Extracts from Cenoz, J. (2005).

English in Bilingual Programs in the Basque Country

3.2. Toward multilingual education

The development of bilingual education has implied an enormous effort on part of teachers,
teacher trainers, and institutions in the last 25 years. At the same time, the position of English as
a foreign language not used in everyday life and the need to learn English for communication
with speakers of other languages imply an additional challenge to the Basque educational
system. Parents demand more English instruction and better quality English instruction in
school, because traditionally students in the BAC have achieved relatively low levels of
proficiency in English atschool. These poor English-language results can be attributed to a
number of factors, including large class sizes, the use of outdated or traditional instructional
approaches, and the lack of well-trained teachers with adequate proficiency in English.
The new Spanish educational system (that has been adapted to the
Basque educational system) has also reinforced the teaching of English as a foreign language in
the curriculum. Foreign-language teaching (English in most cases) is compulsory from the third
year of primary school (eight-year-olds), but early instruction in English from the age of four or
six is very common.
Specific projects to develop trilingual education in Basque schools have been developed in the
1990s and they can be regarded as an extension of the bilingual educational system. These
projects aim at achieving communicative competence in the three languages (Basque, Spanish
and English) and also consider the importance of developing positive attitudes toward the
languages. The Basque Government Department of Education supports the development of
trilingual education and subsidizes different activities such as courses, seminars, and projects.
The most popular project is the early teaching of English from the second year of kindergarten
(age four to five). The original project, called ‘‘Early Multilingualism,’’ started in 1991 in
several ‘‘ikastolak’’ and is coordinated by the ‘‘Ikastolen Elkartea.’’ English is taught for two
hours a week in four 30-minute sessions. This project became so popular that nowadays 62
ikastolak (approximately 18,000 pupils) participate in the ‘‘Early Multilingualism’’ project run
by the Ikastolen Elkartea, but the teaching of English in kindergarten has also extended to most
schools in the BAC (Aliaga 2002).
Other projects involve the use of both Basque and English or of Basque, Spanish, and English
as media of instruction. For example, Lauro Ikastola is a Basque-medium school and Spanish is
introduced as a subject in the first year of primary school. English is introduced as a subject in
the second year of primary school but becomes the language of instruction of three subjects in
secondary school: science, history of religion, and computer science (see Cenoz 1998). Another
example is the model-A Gaztelueta School. This is a private school, which has been using
English as a medium of instruction for several school subjects (history, science, and handicrafts)
for a number of years and which added Basque as a medium for teaching other subjects (history,
handicrafts, natural science, computer science) a few years ago. Several public schools have
also initiated similar projects, but these projects are still experimental and have a limited scope.
The use of English as an additional language of instruction provides the opportunity to increase
the limited time devoted to English in other projects. It is also being used as a follow-up of the
early introduction of English to provide more hours of instruction to secondary school students
who started learning English in kindergarten and have been learning English for many years but
only for two or three hours a week. These projects face more problems at the organizational
level. Teachers need to have a high level of proficiency in English and in the subject matter.
Sometimes this creates problems, and it is not always clear whether it is better for the subject
teacher or the language teacher to teach a subject in English or whether content teachers have to
be trained in English or teachers of English in specific subjects. Moreover, students have to
achieve the same level of knowledge in subjects taught in English and the school has to make
important decisions regarding the specific subjects to be taught in English. Finally, the use of
English as the language of instruction implies the development of specific materials in
accordance with the curriculum. These difficulties explain that experiments of this type are not
as common as the early introduction of English in kindergarten and the most important projects
have taken place in private schools.
The Basque Government strongly supports the development of multilingual education along
with the improvement of the quality of education and considers multilingualism as one of the
main aims of the educational system. Parents are also strong supporters of multilingual
education. The increasing use of Basque as the language of instruction shows the interest of
parents in bilingual education. They are also very interested in improving their children’s level
of proficiency in English and support the early introduction of English (Cenoz 1997).
The development of multilingual programs in the BAC is related to the need to acquire English
as a language of international communication and the idea that the positive experience of
bilingual education can be extended to trilingual education. The positive effect of early
instruction in English in foreign-language situations is not based on empirical research but
rather on the popular idea that young children learn languages very easily.

4.2. The effect of bilingualism on third-language acquisition

Research findings on the acquisition of English as a third language in the BAC indicate that
higher levels of bilingualism are positively related with higher levels of proficiency in English
(Cenoz and Valencia 1994; Lasagabaster 1997; Sagasta 2001). The first of these studies (Cenoz
and Valencia 1994) analyzed the level of proficiency in English of 321 students in the last year
of secondary school. The results indicated that bilingual students (model D) outperformed
monolingual students (model A) once the effect of other variables (intelligence, motivation, or
exposure to English) had been controlled. Lasagabaster (1997) compared proficiency in
English in models A, B, and D in primary school and confirmed that proficiency in English was
influenced by the degree of bilingualism in Basque and Spanish. Students who had achieved a
higher level of bilingualism (D model) presented the highest proficiency in English, followed by
students with an intermediate level of bilingualism (B model), and the lowest achievement in
English corresponded to students who presented the lowest level of bilingualism (A model).
Sagasta (2001) examined writing skills in English in the D model and their relationship to the
degree of bilingualism in Basque and Spanish. She found that a higher level of bilingualism is
associated with higher scores in general writing proficiency and specific areas such as syntactic
complexity, lexical complexity, fluency, or error production.
These results are compatible with the folk-wisdom belief that the more languages you know the
easier it is to learn an additional language. They are also compatible with the threshold and
interdependence hypotheses proposed by Cummins (1976, 1981), the higher levels of
metalinguistic awareness associated with bilingualism, and the use of more learning strategies
associated with L3 acquisition (Cenoz and Genesee 1998; Jessner 1999; Missler 1999).

