english language learners' discourse strategies in science instruction

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English Language Learners'Discourse Strategies in ScienceInstructionIliana Reyes aa University of ArizonaPublished online: 20 Mar 2009.

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Bilingual Research Journal, 31: 95–114, 2008Copyright 2008 by the National Association for Bilingual EducationISSN: 1523-5882 print/1523-5890 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15235880802640631

UBRJ1523-58821523-5890Journal of Bilingual Research, Vol. 31, No. 1-2, Jan 2009: pp. 0–0Journal of Bilingual ResearchEnglish Language Learners’ Discourse Strategies in Science Instruction

ELL Discourse Strategies in Science InstructionBilingual Research Journal Iliana ReyesUniversity of Arizona

Abstract

This study focuses on the characteristics of discourse betweenLatino immigrant children and their teacher during scienceinstruction. Peer interaction was analyzed to identify the use andimportance of the native language (L1) for the development ofcontent knowledge during group collaboration. In addition, theinteraction between teacher and children was analyzed to deter-mine the importance of the adult’s use of the L1 in providinginstructional support to make science and literacy meaningful forlinguistically and culturally diverse students. Classroom observa-tions over the course of 1 year focused on how a Spanish-Englishbilingual teacher approached the demands of science inquiry inan urban fourth-grade classroom in northern California. Theanalysis centers on a discourse analysis of the students’ conversa-tions while they participated in and completed a science activity.In their conversations, children employed different discoursestrategies to accomplish their communicative goals during thescience activities. Whereas Spanish was the main language ofinstruction during the science activity, children also used Englishand code-switches to challenge each other, reinforce major sci-ence concepts, and develop literacy skills. Discourse strategiesthat can promote academic achievement among English languagelearners through the use of their native language are discussed.

Dr. Iliana Reyes is Assistant Professor, Department of Language, Reading and Culture,and affiliate faculty at the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Second Language Acquisitionand Teaching, University of Arizona. Her research focuses on early literacy, bilingualism andbiliteracy development, language socialization, and child development.

Address correspondence to Iliana Reyes, College of Education, Room 512, Department ofLanguage, Reading and Culture, P.O. Box 210069, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721-0069. E-mail: [email protected]

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96 Bilingual Research Journal

Introduction

The growing ethnic and linguistic diversity among school-age childrenin the United States has been an apparent trend for decades. Simultaneously,promoting greater educational equity and higher academic standards in theclassroom continues to be a major goal for teachers, administrators, andpolicymakers in this century (National Research Council [NRC], 1996). Theincreasing diversity among students presents challenges for teachersattempting to meet these goals, particularly with regard to how they imple-ment the school curriculum. The educational literature indicates that adisproportionate number of recent immigrant children who are classified asEnglish language learners (ELLs) in the United States have unsuccessfulschooling experiences because their multiple literacies are not always recog-nized and validated in mainstream classrooms (García, 2001). This phenom-enon has particularly occurred in the instruction of content areas likemathematics and science (Lee & Fradd, 1998; Secada, 1996). Consequently,the children’s educational experiences often are not meaningful, a problemthat is compounded as children advance through the U.S. educationalsystem.

Much of the early research on ELL children has focused on the devel-opment of their second-language (e.g., August & Shanahan, 2006;McLaughin, 1985; Wong Fillmore, 1982). As a consequence, little infor-mation is available on what happens to these children’s native-languageproficiency as they acquire English, which is an area in need of study.Moreover, there is a great need to understand how teachers can use chil-dren’s native language to promote their development of academic literacyand content-area knowledge.

The study reported here documents native-language use, in this caseSpanish, during content-area instruction by fourth-grade immigrant Englishlanguage learners. It is part of a larger research project examining the pro-cess and effects of an instructional intervention designed to promoteachievement and equity in science and literacy among culturally and linguis-tically diverse elementary students (see Ku, Bravo, & García, 2004 forfurther details). As part of this research study, a fourth-grade teacher pre-sented science units about measurement and matter topics in Spanish inorder to promote English language learners’ biliteracy development. Thepresent study focuses on the students’ and teacher’s use of Spanish (theteacher’s and children’s native language) during this science instruction. Inparticular, I analyze and document the discourse strategies used during stu-dents’ peer interactions and participation in hands-on science activities1. Inaddition, I analyze and contrast the interaction between teacher and childrento identify how the teacher used the first language (L1) to provide the neces-sary instructional support and scaffolding to make science and literacymeaningful for these linguistically and culturally diverse students.

