The focus of this paper examines how dual language education (DLE) programs are valuable. The literature shows that children do much more than just thrive in a dual language environment. According to research, children who are bilingual are cognitively, academically, intellectually, socially and verbally more advantaged than their monolingual…

Keith Baker's claims in his November 1998 article on Structured English Immersion are based on unpublished data. There are no data showing that all-English structured immersion programs are superior to well-constructed programs that include literacy development and subject-matter teaching in the child's first language. (12 references) (MLH)

Many ideas attributed to the whole-language approach are not new. Whole language demands that literacy instruction be indirect, unsystematic, and nonintensive and that scope-and-sequence charts be abandoned. Experimental research has judged the major tenets of whole language to be erroneous--a point accepted even by whole-language leaders favoring…