Bilingual Education A Part Of Our Education System

Kee Yang 9/30/2014 EngWR 302 Prof. Carter Bilingual Education Bilingual education has been a part of our education system since the 1920’s when the nation’s first bilingual program was established. In the 21st century, California has the most diverse student population in the world, with more than 100 languages spoken in homes of these student (Maggie Beddow) (pg VI). Since many California students came from another country with no background knowledge of the English language, they faced the real struggle when they are put into school. Many view that the more diverse the student population in a school, the â€Å"bigger† the issue when it comes to learning English. It is a challenge to teach a classroom where the students are not on the same†¦show more content†¦Because we live in the most diverse state and city, educators must have to find all the possibilities to be to teach these student to the extent that they will have the potential to become proficient in English. Therefore, bilingual education is one of the m ost successful form of teaching that will give non-native speakers the ability to become educated in the English language. First of all, let’s starts with some terminologies when talking about bilingual education/ program. Bilingual education is an educational program where students receive instruction in both their first language (L1), and second languages (L2) to keep them from falling behind in their content learning and to encourage the development of their first language while they are learning English. Most student who participate in Bilingual educational programs are consider English as a second language student (ESL). There are other terms that are very similar and has the same meaning such as English Language Development (ELD) and English Leaner (EL). These terms refers to non-native speakers who is learning English in school (Beddow). Most educators used these terms to coin student who are in the process of learning English as a new language. Typically, English lea rners speak a primary language other than English at home such as Hmong, Spanish, Chinese, etc, just to name a few. Over the last several decades, the numbers of English Learners have steadily increase throughout the United States.