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ELL Discourse Strategies in Science Instruction 97

Theoretical Framework

Several theoretical assumptions guided this study. First, the nature ofbilingual and biliteracy development is seen as a function of how childrenuse the two languages in their everyday lives in and out of the classroom(Kenner, 2004; Pérez, 2004). Second, a functional approach (Halliday, 1977)is taken to describe the discourse characteristics and strategies that childrenemploy during peer interaction and teacher-student interaction. Moreover,talk in both children’s first and second language is viewed as an interactivesocial activity that leads to learning during peer interaction as well asteacher-led instruction (Echiburu Berzins & López, 2004; Pérez, 2004).Specifically, during student-teacher interactions, instructional congruence2

(IC) has an important positive effect on children’s learning experiences. Inthis case, IC is reflected in the ways in which the teacher provides effectivediscourse strategies to make science and literacy instruction meaningful,accessible, and relevant for linguistically and culturally diverse students(Lee & Fradd, 1998). Moreover, researchers have observed that whenteachers use instructional scaffolding it helps ELLs develop literacy and oralproficiency in their second language through the exchange of questions,ideas, and comments relevant to the topic under discussion (Moll, Sáez, &Dworin, 2001).

In content-area instruction, specifically science, academic languagefeatures and functions include formulating hypotheses, designing investiga-tions, collecting and interpreting data, drawing conclusions, and communi-cating results (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994; NRC, 1996). Additionally, duringscience instruction, children need to become familiar with terms that haveunique meanings in the scientific context (e.g., matter, force, energy, space).Therefore, teachers who are sensitive to students’ linguistic and culturalbackgrounds use specific discourse strategies that integrate the new contentknowledge by relating it to children’s home experiences (Bravo, Hiebert, &Pearson, 2007).

Previous studies show that the collaborative nature of classroom groupactivities influences positively students’ learning by stimulating the devel-opment of inquiry skills and higher-order thinking skills (Good, Mulryan,& MacCaslin, 1992; Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, & Álvarez, 2001).According to Vygotsky (1978), learning is an interactive process in whichgroups of individuals collaborate in the pursuit of shared goals. Educatorsand developmental psychologists have looked at how immigrant bilingualchildren in particular benefit from this type of social interaction during par-ticipation in school and after-school interactions (Moll & Diaz, 1985;Vásquez, 2003). When collaboration occurs during such interactions,participants communicate linguistic and content knowledge by using dis-course strategies to achieve a particular task (Gumperz, Cook-Gumperz &Szymanski, 1999).

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Discourse Strategies

Several recent studies have focused on the discourse strategies thatimmigrant bilingual children use during peer interaction (e.g., Gumperzet al., 1999; Hurtado, 2002; Reyes, 2004; Wulftange & Kyratzis, 2003). In astudy by Cook-Gumperz & Szymanski (2001), Spanish-English bilingualchildren communicated in small groups referred to as familias (literallytranslated as families) in which they helped each other to solve a task. Thegirls participating in their study often took on the role of “big sister” (meta-phorically similar to their role in their actual families) by using a communi-cative discourse style in which either they helped other children to cooperatein accomplishing the group tasks or they competed with other group mem-bers, specifically with boys. For example, in the following case, when achild refuses to answer another child’s question, the latter responds byreminding the other children that they are una familia and appealing to fam-ily members’ responsibility to help one another (from Cook-Gumperz &Szymanski, 2001, example 8, p. 117; translations of Spanish utterancesappear in italics on the following line):

E: ¿Cuál es the answer?What is the answer?

J: hello, hello [child is playing with microphone]A: no te—no te voy a decir la answer

I’m not going to tell you the answerE: somos una familia

we are a familyA: ¿y qué?

So what?E: en las familias se ayudan y no más

family members help each other, that’s all,A: ¿y qué?

so what?

In this example, Emman wants to know the answer to one of the ques-tions, but Alicia right away tells him that she is not going to give it to him, towhich Emman replies that they are a family. Alicia responds with an ironic“so what.” In this case, Alicia has decided not to help Emman because he hasanother partner with whom he can answer the questions. These students’communicative practices ranged from collaborative to competitive stancesthat are more usual of middle childhood (Cook-Gumperz & Szymanski,2001).

In an earlier study, Benjamin (1996) described more systematically theways in which Spanish-English bilingual children used Spanish effectivelyin a fifth-grade classroom. Benjamin reports on naturally occurring interac-tions in which Mexican-American children used speech acts3 in Spanish invery complex ways for both schoolwork and ongoing social conversation.

