Benefits of early bilingualism and a bilingual immersion approach to teaching English in Korea

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the benefits of early bilingual education and to propose an immersion approach to teaching English at the elementary level in Korea, which integrates language teaching and content-area instruction. Various definitions of bilingualism are offered and the positive effects of bilingualism on cognitive, metalinguistic, and sociocultural developments are discussed. Different types of bilingual education programs are examined. Furthermore, empirical support and several rationales for adopting the bilingual immersion model are provided. Finally, practical considerations are discussed for implementing the bilingual immersion model in elementary school in Korea.