Basics of Bilingualism Education

[2.1] How to study this unit?

[2.2] Introduction to bilingual education
[2.3] Main dichotomies in bilingual education
[2.4] Schmidts Noticing Hypothesis

UNIT

[2.5] Bibliographical references

Basics of
Bilingual
Education

UNIT 2 Scheme

Noticing
hypothesis

Dichotomies

Bilingual
programs
Amount
of time

Beginning
age

Limited input is
internalized

Explicit and
conscious learning

Partial, Total

Early, Middle, Late

Transitional, Maintenance, Enrichment

Assimilation
process

Attention

Input > Intake > Output

Chomskys Ideal speaker

Chomsky, Krashen, Gardner vs. Vygotsky, Piaget, Pavlov

Competence vs. Performance

Nature vs. Nurture

Incidental vs. Intentional

Explicit vs. Implicit

Consciousness vs. Attention

Classified
according to

Aims

Foundations of Bilingual Education

Scheme

Foundations of Bilingual Education

Key Ideas
2.1. How to study this unit?
In order to study this unit you must read chapter 4 from: Drnyei, Z.
(2009).Pshycological processes in language acquisition II: explicit vs. implicit learning.
In Author, The psychology of Second Language Acquisition (pp.131-144). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Available at the virtual campus with a CEDRO license.
You will also need to study the chart proposed by Colin Baker where he classifies the
different forms of education, from: Baker, C. (1997). Foundations of Bilingual Education
and Bilingualism (p. 175).Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Available at the virtual campus with a CEDRO license.

The main objectives that we aim to achieve in Unit 2 are:

Understanding the theoretical background to bilingual education.
Identify the main dichotomies involved in bilingual education.

2.2. Introduction to bilingual education

We studied in Unit 1 the concept of bilingualism and how we can measure it. We have
seen that it is a complex phenomenon that can potentially involve everyone because
everybody is virtually exposed to different languages in their daily life. We know that
some people come from richer cultural contexts where they are exposed to different
languages, thus it is easier for them to acquire these languages in a natural way.
Nonetheless, a great amount of people live in different contexts, where the only way they
can grasp a new language is by means of formal education. This unit will be devoted to
further explain and contextualize the education these students are bound to receive.
First of all, we need to know that bilingual education is not an invention or a development
that came with the XX century, although Lambert and his Canadian immersion program

UNIT 2 Key Ideas

Foundations of Bilingual Education

are often referred to as the original paradigm of bilingual education, there are earlier
examples in the United Kingdom, right into the 1920s and 1930s. However, we can go
back some centuries and see even earlier examples of bilingual education.
In the Middle Ages, Latin was the vehicular language by means of which university
teachers used to give their master lessons. Some scholars (Mackey, 1978) go even further
and affirm that, bilingual education, was already taking place as early as 5000 years
before our age; and they also say that monolingual education is more of an exception
rather than the norm.
The changes and evolution that humanity has experienced throughout all these years has
a great significance in the development of bilingual education and its different types. We
will study with more detail the different methodologies that have headlined the XX
century in units 6, 7 and 8 but before that, we deem necessary taking a look at different
varieties of bilingual education, just because as it happened with bilingualism, bilingual
education is a simple term that has been used in a great variety of complex contexts.
In so doing, we will fall back on Bakers classification (1997: 175) where he distinguishes
weak and strong forms of education for bilingualism. Within the weak forms he includes
these programs:
Submersion

Submersion
with
withdrawal
classes

Segregationist

Transitional

Mainstream
with foreign
language
teaching

Separatist

Whereas strong forms encompasses:

Immersion

Maintenance

Two way or
dual language

Bilingual
education in
majority
languages

This classification was created after distinguishing the different aims pursued in the
different educational contexts, where minority language speakers and majority language
speakers lived under the same roof. According to the aims, bilingual programs can be
classified into:

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Foundations of Bilingual Education

Transitional: aims to change students L2 into L1. For instance, an immigrant

whose mother tongue is Italian and Spanish is his L2, would shift them and Spanish
would be his most used language in our national context.
Maintenance: attempts to foster the minority language for the speaker, so he/she
wont lose the cultural aspects. Language and culture go hand in hand, therefore losing
one means losing both.
Enrichment: the aim of these programs is fostering both language so the speaker is
proficient using both of them in different contexts.