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There are various types of speech acts (e.g., stating, questioning, ordering,threatening, confirming, promising, requesting, or advising) that a speakermay use, depending on the situation and particular functions he or she wantsto accomplish. For example, when working together in groups, Hispanicchildren in Benjamin’s study used their native language, Spanish, to provideassistance and scaffolding with the task, and to clarify information needed tosolve it. In addition, they used Spanish to integrate their out-of-schoolknowledge into their school world and to negotiate social relationships. Theuse of Spanish allowed these children to accomplish a variety of tasks and tofulfill their roles as peers, friends, and students in the classroom. These find-ings are relevant to the present study because they highlight the importanceof native language use by immigrant children to achieve several linguisticand academic goals inside the classroom.

This article focuses on the functions of Spanish-language use, specifi-cally discourse strategies, in immigrant Spanish-English language learnersduring fourth-grade science instruction. In addition, this study describesstudents’ and the teacher’s use of Spanish, their native language, to developscience inquiry and literacy during content instruction. By studying the dis-course strategies children use in their daily language interactions, we mightbe able to understand more about what children are able to do and achieve ina specific task when provided with the opportunity to use their first lan-guage. The following two research questions guided this study:

1. What are the discourse strategies of peer interaction during scienceinstruction?

2. What are the discourse characteristics of the teacher-student interactionsduring science instruction?

Because there is considerable evidence that literacy instruction in thenative language facilitates overall academic achievement and the develop-ment of English literacy skills (e.g., García, 1999; Thomas & Collier, 1997),my goal is to explore and describe the teacher’s and children’s use of thenative language in content-area instruction.

Method

Participants and Setting

StudentsFour children out of 25 Latino fourth graders from Bahia4 Elementary in

the San Francisco Bay Area were selected for participation in these observa-tions. The students, two girls and two boys, were selected because they hadattended a transitional bilingual program in the same school during the past 4years, and they had immigrated from Mexico (the two girls), and El Salvador

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(the two boys) when they were 5 years of age. At the time of this study, theschool was still implementing a transitional program despite Proposition207. Although all the children had achieved a competent level of oralEnglish (according to district English assessments), they participated in thebilingual program with parents’ permission and signed waivers. Accordingto the teacher, the children’s parents had a commitment to their children’sdevelopment of bilingualism and native-language maintenance.

TeacherThe teacher, Mrs. Robles, was a Spanish-English bilingual speaker orig-

inally from El Salvador who had been teaching for 7 years in this school.Although Spanish was Mrs. Robles’s first language, at first she felt uneasyabout teaching science in Spanish because of her lack of familiarity withscience terminology in her native language as well as her lack of formaltraining in science in general. As the semester advanced, her attitudechanged, and by midsemester, Mrs. Robles felt confident about teaching sci-ence in Spanish. She was excited about learning, along with her students,new science terminology and instructional strategies in Spanish.

SchoolThe data were collected at an elementary school participating in a research

program called Science Instruction for All (SIFA). Several participating teach-ers and their classes were using a particular science curriculum across variousgrades (for further detail see Ku, Bravo, & García, 2004). Mrs. Robles’s class-room was chosen for observation because it offered an excellent opportunity tostudy the use of Spanish as the medium for content-area instruction. During thefirst semester of classroom observation, Mrs. Robles implemented a measure-ment unit in English. During the spring semester, she implemented a unit aboutmatter (six lessons) in Spanish during the integration hour, during which chil-dren received instruction in their native language (Spanish with Mrs. Robles,and for students whose first language was Cantonese, with another fourth-grade teacher). An average of twice a week for an hour, all native Spanishspeakers from the three fourth-grade classrooms rotated into Mrs. Robles’sclassroom. Mrs. Robles provided instruction in three instructional settings:whole-class discussion, small-group work, and individual work. She wasprovided with instructional materials and science workbooks to use with thestudents for each of the science lessons. Data for this study were collected dur-ing collaborative small-group work in which children shared responsibilities incompleting hands-on science activities.

Data Collection

Two types of data were collected during this study. One was theresearcher’s qualitative field notes taken during weekly classroom observations.

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The second was video recordings of the children’s peer interactions.Mrs. Robles introduced the bilingual researcher, explaining that she was ateacher and a scientist from a local university interested in learning how chil-dren worked together during science activities.

