Research on bilingual education in partner countries

Bilingual Education - a Step Ahead - Research on bilingualism in Strona | 1 partner countries - Survey 1 Within our project “Bilingual Education - a Step Ahead” we concentrate on teaching by means of a new methodology called CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). Our activities are designed to fulfill needs of various stakeholders - pupils, parents and teachers.

The aim of this research is to measure how bilingual education is perceived by students’ parents from the partner organizations. Owing to its results we are able to set up further activities aiming at familiarizing the communities with the Project and its core values. We assumed that it would be most reasonable to measure the level of recognition of bilingual education and CLIL among students’ parents so that make sure our activities will be perfectly tailored to their needs and expectations.

To measure the progress in promoting bilingual education and awareness of language importance we have decided to undertake the survey twice during the project - at the beginning and at the end of our cooperation. Below we present the outcomes of the first one.

The survey concentrated on two main targets – to observe the school reality, how foreign languages are introduced into curriculum and how successful it is in parents’ opinion. The other aim was to see if “bilingual education” and “CLIL” are phrases that bear any association. Naturally we have concentrated on English language teaching as this language is compulsory in all partner countries.

The results analyzed below come from the first year of cooperation, when majority of students and their parents hadn’t been included into Project activities yet. We managed to collect data from all partner countries and most partner organizations, therefore we can assume that the outcomes are objective.

Some statistics of the respondents The survey was distributed online and in a traditional paper form. The process of collecting the data lasted for 2 months. During that time we managed to obtain feedback from 339 respondents, where almost a half of them were citizens of Romania. The smallest number of surveys were send in by Turkey, 21 copies. The vast majority of the interviewees were female, 249 compared to 79 male. 11 respondents didn’t specify their gender. If we look at the age we can easily observe that about 2/3 of the respondents were aged 31-40. We have

also asked about the number of children. The vast majority of the interviewed people raised 1-2 children (313 votes). Cases of families with more than two children were observed Strona | 2 proportionally most frequently in Turkey and Greece.

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Strona |languages 5 Children, and school reality

Analyzing the data we can easily observe that most children start their education being toddlers and preschool students, as over a half of the interviewees claimed that their children started attending English lessons being 2-4 years old. That proves that language education is an important factor in school education.

Depending on the legislation of the partner country as well as the neighbourhood, where the students live, they attend language lessons at school and, if possible, begin language education in a preschool. In most countries numerous language and education centres are present. Another very important issue is that more and more frequently children are taught languages at their homes – by family members or in their free time playing computer games, or eventually taking extra lessons with tutors.

It can be easily seen that the main responsibility for foreign language education lies on public sector. Therefore we have also enquired whether the parents were satisfied with their schools’ offer and quality of teaching. Over 2/3 of respondents expressed their approval for the service they obtained.

A similar situation can be observed when we analyse the answers to another question, where we asked whether they agreed that their school valued language education. 90% of people claimed that they definitely or rather agreed with that statement.

The last question in this section concerns language courses and their perception: importance of particular aims that constitute language teaching attitudes. We consecutively asked about: preparation for school exams, raising communication skills, improving thinking skills, and raising interest in the world. First of all, all of these tasks were acknowledged as important or quite important. However, exam preparation was indicated as the least important. The same with the last category, raising awareness of the world issues, was recognized of less importance. The other categories, thinking and communication skills, are perceived as key factors in language education.

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CLIL and bilingual education The last part of the survey concerned bilingual education and CLIL methodology. Asking these several questions we wanted to see to what extent parents were aware of effects that bilingual education may have on their children’s overall development and whether in their opinion, introduction of bilingual education into school curricula might be positive.

The most important information is that over 330 answerers claims that knowing foreign languages may be helpful in an adult life. That percentage of positive feedback is vital for the project success, as it allow to assume that parents are eager to cooperate in language programmes.