Transitional

Bilingual
programs

Maintenance

Enrichment

We will now look at Bakers classification (1997). He establishes a comparison between

the immersion/submersion programs and swimming in a pool, there is a difference
between being pushed or thrown right into a pool and expect to learn to swim without
any help (submersion) and learning to swim little by little, step by step, with floating
devices, armbands or water-wings (immersion). In the first case learners would either
sink, struggle to breathe or swim, in the latter, virtually everyone will learn to swim.
Students may receive pull-out or withdrawal classes, where extra language classes
are taught to minority language speakers. The risks involved in these programs are that
students might fall behind either on language or content.
The segregationist view focuses on teaching in the minority language. In this case,
there are social issues involved and it may affect minority languages, which are normally
powerless. Very close to this view of bilingual education are the separatists, where
minority language learners are drawn apart from the bigger group, therefore minorities

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Foundations of Bilingual Education

are protected from being over-run. It might be due to political, religious, or cultural
reasons. Opposed to these programs are the transitional programs, which are similar
to submersion ones, but the difference lies on the fact that in this context learners can be
instructed in their own language in some cases, and they are allowed to use it.
Other programs are for example the mainstream ones. The most popular across the
occidental world, where content is taught in the majority language and there are some
L2 classes and subjects. It might be disadvantageous in some contexts like the UK,
because due to the importance of English as a lingua franca L2 does not get the deserved
importance. It also normally fails to produce fully bilingual learners.
We have seen the weak forms of bilingualism and now we will dive into the strong forms.
Immersion programs are the most popular ones, but this in an umbrella term that
contains many different realizations of the same concept. There are different
classifications of bilingual immersion programs depending on different factors, such as
the age where it begins or the amount of time devoted to L2.
Early:
Kindergarten

Age

Middle: 9-10
years old

Immersion

Late: Secondary
education

Amount of
time

Total: 100% in
L2
Partial:
Between 50%
and 100% in L2
Transitional: L2
to L1

Aims

Maintenance
Enrichment

The goal of fully-bilingualism is the aim of developmental maintenance programs.

Here, the language of the minority is also used as a medium of instruction in the
classroom context, therefore students become proficient in all linguistic skills in both
languages. It is the case of Catalan or Basque in Spain, Finnish in Sweden or Welsh in
Wales. Another program that looks forward to achieving fully bilingualism is the socalled dual language or two-way immersion program, where approximately 50% of

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Foundations of Bilingual Education

majority and 50% of minority language are together in the same classroom and both
languages are used as media of instruction at equal 50% rates. This situation can be
unbalanced if there are far more speakers of a language or if a language becomes
dominant. The coexistence of languages within the classroom might be that of two
majority languages (English-French, English-Spanish, Spanish-French) instead of a
majority and a minority language (Spanish-Basque, English-Haitian Creole, ) if the
first case is to happen, then we can talk about bilingual education in two majority
languages and the aims of the schools that offer that type of education normally are
multilingualism, multiculturalism and biliteracy or multiliteracy.

