Strategies for the development of effective bilingual higher education

Andres Felipe Cifuentes N. M.Ed. Educational Leadership

VCU

My experience as an English teacher in Higher Education settings has given me a glance on, what I consider to be some effective strategies for the development of bilingualism in higher education. Other than more evident strategies such as proper teacher training, an appropriate bilingual model approach or a permanent dialogue with policy makers to make bilingualism a nationwide effort, I believe that fostering proficiency awareness; promoting autonomous learning; and an adequate curriculum integration are some key principles that also contribute to the necessary expansion of bilingualism in higher education. What I refer as proficiency awareness is not other than to convince the educational community (staff, students, parents and policy makers) of the advantages of bilingualism at university level which constitutes on an indispensable professional asset that will broaden the students labor opportunities in the future. This might be a strategy that will find little or no resistance among people, since there are undoubtedly a few ones that oppose the benefits of bilingual education. As easy as it may be to convince someone of the virtues of bilingual education, it is not as easy to change someones gears into autonomous learning. Especially in Latin-American countries where the curriculum in both elementary and secondary schools are mainly teacher centered. This means that students are not familiarized with such model and consequently the need to promote autonomous learning as tool to not only enhance the learning process as a whole but to include it as a necessary approach to cope with the linguistic needs of every learner.

In order to do such thing as to ensure the adequate linguistic achievements that every student is required to accomplish at a bilingual setting, then it is necessary to make sure that a student has been provided with a curriculum that considers both the academic language that will allow him or her to develop all his professional potential and also a curriculum that is aligned with the Common European Framework for Languages which is proven to be an effective system to measure the students competence in a foreign language. Finally, the strategies above mentioned need to be complemented with a sustained effort of every stakeholder involved in the implementation and realization of any bilingual program. Due to the nature of such enterprise the effectiveness of bilingual higher education requires much more than just financial resources, in which maybe the human resources are the ones that truly affect how successful these or any other strategies.