An Overview of Models of Bilingual Education

Abstract

Bilingual education is considered to be an effective way of learning a new language and in many countries of the world, it represents an increasingly popular pedagogic approach. In Europe, bilingual education using predominantly the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology has evolved as a response to the commonly recognized need for the development of plurilingual competence. In this article, we present forms of bilingual education that are recognized according to worldwide research as well as varying purposes behind using different languages as the medium of instruction in schools. We begin by outlining the emergence of bilingual education in general and by stating the different purposes that lead to the occurrence of various actual school systems of bilingual education. The paper focuses on a taxonomy of common patterns of bilingual education, based on worldwide research sources.