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Chapter8-diversity.docxChapter
8
Teaching in a Linquistically Diverse Classroom
Understanding the Power of Language
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Focus Questions
Do you remember learning to talk? If not, why not?
Think of occasions when you were speaking to someone and that person seemed not to understand what you meant. How many different reasons can you think of for this phenomenon?
What is the difference between an accent and a dialect?
Have you ever been speaking to someone who was standing too close to you for your comfort? Why do you think you felt uncomfortable?
How do you learn best? If faced with the need to learn something new, what would you do (e.g., read about it, talk to someone about it, have someone show you)?
What do you think about bilingual education? Is it necessary for some children? Does it hinder or help English language learners?
“Language is never neutral.”
SONIA NIETO
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Case Study
Joanne O’Connor Learns to Listen to Language1
Joanne O’Connor, a student in Professor Adams’s diversity class, was on her way to the school in which she was doing a final field placement prior to her student teaching next year. She had been there for 3 weeks already, and she loved it. The first thing she learned in Mrs. McCord’s first-grade classroom was that she had to listen very carefully to the language spoken by everyone. More than anything else, this classroom held a really close-knit group of people—children and adults—who paid attention to language.
The reason for this was an approach to teaching language arts researched, developed, and tested by Mrs. McCord, called “language study,” a way of teaching standard English in a linguistically diverse classroom that at the same time honors a wide variety of English accents and dialects by including them in classroom “talk.” This also applies to languages other than English, such as those that her Spanish-speaking students brought with them into the classroom. It is a way of helping children learn to code-switch between language used at home or with friends, and language spoken in school and other more formal settings. In order to do this, you have to learn to listen.
As she neared the school, she thought about her 4-week experience in Australia last year, and about Felicity, the Australian 15-year-old who had so impressed her. Felicity, it seemed, was a girl who thought about her future in terms of likely changes in the world over the coming decades. Joanne remembered Felicity’s exact words: “Most people will be working across national borders and cultures, speaking more than one language—and, given where I live, that probably includes an Asian language … [indeed]—it is likely that in our homes someone will speak Japanese, Korean, Spanish, or Chinese.” And although people in Joanne’s current field placement did not speak Asian languages, they certainly brought linguistic diversity to the classroom.
Driving into the school parking lot, Joanne remembered her first day in Mrs. McCord’s class. The school, located not far from her university, was in a borderland between the city and the countryside; most of the families were agricultural workers on produce farms in the area. Ninety-nine percent of the children received free and reduced breakfast and lunch. Other social differences were present as well: students from Mexican and South American families (70%) usually lived in brightly painted trailers where they and their families raised chickens and grew vegetables in backyard gardens. Students from African American families (25%) and white families (5%) were more likely to live on shady streets without sidewalks, where they played in large grassy areas.
Mrs. McCord was firm in her belief that in this school, a different approach to language arts was not only necessary but also a wonderful opportunity to help students learn to be “at home” in different kinds of situations, with different kinds of people.
“Young children come to school steeped in their home language, lullabies, jokes, and family stories from infancy,” explained Mrs. McCord. “It is hard to tell a 5- or 6-year-old that the language spoken by his or her mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, or uncle is ‘wrong.’ Casting doubt on the words used by a family to speak, to think, to dream either disconnects children from everything they already know or may very well disconnect them from school itself.”
“But the school requires them to learn standard English,” Joanne had protested. “All the tests are in standard English!”
“That’s right,” responded Mrs. McCord. “And that’s part of the problem. The children need to learn how to speak the language of power, the language spoken on television, in most books, and in the workplace in most places around the country. Linda Christensen, a white European American who spent 30 years teaching in the inner city of Portland, Oregon, was passionate about this. She said:
We must teach our students how to match subjects and verbs, how to pronounce lawyer, because they are the ones without power and, for the moment, have to use the language of the powerful to be heard. But, in addition, we need to equip them to question an educational system that devalues their life and their knowledge. If we don’t, we condition them to pedagogy of consumption.’”
“Wow!” breathed Joanne. “I never thought of it that way!”
“If we’re to do both parts of that prescription,” Mrs. McCord went on, “we must also include students’ family dialects and languages in school. Those words, that grammar, that syntax, must have high status, too.”
“How do you do that?” asked Joanne, thinking this was going to be a real challenge.
“Well, this approach that I call language study, in its simplest form, is a student-centered approach to grammar study. It has two main components: (1) to teach students how to negotiate the language they use based on context and (2) to build on background knowledge to make the study of words relevant for all children.”
“How do you know student’s background knowledge?” Emma asked.
“From the students, themselves, and from their families,” answered Mrs. McCord. Indeed, the earliest goal of language study is to bring together children’s home and school backgrounds. Actually, we’re starting tomorrow.”
And so they had. Explaining that the first building block in language study is the language invitation, Mrs. McCord said, “The purpose of the invitation is first, to engage students in studying language by beginning conversations about how they use words daily, and second, to give you a chance to assess their prior knowledge and determine appropriate next steps. You’ll see. I’m ready to extend the invitations.”
Joanne had been a little dubious.
As Joanne walked into the building from the parking lot, she saw the familiar room arrangement that Mrs. McCord had created on the second day of school. Tables in the room had been rearranged; on one table were photographs of children on playgrounds; various kinds of houses of worship which with the children might be familiar; and pictures of sports, especially soccer, which is very popular with both Mexican and U.S. children. On a second table were children’s story books that told about children in various places and circumstances, including Flossie and the Fox. On a third table were clippings of newspaper stories and advertisements from magazines. And on a fourth table was a laptop and various videos of linguistically diverse read-aloud stories.
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Seated at two of the tables were classroom volunteers, one of whom had a lilting Irish accent and sat at the newspaper clipping and advertisement table; the other was at the table with children’s books. One of Joanne’s assignments in the classroom was to sit at the table containing photographs, while Mrs. McCord took the laptop and story read-aloud table. The students were invited to select a table and begin examining the pictures, books, etc.
As children explored the materials, adults asked questions. Joanne, at the photo table, noticed that several of the children were engrossed in a picture of multiracial children at a playground.
“How are these kids speaking?” she asked. “What might they be talking about?” “Do you speak differently in different places?”
Looking at a picture of soccer teams from Mexico and the United States, two students had a long discussion about which language each team spoke. These students, Maria and Jorge, were from Guatemala and Mexico: both came from Spanish-speaking homes and lived next door to one another. Both also felt comfortable using Spanish in school. Eventually, they came to an agreement on the language of the teams: those players that had the Mexican flag on their uniforms probably spoke Spanish, while the players whose uniforms were red, white, and blue probably spoke English.