2.3. Main dichotomies in bilingual education

As we have seen in Drnyeis work (2009) there are differences between consciousness
and attention, between explicit and implicit learning and also between incidental and
intentional learning. These dichotomies are key language education and are undoubtedly
interrelated among them and we must be fully aware of its impact on our students
acquisition and learning of new concepts and material.
Together with these psychological distinctions, it is very important to add two other pairs
of opposed terms that occupy a prime position in education theories and investigations:
competence vs performance and nature vs nurture.
Chomsky gave a great importance to this distinction between competence and
performance in his generativist theory of language, where broadly speaking one term,
performance, is the actual realization of an idealized capacity, competence. It means
that the ideal speaker-hearer will be able to learn all the grammatical, phonetic,
morphological, syntactical, and semantic rules that underlie a language; that is
competence. However, we all know that it is virtually impossible being able to reach that
potential because languages are living entities that keep continuously evolving and this
fact leads us to performance. Speakers might have false starts when trying to speak to
someone else, or might incur in any kind of grammatical or lexical mistake. Regarding
education, there has been a clear evolution where the emphasis has shifted from
competence and grammar, to performance and effective (mainly) oral communication.
Nature and nurture are two other opposed terms that have leaded neverending debates
naturists and nurturists. On the one hand, naturists affirm that human beings are

UNIT 2 Key Ideas

Foundations of Bilingual Education

born with an innate ability to learn languages, and the prolonged use and hearing of the
given language or languages will make them achieve proficiency. Chomsky, Krashen and
Gardner sided with this view. Scholars think that language is already in our mind since
the moment we are born and it needs to be triggered so it can evolve.
On the other hand, nurturists like Vygotsky, Piaget, or Pavlov, supported the view
which posits that people need to be explicitly taught language, because they are born as
a tabula rasa. Experts who defend this position tend to put a great emphasis on the
importance of stimulus and experience.
Closely related to these dichotomies we find Schmidts Noticing Hypothesis which we
will study in the following section.

2.4. Schmidths Noticing Hypothesis

We have just taken a look at some of the main oppositions in language learning theories
and we consider that Schmidts Noticing Hypothesis deserves a section for the
concept itself, due to its importance from the beginning. This psychological
theory was the first one to reach the mainstream status in the Second Language
Acquisition field because it directly addressed two fundamental issues: 1) the role
of the explicit and conscious learning and 2) the explanation about why only a
limited input becomes internalized by learners.
Directly opposed to Krashens naturist view, Schmidt proposed that a certain degree of
awareness is required before some new linguistic material can be incorporated into the
learners system. That is why he defended that some explicit teaching is needed, in the
beginning, for the assimilation of the new material; after that, the implicit learning can
occur. It is also made clear in this theory that explicit teaching is needed in the first
stages; the importance of the implicit learning has been proved by means of the
internalization of newly added linguistic material. In other words, Schmidt says that
what learners notice in input is what becomes intake for learning in medium-term
memory, it becomes then part of the individuals system in long-term memory- and it
results finally in output.

UNIT 2 Key Ideas

Foundations of Bilingual Education

Input

Intake

Output

There are, however, some limitations to this theory since everything cannot be noticed
or focused on. There are cases where a lot input is offered and learners brains have a
lot of information to look at so it is impossible for them to notice everything, thus
noticing needs to be directed towards our aim, be it grammar, meaning, phonetics
Nonetheless, this theory has fostered the development of different language teaching
approaches in the last years, and these approaches and methodologies include an explicit
component such as consciousness rising, focus on form, or the communicative approach.
If we want to direct our students attention towards a given skill or aspect, available
resources are almost unlimited. Probable, the most usual tool in the classroom is our own
voice and we can use it to call our students attention, then we can proceed with the given
grammar explanation, for example, or with the definition of a word or a concept that
students do not understand.
We can also use, for instance, different font types because using different colors, sizes,
bold or italics to make students aware that something important is taking place, and our
group of students will center their attention on that highlighted term. Images are also
very useful to this extent if they are used appropriately and not only with mere aesthetic
intentions.

2.5. Bibliographical references

Mackey, W. F. (1978). The importation of bilingual education models. In J. Alatis (ed.)
Georgetown University Roundtable: International Dimensions of Education.
Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.

UNIT 2 Key Ideas

Foundations of Bilingual Education

Specially Recommended
Master classes
Noticing hypothesis
In this master class we will focus on how to make our students notice what is important
for them to learn actively.