4.3. The effect of early instruction in English on the development of proficiency in English
The results of research studies comparing different areas of English language achievement by
different age groups who have received the same number of hours of instruction indicate that
older learners obtain significantly higher results than younger learners (Cenoz 2003a; García
Lecumberri and Gallardo 2003; García Mayo 2003; Lasagabaster and Doiz 2003). These
findings confirm the poor results obtained by young students in educational settings in studies
conducted in other contexts (Burstall 1975; Cenoz 2002a; Ekstrand 1976; Muñoz 2000, 2003;
Celaya et al. 2001). Cenoz (2003b) also found that when the levels of proficiency of learners
who were in the same course but started learning English at different ages are compared, the
number of hours of instruction does not necessarily imply a higher level of proficiency in
English.
These findings go against the popular belief ‘‘the younger the better,’’ which has been
confirmed in cases in which the second language is used in everyday life but not in situations of
foreign-language acquisition (Singleton 1989, 2001). Cognitive maturity can explain the higher
linguistic development of older students when different age groups are compared, but it is not
possibly a factor when the proficiency of learners who are the same age is compared. These
results indicate that the number of hours of instruction is not a sufficient predictor of second-
/foreign-language proficiency (Genesee 1987; Harley 1986). An alternative interpretation is that
younger learners do not present advantages because they are still in the first stages of third-
language acquisition and, as it is the case in second-language acquisition in natural settings, the
advantages of older students could disappear in the long run (Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle 1978).

4.4. The effect of early instruction of English on other languages and on the cognitive
development
There is still limited research on the effect that the early introduction of English has on Basque
and Spanish. According to the evaluations of the project carried out by the Ikastolak, instruction
in English from kindergarten does not adversely affect the students’ acquisition of Basque or
Spanish or their overall cognitive development (Cenoz 1997; Garagorri 2002).

4.6. Attitudes and motivation

In general, younger learners present significantly better attitudes toward learning English than
older learners and attitudes toward the learning of the three languages decline at the end of
primary school (Cenoz 2002b, Cenoz 2003c). These differences could be linked to
psychological and educational factors. Psychological factors associated with age could explain a
rejection of the school system on part of older learners, and educational factors include the use
of more traditional and less active methods with older learners.

5. Future challenges
The educational system in the BAC has consolidated bilingual education and has taken
important steps toward the development of multilingual education during the last years, but
there are still important challenges and problems to be solved.
The increasing number of students who have Basque as the language of instruction or one of the
languages of instruction has had an important impact on the number of bilingual speakers, but
there is still an important gap between the knowledge of Basque and the use of Basque in
everyday life. There are also some worries regarding the quality of the Basque language used by
non-native speakers of Basque and the important influence of Spanish on Basque mainly at the
lexical and grammatical levels. These problems are related to its status as a minority language
and its limited use outside the classroom in some areas of the BAC.
Research studies on early instruction of English in kindergarten indicate that the early teaching
of English is not enough to improve proficiency in the language. It seems that, at least in
sociolinguistic contexts in which English is not used in everyday life, it is necessary to follow
up these programs with more intensive instruction in English and the use of English as an
additional language of instruction. Teaching through the medium of English is not an easy task
but it provides additional exposure to the foreign language and the opportunity to learn it by
focusing on content and on different linguistic aspects and skills than in language classes. An
additional challenge for the Basque educational system is to adapt the educational system so as
to integrate the increasing number of immigrant children who live in the BAC. These children
often receive instruction through the medium of Spanish (A model) rather than in models B and
D, as most Basque children do, and therefore, they can face more difficulties to integrate in their
new cultural environment.

6. Conclusions
The Basque educational system has some specific characteristics related to the sociolinguistic,
political, historical, and economic context in which it is located. Yet, it can be a useful example
of bilingual and multilingual education for other regions because of several reasons. It shows
the way language policy is positively affecting the development of multilingual education and,
at the same time, the way education has an effect on the increasing number of speakers of the
minority languages. It also shows the complexity of developing multilingual education
regarding factors such as teacher training or material development. The development of
bilingual and multilingual education has also had an impact on the research community and
nowadays research on trilingual education in the Basque Country is contributing to analyzing
the effect of bilingualism on third-language acquisition or the effect of age in second-/third-
language acquisition.
University of the Basque Country