Bi-Lingualism

The following three articles on teaching a foreign language will be analyzed and evaluated:

Flor Ada, A. (1986) "Creative Education for Bilingual Teachers." Harvard Educational Review, Nov.: 386-393.

Hakuta, K, and Garcia, E.E. (1989) "Bilingualism and Education." American Psychologist, Feb.: 374-379.

Walz, J. (1989) "Context and Contextualized Language Practice in Foreign Language Teaching." The Modern Language Journal, 73, II: 160-166.

I believe bilingual education is extremely important in a global environment that is becoming more and more multi-cultural. Even though English is fast becoming the universal language, as French was in the 19th Century, it is still essential for children to learn about different cultures and different languages in order to have a more well-rounded education. I selected this topic because I feel at the present time, as much as we debate the importance of a sound education in this country, there are many people who see the learning of a second language as unessential to the education process. Because of this shortsighted view, I believe this topic has a high degree of importance for parents, students and educators.

The first article I will evaluate is by Flor Ada, A. (1986), "Creative Education for Bilingual Teachers." Harvard Educational Review, Nov.: 386-393. In this article Flor Ada recommends a unique approach to

e second article to be evaluated is by Hakuta, K, and Garcia, E.E. (1989) "Bilingualism and Education." American Psychologist, Feb.: 374-379. Like the Flor Ada article, this article takes the point of view that bilingualism is a social and political phenomenon that includes interpersonal factors in addition to the linguistic factors involved, "Bilingualism has been defined predominantly in linguistic dimensions despite the fact that bilingualism is correlated with a number of nonlinguistic social parameters. The linguistic handle has served policymakers well in focusing on an educationally vulnerable population of students, but the handle is inadequate as the single focus of educational intervention. Future research will have to be directed toward a multifaceted vision of bilingualism as a phenomenon embedded in society," (Hakuta and Garcia, 1989: 374). The main difference with this theory and traditional theories of bilingualism is the way second-language acquisition is viewed. The traditional, or empiricist approach has long viewed second-language acquisition as being something whose processes would interfere with the processes that are used to develop and maintain the primary language. In other words, the two diffe