How Early Bilingual Education Predicts Mandarin-Chinese Speaking English Language Learners' L2 Oral Communicative Competence

aiwanese society is a rich mixture of diverse cultures, and more people are becoming aware of the importance of preserving the variety of languages and dialects. However, given that English has become the language of international communication, commerce, and trade, learning English has maintained priority over other languages. In recent years, for their children to achieve better proficiency levels in English, more and more parents in Taiwan have sent their children to attend private language institutes. According to Chen (1996), 83.3% of sixth graders in Taipei City had the experience of learning English for at least six months and 61.9% of elementary school students also had the experience of receiving English education in Taichung (city in the central part of Taiwan). The popularity of sending children to private language schools has aroused discussions on the issue of whether early initiation of English education leads to better performance in English. The premise of these discussions is based on the assumption that young children have an advantage in the acquisition of English. Unlike any other language in the country, English enjoys a unique status and prestige in Taiwan. Parents send children to language schools, and English is a compulsory subject from middle- to high school. Generally speaking, Taiwanese students start to learn English from seventh grade. Ideally, students are developing communicative competencies when they have to use the language. However, many international students still have had difficulties participating in the classroom and are required to take additional intensive English courses in order to improve their English proficiency when they arrive in the US. Based on this phenomenon, the present study examined how early bilingual education in English prepared international students’ future oral communicative competencies.