What is also important, 2/3 of respondents notice a positive influence of bilingual education on the overall skill development of their children, and almost the same number of people thinks that owing to language education children develop thinking skills, so essential in 21st century. Among parents’ opinions we can read: „it is necessary in a multicultural reality”, „A child becomes more open-minded, curious of the world”, “A child learns the same word in two languages that encourages them to learn more about habits and culture of other countries”, “Bilingual education in a primary school can teach children to look for information using foreign sources; it can facilitate peer contact with foreigners”. We can observe awareness of influence the bilingualism on neurodidactic processes: „Bilingual education can develop more links in child's brain so that it is easier to learn more languages, to learn other subjects faster, because there are more links between brain cells created”. Reading parents’ answers we can feel that in their opinion the ones who know more than one language may be more successful in their private/professional lives: “they may learn the second language as native speakers”, „higher self-evaluation, more confidence, easier communication, wide range of vocabulary, easier learning”.

86 respondents said they recognise and know the CLIL acronym and its methodology. Being asked to write down the definition some did, but only a part of the answers might be considered as the right ones. Proportionally the highest number of them was given by Polish citizens, where coordinating partners operate. The other countries provide few or no proper answers that should be perceived as a warning and a challenge for partner countries.

Arguably, because of the lack of knowledge or any experience some of parents are afraid of compulsory bilingual teaching in a public sector. However, over 220 respondents would like their children to participate in such activities at schools, although they can indicate possible drawbacks of bilingual lessons at schools. As the main ones they perceive: insufficient language level of English among children and their parents (sic!), too difficult topics and

vocabulary as well as a risk of failure for the “weaker” students, who might not cope with this kind of challenge. The fears derive from lack of knowledge what a bilingual programme looks like, especially in terms of CLIL, that we hope to present by our Project activities.

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At the very end we asked the parents whether they would be interested in making use of products that are supposed to be the outcomes of our cooperation – an online platform with ready-to-use lesson plans and other materials for home teaching, and methodological workshops for parents, when we will show how to work with children. In both cases the initiative is more than welcome as only 10% of respondents are not keen on participation.

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Conclusions The picture we obtained analysing the data presents a group of parents aware of positive aspects of language education and bilingual teaching. They seem determined to introduce changes into education systems, want their children’s global development, compatible with key competences of 21st century. The ideas of our project „Bilingual Education – a Step Ahead” reflect their expectations. Our task as project partners is to promote bilingual education and its advantages. We have to do our best to resolve aby doubts that the parents might have. It is crucial to familiarize them with CLIL methodology as the notion itself in a novelty for a great group of parents. Practical tasks such as methodological workshops for parents and the online platform with ready-to-use materials will be a wonderful support for those parents that want to intensify time that their children spend learning foreign languages and/or try home language teaching.

Outcomes after the second year of the Project We asked mostly the same parents to fill in the survey once again at the end of the Project.

As we assumed our efforts proved to worthwhile. We observed some progress both in understanding the CLIL acronym, its methodology as well as the positive aspects of bilingual

education. It was especially recognizable at the preschool level, where bilingual lessons took place every day and the progress was the biggest. The parents were extremely satisfied with the easiness their children acquired a new language and encouraged the authorities to keep the lessons Strona | going 15 after the end of the Project.

This time the survey was filled in by 220 people: 70 Poles, 25 Greeks, 105 Romanians, 19 Turks and 1 person from Serbia.

There were 48 male interviewees compared to 168 female.

Below we present the charts you can easily compare with the previous ones. Looking at the results we may conclude that the Project increased the global understanding of bilingual education and at the same time diminished the number of parents being afraid of this kind of learning. There are still some parents not familiar with the idea of CLIL in theory, but as we observe practically much into bilingual lessons taking place in their children’s everyday routine. To sum up, we are even more motivated to keep informing about the theoretical background of our teaching work as well as continue implementing bilingual education into curricula.

How many children have you got?

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