Later, Mrs. McCord told Joanne that this had been a very important conversation because it showed that the students were thinking of context, choices in language use by relying on the place- and person-based considerations people make when they use words to communicate.
When the table conversations had kind of petered out, Mrs. McCord called the whole class together to discuss their impressions. Students spoke about language they used with family and language they used with friends. They noticed that people speak in different languages (e.g., Spanish or Chinese), and read different media (newspapers, magazines, books, movies) for different purposes. They also wanted to learn about other languages and about dialects. “Why do some English words sometimes sound different?” asked several students.
When the language arts class was over, Joanne enthused, “All in all, I think the kids learned a lot, and so did I!”
“I agree,” Mrs. McCord smiled. “And it’s gotten even better since we’ve started using ‘translation charts.’ Joanne looked at a stack of sheets of paper with three columns drawn vertically so that students could study what different words we use at different times and for different occasions. For instance, in one column are words we use with family; in the second column, words we use with friends; and in the third column, words we use with other grown-ups, like teachers and principals. So, upon meeting people, we might say, “Hi! I’m home!” to family; “Dude, what’s up?” to friends; and “Hello, how are you?” to other adults. There were a week’s worth of them, and she knew for a fact that they had increased the students’ awareness of language differences.
“Now,” said Mrs. McCord, “we’ll try to identify a language problem, such as not having many books in other languages or in multiple languages in our library. Then we’ll create a plan to solve that problem, and then take action to remedy the problem. Then, we’ll have a big celebration of language–a kind of party to which we invite our parents and other community folks. Finally, we meet together several times to reflect on what we’ve learned and where we go from there.”
Joanne was happy and proud that she was able to participate in this work. Again, she thought about Felicity, probably now almost ready for college, and silently thanked the Australian for challenging her own thinking about the future. At least in this classroom, things were changing and seeds were being planted in these children for a lifetime of interest in language.
1 This case study is an adaptation of the work of Dr. Jen McCreight in her first-grade classroom, chronicled in McCreight, Jen. (2016). Celebrating diversity through language study: A new approach to grammar lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. The new approach to teaching language arts in a linguistically diverse classroom, called Language Study, was researched, developed, and tested by Dr. McCreight. It has proved to be an effective way of engaging even very young students in understanding and negotiating the ways that they, and others, listen, speak, and respond.
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Case Analysis
As the world “shrinks,” American schools are increasingly seeing children coming into classrooms speaking several dialects of English as well as languages from other countries. Indeed, native-born children speak many different dialects of English, including African American Vernacular English (sometimes called Ebonics, or urban English), Mountain English (usually children from Appalachia), Cajun Vernacular English (mostly southern Louisiana and Eastern Texas), Hawaiian Creole English (sometimes called Pidgin), Latino Vernacular English (Chicago and Miami English), Pennsylvania Dutch English, Yeshiva English, and many more. This diversity of language forms is also the case in all English-speaking countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, many English-speaking island nations, and two countries in Central and South America. Nevertheless, students whose home languages are either dialects of English or another language altogether need to learn standard American English in addition to their home languages because standard English is the language of power in the United States—it is used in school, in testing, on radio and television, on websites, and in workplaces.
Typically, such students are “taught” standard English by correcting inaccurate vocabulary and grammar both in speech and in writing, as well as through a great deal of practice in standard English. There are some fairly elaborate strategies for teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) students, and there is a brisk debate about the context in which they are used (there will be more about that later in the chapter). Since all languages, including dialects, have a particular structure, and often particular vocabulary and pronunciation, in Mrs. McCord’s class students are taught standard English by observation, study, and comparison. Moreover, they are taught in a classroom community that honors all language differences and makes all language differences part of the study process. The fundamental idea is to learn where and when to use which language and with whom. Thus, the translation charts include family, friends, and other adults (or more formal situations), because the relationship between the speaker and the person spoken to matters as much as the place and the situation.
This process and skill is called code-switching, defined as the ability to shift between dialects or languages depending on the context of a situation (Genishi & Dyson, 2009). It is clearly a major goal in language study. There will be more about code-switching later in the chapter.
Characteristics of a Linguistically Diverse Classroom
Classrooms that are linguistically diverse are also usually culturally diverse. This is the case regardless of whether the classroom has students from other countries or students from different places in the United States, or both. Therefore, what is good practice for culturally diverse students is also good practice for those who are linguistically diverse because language is an important element of culture. Always remember that all students—whose first language is not English, those who speak an English dialect, and those that are standard English speakers—need to have lots of opportunities to learn words that may not be required in an ordinary conversation. Thus, the best classrooms for all these students will have a look, a feel, and sounds of a particular kind of classroom life that is easily discernable.
First, linguistically diverse classrooms are organized for activity. Student work covers the walls of halls and classrooms. Arrangements of classroom furniture and equipment vary according to the work being done in them: easy chairs or sofas for reading and conversation, tables for assembling books and newspapers, tables and counters for scientific work, computer corners, and open spaces for gathering people together. There is a sense of “purposeful clutter in these schools and classrooms. They are places to do things in, not places to sit and watch” (Wood, 1992, pp. xiii–xiv).
Second, everyone present in the classroom participates in this activity-oriented environment. Young children are eager to show off the books they have written; older students are engaged in activities that range from interviewing older community members to completing a scientific inventory of nearby plants and animals. Parents and teachers are often found working together to develop and implement instructional goals (McCaleb, 1994). Principals, teachers, parents, and students often work collaboratively on joint projects, such as publishing a newspaper or refurbishing the library. Because of all this ongoing activity, such schools and classrooms are rarely quiet, at least in the traditional sense of a school where adults talk and children listen.
Third, in linguistically diverse classrooms, there is a sense that everyone belongs to the community: students, teachers, parents, administrators, support staff, volunteers, and other members of the broader community outside the school. Relationships among all people are collaborative, and each individual perceives all others as both teachers and learners. In a learning community, each individual is valued: cultural and linguistic identity is affirmed by using what each person brings to school as starting points and building blocks (McCaleb, 1994, p. xii).
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The Need for Effective Linguistically Diverse Classrooms
So far, the image of effective linguistically diverse classrooms has been primarily those in elementary schools, but they can be found in all levels of schooling, from preschools to high schools, and colleges as well. In just 16 years, the number of English language learners in the United States increased by more than 1 million students, from 3,793,764 in 2001 to 4,858,377 in 2016 (NCES, 2018).
Each of these students comes to the classroom with a first language; younger students may not have had schooling in their native languages, but most will have some. Older students, for the most part, will have been schooled in their first language and it will be foremost in their minds when they begin. Some students, particularly those who have come from active war zones, may be of an age (perhaps ages 6–12) to have been in school, but have not because there were no schools to go to, or their families were on the run or in refugee camps.
