Essay

Five-year-old Xian Lei enters kindergarten with little understanding of English. Ms. Sisco, her teacher, sees that Xian Lei has difficulty con- necting with much of what is going on in the classroom if it depends on English. The one time when she seems to brighten up is when Ms. Sisco tells nursery rhymes or reads traditional stories such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears. These are stories that Xian Lei has obviously heard in her own language. That’s when her teacher first hears her say some phrases in Eng- lish, such as “Bears eat” and “Goldilocks sleep,” in her play and as she draws pictures in her journal following story time. Xian Lei also seems eager to participate in the classroom activities that spin off from Ms. Sisco’s storytelling.

M any US classrooms today have at least some children with limited abilities to under- stand and express themselves in English. Because language

acquisition is highly social, there is reliable evidence that immersing young dual language learners (DLLs) in playful contexts that high- light language is far more effective than teach- ing isolated skills in resource rooms or through tutoring sessions (Freeman, Freeman, & Mer- curi 2004). Even so, during the initial stages, second language acquisition can be challeng- ing for young children and for the classroom teacher who must create high-quality learning experiences for everyone in the class.

Using Stories to Extinguish the Hot Spots in Second Language Acquisition, Preschool to Grade 1

34 Young Children March 2013

Anne K. Soderman, Kay G. Clevenger, and Ian Gregory Kent

Supporting Dual Language Learners and Their Families

® 2

, 3

Photos © Ellen B. Senisi unless otherwise noted

Two critical factors spell success or failure for teachers who have DLLs in their classrooms: the teacher’s under- standing of and respect for the initial difficulties in learn- ing a second language and the teacher’s ability to adapt learning experiences in a creative and playful manner (Soderman, Wescott, & Shen 2007; Menken & Garcia 2010).

Responding to hot spots in early acquisition of second languages Acquiring a second language presents challenges that differ for individual children. It is less difficult when done as early as possible and prior to adolescence (Howard & Sugarman 2007). The young dual language learner is better able to hear the “music,” or prosody, of the new language and therefore has less difficulty with phonol- ogy than do older children and adults. However, there are definite hot spots where children in preschool through the early primary grades need targeted support as they move through the multiple stages of second language building. The following six suggestions will enable teachers to help children through these hot spots.

Foster children’s moti- vation to acquire a new language

Second language acquisition is almost never a young child’s choice. Families move from their home countries for many reasons, including business, politics, marriage, war, and economic circumstances. For these children, bilingualism is usually a fact of life and not an option (McCardle & Hoff 2006). Other families may enroll their children in dual language programs because they appreci- ate the value of bilingualism and multiculturalism for their children’s future.

Children, on the other hand, are not thinking about these issues. Many children arrive with interrupted schooling, very little command of English, and limited

ability to verbalize their feelings about being separated from immediate or extended family members. They are also powerless to voice their discomfort in being in an unfamiliar situation with an unfamiliar language (Cho, Chen, & Sin 2010). Children’s incentives for acquiring a second language are likely to rest entirely on social forces that activate emotional arousal and behavior; that is, wanting their desires satisfied, being able to enter into play with others, or getting their ideas across to someone who does not speak their primary language (Kovelman, Baker, & Petitto 2008; Soderman & Oshio 2008).

Build a rudimentary receptive vocabulary

As with learning their home language, once a child acquir- ing a second language has obtained about 50–100 words, language develops quickly. Children first develop labels

for objects and people in their environment. Subsequently, they add action verbs and venture out with simple formu- laic phrases: “Want markers,” “Thank you,” “Yes, please,” “Excuse me,” “Don’t like that!,” “Stop.” When they build

About the Authors Anne K. Soderman, PhD, is professor emeritus at Michigan State University, adjunct faculty at the University of South Florida, and research consultant to 3e International School in Beijing, China. [email protected]

Kay G. Clevenger, MA, is associate princi- pal at 3e International School in Beijing and is Montessori (AMS)-certified. She holds an MA in early childhood from the University of Michigan and taught kindergarten for more than 40 years before moving into education administration. kayclevenger@ 3einternationalschool.org

Ian Gregory Kent, BA, is a program leader at Hudson Out of School Care in Van- couver, British Columbia. Ian has written and produced two children’s plays for the Edmonton International Fringe Festival. [email protected]

35March 2013 Young Children

36 Young Children March 2013

enough receptive vocabulary, or understanding of the lan- guage, to begin communicating with others and receive en- couragement and opportunities for practice, they are usually on their way to rapid advancement (Kostelnik, Soderman, & Whiren 2011).

