The Valencian Context

The Autonomous Region of Valencia is not like many other regions in Spain, here you get bilingual students and theoretically this should make teaching English easier or more effective but academic results show otherwise. Something must go terribly wrong in classrooms if teaching English to bilinguals is as successful or unsuccessful as teaching monolingual students in Castilla la Mancha. I don´t have the facts and figures of that but I think teachers here are not taking advantage of their students´ bilingualism. Personally I blame it on the whole immersion craze. It seems that because it works with young children we should always use English and only English in class. I think that a contrastive approach especially when teaching grammar would prove more useful. Actually, textbooks recommend giving the grammar explanation in students´ first language.