Chapter 1: The Bilingual Advantage

1. BLUEPRINT FOR ENGLISH
LANGUAGE LEARNERS
SUCCESS

2.  What do educators, school administrators, and
parents need to consider when trying to define the
concept of bilingualism?
 What does bilingualism bring to the individual and to
the countries or regions that promote the use of two
or more languages for instruction?
 What does the research say about the effects of
bilingualism in children?
 In the United States, does bilingual education have a
chance to become a more significant instructional
model in public school?

3. Designing and
delivering instruction
that is culturally and
linguistically
appropriate for all
diverse learners,
including those with
individualized
educational programs
(IEP).

4.  “If you talk to a man in a language he
understands, that goes to his head. If
you talk to him in his language, that
goes to his heart.”

5.  Benefits of being Bilingual
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZANBvuS_iDU
 Teen speaks over 20 languages
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km9-DiFaxpU

9.  In the brain of bilingual individuals, where is
each language stored?
 How does the bilingual brain switch when
confronted with two languages?
 What are the functional differences or
similarities of a bilingual brain?
 How do the functions of the bilingual brain
compare with those of a monolingual brain?

10.  Vaid and Hull (2001) found that the left
hemisphere dominated language processing
for monolinguals, while bilateral involvement
was pronounced in early fluent bilinguals
compared with late frequent bilinguals.
 Bilinguals appear to be less left-laterized
than monolinguals, suggesting that similar or
identical regions of the brain serve both
languages.

11.  When bilinguals are going back and forth
between two languages, in the bilingual
mode, individuals show significantly more
activity in the right hemisphere than
monolingual speakers, particularly in a frontal
area called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

12.  Promotes metalinguistic awareness
 Promotes cognition
 Mind developing
 Executive functioning
 Promotes social achievement
 Literacy and biliteracy development
 Content area development
 Promotes cross-cultural awareness and
understanding

13.  Transferability of skills from one language to
another play a critical role in the education of
bilingual learners (Rodriguez, Carrasquillo,& Lee,
2014).
 One of the benefits of using bilingual students’
native language in instruction is based on the
theory that students who have strong
proficiency in their native language have the
ability to transfer cognitive and linguistic skills,
processes, and strategies from that language to
a second language they are learning (Rodriguez,
Carrasquillo, & Lee, 2014)

14. Providing integrated
language and content
instruction to support
language development
through language-
focused scaffolds.
Bilingual, ESL, and other
content-area teachers
must collaborate
purposefully and
consistently to promote
academic achievement
in all content areas.

15. Conceptual Knowledge Student bring a long list of learned concepts to
the new language
Subject matter knowledge Older students who have been exposed in their
native language to specific content related to
the social sciences, mathematics, and general
knowledge bring their knowledge to the new
learning experience.
Higher-OrderThinking Skills Students experience using the primary
language to inquiry, question, compare,
analyze, and argue about a variety of topics.
Reading Processes and Strategies Students bring a variety of learning strategies
to approach a broad range of reading texts.
Writing Composition Skills Students may have been exposed to writing
about a variety of topics with different
audiences and purposes.

16. Utilizing materials
and instructional
resources that are
linguistically,
age/grade
appropriate and
are aligned to the
CommonCore
Standards.

17. Adequacy exposure to primary language in school
Promoting of additive bilingualism or dual language programs
Challenging instruction that emphasizes deep conceptual and linguistic proficiency,
first in the home language and using that foundation in the second language
instruction
Using parents as language resources and motivating them to provide language and
literacy experiences for their children in the home
Availability of classrooms that provide opportunities for active exploration through
questioning, diversity of learning experiences and activities, and meaningful
conversation interaction; and
Classrooms in which thematic units, community topics, and multicultural literature
are main components of the first and second language curriculum

18. Collaborating with
the school’s support
personnel and
community-based
human resources in
order to address the
multiple needs of
ELLs.

21.  The primary language students bring to the
classroom and the instruction they receive in
making that language stronger play an
important role in how those students will
develop cognitively and academically.

22. Rodriguez, D., Carrasquillo, A., & Lee, K. S. (2014).The bilingual advantage:
Promoting academic development, biliteracy, and native language in the classroom.
NewYork:Teachers College Press.
Vaid, J. & Hull, R. (2001). A tale of two hemispheres: A meta-analytic review of the
bilingual brain of language minority students. Poster presented at theThird
Symposium of Bilingualism, University ofWest of England.