Bilingual and Bi-Cultural Students

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that only through interaction and collaboration among students, teachers, parents and community members will bi-cultural and bilingual students develop an identity and realize their true potential; therefore, schools that neglect to infuse curricula and educational environment with interactive and collaborative policies fail students and society. The author points out that the current number of bilingual programs available in the United Students serve a very small percentage of the actual number of bilingual students in need and these programs. The paper stresses that teachers must understand that a culturally diverse student base means that not all students have the same reference point when learning in the classroom because what is intuitive to one student may seem foreign to another depending on their cultural heritage.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Understanding Bilingual Education and ESL
Cognitive and Linguistic Development in Bi-cultural Students
Structuring Bilingual and ESL Classrooms to Enable Student Achievement
Cultural Conflict Students Face in Schools
Analysis
Conclusions

From the Paper:

"The manner in which adults and children interact are also different among various cultures. In most traditional U.S. classrooms for example, most teachers repeatedly ask questions of students to evaluate their achievement. This process may confuse bicultural students who grow up in a culture where adults only ask children questions when they don't know an answer themselves; students in this situation may not understand why a teacher would ask a question if they already had the answer causing a disruption in learning.Text organization also varies among cultures."

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• Term Paper # 148998 : "The Giger and Davidhizar Cultural Model"

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