Bilingual Schools as a Model of National Education of the Ukrainians Abroad in a Foreign Language Environment

Abstract

The article provides a retrospective analysis of the evolutionary proc-esses of formation and development of native language education of Ukrainians in the polyethnic environment of Canada and the important role of the state bilingual (Ukrainian-English) school, their importance in preserving the national culture of diaspora Ukrainians. The organizational and pedagogical principles of the educational process in bilingual schools as the main means of learning the native language by Canadian Ukrainians are highlighted. In Canada, there are four types of language immersion programs. They differ from each other in the number of academic hours dedicated to learning in the second language. The full immersion program in the second language takes 80 to 100 percent of the study time. In the programs of partial immersion during the first half of the day training is conducted in the second lan-guage, and during the other – in English. It is established that the system of bilingual education gave students the opportunity to master the Ukrainian language as a subject and at the same time to study certain school subjects in this language, which is extremely important from a psychological point of view. According to the educational program for grades 1–12 in the first three grades, the main focus is on listening, speaking and cultivating respect for culture, but already in the second grade, children begin learning reading and writing; in the 4–6 grades the culture of language is formed – its comprehension, speaking, reading and writing; in grades 7–12 students improve language and speech knowledge, skills and abili-ties, use them in their everyday life. It is found out that the main method of forming language and speech competence is conversational-visual. To implement it, teachers widely use methodological resources of teaching: printed educational publica-tions, audio and video resources, educational and methodical materials on different types of media, information and communication Internet resources, periodicals, primarily pedagogical. It has been detected that public bilingual schools in Canada contrib-ute to the mastery of the Ukrainian language as a major factor in pre-serving the ethnocultural identity of Canadian Ukrainians, an important means of their ties to the world Ukrainians.