Recent Trends in Bilingual Education in the United States : Two-way Bilingual Programs

P(論文)In the United States, where a variety of ethnic groups manifest diverse cultures and languages, you often meet people who speak more than one language other than English. This may give the impression that Americans overall are good at foreign languages and sympathetic with teaching them. However, there are people who do not consider it important or necessary because English is the dominant language. There are also people, stressing the importance of strengthening national unity, who take a strong stand in support of the "English Only" policy. On the other hand, there are a number of people who understand the nation as multicultural and earnestly support the idea of "English Plus (learning at least one foreign language)." In the United States, the program of FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary School) was started in the 1950's. Despite its long history, it is on the decline compared to European and Oceanic pioneer countries in the field. However, because of the success of two-way immersion programs, which provide an effective learning and instructional environment, new standards for foreign language teaching from Kindergarten to College (K-16) in the United States have recently been proposed. With this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to provide an update on two-way immersion programs, which help English speakers learn a second language and at the same time non-English speakers learn English. It will also offer some recent trends in foreign language education, which aim at promoting cognitive, linguistic and literacy development.departmental bulletin pape