English in Bilingual Programs in the Basque Country

Abstract

This paper focuses on bilingual and trilingual education in the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain, where Basque and Spanish are official languages. The use of Basque as the language of instruction is widespread and there is a trend to introduce English as a third language from a very early age. The paper also discusses the use of English as an additional language of instruction within the bilingual system and the teaching conditions. It also summarizes the results of research on multilingual schooling in the Basque Country, which has focused on different areas such as the development of proficiency in Basque and Spanish, the effect of bilingualism on third-language acquisition, the effect of early instruction on the development of proficiency in English or other languages and on the cognitive development. Finally, some of the challenges that the Basque educational multilingual system will have to face in the course of the next years are considered.