English Teachers' Beliefs about Bilingualism Benefits

In the context of Türkiye, the beliefs of English teachers’ about bilingualism were not known. To solve this problem, the current paper explored the bilingualism benefits beliefs of English teachers at a private chain school offering Turkish-English bilingual preschool education in Türkiye. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 preschool and primary level, non-native English teachers. The content analysis of the data resulted in 8 themes. In conclusion, the teachers believed that bilingualism had benefits in cognitive, social, cultural, emotional, academic, economic, linguistic and identity-development domains. Furthermore, regarding the differences noticed at primary level between the children who attended bilingual preschools and those who did not, it was found that there were 7 main benefits differences in favor of the children who attended bilingual preschools. They were cognitive, social, identity, linguistic, emotional, psychological and cultural benefits differences.