Models of Bilingual Education

The study Models of Bilingual education focuses on the application of dual-medium and parallel-medium instruction in two historically disadvantaged schools in the Western Cape. It tested two assumptions: (1) that parallel-medium teaching in practice uses only one language of learning and teaching (LoLT) and therefore leads to monolingual classroom practice; and (2) that dual-medium teaching offers the best route to bilingualism but in practice it’s applied haphazardly, leading to the loss of much pedagogical and language learning benefits. The study, based on a Master’s dissertation completed at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa), questions the very nature of implementing bilingual education at the two historically disadvantaged schools, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa.