only broadens the child’s linguistic competence, but also deepens their
knowledge of concepts, and provide supporting statements from focus group
interviews with children and teachers as evidence of good practice. The
chapter demonstrates quite clearly the need for evaluative research in relation
to current practices in bilingual classrooms in order to produce well-defined
policy and practice that best serve the variety of speakers attending bilingual
schools. The interaction between the two languages within the classroom
setting is thus seen to be active and as having an additive role in education.
However, although much of the research on bilingual education has
focused primarily on the primary school years (age 4 to 11), continuation of
bilingual provision throughout the secondary school years (age 11 to 18) and
into Higher Education (18+ years) is central to the success of bilingual educa-
tion worldwide. While Chapter 7 covers the primary and secondary sectors,
then, Chapter 8 goes one step further and focuses on bilingual provision in
Higher Education (HE). Few studies have been conducted on the use of
minority language teaching in HE, primarily owing to the limited number
of countries where education is offered through a minority language at that
level. This chapter focuses on current developments in HE, with a specific
focus on the impact of bilingual provision within HE in Wales. In this chap-
ter, we share the outcomes of an in-depth study looking at the bilingual
provision and practices employed across various degree courses offered in a
single academic department at a Welsh university. Based on student ques-
tionnaires, staff and student interviews, and classroom observations, we
discuss the variety of approaches to teaching monolingual English students
(who study their course in English) and bilingual Welsh-English students
(who choose to study their course in Welsh) in the same class. Their study
highlights the complex nature of bilingual provision in higher education,
outlining the advantages and disadvantages relating to various kinds of
teaching methodologies, and revealing a wide variety of opinion on bilingual
teaching among university staff and students. We stress the importance for
dual language usage to be pedagogically appropriate in order to provide posi-
tive student experiences to all, and to enhance the effectiveness of learning.
In this sense, the relationship between a bilingual’s two languages can be
additive, provided it is offered in an appropriate manner.
The success of dual use of language in schools and HE institutions may
well be rooted in the neurological organisation and processing of the bilingual
brain. One well-established claim in the bilingualism literature is that both
languages of a bilingual are activated at any one time, regardless of the target
language being used. These findings have been demonstrated in numerous
behavioural studies in addition to the more recent neurological methods
involving functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and event-related potentials
(ERPs). The final part of this book – The Bilingual Brain – looks at the
underlying cognitive mechanisms that allow bilinguals to select their target
language, while at the same time inhibiting attention to their co-activated,
xxii Advances in the Study of Bilingualism