While there is a need to teach English to linguistically diverse students, it is important to remember that they also need to maintain and develop their first languages. This is because if a student knows content in one language, it is easier to identify words and ideas in another. At the beginning level, if one can read, even a few words, in one’s first language, it is easier to learn to read those words in another language (Levitan, 2015). It is also because “there is no more personal tool that bridges the gap between home and school than language” (McCreight, 2016, p. xvii). Again, this is the case whether the language is not English or is a dialect of English. School is strange enough when a 4- or 5-year-old first encounters it; if the language that child has spoken since babyhood is not found in school, it is all the more disconcerting.
Teaching in the 21st Century: Who Are the Students?
Even a cursory look at statistics for English language learners (ELLs) in American classrooms shows that not only linguistic diversity is increasing, but that it is not at all the western oriented, northern European ethnic variety that it was for much of the 20th century. Indeed, the ten most commonly found home languages of English language learners today are, in descending order, Castilian Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Haitian and Haitian Creole, Somali, Russian, and Korean. Spanish is the home language of nearly 4 million ELL students, accounting for 76.5% of all ELL students and almost 8% of all public K-12 students. In addition, McFarland writes that “Overall, there were 38 different home languages reported for 5,000 or more students (McFarland, 2015).”
But statistics do not tell the full story. As Joanne is discovering in Mrs. McCord’s class, young children, whether they are from Mexico or Somalia, Haiti or Korea, come to school mostly unaware that their language will not be heard in the school. Their experience is not unlike the experience of the Austrian girl in Chapter 2, who wrote of feeling alone and scared as she entered an American school for the first time, except that Girti Bieder knew that she probably would not be understood, and Mrs. McCord’s first graders were not so alone. Still, the problem remains. As Mrs. McCord noted, “Casting doubt on the words used by a family to speak, to think, to dream either disconnects children from everything they already know or may very well disconnect them from school itself.” The attitude of the teacher toward the language they bring with them is critically important.
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The Work of Teachers and Students
As with all classrooms discussed so far, the traditional work of adults and children in linguistically diverse classrooms are not so much changed as it is expanded. Thus, the work of teacher as teller is expanded to teacher as guide, as coach, as learner, and sometimes as cheerleader! The work of teachers is also expanded to include other adults—parents, administrators, and community members—who provide various types of specialized assistance to the regular classroom teacher. Similarly, the work of students is also expanded; they, too, may serve as teachers, story tellers, and critics of one another and of teachers. The work of learner, like that of teacher, is expanded in linguistically diverse classrooms. Because everyone (teachers, students, administrators, parents, and community members) has unique experiences and specialized knowledge to share, it follows that everyone will be a learner as well as a teacher.
Knowledge as a Tool in the Classroom
A primary source of knowledge in a linguistically diverse classroom is vocabulary—words in different languages or dialects. Mrs. McCord’s translation charts, for example, have three columns of words: one column with words used at home, one column with words used with friends, and one column with words used with grown-ups, like teachers or principals. Applying this kind of knowledge enables children to code-switch, or to move from their home language or dialect to standard English by understanding the context in which each is used.
Research on code-switching is growing, as is the development of ways for children to learn how to do it. One interesting one is called “ToggleTalk”—a curriculum designed at the University of Michigan and tested in some Michigan schools. The metaphor is that students “toggle” between their home language or dialect and standard English, much like one “toggles” a light switch to turn it on or off. Initial research in 2013 aimed at teaching kindergartners and first graders to recognize five common features of their home dialect (in this case, AAVE, or African American Vernacular English) and to switch between that and speech forms more suited to the classroom. The five features are:
Making a plural with “s” – AAVE speakers often keep the “s” in the plural that ends in a vowel sound, but drop it if it comes after a consonant sound. Example: “Two shoes,” but “three ball.”
Past tense “-ed” – In a simple past tense, the student uses the ending “-ed” only if it adds an additional syllable. Example: “The boy decided,” but “The frog jump.”
Subject-verb agreement – The student drops the “s” from the verbs in sentences that would be singular. Example: “The sign say ‘Danger.’”
Supporting verbs – The student omits any “being” verbs. Example: “I don’t know what she doing.”
Articles – The student omits articles or uses only “a.” Example: “dog found some frogs.” (Sparks, 2014).
In the study, students participated in 20-minute sessions several times a week in which they read books especially written for this curriculum and discussed and role-played how and when to switch from their home dialect to academic English. As Sparks notes, “By the end of 8 weeks, students had improved at recognizing dialects and academic English, and had started asking each other to ‘use your formal words’ in math and other classes outside the program.”
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Many children learn to code-switch naturally, in the course of being in school, but it often takes 3–4 years. And some never really succeed. Julie Washington, professor of communications sciences and at Georgia State University, notes that “if students don’t learn to code-switch by the end of third grade (and about a third of AAVE-speaking students do not) then you have to teach it” (Brennan, 2018).
Evaluating the Results of Teaching and Learning
In traditional classrooms, evaluation of student achievement (which is the way in which many teachers are also evaluated) is largely accomplished through the practice of paper-and-pencil testing. The ESEA allows some accommodations for ELL students as they take the tests, but these accommodations last only as long as a student is in an ELL program, which, in most schools is, at maximum, 3 years.
Many are coming to believe that dialect plays a significant and little noticed part in the achievement gap between Black and white children. Early research shows that children who speak the most dense varieties of AAVE have the most difficult time learning standard English, and if they can’t read standard English, then they are ill-prepared to do well on standardized tests given in the United States (Brennan, 2018).
Still, the linguistically diverse classroom can be a place where children who speak in all kinds of ways can create community and stimulate active interest in the rules and contexts of language. Mrs. McCord’s classroom is one of those, and, hopefully, Joanne’s future classroom will be as well.
Perspectives on First Language Acquisition
It is often said that language is what makes us human. Certainly, language is the primary means for socializing us into our families and our social groups and, through them, to acquiring our cultural identity. How humans developed the power of language and speech in the beginning has been a topic of great interest and even greater debate for several centuries. Since Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolutionary development, it has been widely accepted that the ability to create syntax (word order) to vocalize that word order (to speak), and to think or produce thought (using, of course words), must have developed in humans over a long period of time. Recent research, however, indicates that on the contrary, the faculty (or mechanism) of language appeared from a small mutation in one individual, and that all languages in the world are descended from a stone-age, East African dialect (Derbyshire, 2011). As the theory goes, about 100,000 years ago the mechanism of language appeared as a biolinguistic unit, in a small African population a bit prior to the large exodus of African populations to the rest of the world (Derbyshire, 2011).
