Problems And Suggested Solutions To Bilingual Education In Tertiary Institutions

Nowadays, as a hot issue of the Chinese society, bilingual education is attracting more and more people's attention. As a revolutionary teaching method, it refers to the use of a second or foreign language in school for the teaching of content subjects. Following this method of language instruction, students can master language as well as specialized knowledge.The publicly recognized bilingual education first emerged in North America in the 1960s. Some developed countries, such as America, Canada, Singapore, etc., have conducted bilingual education for several decades, but the goals and models of bilingual education in each country are different from the others. Generally speaking, there are the transitional model, the maintenance model and the immersion model of bilingual education. The immersion model originating in Canada, known as the"French immersion program", is the most successful and popular one in the world.While some important achievements have been made in bilingual education, it also poses some problems. The teacher resources, curriculum design and the students'language proficiency are problems often encountered in bilingual education, so the dispute about bilingual education is still going on.Ocean University of China (hereinafter referred to as OUC) began to conduct bilingual education in 2001, and it has accumulated some valuable teaching experiences. In order to define bilingual education more objectively and scientifically, with the aid of theories and methodologies from relevant subjects of SLA and other areas, the research is conducted among students from some majors of OUC, and takes 256 students from two grades as the viewed objects. Various instruments and research methods are employed during the case study,including direct classroom observation, interviews with bilingual teachers, and the questionnaire from students. Through the...