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Bilingualism In Educations Of Politics

In examining Spanish language instruction for U.S. Hispanic bilingual college students during the last 20 years or so, a review of the literature shows that the development of such instruction is a long way in terms of research and the development of instructional materials (Aparicio, 1983). There remains, nevertheless, much research to be done on ways to improve college-level Spanish instruction for the Hispanic bilingual. Questions have been raised recently about how much the profession has achieved on a national scale regarding the teaching of Spanish to native speakers; how far the profession has come in shaping theoretical paradigms on which to base SNS instruction; (Marques, 1992) states.   A question also remains that what progress has been made in the practice of assessing the bilingual student's language proficiency; how current placement tests can be improved; and how individual colleges and universities are dealing with language requirement exemptions, language placement, credit-by-examination, and SNS curriculum development needs.
Learning a second language was never a priority in California public schools.   In fact, in California bilingualism has become a dirty word. This year marks the seventh anniversary of the passage of Proposition 227. It is now politically correct to refer to bilingual education as a failure, ranking right up there with the teaching of reading by sight, rather than phonics states (Riehl, 2005).   Nevertheless, educators continue to disagree over the effectiveness of English immersion programs versus bilingual education in helping English learners succeed in school. Each side uses its own interpretation of student test scores to prove their case.   Bilingual educators opposed the recent appointment of Oceanside Superintendent Ken Noonan to the state Board of Education (Riehl, 2005).   A former opponent of Prop. 227, Noonan now embraces English immersion as the best way to close the academic achievement gap for English-language...