Furthermore, human beings have the capacity to learn any language at all, which probably means that the faculty of language came before language itself. So, diversity of language is a testament to both the commonality and the variety of human beings. As Berwick and Chomsky (2016) recently wrote:
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We are born crying, but those cries herald the first stirrings of language. German babies’ cries mirror the melody of German speech; French babies mirror French speech—apparently acquired in utero (Mampe et al., 2009). Within the first year or so after birth, infants master the sound system of their language, then, after another few years have passed, they are engaging their caretakers in conversation.
While debates about the origin of language go on, we can be a bit more down-to-earth and think about these linguistic commonalities and differences in a more practical way. For example, how did we experience language when we were just learning to talk?
Language and the Family
A number of scholars have referred to language as the first institution encountered by the individual (Berger & Berger, 1972; Boroditski, 2009; Port, 2010; Sinha, 2009). This conclusion may surprise you if you think of the family as being the first institution, the one that introduces us to language. Infants, however, can’t know what a family is until they have acquired some form of language. Language objectifies, interprets, and justifies reality for the child, thus structuring the child’s environment (Berger & Berger, 1972, pp. 68–69). It puts labels on roles (mommy, police officer, teacher) and permits the child to extend those roles into the wider community. It also brings the meanings and values of the wider community onto the small stage of the immediate family. Consider the case of the father in the act of punishing the child:
As he punishes, he talks. What is he talking about? Some of the talking may just be a way of giving vent to his own annoyance or anger. But, in most cases, much of the talking is a running commentary on the offending act and the punishment it so richly deserves. The talking interprets and justifies the punishment. Inevitably, it does this in a way that goes beyond the father’s own immediate reactions. The punishment is put in the vast context of manners and morals; in the extreme case, even the divinity may be invoked as a penal authority… . The punishing father now represents this system (pp. 69–70).
Institutional Aspects of Language in the Family
Language has several characteristics in common with other social institutions (Berger & Berger, 1972). First, language is external. It is experienced as “out there,” in contrast to the individual’s private thoughts or feelings (which, incidentally, are also structured by language and its meanings). Further, when an individual hears language spoken by another person, that person is speaking according to a particular language system that was created neither by the speaker nor the listener. It is external to them both.
Second, language has objectivity; that is, everyone who shares it agrees to accept the norms and conventions of its particular symbol system. Berger and Berger noted that “the objectivity of one’s first language is particularly powerful” (p. 72). They wrote:
Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, tells the story somewhere of a small child who was asked whether the sun could be called anything except “sun.” “No,” replied the child. How did he know this, the child was asked. The question puzzled him for a moment. Then he pointed to the sun and said, “Well, look at it” (p. 72).
Third, language has the power of moral authority to direct us. As children learn to speak their native language, they are usually excused small lapses in pronunciation and usage. As they grow up, however, inappropriate use of language may very well expose them to ridicule, shame, and guilt. Consider the child who speaks a language or dialect different from that of the school, the working-class college student who is expected to engage in polite conversation at a formal reception, and the adult who tries to speak in the rapidly changing vernacular of her teenage children. Not only are these individuals often misunderstood, they are also often the objects of considerable disdain.
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Finally, language is historical. It was there before we were born and will continue after we are gone. Its meanings were accumulated over a long period of time by myriad individuals now lost forever. Furthermore, language is a living, changing tool, with new words and meanings constantly being added, some for a few days, others for much longer. Some regard language as a “broad stream flowing through time” (p. 75). Berger and Berger wrote:
An Austrian writer, Karl Kraus, has called language the house in which the human spirit lives. Language provides the lifelong context of our experience of others, of self, of the world. Even when we imagine worlds beyond this one, we are constrained to put our intimations or hopes in terms of language. Language is the social institution above all others. It provides the most powerful hold that society has over us (p. 75).
Given the power of language to shape us in many ways, it is well to keep in mind that it is not only our “own” language—formal or informal—that has such power. As Gonzalez (1974) noted,
There is no such thing linguistically speaking as a good language or a bad language, a superior language or an inferior language. Each language is appropriate for its time, place, and circumstances. All languages are complete in this respect (p. 565).
Perspectives on Language Variation
A number of Mrs. McCord’s classroom activities are designed to show how language varies from one group to another, as well as between individuals within the same group. Likewise, teachers and students sometimes speak different heritage languages, but more often, they speak the same language in different ways. Moreover, teachers and students use both verbal and nonverbal means to communicate significant messages to one another.
Verbal Communication
Whether over thousands of years or suddenly, about 100,000 years ago, humans developed the ability to produce, receive, store, and manipulate a variety of symbolic sounds. Human beings, more than any other creature, depend on the production of sound in the form of verbal language as their primary means of communication.
Within any given language, however, vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax (grammatical structure), and semantics (the meaning of words) may differ widely. Furthermore, the form in which language is conveyed may also differ, as, for example, in sign language where syntax is composed of a combination of specific movements of the fingers, hand, and arm as well as facial expressions. Most people are fascinated to watch this kind of speech, made public in recent years by signers who accompany performances on television or talks by public officials. As Mrs. McCord’s students interviewed one another they were able to hear other variations in language, such as accents and dialects, as well.
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Accents
An accent differs from the standard language only in the way words are pronounced, and it often results from pronunciation habits shared by people from a geographical region. People with a typical New England accent, for example, may pronounce the words car, far, and bar as if they were spelled caaa, faaa, and baaa. Similarly, people who have learned to speak English in Appalachia, the South, or the West may have significant differences in the way they pronounce the same words. People whose first language is not English may have difficulty pronouncing certain English words. Japanese speakers, for example, often have trouble with the letter l, and Russian speakers may have difficulty with the letters w and v as they are used in English words. Note that such speakers may be speaking quite proper standard English, but with an accent (Gollnick & Chinn, 2005).
Dialects
A dialect is a variation of some standard language form that includes differences in pronunciation, word usage, and syntax. Such differences may be based on ethnicity, religion, geographical region, social class, or age. Dialects differ not only in their origin but also in the specifics of their expression. Regional differences, for example, usually involve variations in the pronunciation of vowels (recall the example of people from New England). Similarly, people from southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee may have both Appalachian accents and also speak a dialect of English sometimes referred to as mountain English. Social dialects, on the other hand, are most often distinguished from one another by variations in the pronunciation of consonants, particularly the th sound and the sound of the consonants r and l. Regional and social dialects and accents may vary together or be a combination from a number of sociocultural origins, depending on the life experiences of the speaker. Although a variety of dialects are spoken in the United States, the three most widely known are African American Vernacular English (AAVE), rural (or mountain) English, and standard English.
