Bilingual education - advantages & disdvantages

As someone who teaches biology to English language learners, and who is in favour of inclusive science education, I am interested in the debate around the various advantages and disadvantages of bilingual education. 

One of the major obstacles when considering bilingual education starts with defining what actually constitutes bilingual education. Maria Brisk has defined bilingual education as the use of two languages as the media for instruction. However, within this broad definition lies a wide variety of approaches to bilingual education, especially in non-Western settings. For the purposes of this post I will focus mainly on English language learners in Thailand. (It should be noted that there are additional issues for speakers of minority dialects in Thailand - see, for example, Draper, 2012). 

Within Thailand there are a number of approaches taken to bilingual education, although ways to describe these are not well defined. Broadly speaking there are two types of English Program in Thailand: Mini English Programs, where students receive 8-14 hours per week of English medium classes, and English Programs, where students receive at least 15 hours per week of English medium classes (Keyuravong, 2008, cited in Bax, 2010). My school falls into the latter category. In addition to English Programs there are bilingual schools, which have more variety in the number of hours devoted to English-medium teaching.  

Advantages of bilingual education

In the past actual cognitive advantages of bilingual education were difficult to ascertain. In fact, at times the arguments around bilingual education tended to suggest there were cognitive disadvantages for learners. This argument has now shifted somewhat, with bilingual education no longer regarded as necessarily disadvantageous: 'Current studies that report no difference between groups present themselves as a challenge to claims of bilingual advantages rather than to claims of bilingual disadvantages...' 

Further evidence for the cognitive benefits of bilingualism come from neurological studies, for example bilingual learners may have better information processing skills. In science this may help these learners get to grips with scientific language more quickly, because they already have the skills with which to assimilate a new language. These neurological studies also suggest that bilingualism affords neurological benefits that extend beyond the fact of their being bilingual, for example bilingualism being protective against neural decline in older age. 

Other advantages that a bilingual education may confer are global competitiveness and global engagement. Being bilingual is highly likely to increase an individual's employment opportunities in today's globalized world. For example, the recent further integration of the ASEAN countries, of which Thailand is one, and that organization's adoption of English as its official working language, means that citizens of member states who are bilingual will have a competitive advantage. In addition, by pursuing a bilingual education, individuals may become more globally engaged, globally competent citizens. This could lead to them possibly becoming actively involved in human rights issues, or championing environmental issues, for example.

Disadvantages of bilingual education

If there are disadvantages to a bilingual education, these may be sociocultural rather than cognitive. Firstly, bilingual education may exacerbate social divisions, with only the wealthy elites able to access it, something that Hu (2008) argues is happening in China. Obviously, if only the wealthy can access bilingual education then this will have a negative impact on those learners who cannot. Secondly, bilingual education may privilege one language over a learner's first language, leading to a loss of cultural capital and a weakening of their first culture identity. This second disadvantage may then lead to poor learner outcomes by fostering a negative attitude to school and learning more generally.  

Summary

Clearly, the disadvantages of bilingual education are important factors that should be taken into consideration, but are not in and of themselves arguments against bilingual education - rather they are an argument for a more egalitarian approach to the way societies and their education systems are structured. Taking these disadvantages into account then, I continue to feel that the benefits offered by bilingual education outweigh the negatives. I would be interested to hear others' views on this topic. 

Essay submission day

I usually get a chorus of cheers at the start of the first semester from my Grade 12 biology students when I announce that there will be just one major homework assignment for the whole semester. Strangely these cheers soon change to groans when I tell them that the assignment is a 1500 word fully cited and referenced academic essay!

The rationale

I am aware that there is a continuing debate going on around whether teachers should be setting homework at all, and a few of the opposing viewpoints are summarised nicely here. Some research suggests that whilst homework may not have much effect on achievement for younger students, for high school students it can have beneficial effects on achievement. I will return to homework in a future blog post - for now I will focus on these essays & why I assign them. The rationale for this activity is that my students will shortly be going to university, and many of them will need to use academic writing skills, whatever degree subject they choose to pursue. They will also need to carry out independent research and find relevant articles and background information for themselves. Thus this essay task gives them an opportunity to gain some experience in these areas. This is not an easy task for my students since they are Thai and therefore learning (and writing) in their second language. 

The work

Before setting the essay itself, I assign three very short pre-essay tasks to give my students the opportunity to practice three important skills: paraphrasing, summarising, and the correct use of in-text citations. These tasks are awarded a simple completion grade; the main purpose is to get learners familiar with these skills. 

For the essay itself, there are some important points to note. Firstly, although it is first and foremost a biology essay, students have complete freedom to choose any topic with a biological focus. Many students choose to do a 'pure' biology essay. Other students, who may be less interested in biology, are able to choose a different approach, for example bioengineering or biochemistry. Another popular choice is to take a psychology-oriented approach, for example I have previously received essays about the psychology of sleep, and one about how the teenage brain affects teen behaviours. I think it is important for students to have this level of choice since this is a major piece of work which they will need to spend some time with - hopefully if they choose to write about something they are already interested in it will increase their engagement with the task. From my point of view it also makes the task of grading the essays far more enjoyable by having a set of completely different essays, rather than the same topic appearing repeatedly. 

The second point to note is that I give my students a time frame of three months to write the essay. They are free to submit their essay at any point during these three months, although they are informed that it will not be graded until everyone has submitted their work. This is an attempt by me to minimise deadline bottlenecks for my students at the end of the semester. Of course, being teenagers, I generally get fewer than ten percent of the essays submitted earlier than the deadline!

