Bilingual Education Parallels to Learning a Foreign Language

During my junior year, I had the opportunity to study abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Like many of our ELL learning in the US, I was overwhelmed by the system, the language, the culture, the food... I think it is something I really draw on when talking with my ELL students.

There are a lot of parallels to getting a student to learn English to the process of learning spanish. During high school and college I took a lot of courses learning Spanish in the US. This would compare most similarly to the paired bilingual education approach used in ELL programs. When I got to Argentina, however, I had a higher level of Spanish. Therefore I was directed into a Spanish immersion program much like the English immersion program.

As I reflect upon this experience, I recall writing this blog post. At the time I believed that the Argentinian education system was the craziest in the world. Boy was I wrong. I now think urban education is even more complicated than the inefficient Argentinian system.

One big implication to this is that this experience allows me to relate to my students in a very unique fashion. I can talk to them about the cross cultural immersion experience and how difficult it was for me at first to mitigate in another country speaking a language partially foreign to me at the time.