African American Vernacular English is a dialect spoken primarily but not exclusively by urban African Americans. Although it is often associated with those who live in low-income communities, it is also spoken by African Americans from a variety of social classes and can serve, in part, as an expression of cultural identity. The influence of social class on African American Vernacular English is seen mainly in the ability of Black English speakers to switch back and forth between their home language and standard English. One explanation for the origin of AAVE is that it is derived from Gullah, a Creole dialect developed by Africans brought to the United States as slaves, which puts English words into a syntax similar to many African languages. Another explanation sees it as a version of a regional English dialect spoken by early English settlers on the East Coast. Gullah is still spoken by some residents of the Sea Islands off the Carolina coast, and while many of the distinctive features of AAVE are similar to Gullah, it is also similar to other dialects spoken by European whites in some rural areas of the United States. Indeed, some scholars have found that similarities outweigh differences when comparing African American Vernacular English with standard English (Wolfram, Adger, & Christian, 1999).
Rural English, sometimes called mountain English, is a dialect spoken primarily in Appalachia and is derived from the language of early English settlers in the area. People from Appalachia are often ridiculed for their speech, but some linguists say that mountain English is the “purest” English spoken in the United States and the closest to the English spoken in Shakespeare’s time. It has been preserved, in part, because of the isolation of mountain people, in the same way that Gullah has been preserved off the coast of the Carolinas.
Finally, middle-class European Americans may be surprised to learn that so-called standard English is also a dialect of the English language. Although the term “standard English” is usually taken to mean that version of the English language most acceptable or most “correct,” there are, in fact, many varieties of standard English. Gollnick and Chinn (2005) noted that “the speech of a certain group of people in each community tends to be identified as standard” (p. 253). Moreover, standard English as it is spoken in countries such as Australia, India, Nigeria, and England differs significantly from standard English as it is spoken in the United States (Tiedt & Tiedt, 1995). Standard English, as the term is used in U.S. schools, usually refers to that dialect spoken by educated middle and upper classes and to the formal written and oral English that dominates print and broadcast media.
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Bidialectalism
Bidialectalism refers to the ability to speak two (and sometimes more) dialects and to switch back and forth easily. Examples of people engaging in bidialectalism are the country boy who has become an executive in a large city and switches dialects when he goes back to his hometown, or the African American woman who has become a professor and speaks standard English but switches to AAVE when speaking informally to African American colleagues, students, or friends. The ability to “code-switch,” which is so important in Mrs. McCord’s class is often encouraged in schools as a way of enabling youngsters to both broaden their language horizons and receive the perceived economic and social benefits of speaking standard English.
Sign Language
Although sign language is often thought of as nonverbal communication, it is also a form of verbal expression. One form of sign language is the language of signs spoken by the deaf. Several varieties of signed communication exist, notably American Sign Language (ASL), which is the only sign system recognized as a language in the United States (sign languages also exist in other countries); signed English, which translates oral or written English into signs; and finger spelling (sometimes called the manual alphabet), which literally spells out English words letter by letter. Very young children acquire ASL in infancy in the same way that their hearing classmates learn oral language. Like other languages, ASL has its own syntax and rhythms. Young deaf children learn to think in it and translate other sign languages and lip reading into ASL. Closely associated with the culture of the deaf, ASL is the subject of often-heated debate in educational circles. Some educators believe that all deaf or hearing-impaired children should learn to speak orally; others believe that signed communication is not only sufficient but that these individuals—both hearing and hearing-impaired—are bilingual in ASL and English.
Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal communication, used by both hearing and hearing-impaired individuals, refers to body movements, facial expressions, and a variety of word replacement strategies. It has been estimated that nonverbal communication accounts for 50–90% of the messages we send and receive (Barnlund, 1968). In 1973 Leubitz identified four functions of nonverbal communication: (1) to convey messages; (2) to augment verbal communication; (3) to contradict verbal communication; and (4) to replace verbal communication. For purposes of analysis, three aspects of nonverbal behavior are usually studied: proxemics (the culturally determined comfortable distance between people when they are speaking with one another), kinesics (the study of body movements), and paralanguage (sounds made by the voice that are not words such as crying, sighing, and word substitutes such as “Shhh”) (as cited in Gollnick & Chinn, 2005, pp. 218–219). It is well to remember, however, that these nonverbal aspects of communication are seldom used or experienced individually; rather, they combine in various ways with one another and with verbal language to produce the innumerable nuances we take for granted in ordinary communication. It is also important to understand that nonverbal communication expressions can differ dramatically from culture to culture.
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Perspectives on Second-Language Acquisition
With increasing immigration to the United States in recent decades, schools are being faced with the challenges of large numbers of children for whom English is not their first language. This is not a new phenomenon for American schooling. Contrary to popular belief, bilingual education is not a creation of the 1960s, although the civil rights movement gave it renewed emphasis. Indeed, Ohio was the first state to pass a bilingual education law in 1839—allowing German-English instruction if parents requested it. Similar laws were enacted in Louisiana for French and English in 1847 and in the New Mexico territory for Spanish and English in 1850. By the turn of the 20th century, many local districts and nearly a dozen states were providing bilingual education in languages including Norwegian, Italian, Polish, Czech, and Cherokee (History of Bilingual Education, 1998). At that time, at least 600,000 children in primary schools (public and parochial) received part or all of their instruction in German—about 4% of all American elementary students.
Bilingualism and the Law: 1960–2015
Nativist fears stemming from World War I changed the political winds, however, and by the mid-1920s bilingual education provisions were replaced by English-only laws in a majority of states. The ferment surrounding civil rights in the 1960s brought renewed interest in bilingual education. In the 12-year period from 1963 to 1975, private and governmental studies and hearings and a series of lawsuits regarding rights to native language instruction, placement of children with disabilities, and desegregation produced many mandates for the schooling of minority students. Concurrently, new educational strategies and curricula, especially in bilingual and bicultural education, appeared in districts across the nation. The Bilingual Education Act was passed in 1968 as Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. President Lyndon Johnson clarified the intent of this law in the following words:
This bill authorizes a new effort to prevent dropouts; new programs for handicapped children; new planning help for rural schools. It also contains a special provision establishing bilingual education programs for children whose first language is not English. Thousands of children of Latin descent, young Indians, and others will get a better start—a better chance—in school (as cited in Tiedt & Tiedt, 1995, p. 6).
In 1970, the Office of Civil Rights Guidelines tried unsuccessfully to make special training for non–English-speaking students a requirement for public schools that receive federal aid. The office stated:
Where inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin–minority group children from effective participation in the education program offered by a school district, the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students (as cited in Tiedt & Tiedt, 1995, p. 6).
