1. Email: Anwei.Feng@durham.ac.uk School of Education, Durham University
Essential Concepts for Researching Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
Dr Anwei Feng
School of Education, Durham University

2. Two Questions
Why is it important to study bilingualism and bilingual education?
What do we need to know to study the issues related to bilingualism and bilingual education?

3. Common (Mis)perceptions
Issues related to bilingualism and bilingual education are perhaps basically linguistic issues. So let’s leave them to the ‘language people’ or linguists.
Concepts related to the notions are easy and only relevant to minority groups.

4. Why Important? Importance Counter Arguments
Activity 1 – Discuss whether and, if yes, why it is important to study bilingualism and bilingual education and what counter-arguments there are.
Importance
Counter Arguments
Response to globalisation
Intercultural communication
Minority education
Language provision policies
FL education
Personal needs
For nation-building
For social stability and racial harmony
etc.
Cause of underachievement
Potential catalyst for Quebec-style separationism
Detrimental to cognitive development
High cost
Split personality
Identity and emotional problems
Etc.

5. What do we need to know? SLA for sure
A revisit to WHY question tells us research into these issues is interdisciplinary.
SLA for sure
Psychology (bilingualism and emotions)
Sociology (language and society)
Politics (language and politics)
Cultural studies (intercultural communication)

6. An Example
If you wish to discuss the case of CMI versus EMI schools in Hong Kong, what literature will you need to review in order to gain a relatively full view of the phenomenon?
Language and politics
Language and identity
Mother tongue education and empowerment
Effectiveness of each model
Emersion: total or partial
Strong form or weak form
Bilingualism and intelligence
Bilingualism and economic development
Globalisation and language policy

7. Another Example
If you wish to discuss Putonghua education in Hong Kong schools, what literature will you need to review in order to gain a relatively full view of the phenomenon?
Language and national identity
Bilingualism and economic development
Bilingualism, biculturalism and/or interculturalism
Language and power
Effectiveness of Putonghua education
A weak form
A strong form

8. How complex concepts can be?
Activity 2 – What is “bilingualism”?
Write a simple definition or key words to “bilingualism”

9. Bilingualism 1
Common definition - The use of two languages by individuals
‘use’ can range from native speaker competence to incipient ability to survive with a foreign/second language
‘two’ is not accurate as the term is used also to refer to tri- or multi-.
‘language’ may include formal language, variety of language, or even dialect
‘individual’ is not accurate as the term is often used to refer to societal phenomena

10. Bilingualism 2
If they are difficult to define, can we describe BILINGUALISM?
(Baker’s (2001) dimensions, p.3)
Ability (how proficient – incipient  receptive  productive  native-like)
Age (simultaneous, sequential, late )
Balanced (equally fluent in two)
Development (Additive – Subtractive; Ascendant – Recessive)
Contexts (Home, school, etc.)
Circumstantial (forced to learn for survival because of circumstances) or Elective (choose to learn to add another language competence)

11. Societal Bilingualism
Diglossia – Situation where two languages, or varieties of a language (High-variety Vs Low-variety) are used for different purposes in a society (Fishman, 1972; Baker, 2001)
High variety (language or dialect) – Often used in formal domains
Low variety (language or dialect) – Used in informal domains
*The term is useful for analysis of language use in multilingual situations and power relationship between HV users and LV users

12. Diglossia and Bilingualism
Four language situations
Diglossia
Individual bilingualism + -
Diglossia and bilingualism
Bilingualism without diglossia
Diglossia without bilingualism
Neither bilingualism nor diglossia (a political fiction)

13. Diglossia with bilingualism
Diglossia with bilingualism: exists and is stable if other factors support
Examples?
Most cities in China (H - Putonghua; L - Local dialect or language)
In London (H – RP English; L – Cogney or any other ethnic minority language)
In Singapore (H – English; L – ethnic minority language?)
In Hong Kong?
Etc.

14. Diglossia without bilingualism
Examples:
Switzerland (German, French, Italian, Romansch speech communities in different area)
India (power group speak English, masses their own languages)

15. Bilingualism without diglossia
Bilingualism without diglossia (unstable and likely to lead to creolisation?):
Examples:
Wales (bilinguals use either Welsh or English in any domain)
In Ireland (same situation)
Some places in North America
Hong Kong?

16. Neither/Nor Neither/nor: monolingual states – political fiction?
Examples:
Cuba (forced monolingual state by exterminating minority languages)
The Dominican Republic (forced?)
Natural ones (non-existent?)

17. Limitations
Difficult to categorise some communities into the ‘cells’ (Boyd and Latomaa, 1999)
Multilingual societies/states (i.e. politically unified): using more than one official language
Bilingualism without diglossia may not be unstable.
Stability of diglossia with bilingualism may be affected by increasing communication with otherness.

18. Bilingual Education
Write several words to show your working definition of the term.
Write a few examples of bilingual education according to your definition

19. Are they defined as bilingual education?
A classroom with both local students and students from other countries using the local language as MoI?
A classroom dominated by minority students but taught in the majority language?
A classroom dominated by students of the majority group but taught in a foreign language?
A classroom mainly taught in the native language with a second/foreign language as a school subject?

20. Are they defined as bilingual education?
A classroom taught simultaneously by two teachers in two different languages?
A classroom taught in a foreign language but gradually changed to be taught in a local majority language?
Etc.

21. Introductory Texts C. Baker (2006) Foundations …
J. Cummins (2000) Language, power, and pedagogy. …
J. Edwards (1994) Multilingualism …
A. Feng (2007) Bilingual education in China …
A, Pavlenco & A. Blackledge (2004) Negotiation of identity …
A, Pavlenco (2006) Bilingual minds …

22. Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
Durham Module
Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
Thanks