Bilingual Education at Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS): Suggestions for overwhelmed families. 

 

“The gardener does not make a plant grow. The job of a gardener is to create optimal conditions.”

Sir Ken Robinson (s.f.)

 

Introduction

Welcome to this article designed to assist families who are starting their journey into bilingualism in Early Years Foundation Stage.

With the aim of making their children's learning a pleasant and satisfactory experience, our goal is to help those families overwhelmed by doubts and worries about bilingualism at this stage, as the Infant Education period coincides with one of the most important phases in the development of children's language.

Many educational centres offer bilingual training. Therefore, several uncertainties arise in families when choosing a school that can provide optimal academic and personal development for their children. From this point onwards, we will present the main concepts regarding bilingualism in Early Years in order to answer those queries from families.

 

Convenience of the Bilingual Programme of the Community of Madrid

There is unanimous support for the idea that the progressive interdependence among countries, as well as the gradual process of globalisation in all areas: technology, economy, politics, culture, and society, increasingly requires citizens to move between different countries.

For this transfer of information and experiences to occur, there must be a social transformation that facilitates this mobility, in which the demand for knowledge of languages that enables the necessary flow of people across borders, must be emphasised.

The mastery of a plurality of languages has become one of the most sought-after skills in the professional field, hence the socio-educational relevance that second or third language learning has acquired, opening up a new field of research that has been mainly addressed from a didactic approach.

Aware of the growing demand for the mastery of a second language, and the need to improve foreign language skills of students as fundamental elements for their professional and personal development, the Community of Madrid established its own Bilingual Programme in the 2004-2005 academic year, laying the foundations for what has subsequently been considered one of its most emblematic features.

 

¿What is bilingual education? What does it mean to be ‘bilingual’?

In general terms, bilingual education refers to that in which “contact with the second language occurs as a pedagogical option for schooling, that is, the second language as a vehicle for access to general knowledge”, as pointed out by (Loaiza & Galindo, 2014).

The concept of bilingualism is debatable, and there are a multitude of definitions of the term, ranging from the minimalist one of (Diebold, 1964) for whom bilingualism only requires knowledge of minimal phrases used in the business or tourist environment, the broadest one of (Baker, 2011) who defines it as the “act of using two languages in a constant and intermittent way”; the maximum bilingualism of (Bloomfield, 1935) for whom bilingualism entails “control of two or more languages like a native”. Likewise, we find definitions more focused on the achieved competence, such as that of (Grosjean, 1985) for whom a bilingual person is one who can use each language according to their needs. In the same sense (Siguán & Mackey, 1986) call ‘bilingual’ those individuals who can handle their first and second language with similar efficiency.

At this point it is important to highlight that linguistic competences evolve or devolve throughout life; therefore, the concept of bilingualism does not correspond to a static term.

Similarly, it should be noted that it is difficult to find bilingual people at the highest degree of bilingualism indicated by (Bloomfield, 1935), since it is rare for someone to have the same level of competence in both languages. In addition,  the degree of language proficiency and fluency depends on factors such as frequency of use or context, so it is difficult for a person to use both languages at the same level.

Finally, it is relevant to refer to the fact that bilingualism not only involves learning a language but also requires an approach to a new culture.