Title: Attitudes toward Bilingualism of children in two different types of bilingual education programs

The purpose of this study was to investigate attitudes of children who are in two different bilingual programs: Transitional Bilingual Education program (TBE) and Two-Way Bilingual Education program (TWE). Literature reviewed in this study demonstrated that school environments and teachers’ expectation significantly influence attitudes of children toward education. In particular, children whose first language is other than English fail to develop their bilingual abilities and cultural identity unless educators and communities support to maintain positive attitudes toward bilingualism and multiculturalism. Therefore, it was hypothesized that children in two different types of bilingual education programs have different attitudes toward bilingualism if two programs have different objectives on students’ language development.
Data of students’ attitudes were obtained from observations, interviews, and the questionnaire with 32 students in the fourth grade in a Spanish-English Two-Way bilingual program and 16 students in a Spanish-English Transitional Bilingual Education program. The analysis of variance ( ANOVA) was used to examine the differences of attitudes between the groups. The results of the questionnaire indicated that there was no statistic differences between the students in the two groups ; the students in both programs had positive attitudes toward bilingualism. However, results of interviews demonstrated that attitudes towards two languages(English and Spanish) and the perceptions of the first language significantly differ between the students in the two different program. The students in the TWE program have more positive attitudes toward learning two languages and more favorable views to the program than the students in the TBE program. In addition, results of this study suggest that the program impact affect students’ personal goals in a great extent. In conclusion, different types of bilingual education programs, which have different goals and objectives, greatly affect attitudes of students toward bilingualism and learning two languages.