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A significant case in the development of multicultural and multilingual education was Lau v. Nichols, decided by a 1974 Supreme Court ruling. This decision declared that a San Francisco school district violated a non–English-speaking Chinese student’s right to equal educational opportunity when it failed to provide needed English language instruction and other special programs. An important consequence of the Lau decision was the declaration that school districts across the country must provide students an education in languages that meet their needs. Other cases followed, making the same arguments for African American and Latino students.
In 1981, a pedagogically sound plan for limited English proficient (LEP) students was set by the Fifth Circuit Court in Texas in Casteñada v. Pickard. The plan required a sufficient qualified staff to implement the plan, including hiring new staff and training current staff, as well as the establishment of a system to evaluate the programs. It is important to note that a formal “bilingual education” program was not required; however, it did require that “appropriate action to overcome language barriers” be taken through well-implemented programs.
The debate on the requirement that schools provide special programs for English language learners, and the degree of that provision, is still a matter of debate today, although as a matter of policy, the nation has once again reverted to preference for English-only programs. In the fall of 2009, for example, the Supreme Court ruled, in Horne v. Flores, that Arizona’s funding for programs that serve English language learners does not violate the terms of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, and that states are free to develop their own funding plans for such programs. This case, fought in the courts since 1992, is an example of the debate about “how much funding is enough” to provide sufficient resources for teaching English language learners. In Flores, the Supreme Court overturned two lower courts, which had found in favor of those who asserted that, in fact, state funding was insufficient.
The Current Debate on How to Teach English Learners (ELs)
Much of the “how” of teaching English language learners (ELLs) is contained in the legislation that is responsible for seeing that any attention at all is paid to them. In order to make your way through the “alphabet soup” of federal legislation, you need to know a few things. First, most education legislation is contained in an omnibus bill called, since 1965, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act. As this legislation is reauthorized over time, it frequently takes on new names. The name in 2001 was The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In 2015, it became The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Similarly, the name of the Bilingual Education Act has had its name changed several times.
When the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)—the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)—was signed, several things happened to the Bilingual Education Act. First, it was moved from Title VII of ESEA to Title III of NCLB. Second, it was renamed The Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students. Third, it did not make any distinctions between bilingual (learning two languages at once) and non bilingual programs (usually English immersion programs, often called ESL or English as a Second Language programs). Because of the accountability (testing) measures central to NCLB, the issue of how and when to test English language learners in English rather than in their native language became a point of dispute. Particularly concerned with “making” annual yearly progress mandated under NCLB, school districts began providing additional time on learning English, thus interrupting (and sometimes ruining) dual language programs in which students were making progress in both their native language and English, which is the kind of program undertaken by Mrs. McCord.
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With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015, responsibility and funding for English language learners remains in Title III, plus funding has increased due to the increase in the numbers and percentage of English learners in the United States. Further, measures for accountability have softened somewhat into the following two choices:
For 1 year, exclude the student from taking the reading/English language arts test and from counting results of either or both the math and English language arts tests; OR
For the first year of the student’s enrollment in a U.S. school, report on but exclude from accountability system the results on these tests; for the second year of enrollment, include a measure of student growth on both tests; and for the third year of enrollment, include proficiency on both tests in the accountability system.
Here we still see an “English-only” bias, associated with legislators’ sense of urgency that these students learn to speak English as rapidly as possible so that they can be tested and not be left too long outside the call for accountability. But the measures allowed in ESSA do recognize that students’ first language is a very important element in the transition to English.
Understanding Terminology
One of the difficulties in discussing second language acquisition is the terminology that has developed as more research has been done and the laws have changed. Judie Haynes (2010) noted that:
All of the following terms are used to refer either to programs or “students: who are learning to understand, speak, read, and write in English.”
Programs
ESL (English as a Second Language). This term generally refers to programs in the United States.
EFL (English as a Foreign Language). This term refers to students learning English in a foreign country. For example, Chinese students studying English in China are in an EFL program.
ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages). This term is used to describe programs in different parts of the United States, primarily in the South.
ENL (English is a New Language). This term is used by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
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Students
ELL or El (English language learner or English learner). This is the term most often used to describe students who are learning English in the United States.
LEP (Limited English Proficiency). This term is used to describe ELLs by laws and government documents. Many consider it a pejorative term.
Bilingual. This term refers to the fact that students speak more than one language. It can also refer to a program where students receive content information in their native language.
Just as there are many different ways to discuss English learners and their programs, so there are a number of different kinds of programs. The following are a sample of the most frequently found kinds of ESL programs:
Two-Way Immersion/Dual Language. A native English-speaking group and a non-English group (e.g., Spanish speakers) are both taught academic content in both languages for an extended period of time. Both groups develop academic proficiency in both languages.
Transitional Bilingual Education. ELLs receive academic instruction in their first language for part of the day. For the remainder of the day, they receive ESL taught traditionally, with the focus on language, plus some mainstream classes. As English proficiency increases, instruction through the first language decreases. The program lasts 2–4 years.
ESL Pullout. Students attend mainstream classes for much of the day and also meet separately for about 3–10 hours a week in small groups with an ESL instructor who focuses on language development.
Content-Based ESL. ELLs receive ESL instruction, taught by an ESL licensed teacher, in preparation for grade-level content instruction in English. The emphasis is still on language development, but augmented with academic subject matter vocabulary and beginning concepts.
Sheltered English Instruction. ELLs are taught academic content in English by a content licensed teacher. However, the English language used for instruction is adapted to the proficiency level of the students. While the instruction focuses on content, sheltered English instruction also promotes English language development.
Structured English Immersion. ELLs are taught subject matter in English by a content licensed teacher who is also licensed in ESL or bilingual education. The teacher is proficient in the first language of the student. Students may use their native language for clarification, but the teacher uses only English. No ESL instruction is provided in this model.
Heritage Language. A program where ELLs are taught literacy in the language the student regards as his or her native, home, and/or ancestral language. This covers indigenous languages (e.g., Arapaho and Shoshone) and immigrant languages (e.g., Spanish). The intent is to provide literacy skills that can then transfer to English language acquisition.
Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE). A program of instruction in a subject area, delivered in English, which is specially designed to provide ELL students with access to the curriculum.
Native Language Literacy. Language arts instruction focuses on developing oral language, reading, and writing skills in the student’s first language. Teachers fluent in the students’ native language provide instruction utilizing techniques, methodology, and special curriculum in the students’ primary language.
Parental refusal students. Districts that have students whose parents have refused the ELL services offered by the district must still provide the ELL student with the services necessary to acquire English fluency and access the academic content of the curriculum. This places the burden of ELL services on the mainstream classroom teacher who must provide appropriate accommodations and adjust teaching to the student appropriately in order for the student to access the content and acquire English (Dept. of Ed., State of Wyoming n/d).