The master class is available at the virtual campus

Do not forget to read

Foundations of Bilingual Educacion and Bilingualism
Baker, C. (1997). Foundations of Bilingual Educacion and Bilingualism. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matter.
This book by Colin Baker is one of the main and strongest foundations to the introduction
of bilingualism and bilingual education. It addresses the main issues concerning this
field, including the historical, social, political and methodological perspectives among
many others. It is must-read if you are interested in bilingual education.

UNIT 2 Specially Recommended

Foundations of Bilingual Education

Do not forget to watch

Noticing Hypothesis
Jack C. Richards presents his point of view on the Noticing Hypothesis proposed by
Schmidt.

Access to the video through the virtual campus or the following website address:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_qMGCk7EjI

Bilingualism and multilingualism

A TED talk about bilingualism and multilingualism given out by Samuel Aguirre.

Access to the video through the virtual campus or the following website address:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr_ekwQyt2k

UNIT 2 Specially Recommended

Foundations of Bilingual Education

+ Information
In Depth
Noticing and Text-Based Chat
Lai, C., & Zhao, Y. (2006). Noticing and Text-Based Chat. Language Learning &
Technology, 10 (3), 102-120.
This study by C. Lai and Y. Zhao posits that text-based online chat promotes noticing
more than face-to-face conversations, especially in terms of learners noticing of their
own linguistic mistakes.
Access to the article through the virtual campus or the following website address:
http://www.llt.msu.edu/vol10num3/laizhao/default.html
Feedback, Noticing and Instructed Second Language Learning
MacKey, A. (2006). Feedback, Noticing and Instructed Second Language Learning.
Applied Linguistics 27(3), 405-430.
Alison Mackey explores the relationships between feedback, instructed ESL learners
noticing of L2 form during classroom interactions and their subsequent L2 development
in this article.

UNIT 2 + Information

Foundations of Bilingual Education

Webgraphy
Bilingualism Matters
Bilingualism Matters was set up in 2008 in order to communicate what research shows
us about speaking more than one language.

Access to the website through the virtual campus or the following link:
http://www.llt.msu.edu/vol10num3/laizhao/default.html

UNIT 2 + Information

Foundations of Bilingual Education

Test
1) Bilingual education began in:
A. The XX century.
B. There are no scientific records.
C. The Middle Ages.
D. The Roman Empire.
2) According to what factors are not bilingual programs normally classified?
A. Age.
B. Learners linguistic competence.
C. Aims.
D. Amount of time.
3) With which processes is implicit associated?
A. Conscious.
B. Behavioral.
C. Automatic.
D. Short-term memory.
4) Who are the main figures who defend the nurturist view?
A. Vygotsky, Pavolv, Piaget.
B. Vygotsky, Chomsky, Pavlov.
C. Krashen and Lambert.
D. Vygotsky, Piaget, Chomsky and Pavlov.
5) Match each concept with its definition
Programs where L2 speakers are gradually taught
in a foreign language.

Submersion

Immersion

Programs where speakers of two different

2 languages share the same classroom and subjects
are taught in two languages.

Two-way

Programs where L2 speakers are directly taught in

a foreign language.

Partial Immersion

Programs where the aim is that students L2 turns

into L1.

Transitional Immersion

Programs where the amount of hours taught in L2

are less than 100%.

UNIT 2 Test

Foundations of Bilingual Education

6) According to Baker, which of the following programs does not belong in a

classification based on aims:
A. Enrichment.
B. Transitional.
C. Maintentance.
D. Dual.
7) Schmidts noticing hypothesis opposes to
A. Chomskys theory.
B. Krashens theory.
C. Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development concept.
D. None of the previous answers is correct.
8) Which of the following programs pursues biculturalism and biliteracy:
A. Immersion.
B. Submersion.
C. None of the answers is correct.
D. Both of the answers are correct.
9) A grammatical mistake might take place in Chomskys concept of
A. Competence.
B. Performance.
C. Long-term memory.
D. Intake.
10) Which of the following is not a common dichotomy in bilingual education?
A. Nature vs Nurture.
B. Explicit vs Implicit.
C. Immersion vs Submersion.
D. Incidental vs Intentional.

UNIT 2 Test