Thinking On Bilingual Educatoin In Middle Schools

Bilingual education starts its new era in China with its process of interacting with the rest of the world in economy, information, technology, etc. The concept of bilingual education arose from the western world because of their internal purposes such as the identification of the minorities (native, immigrants) in the USA, harmony between two big nationalities (English speaking and French speaking) in Canada. Many other countries and regions conditionally choose the bilingual education models with their own real situation, China is one of them and the purpose of the bilingual education in China is to expedite the speed to catch up the developed countries in many areas.Although with almost 20 years'experience of bilingual education in China after opening policy, the theory and practical accumulation is not enough to establish a general model and rules to guide all education institutions. As an English teacher, the author has strong interest in contributing her knowledge into the development of the basic education system which can bring out more compound talents in both subjects and language. So the author wrote this paper based on her school's experience as a trial to explore the roadmap of successful implementation of bilingual teaching in her school-- Foreign Language High school Affiliated to Shanghai Normal University.This paper has five chapters. Chapter One covers the history of bilingual education world wide and also its development history in China as well as the purpose, objective, methodology of this paper Chapter two briefly covers the definition of bilingual education, main models of bilingual education, the attributes of China's bilingual education according to its own condition and situation. Chapter Three mainly focuses on the first trial in the school in bilingual teaching, current status, as well as the primary conclusion from the interviews and questionnaire survey. Chapter Four introduces the simple project for the second trial in the school proposed on the basis of further analysis as well as the author's personal views on the suitable model for China's bilingual teaching. The author also discloses 7 critical success factors (Teacher, Students, Government, Teaching mode, Teaching material, School, Environment) of a balance map for bilingual teaching and what a middle school like us should do to ensure the success of bilingual teaching. In Chapter Five, in addition to the expectation of successful bilingual education in the school and China, the author raises her personal concern about the risk of its direction to elite education which is another hot topic in the world wide.The author is not sure if the second round trial in the school will be a full success but it is hoped that this paper can increase the possibility of it. In China, the bilingual teaching is still in an experimental period and it does not have a complete theory system of the bilingual teaching, we did achieve some progress but also experienced many frustrations. It can be regarded as another long march for China's education system. The author hopes everybody being involved in this movement can exert their own efforts to make it move fast and steadily.