Bilingual Education in Lebanon

Abstract

Lebanon has been one of the very few countries in the world where foreign language education is introduced in the first year of schooling; it starts with three-year-old children at the level of the Nursery in private schools and with five-year-old children in second year kindergarten (KGII) in state-sponsored schools (which are schools fully or partially supported by the state). These students study French/English as a foreign language at the rate of 8 hours a week in the Elementary, 6 hours in the intermediate, and 4 hours in the secondary moving gradually from language to literature to philosophy and psychology. Furthermore, since the early 1920’s, English/French has been used as a medium of instruction for mathematics, sciences. and social studies at all levels in most private schools; in public schools, it has been the medium of instruction in mathematics and sciences in the intermediate and secondary cycles (grades 6–12).