Bilingual Education Current Problems

This assignment delves into the ongoing issues confronting bilingual education worldwide. It draws upon various sources, including scholarly articles, government reports, and news pieces, to shed light on the complexities and debates surrounding bilingual education. The analysis encompasses a range of topics, such as language policy, program effectiveness, cultural considerations, and the impact on students from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

Running Head: Bilingual Education 1
Integrated business management project

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Aim and scope..............................................................................................................................3
Literature review..............................................................................................................................4
Infant or Child bilingualism.........................................................................................................4
Role of bilingualism in Australia.................................................................................................5
Benefits of bilingual education....................................................................................................6
Challenges in Bilingual education...............................................................................................8
Lack of bilingual teacher training............................................................................................8
Lack of managerial support......................................................................................................9
Failure to use language.............................................................................................................9
Low expectations....................................................................................................................10
Rules and regulations.............................................................................................................10
Recommendations......................................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
List of Figures
Figure 1: Advantage of Bilingual education....................................................................................8

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Introduction
Changes in the Bilingual education have important impact on the future of the education
system. This report provides some of the major research related to purpose and effectiveness of
the bilingual education. Before researching about the bilingual education, it is important
understand the concept of bilingual education. Bilingual education includes the active practices
of learning based on two languages used by the educational institutions of countries in the
society where various languages exist. It may be the situation where two different languages
exist. On the other hand it may be the situation that rather than the state language, other
languages are present. In present time, bilingual programs is used in the colleges, schools and
universities where they are paying attention on the study of the foreign language and
international cultures. Along with this, bilingual programs are focused on creating the conditions
for the students to adjust in the intercultural language environment. Now, bilingual education can
be found in the pre-school institutions. There is vast contribution to the bilingual education
system at an early stage. For instance, popular and famous project ‘LIGHT’ is actively supported
by many countries i.e. France, Germany, Finland and Austria. It is perceived that bilingual
education in the early stage is most effective for children as children are more open to the new
and they do not have any kind of obstruction and typecast. For instance, there is one of the
Australian school focusing on the bilingual education i.e. Huntingdale Primary school. In this
education system, school is providing different curriculum to develop bilingual skills in the
students (Pray & Jimenez, 2009).
Aim and scope
Aim of this report is to build is to analyze the issue of bilingual and immersion education
in Australia and find out the most possible solution to deal with this issue. It synthesizes and
summarizes the appropriate empirical work on bilingual education in schools at early stages.
This report evaluates the quality of these studies and focuses on the improvement if bilingual
education in the schools. The scope of this research is to generate the understandings of how
immersion childhood education contributes is helpful in bilingualism and early school success.
For the research, recent relevant studies on the bilingual and immerse early childhood programs
would be focused.

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Literature review
The term bilingualism is quite difficult and controversial to define. According to Baker
(1993), bilingualism is a kind of child who is able to speak two languages smoothly. Some other
researchers argued that bilingualism starts at that point where the speaker of one language is able
to produce complete and meaningful speech in other languages. Further, bilingualism begins
when someone starts to understand other languages without any barriers. In bilingualism, there is
one more term i.e. infant or child bilingualism. According to the Saunders (1988), infant
bilingual can be described as the immediate acquirement of two languages from birth. Child
bilingualism is successive fluency in two languages i.e. child learns first language within the
family and then learns second language in preschool or early school years. Those child who are
bilingual before four years of age have more chances of being able to make the use of two
languages in their daily lives. Along with this, they have awareness of language; they have high
level of level of adeptness at divergent thinking, creative thinking and concept formation. There
should be bilingual education system in the Australian schools as in the country, majority of the
Australian born households are not bilingual and immigrant households. So, for the development
of children, there must be bilingual education system in the schools (Lin & García, 2016).
Infant or Child bilingualism
Child bilingual is one who has successive fluency in two languages. Those types of
children acquire first language within the family and then learn second language in the school
years. If a child has not get exposure of another language from birth or within the family then he
or she will not be classified as an infant bilingual as he or she is not learning those two languages
by birth. In the Australia, there is the multicultural society and bilingual education is actively
debated in the society. Bilingual education must b e provided in the first language to transfer
natural literacy from first language to the second language. Park (2007) argued that foreign
women who are working in the country must use the language in which they are most
comfortable to raise their children. According to her, proficiency in the mother tongue is helpful
in the development of children in terms of learning skills.
The world is changing at the continuous level and there is the need of highly developed
skills for the students for becoming successful global citizen. There are various situations those
are essential for the students to become successful. In the schools of Australia, teachers are

