain youthful cognitive control abilities in aging.
In one particular neurology study, across two experiments using different subjects, older adult bilinguals switched between perceptual tasks significantly faster than their monolingual peers. Experiment 2 revealed that older adult bilinguals showed a pattern of fMRI results similar to the younger adult groups: they outperformed monolingual older adults while requiring less activation in several frontal brain regions linked with effortful