Thirdly, I make it very clear to students that plagiarism will not be tolerated. Very occasionally I have had to return work to students ungraded, and ask them to re-submit an essay that has not been extensively copied and pasted. I even had a student submit work that came from a website that claimed it wasn't a cheat site, but a collaborative one, when it clearly was simply in the business of selling complete essays. Fortunately these cases are rare, and the vast majority of students do a good job and are careful to fully cite and reference their work. 

Some examples

Each year I look forward to seeing the diversity of topics chosen by my students. The range of diversity can be seen in some of this year's list of essay titles, which, in no particular order, are: 

• Life in the underwater world
• Why do we die?
• Bird migration
• Infectious disease
• Stem cells
• The fatal Ebola
• Viruses
• Biodegradable plastics
• The digestive system
• Biological weapons
• DNA profiling
• Cancer treatment
• The meaning of animal behaviour
• Plant diversity and evolution
• The classification and evolution of dinosaurs
• Coronary surgery
• How does Golden Rice help vitamin A deficiency?

Summary

As already mentioned, my students are Thai and therefore a task such as this is particularly challenging for them. However, it is clear from the generally high standard of essays that I receive from my students that they put a lot of time and effort into these essays, and I am frequently pleasantly surprised at the insights and thoughtfulness displayed in some of their work. Although there is some (generally!) good-natured grumbling about the task, I think in the end my students can see the benefits of doing this work.  

Mastering academic writing with EALs via formative assessment

I recently wrote about an extended piece of scientific writing I assign to my Grade 12 biology students. This is to be a fully cited and referenced piece, and in order to guide my students I set them a small number of brief pre-essay formative assessments relating to paraphrasing, summarising, and how to correctly use a consistent style (e.g. APA) for in-text citations and reference lists. Since these are formative assessments, and therefore assessments for learning, I check them and provide feedback but do not grade them, although students do get credit for participation.

One of the recurring problems for my learners when looking at author lists for their citations is determining an author's family name. This sounds like it should be straightforward, except that in Thai culture the family name is very rarely used, except in very formal situations. While someone's given first name is used slightly more commonly, it again is generally used in more formal situations. Mostly, people go by their ชื่เล่น (chu len), or nickname. This does somewhat simplify things in most day-to-day interactions, because Thai official names can be very long. For example, someone called Chattamachode Krassanairasuriwongse may go simply by the nickname 'P'! But it does bring me back to my original point - that Thais can find it difficult to correctly ascertain a Western author's family name when writing their citations and references. Carrying out formative assessment is a great way to identify these problems and provide learners with rapid feedback about where they are going wrong. 

Paraphrasing and summarising academic writing can prove difficult for many learners, but may present EALs with a much bigger challenge. Although there is some evidence to suggest that EALS can have an advantage when it comes to certain linguistic skills, there are some difficult challenges to overcome when learners' first language is so very different, and this is compounded in this case with the use of academic English. My students are often shocked when I point out that when writing literature reviews, authors must summarise entire research papers in a couple of lines. Again, I am hoping that by having learners engage in these formative assessment tasks they will gain a much clearer understanding of what is required for their final essay task.

A big help this year in providing timely feedback for learners came from using Google Classroom. This allowed me to distribute the formative assessments to students easily, and to then provide direct comments in their text and where they made errors. What I am also able to do, which was more difficult when using our previous LMS, Moodle, is to offer students the option to share their early drafts with me. This will allow me to give them real-time feedback on the development of their essay. Obviously I will not be re-writing their work for them, but I would like to scaffold them to achieve a level of mastery in academic writing, which will be more feasible with this kind of ongoing support. I will be interested to see how this approach affects the essays which get submitted at the end of the semester.

Extended scientific writing with EALs

This week I will be assigning the major piece of coursework for my Grade 12 students this semester – a 1500 word scientific essay, on a biology topic of their choice. This is a challenging activity for my learners, given that they are EALs. However, I feel it’s a great way to have them practice important transferrable skills that will be invaluable to them when they go to university next year. Some of my learners will go on to study in the UK or the US, while many others will take up places in international programmes in Thai universities where the medium of instruction is English. Academic writing, paraphrasing, and the correct use of citations and referencing, are skills that most, if not all of them, will likely be facing in the coming years.

Image: Graham Holliday via Flickr http://bit.ly/1FHA65t

I hope that by giving learners free reign in terms of choosing their topic, it goes some way to lightening the burden of this task. They can choose any topic they like relating to biology. For those who may be less interested in biological sciences as a subject, or will not be pursuing a degree in that field, I will accept essays with a biology angle. For example, in previous years I received essays based on biomechanical engineering and sleep deprivation studies, which obviously lean more towards engineering and psychology, respectively.

Before getting started on the essay itself, I set a couple of pre-essay activities. These give learners an opportunity to review and practice a number of key skills I am hoping to reinforce with this assignment. The first pre-essay activity involves the correct use of in-text citations and references. The second gives learners a series of short extracts from primary scientific literature that they must summarise and paraphrase. They are also expected to find an example of a recent research article of their own and write a two or three sentence summary of it.

Grade 12 students here in Thailand have an awful lot of pressures piling up on them during this, their final year of school. Many of them will be preparing for and sitting multiple exams, for example SATs and university entrance exams. Therefore I do not assign a lot of homework, with this essay being their one major task to be done outside of class time. As a result, the deadline for this work is two months from now, in early September. I also make it clear to my students that they are free to submit their essay at any time between now and the deadline. This is partly to help them avoid the typical bottleneck of deadlines that build up at the end of term. However, teenagers being teenagers, I can count on one hand the number of essays that have been turned in much before the deadline in the past!