Consequences Of Bilingualism And Possible Improvements In The Spanish Academic Field

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Consequences of bilingualism and possible improvements in the Spanish academic field

Summary

Saxon bilingualism has been part of education in some of the schools in the country for years, thus promising a great professional and academic future for students who form in these schools. The excessive use of this, for better or worse, has become the subject of controversy among teachers, students and politicians. The following work shows the consequences of excessive use of sajon bilingualism in Spanish -speaking schools, including the advantages, metalinguistic skills and mastery of language that children with bilingual education get to obtain. In addition to this, various motivational, cognitive and metacognitive strategies are explained to learn English as a second language, thus rejecting the erroneous ideas of bilingualism.

Introduction

Thanks to the development of globalization in Europe, the term bilingualism is already a reality, thus becoming a requirement for people when maintaining a conversation and a relationship. Therefore, knowledge of another language is necessary to be able to develop as citizens affected by globalization. Therefore, as the 1995 European Commission documented, for a European citizen it is necessary to know in all aspects the mother tongue and two foreigners. Therefore, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports publishes new plans and projects for a mobility improvement in the continent and the development of a second language. In Spain, Galicia, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Valencia have a trilingual education, unlike the other autonomous communities that have a bilingual education. The stage of primary education is the most related to bilingual education, as it says in Royal Decree 126/2014: “Acquire in, at least a foreign language the basic communicative competence that allows them to explain and understand simple messages andfall in everyday situations ". (p.19354).

A good definition of "bilingualism" is what Robin Kuip (2011) shows in his bibliographic study entitled "The cognitive effects of bilingualism" defining bilingualism as the phenomenon in which, together with the mother tongue, it is dominated howUse another language. On the other hand, Macnamara defines a bilingual person as a person who is able to dominate one of the skills of a language (speaking, listening, writing or reading). Thus, in this document the various advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism will be treated, as well as the excessive use of this, ending with possible improvements and methodologies.

Advantage

One of the different advantages that bilingualism can have in children is the learning of new cognitive strategies, related to different levels of language (phonological, lexicon/semantic, grammatical and pragmatic) although the advantages could be demonstrable at the grammatical level andlexicon-semantic.

Learning a second language can be the most direct method to understand that our language represents just a specific and particular way of organizing reality and our personal experiences, not the only way to conceptualize the world. It has been shown that bilingualism is associated with better metalinguistic and metacognitive abilities (Lombardi, 1986).

As a second advantage you could have a better understanding of the first language, since learning a second language can cause an improvement in metalinguistic consciousness. It could then be a way of understanding our own language in a different way and as already demonstrated, bilingualism is associated with an improvement of metacognitive skills.

Another advantage would be considered the increase in cognitive control, which has also been associated with effective bilingualism in children. Finally, Ricciardelli showed that bilingual children were superior in termsSensitice.

Disadvantages

Bilingual use in children also has its disadvantages, which will be treated in this document. As disadvantages we can consider the different difficulties that a child with language problems can have with the language, on the other hand, the decrease in the child’s verbal fluidity and to end the interference between the two languages. "Interference depends on a variable diversity. This increases when both languages are active and can be greater when L1 and L2 are nearby languages. It can also partially explain the decrease in verbal fluency found in bilingual subjects ”. (Kuip, 2011, P.8).

These disadvantages are given when the two languages are active in the child, such as bilingual education like the one given in Spain. Even a bilingual child, unlike a monolingual child, tends to have little vocabulary in both languages, since they do not take advantage of a language, but are exposed to knowledge in two languages.

Situation and improvements in the Spanish education system

Given the different disadvantages or negative effects of bilingual education, different measures and improvements could be put in the Spanish education system. First, every teacher must have a B1 to be able to give matters in English, therefore, as a possible improvement, it could be investigated if this type of level is sufficient to be able to educate children well. In addition, teachers should be continued in the English language so that the language level is very high and apart from educating students in the field, they can be reinforced with knowledge of the given language. On the other hand, it is obvious the linguistic incompetence of the young Spaniards, thus reaching courses such as Baccalaureate without knowing how to write their own mother tongue or opponents of firefighter to suspend the oppositions for either knowing how to write their language.

Equateing a mother tongue with an instrumental language language is a complete dislate, which only contributes to reduce the consideration that maternal languages deserve as a form of expression of our identity. This explains that many children and young people speak a rudimentary Spanish with whom they can no longer express reflections elaborated. (De Prada, 2019).

What is the point of explaining in English the pollination of plants or the formation of the continents? The teacher will have to spend time and energies to explain an abstrusal vocabulary (stamens and pistils, orogenesis and tectonic failures), with the consequent reduction of the level of transmitted knowledge. At the end of the course, their students will not have learned any geography or biology;And, on the other hand, they will have their heads full of absurd words that will forget a few months, due to lack of use. (De Prada, 2019).

With these quotes from Juan Manuel de Prada we can be aware of the problem that the Spanish education system has, since it focuses on giving all possible subjects in English leaving behind the mother tongue itself.

Conclusions

In Spain;The Basque Country, Galicia, Valencia and Catalonia have a maternal language apart from Spanish and are multilinguals at school. This type of bilingualism is not bad, since the two languages are put into practice. Thus their two maternal languages, English and the optional language that they decide to choose, among which are Basque (as in Navarra), French or German. These options offered at the ESO stage are subjects that focus on teaching the language.

To conclude, the amount of subjects offered in English should be modified and not allowing children to grow with great linguistic incompetence in their own mother tongue;Continuously train teachers who teach subjects in English and not stop promoting the learning of new languages. 

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