Help children develop self-con�idence and com- fort in expressing their needs and ideas

For children who tend to be shy, isolate themselves when under stress, or seem afraid to make mistakes, expressive language will come more slowly. Teachers need to build early rapport with children. This is critical and more challenging when language is a barrier; however, good teachers fi nd a way to let children know, “I’m here to help, and I really like having you in my classroom.”

Children acquire a second language more quickly in a learning environment where planned activities and ex- periences are meaningful, playful, engaging, and useful (Soderman 2010). Such classrooms typically have space for large group meetings and spontaneous small group activi- ties; clusters of tables and chairs; centers for construction, dramatic play, writing, art, and listening to favorite books; and a library. Environmental print (e.g., labels on equipment and materials and predictable charts) and invitations to print (e.g., sign-up sheets, a well-equipped message center) are everywhere. Books are displayed on shelves and in baskets. Areas and supplies are labeled with both words and pictures, and sign-in and sign-up sheets are visible. In some class- rooms, eye-catching displays may hang from the ceiling or be in other unexpected places (e.g., the bathroom). Early read- ers have access to charts on which familiar poems, rhymes,

and songs are displayed, and children might construct masks, props, or puppets to use in their dramatic produc- tions (Bhattacharyya 2010).

Support phonological awareness

Speaking, reading, and writing in English require all learners to move through sequential stages (see “Phonological Aware- ness Continuum”). The process allows the learner to under- stand that the language can be broken down into smaller parts and manipulated. Activities such as word play, rhym- ing, onset and rime (consonant and a phonogram, beginning with the vowel that follows; for example, “fat, bat, hat, mat” or “dig, big, wig, rig”), and isolating various sounds within a word lead to a child’s well-developed phonemic awareness and, eventually, good abilities to spell and decode.

Promote alphabetic awareness

Some children coming into English-speaking classrooms might have only had experience with idiographic languages, such as Japanese, that use symbols but not a phonetic alpha- bet. In addition, there are variations in worldwide phonetic alphabets, with some symbols being culturally relevant. Eng- lish requires the child to develop a fl uid understanding of what 26 lower- and uppercase symbols look like, to make correct grapheme/phoneme (letter/sound) associations depending on context, and to structure letters consistently and sequentially to form words. Learning the sound is equally as important as learning the letter names. When children internalize these insights, they acquire the foundation needed to move ahead with reading and writing in English (Yopp & Yopp 2009).

Phonemic Awareness

Individual Sounds Grapheme /Phoneme Association

Decoding

Less complex More complex

Phonological Awareness Continuum Understanding that words can be divided into smaller parts

and manipulated

Word Families

Onsets and Rimes

Syllabification

Separating Words into Syllables

Sentence Segmentation

Phrases, Words

Hearing Rhymes

Generating Rhymes

Eliminate confusion about consonants, vowels, grammar, and syntax

Becoming academically skilled in a language—that is, mov- ing beyond a conversational understanding and usage of the language—takes at least fi ve years, but depends greatly on children’s cognitive development, exposure to the second language, and amount of practice. It also depends on their having a knowledgeable mentor who can model, monitor, and expand usage. One of the best ways to pro- mote young children’s understanding of how a language is to be expressed is to model usage daily. This takes alertness and intentionality on the teacher’s part to do so as often as possible (Youngquist & Martinez-Griego 2009). With older children, we can point out particular written and spoken conventions (taking care to keep children’s self-esteem intact), have children write every day, and discuss aspects of their written work samples with them.

Using stories to address the hot spots Stories are powerful resources for teachers of dual lan- guage learners. In order to motivate children, provide a comfortable learning environment, and build their lan- guage skills, we need to take greater advantage of such an eff ective and natural teaching asset.

Stories and connected activities, called literacy spin- off s, help teachers expand children’s cultural awareness; adapt to their capability, interests, and experiences; and address many of the potential complexities inherent in language acquisition. Listening to stories, children build phonemic awareness and hear vocabulary not usually heard in everyday conversation. They learn about story elements (characters, mood, and plot) when teachers

enhance their narratives by using exaggerated facial expressions, vocal eff ects, and pictures, and by encour- aging children to act out the story. When teachers point out vocabulary ahead of time and examine and reuse the words in another context after telling or reading a story, children’s knowledge is signifi cantly enhanced.

