Living Between WorldsDavid and Yvonne FreemanThe University of Texas at Brownsville

Why “Between Worlds” in This Title?

• Our students move between the world of their families and their native countries

• True for all students but for ELLs they come from different worlds… often worlds different from their teachers

• Many of our students are marginalized by the instruction they receive and the attitudes they encounter

Why “Between Worlds” in This Title?

• Many feel they do not belong anywhere-not accepted by school or home community cultural ambivalence-

• Others succeed in school but in the process lose home community

• Students may enter school monolingual in one language and leave school monolingual in another (lose L1)

• Rather than the best of both worlds, they trade one world for another

Why “Second Language Acquisition” in Title

• A number of linguistic, psychological, and social factors interact to permit or deny students access to a new language

• Teachers need to know about recent research, language learning theories, and effective practices

Living Between Worlds

What factors affect the school success of ELLs living between worlds?

The school exists within family, community, state, and national contexts

These contexts interact in complex ways to affect the success of English language learners

No one factor can explain success or failure However, we can change different aspects

of these contexts to assess the affect on our English language learners to improve their chances for success

national and state context

community and family context

school context

dynamic contextual interaction model

National and state attitudes toward

immigrants

legal mandates

mass media

National and State Context

Legal Mandates

Despite research showing the benefits of primary language instruction, legal mandates and common-sense practice have led to ineffective programs for ELLs

California, Arizona, and Massachusetts have enacted laws that result in English only instruction for English language learners

This has led to school programs, such as structured English immersion, that do not develop students’ first languages.

Many other states have either ESL or transitional bilingual programs that do not fully develop students’ first languages.

Neighborhood conditions

Family conditions

Family education level

Developmental needs

Family and Community Context

Mother’s Education Level

Ethnicity

Less than HS

high school

BA or more

Latino 41 29 10White 6 29 32Black 18 34 15Asian 16 22 45From Gándara Educational Leadership 2010

school facilityschool resourcesschool climate

student attitudesschool peers

level of staffingteacher attitudes

teacher knowledge and skills

parent involvementafterschool programs

student language proficiency

students’ prior schoolingstudents’ first language

and culture

School Context

Who Are Our English Language Learners Living Between Worlds?

Adequate formal schooling students

Limited formal schooling students

Long-term English learnersPotential long-term English learners

Newly arrived with adequate schooling

recent arrivals (less than 5 years in U.S. )

adequate schooling in native country

soon catch up academically may still score low on standardized

tests given in English

Newly Arrived with Limited Formal Schooling

recent arrivals ( less than 5 years in U.S. )

interrupted or limited schooling in native country

limited native language literacy

below grade level in math

poor academic achievement

Long term English learner

7 or more years in the U.S.

below grade level in reading and writing

mismatch between student perception of achievement and actual grades

some get adequate grades but score low on tests

have had ESL or bilingual instruction, but no consistent program

Potential Long Term English Learners

students who begin their schooling speaking a language other than English K-5

parents with low levels of education parents struggling financially and/or socially

school facilityschool resourcesschool climate

student attitudesschool peers

level of staffingteacher attitudes

teacher knowledge and skills

parent involvementafterschool programs

student language proficiency

students’ prior schoolingstudents’ first language

and culture

School Context

Mrs. Brown

“Teaching isn’twhat it used to be.”

Mrs. Brown Teaching Isn’t What It Used to Be

Analysis students have changed teachers don’t understand students’

languages, cultures, and values teachers struggle to communicate with

parents teachers become frustrated

Positive response

What Influences How Teachers Teach?

Several factors interact to account for how teachers teach and the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they develop

What influences how teachers teach?

Influences ResultsPast academic experiences

Teach as we were taught

Educational training Teach as we were taught to teach

Colleagues/administrators

Teach as others teach or as we are required to teach

Changes in teaching situation

Adjust teaching to new school or level or new students

What influences how teachers teach?

Influences Resultsmaterials teach using available

or required materialsstudents teach in response (or

reaction) to the students

legislation teach to ensure that students meet the requirements of state and federal legislation

How do people learn and how do they acquire language?

The way teachers teach also depends on how they believe people learn and how they think people acquire language

Different methods follow from different views of learning

How do people learn and how to they acquire language?

“Learning and language acquisition overlap to a great extent in the sense that they are both social, contextual, and goal oriented. That is, individuals learn both content and language as they engage with others in a variety of settings to accomplish specific purposes” (Faltis and Hudelson, 1998)

Teacher’s Role

The role of the teacher is to mediate learning for students by providing scaffolds that enable them to solve problems and carry out activities independently.

school facilityschool resourcesschool climate

student attitudesschool peers

level of staffingteacher attitudes

teacher knowledge and skills

parent involvementafterschool programs

student language proficiency

students’ prior schoolingstudents’ first language

and culture

School Context

My Name is Jorge on Both Sides of the River (Medina, 1999)

¿Por qué soy tonto?

En mi país Yo era listo

Why am I dumb? In my country I was smart

Views of Bilinguals (O. García, 2009)

People, including researchers, have generally taken the view that bilinguals are really two monolinguals in one person

This view has led to misunderstandings about bilingual people and bilingual programs

García argues that we need to see bilingualism as a dynamic process in which the two or more languages constantly interact

Balanced Bilinguals

The reason that people think of bilinguals as being “balanced” is that they picture bilinguals as being like two monolinguals in one person.

However, bilinguals are not simply the sum of two monolinguals

L1

L2

A Holistic View of Bilinguals “the bilingual is an

integrated whole who cannot easily be decomposed into two separate parts… he has a unique and specific linguistic configuration”

Grossjean 2009

L1+L2

A holistic view of bilinguals

A bilingual is like a high hurdler. She doesn’t have to jump as high as a high jumper or run as fast as a sprinter

Instead, she is a unique individual with special skills

Dynamic Bilingualism

Dynamic bilingualism -Languages interact continually

Emergent bilinguals constantly access both their languages as they use them with different people in different contexts for different purposes

Theoretical Support for Using Both Languages in Instruction

New knowledge is built on prior understandings. If those understandings were built through L1, they can best be accessed through L1

Literacy skills are interdependent, so teaching should facilitate cross-language transfer

Ways to Support Students’ First Languages and Cultures While They Develop English

There are many ways that teachers can support and build students primary languages and cultures as their students develop English

Ways to use two languages together

Assign bilingual pairs

Arrange sister class exchanges

Conduct language comparison studies to build metalinguistic awareness

Metalinguistic Awareness

Ways to Use Two Languages Group students

heterogeneously for a writing assignment

Students read in L1 and retell stories to other students in L2

Students use bilingual dictionaries as a resource or read bilingual books or books in their L1

Ways to Use Two Languages Students are

grouped by L1 to discuss in L1 how to do homework in English

Students use L1 to discuss homework with parents

Students are given awards for proficiency in a non-English language

Ways to Use the Two Languages Together

Focus on cognates

(democracy, democracia)

create bilingual multimediabooks and projects

school facilityschool resourcesschool climate

student attitudesschool peers

level of staffingteacher attitudes

teacher knowledge and skills

parent involvementafterschool programs

student language proficiency

students’ prior schoolingstudents’ first language

and culture

School Context

national and state context

community and family context

school context

dynamic contextual interaction model