In order to capture natural language use within the classroom setting, fourchildren, Andrea, Claudia, Edgar and Ruben, in two groups were selected to beaudiotaped during their participation in different science activities over a periodof roughly 6 months. In addition, the researcher was present twice a week duringthe science period to develop rapport with the children and teacher, so that theywould feel comfortable about having video and audio recording equipmentaround the classroom. The researcher also collected written samples on students’understanding of matter concepts, but those data are not presented here.

Data Analysis

The data analysis focused on the functions of students’ Spanish languageuse within their collaborative groups. Most of the recordings and transcrip-tions consisted of conversation between several of the focal children andother classmates. For this reason, we needed an analytical framework thatwould allow us to develop descriptors of what discourse strategies the chil-dren could accomplish in Spanish conversation during their science class. Theresearcher logged all tapes and field notes to create descriptive summaries ofclass episodes, and transcribed the children’s conversations using Gumperzand Berenz’s (1993) transcription method. Once transcribed, the conversa-tions were coded into discourse strategies, including speech-act functions,following the work by Benjamin (1996), Halliday (1977), and Searle (1975).During the data analysis, other functions related to teacher-student interaction(e.g., literacy scaffolding) emerged, and these were added to the codingscheme. See Appendix A for a description of the different language functions.

Findings: Spanish-Language Functions

The students’ discourse strategies fell into three main sociolinguisticcategories: (a) getting work done (subdivided into requests for clarification,for assistance, and for action); (b) getting along with others (subdivided intochallenging others and directing others); and (c) linguistic and literacy scaf-folding (subdivided into language and literacy scaffolding and talking tooneself). Linguistic and literacy scaffolding was observed particularly dur-ing teacher-student interactions. The following section provides descriptionsand examples of each type of discourse strategy identified in this corpus.Each example highlights children’s abilities to use their native languageeffectively with peers and the teacher to achieve different discourse goals,some related directly to the completion of the science activity and othersrelated to their social worlds.

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Discourse Strategies

Getting work doneBecause of the nature of the activity, the children spent a good deal of

their time talking about their science work and their plan to carry out theexperiments in each lesson. All the children used requests for clarification,for assistance, and for action to further the accomplishment of the task morefrequently than any other types of speech acts. The following example,which occurred during the lesson on melting, illustrates a typical request forpeer assistance during collaborative work. In some cases, children directlyrequested actions from each other to complete the task.

Example 1: request for assistance and action5

A: Rubén . . . ¿Rubén, vas ayudar?Rubén, are you going to help?

R: no** comiences a . . .Don’t begin to . . .

A: =yeah entonces=yeah, then?

R: =yo y ella=Me and her . . .

M: ¿ustedes se van primero?You are going first?

R: yo segundo, tu tercero y tu cuarto, CarlosI’m second, you third, then you fourth, Carlos

A: ¿**Qué? ¿Quién dijo que tu eres primero?What? Who said that you are going first?

R: n ::o ellos ellas dos van primero después yo y después tu?No, they[masc] they [fem] go first and then I go and then you go?

A: **si si pues pues tuyes sure you go ahead

In Example 1, the children are deciding who is going to do what taskduring the science activity. Andrea asks Rubén if he is going to help. Rubénimmediately responds, not directly to Andrea, but by organizing the wholegroup and telling them who is going to go first to do the observations andweigh the melting ice. This example illustrates children using the L1 torequest assistance and organize the group members’ responsibilities for spe-cific tasks.

In the following example, Rubén and Edgar use language to regulateand influence the behavior of others (similar to Halliday’s regulatoryfunction) while working together.

Example 2: regulating and influencing others’ behaviorR: ¿qué sigue? ¿cuál es el segundo paso? ¿ya preguntaste a

Mrs. Robles? ¿treinta que?

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What’s next? What the second step? Did you ask Mrs. Robles?Thirty and what?

E: tenemos que pla::nearwhe have to plan [for the activity]

R: =lo voy a planearI’m going to plan for it

E: si tu debes empezar sumando esos dos números, y yo peso labolsa de hielo otra vezyes you have to begin by adding those two numbers while I weighthe bag with ice one more time

This example illustrates how children during peer interaction guide andinfluence the behavior and learning of their classmates in order to advancethe activity. In this case, Edgar is influencing Rubén’s learning by explain-ing what they should do next to complete the activity. While Rubén beginsto think and plan for the next step, Edgar explains that he is supposed to addtwo numbers while he uses a scale to weigh the ice bag. Children are usingtheir linguistic resource in Spanish to explain an activity and to further eachother’s knowledge.

