Article Writing Homework Help

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on need for bilingual education, benefits of bilingual education. This paper, however, uses a more specific definition, which pertains primarily to the United States setting.&nbsp. Bilingual education, as referred to here, adopts the meaning provided by the paper ‘What Works for the Children? What We Know and Don’t Know About Bilingual Education’ by Harvard University, September 2002, which is “(1) Transitional bilingual education programs allow students to receive some instruction in language skills and on academic subjects in their primary language. As the students progress in English, the programs decrease the amount of instruction in their primary language with the goal of transitioning the students into general education classes as quickly as possible. (2) Dual language or two-way bilingual programs combine native English speaking students and ELLs with the goal of developing proficiency in both languages for both groups of students.”

The United States public education system has been beset with much controversy on whether the bilingual education policy is abolished or not. It is a pressing issue, as the demographic landscape of the US continues to be that of rich diversity, with immigrants from practically all over the world continuously flocking to the US, resulting in the consequent rise in the “minority” student population in the US public schools. As stated in an article in University.com, “Bilingual Education – Need for Bilingual Education, Benefits of Bilingualism and Theoretical Foundations of Bilingual Education”, based on 2000 US Census data, there are more than 9.7 million children aged five to seventeen, or one out of six, who speak language other than English at home. It further states that the years 1990 to 2000 saw a dramatic increase in the population of language-minority children, increasing at 55%, in contrast to only 11% increase in the population of children from homes where only English is spoken.&nbsp.

O’Dea, Patricia, 2001, in her CRS Report on ‘Bilingual Education: An Overview’, writes that “estimates indicate that there are over 3.4 million LEP students in the U.S. (Precise estimates of the LEP population are not available due to the lack of a standard definition of LEP.