Bilingual Education - Does bilingual education only go to further the Research Paper

Bilingual Education - Does bilingual education only go to further the isolation of ESL students - Research Paper Example However, teaching and use of English was faced some challenges since English is not the first language of everybody across the world. Hence, bilingual education, programs that provide support to students with limited English proficiency was introduced. Some of these programs teach academic subjects in the student’s home language while also requiring language-minority students to take classes English as a second language (ESL). Other programs aim at teaching English to language-minority students by immersing them in English-only classes. It is believed that ESL students have been isolated from those who English is their first language. Consequently, this has led to the question on whether bilingual education only go to further the isolation of ESL students. This paper is therefore aimed at determining whether bilingual education only go to further the isolation of ESL students or not. Bilingual education refers to the programs that offer support to students with limited English proficiency. Students are taught in their home language in these programs while also needing language-minority students to take classes in English as a second language (ESL). Other programs aim at teaching English to language-minority students by immersing them in English only classes. Others are dual-language programs that aim for fluency in two languages such as English and Spanish. These main approaches have numerous variations and their combination might be used by districts and schools (Ramà ­rez et al., 1991). Hence, when people argue about effectiveness or ineffectiveness of bilingual education, they could be discussing various forms of bilingual education. Nevertheless, in public debate, bilingual education normally refers to transition bilingual education which offers native-language instruction to non-English-speaking learners in their preparation of their ultimate learning of E nglish in mainstream