Practice and familiarity with words leads to children internalizing and, eventually, expressing language. For ex- ample, after Ms. Edlund reads Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar to the children, she uncovers a small terrarium containing a caterpillar. As the fascinated children crowd around it, Ms. Edlund points to the text on a sign above the

terrarium that asks, “What is the caterpillar doing?” She in- vites the children to stop by that morning to watch and tell her tomorrow in large group what they saw the caterpillar doing. That day, Jaliyah writes in his journal, “The cadaplrs are moving. The cadaplrs are Eating. Climbing” (Soderman & Farrell 2008, 75).

Expand our concept of stories

Stories can come from many places, be completely oral or in print, and involve diff erent print genres. We usually think of children’s narrative picture books as the primary source

37March 2013 Young Children

The concept of a story may be broad- ened to include nursery rhymes, poems, songs, traditional stories, and stories made up by the teacher, the children, and their families.

38 Young Children March 2013

for stories. However, the concept of a story may be broad- ened to include nursery rhymes, poems, songs, traditional stories, and stories made up by the teacher, the children, and their families.

Nursery rhymes, poems, and songs are not usually thought of as stories, but they are a child’s version of a short story. Poems, rhymes, and songs are often the first solid connection children experience with a second language. Best of all, they are joyful and without threat. They are useful for engaging dual language learners and expand- ing their concepts of language and literacy in the second language. Children can

n develop phonological awareness as they detect and manipulate sounds and syllables (Yopp & Yopp 2009);

n learn quickly about rhyming words, language rhythm, phrases contained within sentences, and the concept of beginning, middle, and end;

n come to understand that characters in the stories may experience problems, such as those encountered by Little Miss Muffett, Clifford, Humpty Dumpty, and the Rainbow Fish; and

n expand their memories (children can often be heard pri- vately singing a song in another language, even before they understand the words).

Use traditional stories

Traditional stories include fairy tales and legends from almost every culture and in different languages. Teachers can suggest that families read or tell a tale to the child in their home language. It helps to have translated versions of books available in school for families from other countries to check out. For example, culturally relevant versions of the tales of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Billy Goats Gruff, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood are known almost everywhere in the world. Even though children

do not have the receptive vocabulary to understand every word of the English version, they often are completely engaged and actively listening as they put the teacher’s expressions together with pictures and story lines that are similar to those in their home language. When reading to DLLs, teachers can enhance their experience by

n Previewing the pictures to familiarize children with the story prior to reading the storybook (a picture walk);

n Including culturally relevant stories as often as possible

n Encouraging children with limited expressive vocabu- lary to respond to questions about the story by using gestures or pointing to the illustrations;

n Expanding the ideas in the book to other classroom cen- ters, prompting children to use the vocabulary in other contexts;

n Inviting children to retell or dramatize the story once they have heard it several times;

n Using manipulatives, illustrations, gestures, and facial exressions to help children understand vocabulary; and

n Explaining three to five core words essential to under- standing the story prior to reading it (Gillanders & Castro 2011).

Create personal stories

Teachers create personal stories to target particular issues, to expand on children’s emerging interests, or to connect to experiences certain children have had. These can be made more effective for dual language learners when the teacher does the following:

n Include visuals, props, photographs, or on-the-spot drawings to support what is being told

n Take time to listen to children’s stories and to have re- laxed conversations with them about what is happening in their lives

n Clarify and expand on the language children are using n Encourage conversation at snack, lunchtime, and for a

few minutes after reading a story n Hold one-on-one or small group conversations sponta-

neously throughout the day

Use puppets

Some teachers use a puppet to tell a story. For example, Xian Lei’s teacher has a puppet named Max that sits on a high shelf near the large group area. Max occasionally joins large group time to tell the children a story about something that has happened to him outside the class- room, on the playground, or elsewhere. He has a name and other identifying features that make him very real to the children: He is 5 years old but will be 6 in February. He has a mother and father and two brothers, and a dog named Fozzie. He is sometimes afraid of the dark. Revealing such personal aspects is all part of his storytelling.

Creating story spin-offs Teachers need to expose children to songs, rhymes, poems, and narratives again and again to develop children’s famil- iarity and understanding of language usage. To keep chil- dren engaged and to scaffold literacy skills and concepts, teachers can spin off these stories in intriguing ways. For example, a kindergarten group in Ocala, Florida, developed

Teachers need to expose children to songs, rhymes, poems, and nar- ratives again and again to develop children’s familiarity and under- standing of language usage.

39March 2013 Young Children

a humorous class book. It illustrated various places where Humpty Dumpty sat, such as “Humpty Dumpty sat on the moon” and “Humpty Dumpty sat in his car.”