Getting Along with Others

The second most frequently used function was getting along withothers. The children spent a great deal of time working out their relationshipswith one another using two subcategories of speech acts: challenging othersto establish their standing relative to others, and directing others in anactivity. These children used the first subcategory, challenging each other, todefend their own perspective when disagreeing with others. In the text thatfollows, the two girls, Claudia and Andrea, are challenging each other’sexplanations for the change in states of matter and whether the ice is goingfrom solid to liquid. Later on, Claudia and Andrea discuss which term inSpanish, líquido or agua (liquid or water), should be used for the new stateof matter of the ice.

Example 3: challenging others1 C: ya hicimos pre-pregunta **what is it?

we already did question what is it?2 A: **el a::gua the water [masc]3 C: **el líquido the liquid4 A: **el agua? the water [masc]5 C: **el líquido the liquid6 A: **el agua porque agua es un líquido **no solamente líquido

the water because water is a liquid not just a liquid7 C: **la agua[fem] the water [fem]8 A: es líquido pero tambien es la agua[fem]

is a liquid but it is water[fem] too

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9 C: el agua[masc]? o la agua? [fem] is it the water[masc] or the water[fem]10 A: yo le voy a poner . . . el agua[masc] I’m going to write water[masc]11 C: yo le voy a poner . . . la agua[fem] I’m going to write water[fem]

First, these two girls challenge each other’s answer to the question,What has the ice (solid) turned into? One cites the concept of liquid, whereasthe other mentions the concept of water. In this case, Andrea is convincedthat the term should be el agua (water), while Claudia first says that it shouldbe el líquido (liquid). As Andrea continues to insist that the answer is elagua, her tone of voice rises and she states that it is “water because water isa liquid” (line 6). Once they have agreed on the answer, they go on to discusswhat grammatical article they should use to write the word water in Spanish.In the Spanish language, there is an important distinction between feminineand masculine grammatical gender. In line 9, Claudia asks for clarificationpurposes if the answer should be el agua [masc.] or la agua [fem]. In theend, because they do not come to an agreement, each girl decides to write inher science workbook the answer she thinks is correct (one writes el aguaand the other la agua), and they continue their work. This example illustratesthe use of Spanish in several discourse strategies. One is the function of chal-lenging each other to reach agreement on a concept. The second is clarifica-tion regarding the grammatically correct article to use in writing the answer.In addition to these speech acts, the children use two more strategies to gaincontrol of the situation: raising their tone of voice and switching betweentheir two languages. For example, in line 1, I observed the use of code-switching into English when asking a question. This shows that the childrenare developing the metalinguistic awareness that allows them to explicitlydiscuss the grammatical and linguistic rules of their languages.

Linguistic and Literacy Scaffolding

The classroom science activities involved different activities and stepsthat the children needed to follow to complete the task. First, the childrenparticipated in whole-class discussion with the teacher, who introduced thetopic and vocabulary for the lesson. Then, students worked in small groups,discussing the problem at hand. All the children were expected to write intheir science workbooks the main question to be answered in the experiment,along with hypotheses about the results. Next, they had to describe and writedown the materials and steps they needed to follow in order to complete theexperiment. After making observations and completing the experiment, stu-dents discussed the activity in their small groups and wrote out the results intheir science workbooks. Because of the nature of these science activities,the teacher and children used linguistic and literacy scaffolding to facilitatethe learning of concepts. Moreover, students had the opportunity not only todescribe verbally what they observed and learned from the experiments, butalso to write notes during the activity and expand their literacy skills. The

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linguistic and literacy scaffolding function was divided into two subcatego-ries: language and literacy strategies (e.g., clarification of writing conven-tions and reading strategies, guidance), and talking to oneself.

The function of language and literacy scaffolding was used most frequentlyby the teacher when guiding students through reading and writing activities.In the following example, Mrs. Robles addresses writing conventions anduses science inquiry discourse for literacy scaffolding:

Example 4: literacy scaffolding regarding conventionsT: Y no se les olvide que como ustedes están haciendo la pregunta

¿Deberían de tener . . .?And because you’re writing a question, don’t forget that it shouldhave . . . ?[Teacher waits a few seconds for an answer]no punto . . .not a period . . .

R: **Signo de interrogaciónQuestion mark

T: Signo de interrogación al principio y al final de la preguntaQuestion mark at the beginning and at the end of the question.