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Stages in Second Language Acquisition
Years of research on the factors involved in learning a second language have produced agreement that second-language learners will move sequentially through these six predictable stages of language acquisition (Robertson & Ford, 2019).
The silent/receptive or preproduction stage. This is also called “the silent period,” when the student takes in the new language but does not speak it. ELLs need time to listen to others talk, to digest what they hear, to develop receptive vocabulary, and to observe their classmates’ interactions. This stage can last from 10 hours to 6 months.
The early production stage. In this stage the individual begins to speak using short words and sentences, but the emphasis is still on listening and absorbing the new language. There will be many errors in the early production state. This stage can last an additional 6 months.
The speech emergence stage. In this stage, lasting up to another year, speech becomes more frequent, words and sentences are longer, but the individual still relies heavily on context clues and familiar topics. Vocabulary continues to increase and errors begin to decrease, especially in common or repeated interactions. This can take 1–3 years.
The beginning fluency stage. In this stage speech is fairly fluent in social situations with minimal errors. New contexts and academic language are challenging and individuals will struggle to express themselves due to gaps in vocabulary and appropriate phrases.
The intermediate language proficiency stage. In this stage communicating in the second language is fluent, especially in social language situations. The individual is able to speak almost fluently in new situations or in academic areas, but there will be gaps in vocabulary knowledge and some unknown expressions. There are very few errors, and the individual is able to demonstrate higher order thinking skills in the second language such as offering an opinion or analyzing a problem. This stage may take another year.
The advanced language proficiency stage. In this stage the individual communicates fluently in all contexts and can maneuver successfully when exposed to new academic information. At this stage, the individual is essentially fluent and comfortable communicating in the second language. To achieve this stage often takes 2–5 years.
Because students go through these stages in different time periods, it is usually understood that it takes 5–7 years to fully acquire a second language. No school district in the United States allows that much time. Ordinarily, students in classes in English as a second language are expected to be in all-English classes after 3 years at the most.
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Understanding the Difference between Social and Academic Language Acquisition
The expectation that school districts have about the length of time it takes ELLs to become fluent in English often ignores the important distinction between social language and academic language. As Haynes (2007) described it,
“Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are language skills needed in social situations. It is the day-to-day language needed to interact socially with other people. English language learners (ELLs) employ BIC skills when they are at the playground, at lunch, at parties, playing sports, and talking with friends. Social interactions are usually context embedded. They occur in a meaningful social context. They are not very demanding cognitively. The language required is not specialized. These language skills usually develop within 6 months to 2 years. Problems arise when teachers and administrators think that a child is proficient in a language when he or she demonstrates good social English.”
“Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) refers to formal academic learning. This includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing about subject area content material. This level of language learning is essential for students to succeed in school. Students need time and support to become proficient in academic areas. This usually takes from 5 years to 7 years.”
“Academic language acquisition isn’t just the understanding of content area vocabulary. It includes higher-level skills such as comparing, classifying, synthesizing, evaluating, and inferring. Academic language tasks are context reduced. Information is read from a textbook or presented by the teacher. As a student gets older the context of academic tasks becomes more and more reduced. The language also becomes more and more cognitively demanding. New ideas, concepts, and languages are presented to the students at the same time.”
Research on the difference between BICS and CALP tends to show that schools should enable teachers and ELLs to have more time devoted not only to social language learning but to academic language learning as well. Rushing students through a language support program, no matter how good it is, will not develop academic language skills to the extent needed. It would also be well to provide more support for upper elementary and middle school students who have been unschooled in their native language. In addition, maintenance (and growth) of students’ first languages should be encouraged, in the home and in school. As you may have noted, Mrs. McCord would approve of all these recommendations!
Other Important Concepts in Second Language Acquisition
Considerable agreement has also been achieved on several contextual factors involved in acquiring a second language. One of these is the “affective filter hypothesis” (Krashen, 1981; Krashen & Terrell, 1983), which suggests that emotions are a factor in the ease or difficulty in learning another language. In particular, negative emotions such as anxiety, embarrassment, or anger produced by early attempts to speak a second language can produce a kind of filter that gets in the way of the learner’s ability to process new or difficult words.
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Other important contextual factors are: (1) the linguistic distance between two languages (how different they are from one another); (2) the student’s level of proficiency in his or her first language (including not only speaking but also reading and writing); (3) the dialect of the first language (whether it is standard or nonstandard); (4) the relative status of the student’s first language in the community; and (5) social attitudes toward the student’s first language (Waiqui, 2000).
Of particular importance in English language acquisition is the need to build upon the child’s knowledge of his or her first language. Research on the role of the first language demonstrated the relationship between language acquisition and the overall personal and educational development of children (Baker, 1988; Cummins, 2000). This research has resulted in the following findings:
Developing abilities in two or more languages throughout the primary school years provides a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively.
The level of development of children’s first language is a strong predictor of their second-language development.
School acceptance and promotion of various first languages helps develop not only the first language but also the majority school language.
Instructional time taken in a child’s first language does not inhibit development in the majority school language.
First languages are fragile and easily lost in the early years of school.
To reject a child’s language in the school is, in large measure, to reject the child.
Instructional approaches or strategies in teaching children who are English language learners is available from a variety of sources, but one of the most complete is from the Education Alliance at Brown University. Strategies discussed focus on listening, making connections between what the child is reading and what the child already knows, modeling language use for the child, daily sharing as a part of the school day, having regular conversations with students about their reading and writing, and providing lots of opportunities for students to practice speaking, reading, and writing (Teaching Diverse Learners, n.d.)
As Cummins (2000) noted,
In short, the cultural, linguistic and intellectual capital of our societies will increase dramatically when we stop seeing culturally and linguistically diverse children as “a problem to be solved” and instead open our eyes to the linguistic, cultural, and intellectual resources they bring from their homes to our schools and societies.
Ethical Issues: Local and Global
Teaching linguistically diverse students also entails ethical and moral issues. Mrs. McCord, for example, is aware that students who speak another language, or who speak dialects of standard English, are likely to be stigmatized by other students as well as by school policies, particularly in schools without well-developed programs for English language learners.
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Most U.S. schools, and a majority of the general public, are committed to the proposition that all students learn and perform effectively in standard English, which is the language of choice by the dominant social group. Therefore, debates about bilingual education and English as a second language revolve as much around issues of cultural domination and subordination as they do around what is best for individual students. In short, the debate about bilingual education is part of a larger debate about who controls the school curriculum and for what purposes.