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teaching different ways of learning and thinking to the students. Those skills can be transferred
in the daily life and everyday situations for lifelong learning. It is crucial to understand the role
of bilingual education in the Australian society (Skerrett & Gunn, 2011).
Role of bilingualism in Australia
At all the levels of education system i.e. advisors, educators, teachers, ministry, school
management, boards of trustees, and classroom teachers, there must be an effective message of
maximizing bilingual education for the children or infants who speak only one language. The use
of various languages affects bilingual education and education result for bilingual people. It is
considered by the researchers that combination of languages improves the skill base of a person.
Bilingual education includes teaching all important subjects in two different languages and the
practice of teaching to children in the native language. There are many forms of bilingual
education basically and the implementation of the program in the education system is very
effective (Umansky & Reardon, 2015). Bilingual education has crucial role to provide the
opportunities to the children to progress in their subjects such as science, mathematics, and social
studies in their native language. Along with this, they learn second language in the separate
classrooms. The objective of bilingual education is to make the student fluent in two different
languages. Bilingual education plays an important role in the world as common language is
crucial for good communication and understanding. Due to the multicultural societies and
existence of various languages in these societies, bilingual education has great importance. The
role of bilingual education will establish harmony and stillness among the people in the society
(Mongeau, 2016).
In Australia, there are some schools having bilingual programs for children and students
who are speaking community languages other than English. These programs are conducted from
the support of the government. There is bilingual education for native students. For instance, in
the Northern region, bilingual programs for the native students were started with the support of
Federal government in the early 1970s. Further, in December 1998, government of Northern
region announced to start 21 bilingual programs to teach English as the second language. Along
with this, bilingual programs were continuing under the pretext of two-way education. After that,
in 2005, The Minister of Education, Employment and Training announced for renewal bilingual
education at 15 community education centers. The aim of renewal was to provide effective

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education from pre-school to every region. The bilingual education in Australia represents much
more than the education programs.
Bilingual education at home-
Using two languages in households is not an easy job. It needs lots of discipline
and patience from the parents. In Australia, there are around 5 million people uses the language
other than English at home. The most possible languages spoken by people include Italian
(1.6%), Arabic (1.3%), Mandarin (1.6%), Greek (1.2%), Vietnams (1.1%) and Cantonese (1.2%).
If someone grew up in France in a bilingual family in which father is French-speaking and
mother is English-speaking. Then there is the need to speak in their respective languages by the
parents as a child wants to be fit in each culture and does not want to be different from others in
the society (Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2012). By using both the
languages, child will get fluency in English as well as France language and will become
bilingual. Raising a child with two languages needs continuous and sustained efforts by the
parents. But there are some families that may not follow bilingual system in the households.
Some might have geographical rules within the house. So, it is important to enhance the bilingual
education in schools so that children can learn one language in home and another language in
schools (Skutnabb-Kangas & McCarty, 2008).
Bilingual education at school-
For a child, the best time to learn a language is from birth to 8 years old. From 2 to 3
years old, a child knows that language by which he is expressed and exposed himself by tongue
and most of the languages are introduced in the schools. In the bilingual programs, language is
considered as the integrated into curriculum. In the schools, teachers teach something by the
language. Being bilingual basically means speaking two languages without learning them. There
are some models in the bilingual education to teach second languages to the students (Disbray,
2017).
Benefits of bilingual education
Bilingual education has many advantages for the society. The attitude to the bilingual
education should be treated delicately, professionally and carefully. There are many benefits of
the bilingual education in schools for those who are not bilingual and immigrant households.

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Bilingual education allows the students to adjust in the multilingual world and different cultures.
In the bilingual education, training provides the opportunity to the students to learn one of the
languages of world without leaving the touch with the traditional language group. For instance, if
any student is going to study in abroad, bilingual training will be very helpful for him to adjust in
the new environment. Further, bilingual education is helpful in improving the area of teaching,
thinking and art of analysis. Along with this, bilingual education is helpful for the person to deal
with the language misunderstanding barriers and making the student adaptable of other
languages, expanding vocabulary and developing the culture of speech (Johnson & Johnson,
2015).
Learning various languages contributes in developing memory, communication skills and
making the student more tolerant, flexible, and relaxed to deal with the difficulties of the
complex world. Australia is highly multicultural nation. According to data gathered by The
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 28% of Australian people were born overseas so the
young Australians are losing their interest in learning the foreign languages (Bonfiglio, 2016).
Bilingual education is helpful in providing an excellent basis of learning for children. It
basically has benefits for numeracy and literacy development in the language along with
improving the experience and understanding of the children in the world. Bilingual education
should be available in all the schools in Australia. Bilingualism is effective in many ways that is
described in figure.

