5. Conclusion..14

Works Cited...16

1. Introduction

In recent years, with the deepening of economic globalization and China’s reform and opening up, bilingual talent cultivation, as the main purpose of bilingual teaching, has become a hotspot in the current education research in our country. In the meantime, it is also a new attempt to reform education in China. Thus, the rise of bilingual teaching is not only keeping up with the development of the times and cultivating bilingual talents for current economic construction and development, but also catering to the needs of education reform in China.

China has been dominated by examination-oriented education for decades of years, which has unfavorable influence on teaching and learning results, and also accounts for a low level of English teaching in China. China’s examination-oriented education has been widely criticized for being rigorous (Pepper, 1996:102 and Dello-Iacovo, 2007: 241-249). With the globalization and internationalization being a trend worldwide, examination for all-round development is drawing more and more attention in China. It is especially significant in the English related education so as to make our talents well adapted to this competitive world. Bilingual teaching has turned out to be an effective way of learning English and improving academic achievement. 源'自:751]'论-文'网"]www.751com.cn

The importance of bilingual teaching is becoming increasingly clear. As an important education base, primary schools have become a necessary part of education reform in China. The bilingual teaching in primary school education is thus of great importance. In order to accomplish study objectives, multiple methods of interviews, questionnaires and frequent interactions with students involved in the bilingual education programs, as well as opinions from previous published studies are used. This thesis studies the bilingual teaching materials, bilingual teachers, bilingual curriculum and bilingual teaching environment, and proposes concrete feasible measures for the bilingual teaching in China’s primary school.

2. Literature Review 

Originated in the United States in the 19th century, in order to develop the early immigration education, the theory of bilingual teaching was first proposed in American education. And then according to the specific characteristics of their own languages, many foreign countries have implemented different bilingual policies and bilingual teaching practices. Bilingual education has been practiced at different levels of education from kindergartens to universities in China. 

2.1 The Definition of Bilingualism and Bilingual Teaching

How to define bilingualism? According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English with Chinese Translation, a person who can speak two languages is defined as bilingual. In order to be a bilingual, people do not have to speak both languages with the same fluency. It is not uncommon for bilinguals, even those who are born bilingual, to be somewhat skilled in one language. We simply refer to bilingual as speaking two languages regularly (Hornby, 1984：1034).

Bilingual teaching is defined as using a second or foreign language in classroom to teach curriculum subjects (Cohen, 2000: 87, Baker, 1998: 105 and Hyland, 2006:154). Many countries, like Canada, USA, Japan, have carried out bilingual teaching since the 1960s (Zhang, 2003: 78-79).

Looking back on the history of bilingual teaching in our country, it first referred to the combination of minority language and Chinese in a school. It was aimed at showing national equality, speeding up the construction of economy and realizing the unity of the nation.