Learner bilingualism: yesterday, today and tomorrow

Monolingual language environment in the classroom serves as a foundation for the traditional approach to learning a foreign language. Such understanding goes back to the end of the 19^th century. It was believed then that monolingual environment was conducive to foreign language learning in the classroom replicating natural language acquisition. Psycholin-guistic science, which emerged in the mid-20th century, showed the naivety of those beliefs. Recent cognitive studies have proved the legitimacy and utility of bilingual classes and learner bilingualism as a means of pedagogical scaffolding. Today, learner bilingualism in the classroom shows itself in two basic forms: switching codes and translanguage teaching / learning. Bilingual classes have a positive effect on language and cognitive development, facilitates cultural self-determination of the individual, reduces cognitive overload and promotes interpersonal interaction in the classroom. Learner bilingualism in the most natural way emerges in the multicultural and multilingual learning environment, in the context of content and language integrated learning (CLIL), under the impact of cultural migration. Computer modeling, empirical data have shown that learner bilingualism is culturally authentic and pedagogically reasonable in foreign language studies.

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