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Figure 1: Advantage of Bilingual education
(Source: Bonfiglio, 2016)
Challenges in Bilingual education
Although Bilingual education has various benefits for the young learners and children as
it includes more creative thought process and mental flexibility. Numbers of students are taking
language education in Australia but it is quite low. Australia is linguistically diverse nation
having more than 250 languages spoken in the Australian homes. But there are some challenges
in providing Bilingual education to the students. By addressing those problems and challenges,
schools would be able to improve bilingual education in the course structured.
Lack of bilingual teacher training
It is the common practice to assign the teachers for the bilingual educations in the
schools. For this manner, there is the need of little preparation for using bilingual methodologies
and methods. But it is observed that there is the lack of training among the bilingual teachers.
American Institute of Research conducted the evaluation of bilingual education and reveled that
there are almost one-half of the teachers had not received the bilingual training proper over a

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five-year span. Although there are some improvements in the in-service and pre-service training
of the bilingual education but still there is the critical need of bilingual training to the teachers at
some points (Li, 2006).
Lack of managerial support
There is the continuous lack of administrative support and that can be measured by the
resource allocation in the bilingual education for the various programs. Since last few years, the
Texas System of school Finance has provided some additional funding to the schools in support
of bilingual education. But the state law is not focusing on increasing the fund support for
bilingual and ESL programs. In case of bilingual education, there is the requirement of laws and
‘bilingual funds’ in support of these programs. There is the need of hardship and bilingual funds
to spend on the educational programs for the language minority students.
Failure to use language
The concept of bilingual education is based on using native language for the permanent
growth along with other second language for the students. But, due to the lack of large pool of
the trained teachers, bilingual education is not much effective in schools. Rather than addressing
high level of native language speakers and providing them entry in the teaching profession,
school should focus on education al leadership having fluency on the two different languages.
Teachers with different language are very crucial in the schools for the bilingual education.
Sometimes, teachers are not able to develop the extensive fluency which is necessary to be
present in the academic work. Teachers who expect from the students to acquire fluency in few
weeks to handle academic work in that language are failed get similar proficiency themselves.
Along with this, sometimes State Level agency use culturally-biased test for the entry of teachers
into the teacher’s preparation programs for bilingual education. As the result, poor performance
can be seen (Kim, 2015). Further, there is one more weak pint in the bilingual program as
schools import teachers from the second language world and place them as the teacher in the
bilingual education. This action is the cause of many problems in the education system i.e. many
imported teachers do not have proper and adequate skills to present the bilingual curriculum and
the pronunciation and vocabulary of the teacher might be different from the student’s language
so students have to face many difficult situations during the education system. The recruitment
of teachers in the bilingual education is tough task for the schools in the Australian society as
well other parts of the world. Rather than importing the teachers from various places, use of the

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local teachers would be beneficial as they insist on ‘purity of language’ and believe that native
language is the correct language to use in the classroom so that student would not be confused
due to the variation of the languages. Further, maintenance and improvement of the native
language is important but must be separate in terms of bilingual education. Countries are making
second language as the optional and due to this fact; students are losing their fluency on the
languages (Lucero, 2015).
Low expectations
There is one of the most serious failure of Australian schools i.e. inability to differentiate
the unique characteristics of the population and the lack of their mental capability. Poor
performances of the minority, immigrant school population, disadvantages are the factors
affecting the bilingual education in the Australian schools. There is the lack of language
competency which can be seen commonly as the lack of mental competency. There is the
requirement of civil rights to address the lack of language skills in the bilingual programs. Along
with this, there is the issue that bilingual educations in the schools are seen as option al education
programs for the low mental capability students in the society. so, unfortunately parents, teachers
and the students themselves consider the bilingual education as the low level opportunity and
convert it into low level of the performance.
Rules and regulations
There are various rules and regulations that affect the implementation of bilingual
education in the schools. Such rules and policies are becoming handicap in the success of the
implementation the bilingual programs. The restrictions are affecting the characteristics of the
teachers along with the languages used by them. The restrictions are also impacting the
relationship with the sources of funding and the role of professional staff and use of native
languages and many others (Cárdenas, 2017).
Recommendations
To get success in the implementation of bilingual education, schools in the Australia
society must address these problems. Society must expand the educational opportunities for the
large segment of the school populations and students, especially for the language minority
students and limited language proficient students. Importance of language leanings must be
improved due to competing demands of the crowded prospectus. Some immersion programs

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such as language integrated learning programs and content related programs should be delivered
as the second language that would b e helpful for the students to become bilingual along with
learning more subjects. The national curriculum authority should support the language
achievement by following the model of compulsory language funding and learning in the
Australian schools. Language learning should be considered as the key part of 21st century skills.
Speaking in more than one language provides high level of benefit to the students who want to
grow in the increasingly connected world. If learning becomes essential, there would be great
chance to raise the status of Australian schools and motivate more people to move into language
teachings (Dabrowski, 2015).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it is observed that bilingual education has great importance to
raise the students in the growing world. Basically, bilingual programs are focused on creating the
conditions for the students to adjust in the intercultural language environment. There are many
forms of bilingual education basically and the implementation of the program in the education
system is very effective. So, high level of authorities and management should focus on funding
and improvement of the bilingual programs in schools.
References

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https://bilingualkidspot.com/2016/07/21/bilingual-education-benefits/
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