The reason why this study is significant can be explained from three aspects. First, this study investigates Junior high school students’ perceptions, attitudes, viewpoints, and their participation towards the bilingual environment. Consequently, this research might offer some empirical messages for English teachers in Taiwan about conducting a bilingual environment. Second, the results of how students improve their English learning in a bilingual environment can inspire teachers to provide appropriate stimulations to their students.Third, it is hoped that this study may help junior high school students for providing the information of how they can improve their English learning in a bilingual environment.
Limitations of the Study Three limitations of the study are generalized as follows. First, the sample size of this study is small. The subjects in this study were 35 students from two classes in a junior high school in southern Taiwan. The sample for this study was restricted to the urban area. Consequently, it is hard to generalize the study findings to all the EFL students in Taiwan.Second, it is unpredictable whether the subjects respond to the questionnaires honestly.
The subject responses to the questionnaires may be out of researcher’s control. Third, owing to the limited time for answering the questionnaires, the format of the questionnaires consists of only 24 questions. Therefore, the study may be not able to comprise all the questions in terms of the students’ attitudes toward a bilingual environment and the means they improve their English learning in a bilingual environment.Definition of TermsTo help readers get a clear understanding of this study, the following terms are specifically defined: 1. Campus Bilingual Environment: Ministry of Education has announced the guidelines of establishing a bilingual environment in elementary and junior high schools in 2004.
The establishment of campus bilingual environment includes two major perspectives; one is the visual and audio environment which includes signs, directions, posters, broadcasting etc., the other is activity which includes contests in terms of singing, speech contest and extra activities in terms of festival parties and movie appreciation. 2. Teaching Approach: A teaching approach describes typical procedures or set s of procedures based on particular method used by teachers in instructing students.
Traditional teaching approaches such as grammar translation and audio-lingual focus on the language itself, rather than on information carried by the language.Communicative, content-based and task-based teaching approaches emphasize on the interaction, conversation, and language use, rather than on learning about the language (Lightbown & Spada, 1999). 3. Learning Strategies: Learning strategies are operations used by learners to acquire, store, and retrieve information in language learning (Rigney, 1978).
Oxford (1990) regarded learning strategies as specific actions taken by learners to enhance their progress in language learning, including direct and indirect strategies. Learning Styles: Learning styles refer to each individual has his natural, habitual, and preferred way of absorbing, processing and retaining new information and skills (Reid, 1995). Methodologists and linguists have put learning styles under different categories. ‘Visual’ learners, ‘aural’ learners, ‘kinaesthetic’ learners are perceptually based learning styles, in contrast is a cognitive learning style distinction between field independent and field dependent.
Keith Willing produced the following descriptions-convergers, conformists, concrete learners and communicative learners. Learning Motivations: Learning motivation refers to the internal drive which pushes learners to acquire the knowledge. Brown (1994) regarded motivations as the goals to pursue and the effort he/she would devote to that pursuit. Learning motivations involve the learner’s reasons for attempting to require the target language.
