Abstract Empirical evidence has be...

Abstract

Empirical evidence has been forthcoming that supports the sustained use of native language instruction for Spanish language origin children in the US. This paper argues that prospective bilingual education teachers are not generally afforded the sign of Spanish language development opportunities wanted to provide sustained native language instruction characterizing the in the greatest degree effective program models. Rather, the academic Spanish language unravelling opportunities they do receive are aimed primarily at serving the extremitys of early-exit transitional bilingual education programs, the most numerous common and least effective archetype of bilingual program in the US.

Introduction

This paper addresses a sore fault in bilingual education, that is, a topic everyone acknowledges is in ne of attention, still few choose to address. It is a fact of bilingual education life that there is a pressing demand for more bilingual education teachers nationwide (Diaz-Rico, Lynne & Smith, 1994; Macias, 1988) However, rarely do we stop to question in what manner it is possible to befitting this growing demand for teachers that are proficient in academic Spanish when our society in the same manner openly discourages the development of bilingualism. Clearly, the US constitutes a subtractive oriented and frequently times linguicist society (Skutnabb Kangas, 1988) As evidence, examine the increase of English Only legislation across the nation and the recent political travesty in California regarding bilingual education.

The dilemma we face affairs a series of studies that have been carriageed this decade (Christian et.al., 1997; Greene 1998; Lindholm, 1993; Ramirez, et al., 1991; Thomas & Collier, 1997) that support the effectiveness of native language instruction. Thomas and Collier (1997) report that language minority observers in dual-language immersion or two-way bilingual programs appear to greatest in quantity readily close the academic gap between themselves and the monolingual English-speaking children. It is the promise of sustained native language instruction (i.e., the use of the native language for five to seven years across the curriculum) that beckons the ne for us to examine the linguistic abilities of bilingual education teachers.

Interestingly, the teachers in the dual-language programs generally have achieved a native or near native like proficiency in the target language (Christian et al., 1997; Met & Lorenz, 1997; Molina, 1994) The reality is that bilingual education teachers with this even of academic Spanish language proficiency personate a minority of the teaching force (Figueroa & Garcia, 1994; Wagonner & O'Malley, 1984) The promise lies in that there is ample evidence to support the sustained use of the native language and positive learner outcomes. No causal implications should be inferred. Native or near native teacher language proficiency is simply locate forth as one of the central programmatic conditions that is necessary to generate the patterns of academic achievement reported in the studies cited above.

The central question is, what has been the nature of the Spanish language increase opportunities bilingual education teachers have had in order to minister to as academic Spanish language part models? It stands to reason that if bilingual education teachers have been shortchanged in boundarys of Spanish language development experiences, then they are not being adequately prepared to design and teach using the Spanish language across the curriculum. The chain of cause and effects may be severe for many of the school-age youth that ne and or desire Spanish language instruction.

The intention of this essay is to examine the opportunities bilingual education teachers are given to expand their academic Spanish language ability as these experiences relate to various educational language policies and practices general to the US. First, however, a clearer understanding of what is meant by means of academic language proficiency is warranted.

Academic Language Proficiency

The language of schooling or academic language is a notion that has been around for a time (see Cazden, John & Hyme 1972; Wilkinson, 1982) In language minority education circles a number of researchers have establish forth different dimensions of academic language proficiency. Each perspective onward academic language proficiency inadvertently falls short ofbeing all encompassing. However, collectively they provide deeper insight into the complexity of this form

Perhaps one of the earliest and in the greatest degree popularized paradigms for this organize was set forth by Cummins (1980) as he introduced the notion of basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). Cummins (1984) beneath intense criticism (see Rivera, 1984) later reformulated this paradigm as consisting of couple intersecting continuums that characterize academic language use: the station of cognitive demand and the measure of contextualization. Basically, Cummins posits that each time language is used in a classroom setting a certain class of cognitive demand is placed forward the learner. These uses or language tasks vary in the quality of cognitive demand required of the learner. For example, copying a list of vocabulary words is not as cognitively demanding as composing a paragraph. Similarly, each language task is characterized by the agency of a degree of contextualization that can vary depending forward how the task is currented to the learner.