Bilingual Education: From The Policy Perspective

With the rapid development of China's international cooperation and exchange in many fields, the skilful mastery of the English language has become one of the top necessities in the evaluation of a high-quality talent. This thesis is to present the importance of bilingual education to be fully implemented in China's educational institutions with the discussion of subjects like language policy, the driving force for bilingualism, and China's recent practice of bilingual education. The author intends to offer some amendment to some existing national education policy so as to meet the requirement of globalization and long-term national development.Having pointed out the existing contradiction between China's laws on language and education and some recent regulations issued by China's education authorities that encourage bilingual education or schooling at various levels of schools, the author then makes some detailed study on language policy, including its definitions, as well as the historical and theoretical perspectives in language policy and planning. Based on that, the author tries to demonstrate the existing three types of driving force for implementing the language policy of bilingualism or multilingualism, through an in-depth review of the relative facts and practices in the following countries: the United States, Belgium, Malaysia and Australia. It is believed that the various factors lying behind the implementation of bilingualism/multilingualism in different countries can be categorized into three major types of driving force. Back to China, then, issues like the practice and comments of bilingual education in China, including the government policy of English language education, and the conceptions, status quo, context, public response and the impact to stakeholders in education of bilingual education in China are thoroughly elaborated. Finally, the author stresses that with regard to language policy, the rational and successful implementation of bilingual education can not only facilitate the harmonious development of society and economy, but is conducive to the integration and application of various beneficial resources of China, and thus the improvement of the quality of China's human resources. Bilingual education can also help upgrade our national competitiveness, and make our country conform to the prevalent trend of globalization.