Bilingual Education Programmes In The United States: Reflections And Difficulties Of A Bilingual Teacher (Spanish-English) In New México

Abstract

Bilingual Education Programmes in the United States are developed due to the special needs that immigrants moving to the USA have in education. In this article, I intend to point out the main characteristics and objectives of these programmes based on my experience working as a bilingual teacher at Deming High School, New Mexico (USA) for a year. I taught Bilingual Language Arts to grades 10, 11 and 12. I will also pay attention to the main linguistic problems students had with English as a second language. I will concentrate on the main errors found in students’ essays, such as, interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, register and appropriacy, word order and syntax, spelling, omission of particles, and the lack of motivation as a problem affecting the whole educational system.