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BILINGUALISM AND BILINGUAL EDUCATION: A GUEST EDITORIAL *
Author(s) -
Walsh Donald D.
Publication year - 1969
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1969.tb00306.x
Subject(s) - neuroscience of multilingualism , foreign language , bilingual education , linguistics , psychology , first language , sociology , language assessment , pedagogy , philosophy
Peoples who speak a minority language are less and less willing to give up their mother tongues as the price of citizenship in the lands of their birth or adoption. We foreign language teachers must interest ourselves actively in the proper education of U. S. children who lack sufficient command of English to enable them to succeed in school. A child in any country or culture must (1) become literate in his own home language, (2) have all his common learnings in this language, (3) study English as a second language until his command of English is strong enough to allow English to be the medium for some of his instruction, the rest being conducted in the child's home language. Our aim must be to make the child bilingual in English and his own language and to make him equally proud of his progress in each. The products of such bilingual education prove to be brighter, more tolerant, and more perceptive about their own and the other culture than are otherwise comparable monolingual children.