Throughout the lessons, the teacher constantly referred to grammaticaland spelling conventions in the children’s L1. In this case, the teacherguides students in writing their research question for the experiment. Theteacher reminds students of written language conventions in Spanish. Shetakes the opportunity to probe students’ knowledge of the use in Spanish ofquestion marks at both the beginning and end of a question. Throughout thesemester, Mrs. Robles also teaches her students about the differencesbetween Spanish and English writing conventions and linguistic structures.Showing the children such grammatical distinctions between the twolanguages helps them develop metalinguistic awareness of the linguisticstructures in each language, which in turn should help their literacydevelopment.

During different lessons, I observed the teacher to use language scaf-folding in science discourse. Throughout the lesson, she refers to familiarterms and clarifies those that might be confusing to students, sometimes bycode-switching between languages to explain a concept further. On otheroccasions, she offers clarification by using a cognate to define a familiarterm in English (e.g., evaporate–evaporar, liquid–líquido). This strategyhelps children start making connections with their background knowledgein their L2. In the following two examples, we see how Mrs. Robles helpsstudents by scaffolding what students could write as their research questionfor the experiment on evaporation (example 5) and by clarifying key termsin the lesson while they are reading a text in Spanish in the scienceworkbook (example 6).

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Example 5: language scaffoldingT: Ahí por favor, deberían de escribir su pregunta que van a con-

testar en este experimento. Sí, sí, dale, dale . . . ajá. ¿Qué es lo queva ser tu pregunta sobre evaporación?Please write there; you should write the question that you want toanswer in this experiment. Yes, yes, go on, go on. What is going tobe your main [research] question about evaporation?

Example 6: clarificationT: Okay lean conmigo la definición de un **gas y repasen ahí para

ver si ustedes lo escribieron bien también. ¿Sí, Arturo?Okay let’s read together the definition of gas and check your writingto see if you wrote the word correctly too. Yes, Arturo?

A: OK, ¿Qué es un gas?What is a gas?

T: Gracias. Un **gas es materia que cambia de forma y no se puedever fácilmente.Thanks for asking. A gas is matter that changes form, and itcannot be easily seen.[Children and Mrs. Robles continue the discussion]

During the science activity children are encouraged to read, write, andexplore concepts and ideas about matter using their first language. This strat-egy is crucial for developing literacy through content-area instruction,because students are provided with concrete experiences for conceptual andlinguistic development (Pérez & Torres-Guzmán, 2002).

The second subcategory is talking to oneself. In this case, the child’sutterances assist her in planning and evaluating her own ability to do some-thing or the quality of her own work, as the following example illustrates.

Example 7: talking to oneselfC: No estoy escribiendo esto bien, no es derritimiento

I’m not writing this correctly; it’s not “derritimiento.”[Later in the same activity, the child says:]

C: Ahora, sí, this one goes on this list, y éste lo ponemos en esta otra.Now this one goes on this list, and this one goes on the other [list].

Here, Claudia talks aloud and corrects her misspelling of the word der-retimiento as derritimiento. Moreover, she continues to use external speechto describe how she is organizing a list of concepts on a table in her work-book. Research from a Vygotskian perspective has hypothesized that thisexternal speech eventually becomes internal schemas for problem solving,once children reach a particular age (Diaz, Moll, & Mehan, 1986). Iobserved several of the fourth-grade children using this strategy.

Interestingly, I also observed that when students used the function of talkingto oneself, they frequently code-switched, or alternated between their languages, tosolve a problem or to make progress on their work. Furthermore, code-switching

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appeared as another discourse strategy during collaborative group interaction. Weobserved several instances of code-switching in students’ conversations and a fewduring teacher-student interactions. Because Mrs. Robles had agreed to teach thematter unit in Spanish, she might have made a conscious effort to speak onlySpanish during her instruction, which would account for her less-frequent use ofcode-switching. However, in some of the preceding examples, students use code-switching as a strategy for emphasizing important concepts in the lesson and forpeer-teaching purposes (Wulftange & Kyratzis, 2003). The main point here isthat the switch to Spanish is purposeful and can be interpreted as strategy forinvoking shared background knowledge among students participating in a spe-cific activity. In example 8, we see one of Mrs. Robles’s few code-switches,which she uses to explain a term with which the children are more familiar inEnglish because of its use in daily classroom activities.

Example 8: code-switching as explanationT: Vamos a empezar por repasar primero las cosas que vamos hacer.

El proceso de derretimiento, que se va hacer hoy. Esto se llama lalectura compartida, sí shared reading y esto quiere decir compartirlas metas de la lectura para hoy.We are going to start by reviewing what we are going to do today.The process of melting is what we are going to study today. This iswhat we called “lectura compartida,” yes, “shared reading,” andthis term means that we are going to share our goals for today.

