Australian Bilingual Education Research

Bilingual education is an important problem in the whole world. With the tide of globalization, more and more countries implement the policy of bilingual education. No matter in monolingual or bilingual countries, there is successful bilingual education. Australian bilingual education is a classic example.Australia is a multicultural and multilingual country and the official language is English. At the same time, there are many minority languages, including Aboriginal languages and immigrant languages. Bilingual education and community languages have acquired a higher profile since the 1970s. In Australia, the definition of bilingual education is used to refer to both education which uses and promotes two languages and education for language minority children. The models of Australian bilingual education are as follows: LOTE classes address a variety of students who range from fluent speakers of LOTE as their mother tongue to monolingual English-speaking children. Bilingual programmes are mainly transitional or maintenance programmes for students from a non-English-speaking background, but there are some remarkable schools with (partial) immersion pragrammes which are for the whole school population.This dissertation studies the background, history and practice of Australia bilingual education, analyzes the achievements and the problems in the practice of Australian bilingual education. According to the study results, our country should cultivate qualified bilingual teachers, set up a continuous bilingual educational system, carry out perfect evaluation method, and create a better bilingual environment.