English, now being an international communication medium, has been promoted as the most important foreign language in school curricula in many countries. As English competence is regarded as a new kind of literacy tha...English, now being an international communication medium, has been promoted as the most important foreign language in school curricula in many countries. As English competence is regarded as a new kind of literacy that enables the "world citizens" to participate in the global community, various educational reforms in many countries have been implemented and new teaching approaches are introduced, aiming to provide quality English instruction for school children (Cha and Ham, 2008). Among them is a bilingual model-"content and language integrated learning (CLIL)", which serves as the umbrella term for approaches that give emphasis both on language learning and subject knowledge learning. This paper aims to start with a brief discussion of the global role of English in terms of its impact on school curricula and language policy making in EFL and ESL contexts. In the next section, further examination on sociolinguistic and cultural issues of bilingual education in EFL context will be presented and specific reference will be made to English education in China. After that, major concepts of CLIL and cognitive development theories will be drawn on to explore the benefits and potentially problematic areas in bilingual education.展开更多
文摘English, now being an international communication medium, has been promoted as the most important foreign language in school curricula in many countries. As English competence is regarded as a new kind of literacy that enables the "world citizens" to participate in the global community, various educational reforms in many countries have been implemented and new teaching approaches are introduced, aiming to provide quality English instruction for school children (Cha and Ham, 2008). Among them is a bilingual model-"content and language integrated learning (CLIL)", which serves as the umbrella term for approaches that give emphasis both on language learning and subject knowledge learning. This paper aims to start with a brief discussion of the global role of English in terms of its impact on school curricula and language policy making in EFL and ESL contexts. In the next section, further examination on sociolinguistic and cultural issues of bilingual education in EFL context will be presented and specific reference will be made to English education in China. After that, major concepts of CLIL and cognitive development theories will be drawn on to explore the benefits and potentially problematic areas in bilingual education.
