The phenomena of globalization and multiculturalism have determined the educational policies about language from decades. These policies can be considered the result of struggles between parties with different ideas about concepts like assimilation, ethnicity, pedagogy, (San Miguel, 2004).

The language is, doubtless, one of the main aspects in the relationship between different cultures. So, the bilingual education is one of the first tasks of the educational policies in almost all developed countries. The way to deal with this topic can involve integration and enrichment or it can produce the assimilation and extinction of minority cultures.

While the education policy of the United States tends to be assimilationist, in Europe, bilingual and multilingual programs are being promoted with the aim of encouraging the emerging concept of “European citizenship”.

The main goals of this paper are to confirm the benefits that the bilingual programs have on the academic achievement of students in their learning of a second language and to analyze the influence that the programs of bilingual education could have on the academic achievement of the Spanish students in the linguistic and non-linguistic subjects.

It has been stated in many studies that bilingualism can benefit learning. For instance, multilingualism is related to thinking and academic achievement (Carder, 2007). In the same way, Bialystok (2005) established that bilingualism accelerates the development of a general cognitive function related to attention and inhibition, and that facilitating effects of bilingualism are found on tasks and processes in which this function is most required. Related to the cognition and the memory, it can be found that positive effects of bilingualism were found on both episodic memory and semantic memory at all age levels (Kormi-Nouri, Moniri, & Nilsson, 2003).

Concerning the topic of the academic achievement in the different subjects of the curriculum, there are studies which state that no evidences can be found to demonstrate that the bilingualism, in itself, improves the academic achievement (Lindholm-Leary, 2001; Mouw & Xie, 1999). However, there are studies that assert the contrary. For instance, in the study carried out by Armstrong & Rogers (1997), the students who were taught the different subjects in a second language, achieved better marks than those who were taught in their mother tongue.

Furthermore, it can be said that both, those investigations with negative results and those studies with positive results, have demonstrated that the contextual differences, teaching models, transferences, and other factors create a substantial difference which makes generalization very difficult.

Taking into account these limitations, in our study it is hypothesized that the academic achievement of the bilingual students in the English area will be higher. At the same time, the academic achievement in the subjects which are taught and learned in two languages will be affected negatively, particularly considering the model implemented and the cultural context of Southern Spain.

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