Being Bilingual is Hard to Define — Here's How a Teacher Sees It. by Débora Affonso

Bilingualism

You know when you have to define what a word means and you kinda know what it is but it is really hard to put into words, that is how I always felt about defining bilingualism. It is one of those concepts that is a combination of so many variants that it’s hard to know where to start from. But we gotta start from somewhere. So I’ll start by saying when I considered myself bilingual. I learned English in a language school in SP and I started when I was 9 years-old, having 3 hours of lessons a week. When I was a little bit older, I had this habit of watching cable TV and I always put the show in the original language with subtitles. One day, I realised that the subtitles were not on and that I could understand everything that was happening. Plim! I was fluent in English.

Many years later, when I already had my first certificate of proficiency (TOEFL) and was already teaching music in English (yes, my first graduation was in Music Education), I started researching bilingualism and bilingual education and I realised that it was not so simple. Authors don’t really agree on a definition as some will consider the bilingual individual one that can navigate the languages spoken in a determined society or acceptance by the community (Appel and Muysken, 2005; Thiery, 1978, apud MARCELINO, 2009:3) and others will mainly consider the language aspects and how competent they are in the four skills - reading, writing, listening and speaking (Bloomfield, 1933, apud MARCELINO, 2009:3; Macnamara, 1969, apud APPEL, MUYSKEN, 2005:2). More recently, the definition that is more inclusive is of a continuum, where the individual is considered bilingual if they have a basic development and function in some aspect of language to the one that navigates more than one language easily, including aspects of culture, identity and society (Marcelino, 2009). 

With that said, we could move our attention to the focus of this sharing that is bilingual education and how its view and practices are different in the various places that we have worked at and how we understand and navigate these different perspectives and scenarios.

I have worked at several different schools in Brazil and all of the ones that I taught in English were considered bilingual. The majority of my students in those schools were Brazilian and had their bilingualism only as a consequence of their schooling experience, as they would have hours of exposure and learning done in English but mostly at school. Very few of them had parents that would speak to them in English or any language other than Brazilian Portuguese. 

When I moved to Portugal and started working at an international school, that changed drastically. In most groups that I have taught so far, more than half of my students have either or both parents that speak in different languages at home than the primary country language which is European Portuguese. Now you might be asking: what difference does that make? A lot. It impacts their background knowledge, their understanding of cultural differences, how to approach certain topics, what to expect from parents and how they respond to the kids needs, priorities, values etc. It makes a difference in the practicalities in the classroom when you are teaching kids how to read and write and you have to explicitly tell them that in their home language they read from right to left, but in English and Portuguese they have to do it from left to right. It makes a difference when you have to explain to Scandinavian or Australian parents why the kids don’t go outside to play when it’s raining. Do you see that it is not just about the language?

Let me just clarify one thing here: in Portuguese schools that are not international schools, the bilingual education model that is so common in Brazil (shared school hours between languages) is non-existent. The only other model they follow is more hours (3-8 weekly) and languages as subjects and not as means of instruction. Except in Graduation and Post-Graduation where you have several subjects being taught in languages other than European Portuguese. And, in public schools, they learn languages as a part of an European policy, starting in 3rd grade with English and in 7th grade they add a third language, that frequently is French or Spanish.

So what are your thoughts on bilingualism and bilingual education? What is your experience?

APPEL, René; MUYSKEN, Peter. Language Contact and Bilingualism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Academic Archive, 2005

MARCELINO, Marcello. Bilinguismo no Brasil: significado e expectativas. Revista Intercâmbio, volume XIX: 1-22, 2009. São Paulo: LAEL/PUC-SP.