Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

46 Language Planning and Education
• ESL-content (‘sheltered English’): In this program type ESL lessons (focusing
primarily on grammar and vocabulary) are combined with content subject classes
taught in English but designed to be comprehensible to English language learners.
The teaching is carried out by ESL qualified teachers. The focus is on acquiring
English through content subject teaching as well as on learning content subject
matter. Again, this program is usually conceived of as short term. In some cases,
timetabled periods are set aside for native language arts instruction.
• Structured English Immersion: This program type is in fact very similar to the
ESL-content type program outlined above. A defining characteristic is that
academic content subjects are taught in English using specialised materials
adapted to the student’s developing proficiency in the language. Teachers tend to
be proficient in the student’s native language, unlike in ESL-content programs.
The main reason for distinguishing Structured English Immersion (SEI) from
ESL-content programs is their rather different rationale. Specifically, SEI draws
inspiration, and justification, from the Canadian immersion model of bilingual
education, despite the fact that it is actually quite different, as Thomas and Collier
(1997: 57) point out. Canadian immersion models, for instance, have full bilingualism
as their goal and seek to impart minority language skills (French) to
majority English-speaking children using a methodology in which the students’
home language retains a significant role. SEI programs, by contrast, teach the
dominant majority language to linguistic minority pupils using a methodology
that gives the students’ L1 hardly any role. The number of structured English
immersion programs is reported to have increased quite substantially since the
passage of Proposition 227.
Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE)
TBE takes two distinct forms: early exit TBE and late exit TBE:
• Early exit TBE: Content subjects are taught in two languages: the pupil’s L1 (e.g.
Spanish) and English – along with ESL instruction. As the pupil’s proficiency
in English increases, the proportion of instruction delivered through their L1
diminishes. Federal (and state) regulations set a three-year time limit on the use of
the L1 as an instruction medium, after which the pupil is expected to move into
mainstream English-only classes. The student’s L1 thus plays only a temporary
supportive role, and for this reason early exit TBE has been seen as promoting
subtractive rather than additive bilingualism. 14 It is also assimilationist in intent,
the aim being to integrate pupils into an English-dominant education system.
• Late exit TBE: In this variant there is a more gradual transition to English-only
instruction. Instruction in the pupil’s L1 typically continues up to the sixth grade,
though, again, the proportion of instruction through the L1 gradually diminishes.
Throughout the pupil receives specialised ESL instruction. Late exit TBE is less
prevalent than the much more common early exit TBE, though neither program
serves anything approaching the majority of the LEP population. Gandara (1999),
for example, estimates that in the period 1995–97 only about 30 per cent of