Due to their unique histories and to practical considerations, most Europeans believe in multilingualism. Cultural respect for multilingualism is reflected in the language planning and policy of most European countries. Multilingual education in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) exemplifies the implementation of such policies, which have exerted tremendous impact on students' language proficiency, academic achievement, identities, and language attitudes. This book represents the advancement that has been made recently in research on multilingual education.
The first chapter discusses the significance, terminology, and reality of multilingual education. The past decades have witnessed movements for the revival of the minority language in the BAC, and English as a language for international communication has also been claiming ground in school curricula. In Ch. 2, Cenoz puts forward the concept of continua of multilingual education to accommodate the complexity of bilingualism and multilingualism so that different kinds of bilingual and multilingual programs can be compared. Chs. 3 and 4 focus on the use of Basque as the medium of instruction and discuss its influence on students' linguistic and academic abilities. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, there have been an increasing number of Basque schools that teach subjects in the minority language., The local government, school authorities, and teachers have made great efforts to promote the use of Basque. Results from relevant evaluations reveal that bilingual education in Basque has achieved desirable outcomes.
Chs. 5 and 6 focus on the teaching of English as a third language and the assessment of students' English proficiency. The teaching of English in Basque has several prominent characteristics that are worth mentioning, such as the early introduction of English in school and the teaching of English through the Content and Language Integrated Learning method. Assessment of English proficiency proves that the outcome of English teaching in the BAC has been quite satisfactory. Ch. 7 looks at the effect of bilingualism on third language acquisition, that is, the effect of Basque-Spanish bilingualism on the acquisition of English. Research indicates that the effect is quite positive in general.
Ch. 8 examines the identities and attitudes of Basque students from a social-political perspective. Research conducted in the BAC concludes that students tend to have positive attitudes towards their L1 and other languages. Ch. 9 discusses the effect of introducing a second or third language at different ages. It is clear that early introduction of English in school does not interfere with the development of the first language, and age is not a key factor in predicting students' English proficiency. Ch. 10 introduces the measures taken by Basque universities to further promote multilingualism in higher education. Adopting Basque and English as media of instruction has been pushed partly by demand from local students, who are used to this teaching method.
In the final chapter, the author summarizes the trends of bilingualism and multilingualism in the BAC and proposes a uture research agenda. Cenoz argues that it is possible to pursue multilingualism even under complex sociocultural conditions, that languages of different functions and from different origins can coexist side by side in harmony, and that multilingual education should be approached from a multilingual perspective.
