Bilingualism in International Schools: a model for enriching language education

摘要

There is perhaps no educational setting in which issues of multilingualism are more salient than in international schools worldwide. Curricula must address the needs of students with respect to their home language, the language of the community in which the schools are located, and a language of international communication. As the eighth volume in Multilingual Matters' 'Parents' and Teachers' Guide' series, Bilingualism in International Schools (BIS) has the dual purpose of convincing parents, school leaders and teachers of the long-term benefits of a programme designed to address these linguistic demands, and of offering concrete suggestions for putting such a programme in place. It is not a volume intended for academicians or graduate students. Nevertheless, as Jim Cummins points out in the Forward, Carder not only addresses issues of relevance to International Schools, but also argues forcefully for the advantages bilin-gualism, first language maintenance and L1 literacy development more generally. And it presents a window onto an area of language education often unfamiliar to applied linguists.