Create personas

One creative teacher, Mr. Dragan, assumes a completely different persona, often donning a cape covered in alphabet letters for a story or conversation with the children. His mission is increasing their alphabet awareness, one of the hot spots in helping children acquire a second language. The kindergartners delight in this, going along with the act and paying close attention to what the character tells them and asks them to do.

The children never know when the Alphabet Avenger (Mr. Dragan) will appear. When he does, he begins with a story and then talks to them about a particular component of the alphabet he wants them to notice (e.g., how letters are curved or straight, and upper- or lowercase). During another visit, he challenges them to think of as many words as they can that start with a certain letter and sound. He writes the words on the whiteboard with the children’s

help. He provides small baggies of plastic letters and invites the children to go to the table to make words with the letters. The Alphabet Avenger leaves them with cards on which they are to print their names and other words they are learning. He asks the children to tape their cards on a long red ribbon and tells them, “I will return soon to get this ribbon to hang from my ceiling at home.”

Invite guest readers

Guest readers can heighten DLLs interest in being read to. Guest readers can be family members, older children from other classes, and various school employees, including custodians, lunch servers, secretaries, and bus drivers. The principal in one school joins the class occasionally as a guest reader known as The Empress, an activity adapted from Singer, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek (2009). After reading a story, poem, or rhyme, she invites the children to bring her “gifts.” They each bring two gifts, which they select from an array of small laminated pictures of objects that begin with the same letter and sound (e.g., a picture of a bear and a book or a moon and a monkey). They present the gifts by saying

40 Young Children March 2013

the name of the objects (“Dear Empress, I have a bear and a book for you.”). She says, “I thank you for the bear and the book,” reinforcing the phonetic connections children need to make. This game can also be played with older children who are learning concepts such as synonyms, antonyms, adjectives, and alliteration (“Dear Empress, I have a beauti- ful, busy, brown bear and a big, blue, busy book”). Children can make up and illustrate poems to present to her.

Act out rhymes

The ability to hear rhymes and to generate them contrib- utes enormously to children’s phonological awareness. They contribute to children’s sense of syntax in the lan- guage being acquired, their understanding of the phrasing and rhythm of English, and their knowledge of vocabulary. As the children bring these rhymes to life, the characters’ actions become familiar verbs that children can transfer to other attempts at language.

Create story murals

Being able to illustrate a familiar story helps dual language learners internalize the various elements of a story and comprehend the general story line. They can document the title and illustrator, focus on the characters in the story, depict events, describe the location or setting, and reflect on the problem and the solutions. They can work on their own or with other children to complete a series of panels over a period of time.

Use attribute charts

Attribute charts are powerful tools that help children build expressive vocabulary, see conventional spelling, and con- nect words in a language they are trying to acquire with those they already know in their home language. To create an attribute chart, teachers choose a real object or an en- gaging photo or picture in which the children can identify a number of different characteristics. For example, a teacher tells the following story:

Once upon a time, there was a seed planted in the warm earth. The sun shone on it, the rain came down on it, and after a while it started to push. It pushed and pushed and pushed until the seed pod split open, and a stem with two seed leaves came out of the earth. The sun warmed it, and the rain came down on it, and it began to grow. It grew and grew and grew. It grew more leaves. It grew and grew until … it was a beauti- ful sunflower.

After telling the story, the teacher shows the children a real sunflower and talks about its components—stem, leaves, petals, bristles, roots, and colors. The children feel

the flower and its parts, and repeat the new vocabulary. Then the teacher attaches the flower to a piece of easel pa- per. He asks the children to think of words to describe the sunflower. He draws lines on the paper from parts of the flower and invites the children to help him spell the words as he writes them on the attribute chart.

In addition to the scientific names the children are learning, they offer other words to describe the flower, such as “beautiful,” “green,” “dirt” (on the roots), “prickly,” and “center.” The teacher repeats each word and points to the flower part they are referring to, adding their thoughts to the attribute chart. To reinforce this learning, the children plant sunflower seeds outdoors, observe the plants’ growth, and use the vocabulary on the attribute chart.

Conclusion Young children attempting to learn the many rudiments of a second language are empowered when teachers provide engaging activities designed to spark their interest, build receptive and expressive vocabulary, strengthen phonemic and alphabetic awareness, and eliminate grammatical and syntactic confusions. All children in the early childhood learning community enjoy and benefit from such activities. For the young dual language learner, however, they may very well serve as the critical difference between simply being exposed to a second language or benefiting from the richness in language that flows naturally and abundantly out of the many types of stories we can share with them. Ph

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00March 2013 Young Children

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