Another ethical issue is the degree to which assessment of student progress is measured by culture-biased tests that favor students who are already fluent in standard English. It is likely, for example, that a student may be quite knowledgeable about a subject matter but cannot express his or her knowledge in the manner required by certain kinds of tests. Similarly, most traditional assessment instruments tend to favor students who are field independent rather than global learners, who are visual learners rather than auditory or kinesthetic learners, and who prefer to work alone rather than in cooperative groups. In recent years, alternative forms of performance-based assessment have been designed that enable teachers to accurately assess progress for those students who do better with other styles of learning. However, such assessments are relatively slow in being incorporated into statewide, government-mandated tests. In the meantime, teachers like Mrs. McCord must find ways to demonstrate that their students are, in fact, learning effectively according to current, proficiency-based assessment strategies.
A third ethical issue is a global one and concerns the degree to which language provides the keys to understanding other people in an increasingly interdependent world. Globalization, worldwide television (especially cable news networks such as CNN), and the Internet have tended to make English a worldwide standard language. Indeed, more than 60 countries now use English in an official capacity. Moreover, globalization of communication, a growing world urbanization, the spread of Western cultural and media products, and a disdain for the traditional all contribute to the loss of small, community-based languages (Wallmont, 2003).
Critical Incident
Mrs. McCord’s Dilemmas
Many of the students in Mrs. McCord’s classroom speak a second language or a dialect other than standard English—especially at home. She also realizes that many of them are likely to be stigmatized by other students as well as by school policies, particularly in schools without well-developed programs for English language learners.
What should she do given this reality in her classroom?
What should she do for her students as individuals?
What would you do?
Increasingly, especially since the No Child Left Behind legislation was enacted, children are faced with demonstrating their competence and achievement using standardized tests, which may not be as effective at accurately assessing children from some backgrounds. In the meantime, teachers like Mrs. McCord must find ways to demonstrate that their students are, in fact, learning effectively according to current, proficiency-based assessment strategies.
How might she approach this dilemma?
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Summary
Classrooms that are linguistically diverse seem to typify the need for effective teaching and learning in the 21st century. Of particular importance in this regard is attentiveness to the language or languages of students and teachers and to the ways in which all individuals naturally approach teaching and learning. Clearly, language structures the very thoughts and ideas we have as human beings. Not only do we have particular vocabularies that have meaning for us, but we also structure our sentences and pronounce our words in particular ways that we have learned as part of our primary socialization as young children and that therefore seem comfortable and “right” to us.
In classrooms where children of diverse backgrounds attempt to learn a prescribed curriculum, teachers must pay attention to the students’ linguistic backgrounds so that they can be certain that all children are effectively understanding and participating in all learning activities. Teachers who are working with children whose first language is not English must remember that each child’s language is an integral part of that child’s personhood, and must make every attempt to regard that personhood with respect. Both the proponents and opponents of bilingual education want children to learn; they disagree—sometimes profoundly—on the best means (and the best language) to achieve that goal. Because of the history of the bilingual education debate and because of the increasing interconnectedness of today’s world, teachers must be clear in their own minds about the relative merits of bilingual education.
Key Terms
accent
African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
American Sign Language
bidialectalism
bilingual
bilingual education
code-switching
dialect
English as a foreign language (EFL)
English as a new language (ENL)
English as a second language (ESL)
English language learner (ELL or EL)
English to speakers of other languages (ESOL)
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
kinesics
limited English proficient (LEP)
mountain English
No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)
paralanguage
proxemics
rural English
standard English
Interviewing Non–Native English Speakers About Their Experiences in This Country
Purpose: To raise awareness and sensitivity and learn about the problems faced by new speakers of English.
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Describe some of the initial difficulties or problems you encountered when you first arrived in this country. To what would you attribute the problems?
What significant cultural differences did you encounter in the early stages of your adjustment to this country? How did you overcome these?
What primary language did you speak before coming to the United States? Describe your competency as a speaker of your home language. Describe your competency as a speaker of English today.
What communication problems did you experience when you first came to this country? How did you handle these?
What kinds of communication difficulties, if any, do you or your children currently face?
What might people (or schools and/or teachers if interviewing a child or parent) in the United States do that would help to reduce adjustment and communication difficulties for new immigrants?
What messages do you have for other non-English speakers that might make their adjustment and communication easier?
What can you conclude about communication, culture shock, and adjustment that would be useful for teachers?
Classroom Activities
In the elementary classroom, experiment to see what the “comfort zone” is for each student. Draw a circle with a diameter of about 3 feet on the floor with chalk, and ask students to take turns standing in the middle of the circle. Then, ask another student to stand with his or her toes on the outside of the line. Does the student in the circle feel comfortable with another student standing this close to him or her? Can the “outside” student move closer (cross the line) without making the “inside” student uncomfortable? Do this until all students have had a chance to be “inside” and “outside.” Keep track of the results. Discuss with students the importance of proxemics and whether or not their experience with this activity can be in any way attributed to cultural ideas.
Another nonverbal form of communication is called kinesics, and relates to the way in which human beings communicate with body movements. Ask for six volunteers to stand in front of the class and try to communicate the following ideas to the rest of the class without saying anything: anger, sadness, excitement, disgust, sympathy, and boredom. Give each student a piece of paper with the feeling or idea he or she is to demonstrate. As each student adopts the stance, facial expression, or other body movement for his or her term, ask the rest of the class to describe what they see in the demonstrator’s body movement. When each feeling or idea has been expressed and noted, discuss with the class how they “knew” what the student was demonstrating.
In a high school classroom, students can be assigned to research the way or ways in which their school district deals with English language learners. Ask students to find out the history of the program or policy in that district, how many ELL students there are, how successful the program appears to be, and any debates surrounding the program or policy. If there is no program or policy, ask students to interview a school board member, or someone in the superintendent’s office to find out why there is no program or policy.
Another activity for high school students is to ask someone who speaks another language fluently to come to class and begin speaking to the students in that language. Teachers might provide a little more stress by first telling the students that the visitor will be giving them instructions on a project that will be a part of their unit grade. Ask the speaker to speak for at least 5 minutes. When he or she is finished speaking, ask all students to write a short essay on how the experience affected them, and what it might be like to be an English language learner in their school.
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Clearly, establishing a linguistically diverse classroom like Mrs. McCord’s first–grade class is fraught with both difficulties and possibilities. Put yourself in Mrs. McCord’s place, at this early point in the school year, and answer the questions she is asking herself:
1. How am I going to create a democratic, linguistically diverse classroom culture when my students come from such different backgrounds and speak so many different languages and dialects?
2. How am I going to discourage standard English speakers from stigmatizing those students whose language differences are often rejected in American schools?
3. How am I going to provide ways in which all my students can participate fully in the life of the classroom?
4. How am I going to create a classroom environment in which students can teach each other effectively?
5. How am I going to organize instruction so that all students can have equal access to the material at hand?
6. How many of my students’ parents are able and willing to come into the classroom to assist in teaching? How do I find that out?
