Seven common misconceptions in bilingual education in primary education in Spain

Abstract

Foreign language bilingual education has been common in many countries all over the world for many years after the Quebec issue in the 1970s. However, after all these years, bilingual education still remains as a criticized way of education. This research essay examined the most significant criticism by summarizing it into seven common misconceptions of the bilingual education schooling system in Spain in general education English-Spanish 1st—12th grade. A lot of criticism has been directed towards the differences between regular mainstream classes and bilingual classes especially in Primary education. This paper looks at seven commonly addressed issues. The paper especially focuses on Primary education but most revision matters also relate to secondary and even higher education. Special interest is paid to cognitive, social, economic, mode of bilingual education, role of the immigrant students and parents’ attitudes. The conclusion leads to the understanding that English-Spanish bilingual education is not pernicious but, on the contrary, benefits the cognitive a linguistic development of most school children. 
 Keywords: bilingual education; misconceptions; CLIL; immersion; cognitive; socio-economic;

The pragmalinguistic character of intonation units in discourse

“…It is a pragmatic unit that implements the P. Grice's cooperative principle. That is, it has the power of influence and opens the way for the next flow of words through emotions (Madarova & Garcia Laborda, 2020). It has also been established during the experiment that the duration of the hesitative and vocalized pause (one of the components of intonation) is long.…”

Bilingual education teachers’ perceptions of the educational climate and policies in the United States and Spain

“…Their responses indicate that Spanish teachers feel their students are more valued and respected than American teachers do, demonstrating that bilingual education in Spain can be considered to have more prestige and a higher status, a view that is also present in the responses to questions about parents. According to the opinions expressed by the teachers, it seems that parents of children in bilingual programs in Spain seek the teachers out for help on ideas of how to support their children's biliteracy at home and display more positive attitudes about bilingual education (Madarova & Garcia, 2020). In addition, the lower perceptions by American teachers support the ideas by Martinez and Hinojosa (2012) about parents still "rejecting bilingual services for their children in spite of all the supporting evidence offered by current inquiry" (p. 2).…”

Teaching English through play

“…It is no wonder that these promising bilingual programs don't stand away from controversy (Pavón Vazquez, 2018), since bilingual education has the potential to benefit students greatly (Benson, 2002;Bialystok, 2016;Blom et. al., 2014;Madarova & Laborda, 2020;Vinuesa & Izquierdo, 2019). Once again, the media relates the negative impact bilingualism has on students and their learning outcomes (20minutos, 2016;Martín-Arroyo, 2017;Merino, 2015;Sánchez Caballero, 2021).…”