Bilingualism across the curriculum : an aim and a means

Abstract

This chapter deals with issues relating to the use of two languages in the educational process. It gives a brief overview of some well-known examples of bilingual education as a background to the Maltese model. Codeswitching is dealt with in some detail and explained from a pedagogical point of view. Some questions on bilingual education in Malta are raised for discussion at the end. In some countries all linguistic activity is carried out across the curriculum through one language that is normally the mother-tongue of the students, and the national and official language of the country. We are familiar, for example, with the use of Italian in Italian schools, of French in French schools, and of German in schools in Germany. In many other countries, however, two or more tongues share important roles as school languages. In Malta, for instance, both Maltese and English have important functions in the education system. Some form of bilingual education has been in existence in Malta since the beginning of schooling. In many other countries, however, bilingual programmes started to become popular only recently. These are now developing rapidly, either as bilingual streams in monolingual schools or as fully bilingual courses. There are several reasons for this. To take an example, bilingual education – in the mother-tongue and in an international language like English in traditionally monolingual countries like Germany and Austria – form part of an endeavour to give a European dimension to their education, as well as to achieve higher levels of competency in the foreign languages. In other contexts, such as those of immigrant communities in Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.A, bilingual education is a means of preserving the non-English speaking children’s mother-tongue. This is an important way to support them in their learning through English, for them a new language. Their eventual bilingual competence is also viewed as an additional resource within a pluralist and multilingual society. In some other situations, like those of native minorities such as the Friesians in the Netherlands, and of Welsh speakers in the U.K., bilingual education is a matter of identity and political ideology. The reality of bilingual education is often complicated and there will be, in any one scenario, a variety of reasons for organizing a bilingual programme. In fact, bilingual education ranges from attempts in developing countries to include and maintain mother-tongue medium of instruction alongside a lingua franca and/or international language – as in the language maintenance programmes; to what is sometimes termed ‘elitist’ bilingual schemes for which the more educated opt in developed countries. The latter could be considered as ‘higher status’ schools. Such is the case of the Canadian immersion programmes, and of the ‘language and content integrated learning’ in Europe. In the international literature on bilingualism there is a very strong argument in favour of bilingual education. Several positive effects of bilingualism on cognitive development have been repeatedly reported (see various chapters in Bialystok, 1991). Bilingualism has positive effects regardless of which two languages are involved, be they Spanish and English or Arabic and French. Studies of bilinguals who have, roughly, equivalent abilities in two languages, have shown that bilingualism provides cognitive and social benefits as long as both languages are supported academically and affectively by society. The environment plays a large role in determining whether schooling will result in additive or subtractive bilingualism. Subtractive bilingualism, i.e. the loss of a language that results in monolingualism, occurs when the mother-tongue is a low status minority language which is rapidly replaced by the high status language. Additive bilingualism, i.e. when a speaker learns and uses more than one language regularly, on the other hand, is associated with cognitive benefits such as creativity, analogical reasoning, concept formation, classification, visual-spatial adeptness, metalinguistic abilities and social skills. Both cognitive and social development are fundamental in the educational process and this is why bilingualism across the curriculum is both ‘an aim’ and ‘a means’. Bilingual education needs to be appreciated as an aim in itself, with all the advantages it brings. At the same time, it is a means towards more efficiency in the teaching-learning process.