C: ¿Es para que entendamos?So we can understand?

Mrs. Robles begins the lesson on melting with a general explanation ofthe goals for the day. She tells her students that they will be doing la lecturacompartida and immediately uses a code-switch to name the term in Englishto clarify for students what the task is. Both the teacher and students havefrequently used the term “shared reading” in English for their daily readingactivities, and have used the Spanish term much less frequently. Thus, theteacher and students learn and expand their vocabulary in science discourseand their inquiry skills through small-group discussion. The language usedduring both teacher-student and peer interactions during the science activityprovided evidence that the use of Spanish (e.g., to question, to explore) wascontributing to students’ bilingual development and specifically to helpingstudents on the conceptualization of science terms.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this study, Spanish-English bilingual students demonstrated consider-able abilities in their first language. In particular, we can say that using theirnative language in the classroom for science instruction allowed the childrento expand and learn a new discourse. In addition, the teacher encouraged

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children’s development of literacy in the native language through readingand writing activities during the science lessons, and by introducing a partic-ular discourse style for science concepts and activities.

The teacher and students used several strategies to accomplish goalsrelated to the development of science inquiry skills and knowledge:

1. The use of linguistic and literacy scaffolding by both teacher andstudents enhanced students’ learning.

2. The process of peer scaffolding and negotiation observed in small-groupwork pointed to the development of important analytical skills inchildren’s L1.

3. The use of multiple speech acts and lexical code-switches during peerinteraction suggested important skills for problem solving.

The teacher used collaborative group dialogue (in L1 and L2) as a primarystrategy to promote development of science inquiry skills in ELL students. Inaddition, she often used language and literacy scaffolding strategies to assistand guide children through different activities. These strategies were importantfor the development of science inquiry skills during peer interaction. The useof particular speech acts, or language functions, in both the teacher’s and stu-dents’ discourse interactions demonstrates that they were capable of carryingout complex academic tasks in Spanish. Overall, the discourse strategies forpromoting science learning through the use of native language instruction areevidence that the children could draw on their native language as a resource tocontinue the development of skills and knowledge without falling behind theirpeers (Dworin & Moll, 2006). As discussed previously in the literature, devel-opment of content knowledge and literacy in children’s native language facili-tates the transfer of skills into their second language while maintaining anddeveloping biliteracy (see Pérez & Torres-Guzmán, 2002 for review).

Individual children used different discourse strategies according to whatthey wanted to achieve. In terms of group assignments, students were able tolearn in a cooperative environment and to scaffold their learning on analready developed communicative resource, Spanish, their native language.Specifically, scaffolding has been identified as a strategy for children’ssecond-language learning (Ervin-Tripp, 1986; Moll & Diaz, 1985). There-fore, children benefit from scaffolding by teachers and more experiencedpeers, which might help them develop not only linguistic skills, but cognitiveskills along with construction of knowledge (for a discussion on this topic seeHanson, Boogaard & Herrlitz, 2003). This in turn should have a positiveinfluence on students’ development of literacy in their L1 and ultimately intheir second language (Moll et al., 2001; Vásquez, 2003).

Another important strategy observed during children’s interactions was theuse of code-switching. Code-switches into English were used to accomplishseveral goals related to the children’s school activities; in the examplesgiven in this article, they were used for clarification of new terminology in

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Spanish and English. As Reyes (2004) has observed, young children usecode-switching as a communicative tool during peer interactions. Specifi-cally, Spanish-English bilingual children take advantage of their bilingualskills to alternate languages for rhetorical purposes and for accomplishingcommunicative goals of clarification, topic change, and explanation in bothlanguages (Reyes, 2004; Zentella, 1997). Although code-switching has beenseen for the most part as a social communicative strategy, its use may in factassist children with their academic tasks. By switching languages, studentscan recognize and identify words that are cognates or are similar in their twolanguages (Pérez & Torres-Guzman, 2002). The teacher’s use of code-switching, although limited, also served to help students recognize and con-nect new words in Spanish with more familiar terms in English. In groupinteractions, children often used other strategies, such as raising their voicesor using intonation and repetition to get attention or identify separateexchanges. The same strategies have also been observed in small-groupwork with monolingual children (Ballenger, 2004; Ervin-Tripp, 2001).

