Abstract:
Bilingualism has been a key area of research interest lately and has
spread so rapidly that many parents want their children to acquire
two languages equally well. There has been a lot of research on
bilingualism. However, teachers’ and parents’ views of bilingual
education are not available. This is a significant gap and this study
wants to fill this gap. This research aims to investigate the effects
of bilingualism on pre-schoolers at a private preschool in İstanbul as
being bilingual is vital for language acquisition at an early age. In
this research a questionnaire, which is a quantitative data collection
tool, was conducted in order to identify parents’ and teachers’ attitudes
towards bilingual education. The participants were eight instructors
and forty parents. The data collected were analysed descriptively and
evaluated. In the light of the findings, parents have a positive attitude
towards bilingualism and are aware of the importance of bilingualism.
Native speakers teaching children English consider bilingualism to be
very important. Children should be encouraged to pick up a second
language in a natural environment and bilingualism should be part of
the education system in Turkey
