Foundations of Language Education

My Experience as a Bilingual Student

Karina Cabral

Carla Lavelle

Lorena

10/02/03

 Bilingual Education

            Bilingual education since its introduction, thirty years ago, has been a very controversial topic among many educators and politicians. Bilingual education started when The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 was passed. This Act is also known as the Title of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Interestingly enough, this title was the first federal recognition that the limited English speaking ability (LESA) students have special needs should be federally funded (Porter, 2). This Act gave a tremendous turn to Spanish-speaking students. Now they were able to take the first few years of Spanish classes then move on to English only classrooms. Before this Act past, Porter reported that there was a 50% dropout rate of Spanish-speaking children.

            Educators devised different ways to educate students to spoke little or no English. In Keith Baker's book, Bilingual Education in Massachusetts: The Emperor Has No Clothes, he lists four basic types of bilingual education. They are as follows; Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE), Submersion, English as a Second Language (ESL), and immersion (Baker 19). This paper will focus on Transitional Bilingual Education.

  Cummins, Jim. "Research, Ethics, and Public Discourse: The Debate on Bilingual Education." Washington: Presentation at the National Conference of the American Association of Higher Education. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/cummins2.htm

 Krashen, Stephen. "Why Bilingual Education?." ERIC Digest. http://www.ael.org/eric/digests/edorc968.htm

Porter, Rosalie. "Twisted Tongues: The Failure of Bilingual Education." The Communitarian Network. 1998. http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/pop_biling.html

 Richman, Sheldon. "Bilingual Education: A Failed Experiment on the Children." Independence Institute. Jun. 1997.
http://i2i.org/SuptDocs/IssuPprs/isbiling.htm

 Saucier, Heather. "Dos Languages; Program encourages bilingualism." Houston Chronicle 30 Nov. 1998, Monday 3 star ed.: A; Pg. 26 Education.

 Stewner-Manzanares, Gloria. "The Bilingual Education Act: Twenty Years Later." National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Fall 1988.