Throughout the classroom science lessons, the children were able toaccomplish a variety of tasks with their teacher and peers using their firstlanguage. They used Spanish in varied and complex ways, including forreading and writing, learning new vocabulary, and developing discourseinquiry skills. The hands-on approach to learning enhanced children’s sci-ence inquiry and discourse skills, helping them to work effectively in groupsand to complete the science activities. Moreover, the inquiry approach pro-vided a rich context for developing students’ understanding of the contentareas by creating environments for the use of complex language skills.

Through these observations, I was able to document how these childrenconstructed Spanish-language usage in this classroom. By examining bilin-gual children’s conversations across speech events and the functions forwhich Spanish was used during science lessons, I was able to describe theways in which children developed concepts of science and science inquiryskills in their native language.

Implications

Studies report that when minority students are allowed to draw on theirhome languages and cultures in school, their academic engagement is enhanced(Gándara, 1995; Garcia, 2001; Gibson & Bejinez, 2002). Schoolteachers andeducators must become more familiar with the diverse cultural and linguisticbackgrounds of their students to draw on these differences to make instructionmore meaningful and relevant for them. Specifically, if students’ second lan-guage is still developing, we must take advantage of their knowledge and linguis-tic abilities in their L1 to develop content and literacy knowledge. Ultimately,their content knowledge and their reading and writing literacy will affect howsuccessful they are in making the transition into L2 literacy (Moll et al., 2001).

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This study has documented the importance of using students’ nativelanguage for content-area instruction, combined with the teaching of literacy inan integrated teaching approach. Several discourse strategies occurred duringpeer and teacher-student interactions. Specifically, for recent immigrant stu-dents, scaffolding strategies in students’ L1 must be valued as an extremelyimportant science teaching tool (Hogan & Corey, 2001) for the development ofscience inquiry skills, as are hands-on activities. In addition, teachers mustbecome aware that children use different discourse strategies in their native lan-guage to accomplish their goals during content-area activities (e.g., social sci-ence, science instruction). The findings in this study indicate that use of L1 forcontent-area instruction helps students interpret material presented in the lessonand helps them pose questions that they may not be ready to construct in theirL2. The use of complex cognitive and literacy skills in their native languageduring science lessons provides a rich context not only for developing students’understanding of the content area, but for developing science discourse andinquiry skills. These skills in students’ L1 will serve as a foundation for laterdevelopment of literacy and content-area knowledge in L2. Therefore, it isimportant for teachers, educators, and researchers to continuously recognize thediverse knowledge and linguistic resources that children bring to the classroomand to integrate it to classroom activities to optimize their learning experiences.

Finally, teachers should be trained and encouraged to use specificdiscourse strategies to integrate the new content with students’ linguistic andcultural backgrounds, and to provide activities that relate to children’s expe-riences (Bravo et al., 2007). Moreover, teachers need to be able to identifythe learning value of children’s talk, even when it does not obviously relateto scientific knowledge (Ballenger, 2004). It is imperative that we, as teach-ers and educators, expand our views of what counts as scientific discourse sothat we can recognize our students’ diverse knowledge.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a fellowship from the University ofCalifornia President’s Office to the author. I would like to thank Delis Cuellarand Filomena Castro for data transcription. Correspondence concerning thisarticle should be addressed to: Iliana Reyes, Department of Language, Read-ing and Culture, College of Education, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ85721-0069, USA, e-mail:[email protected].

Endnotes1 Although Proposition 227 had already passed in California when I collected thisdata, the school principal and teachers were supportive of the implementation of abilingual curriculum and had approved waivers from the parents who wanted theirchildren to continue participating in the school’s bilingual program.

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2 Instructional congruence refers to the process of mediating the learning ofacademic content with students’ linguistic and cultural experience (see Lee & Fradd,2001).

3 Speech acts are one particular discourse strategy used in conversation. John Searle(1975) argued that speakers use speech acts not only to describe or report informa-tion, but also to use language to accomplish things.

4 Bahia Elementary is a pseudonym, as are all other names used for participants inthis study.

5 Transcription notations: The ** indicates accent and normal prominence. The =indicates overlap and latching of speakers’ utterances. The use of uppercase letters isrestricted to proper names to identify a person or place. The . . . indicates a shortpause. All English translations are indicated in italics.

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Appendix A

Spanish Language Functions

Getting Work Done

1. Request for clarification2. Request for assistance3. Request for action

Getting Along With Others

1. Challenging others2. Directing others

Linguistic and Literacy Scaffolding

1. Language and literacy scaffolding2. Talking to oneself

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english language learners' discourse strategies in science instruction

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