Bilingual education provides path to English proficiency

Throughout my 12 years working in the Riverside Unified school district, I’ve had the opportunity to share some experiences with immigrant children, some as young as 5 years old and others who are adolescents of 18. Children from the 4th to the 12th grades often talk freely about the fears and difficulties they have had since coming to this country and attending American schools.

My experience with immigrant children has been that many of them were fearful when they were first told they were moving from their native country, but once they had spent time here, they became more comfortable and felt less outcast. They learned the way of life here. They began to feel a part of this new country.

The schools, in particular, demonstrate that act of acceptance or rejection. I especially remember one conversation with a high school student. She shared with me that at first she was shy, but she didn’t have problems making friends in her English as a Second Language class because it included kids from all over the world and that made her feel like they were all together and alike. They wanted so much to be able to talk to each other that she tried harder to learn English. But in other classes when she was laughed at because of her poor English, she didn’t want to talk.

Another student, I remember, told me that he would worry so much about the teasing that would occur when he would open his mouth to speak and would not pronounce a word correctly. And if he spoke his native language among those like him, the others would think that he was saying something bad about them. He, therefore, feared to speak English and for that matter even to try. As well, he found himself fearing to speak his own native language.

Immigrant children come to the schools anxious to make friends and succeed. This desire can be supported or it can be destroyed by the social climate of the schools. And that’s where the need for Bilingual Education comes into it.

Bilingual Education is usually defined as the use of two languages as mediums of instruction. Its major goals are to help students identify with their ethnicity; to foster acculturation in the host culture and gain proficiency in the target language; and to help students build on diversity and integrate their home culture and language with their new one.

A key policy issue here is should the priority for the child be to “learn English” or “to learn the basic skills, that is, reading, writing and math. ” Education research has shown that children who learn the basic skills in their native language become literate. Children who learn the basic skills in their native language will be better able to transfer this knowledge into English thus making them bilingual and biliterate.

Transitional bilingual classrooms are set up so as the child’s English proficiency increases, the amount of instructional time spent in the native language is decreased. Most bilingual classrooms in the state are transitional, the goal being to mainstream the child into an English-taught curriculum as soon as possible.

The idea of Bilingual Education is based upon two basic and obvious assumptions: people are more likely to learn anything if they understand what they are being taught; and students with limited English ability will not fall behind their English-speaking peers if they can keep up with school curriculum through their native language while mastering English.

Children achieve when they have been able to follow well implemented programs. Research indicates that a well-staffed and implemented bilingual classroom, in which the limited English speaking child studies in his or her native language in combination with English language instruction, is effective for these children’s academic performance.

Riverside Unified is an example of a school district that has a well implemented program. The district has hired more trained teachers to work with immigrant children in their primary language.

It has made more English as a Second Language materials available in the classrooms and has encouraged a stronger parent involvement in the schools. These three key elements – trained teachers, better curriculum and parent involvement – make a bilingual program that works.

An important contributor to the Bilingual Education program is the RUSD Assessment Center, where we identify the proficiency of each new student to the district whose primary language is other than English. Before the child can enroll in school, an appointment is scheduled at the Assessment Center for testing. The child’s test results are then sent directly to the school for appropriate classroom placement, that is, Bilingual Education or ESL. The intent of placement is to help children learn the basic skills in their native language while at the same time acquiring proficiency in English.

Immigrant children share with all children the need for a high quality core curriculum that teaches basic academic skills, provides support to creating positive self-esteem and shares knowledge which will enable students to function effectively in our society as they learn English.



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