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TESOL QUARTERLY

CONTENTS To print, select PDF pagenos. in parentheses

ARTICLESStandard English: The Only Target forNonnative Speakers of English? 417Lynn M. GoldsteinThe Organization of Instruction in Migrant Education:Assistance for Children and Youth at Risk 437Donna M. JohnsonContent and Formal Schemata in ESL Reading 461Patricia L. CarrellA Cooperative Small-Group Methodology in theLanguage Classroom 483Yael BejaranoEnglish Language Proficiency and thePrediction of Academic Success 505Janet G. GrahamTeachers and Students Learning About Compliments 523Janet Holmes and Dorothy F. Brown

REVIEWSBilingual and ESL Classrooms: Teaching in Multicultural Contexts 549Carlos J. Ovando and Virginia P. CollierBilingualism Through Schooling:Cross-Cultural Education for Minority and Majority Students’Arnulfo G. RamírezReviewed by Constance WalkerComputational Linguistics: An Introduction 556Ralph GrishmanReviewed by Patricia DunkelCAI Adaptation of Robert J. Dixson’sEssential Idioms in English 558William B. Richardson and Sheldon WiseReviewed by Vance Stevens

(10-29)

(30-52)

(54-74)

(76-97)

(98-114)

(116-139)

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIESCognitive Style and First Language Background inSecond Language Test Performance 565 Lynne Hansen-StrainAn Overview of Undergraduate ESL Program Models:A Comparison of Administrative Policies forInternational Students 570Elaine DehghanpishehThe D.C. Schools Project 578Martha Farmelo

THE FORUMComments on Elsa Roberts Auerbach's“Competency-Based ESL: One StepForward or Two Steps Back?” 583

A Reader ReactsFrancis CartierThe Author RespondsElsa Roberts Auerbach

Information for Contributors 589Editorial PolicyGeneral Information for Authors

Publications Received 593Publications Available From the TESOL Central Office 595TESOL Membership Application 608

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TESOL QUARTERLY

In This Issue

n The contents of this issue of the TESOL Quarterly reflect dramaticallythe variety of language teaching issues and learning situations that ourprofession encompasses. Among the topics covered are the status ofstandard English as an instructional goal; the organization of instruction inmigrant education; the role of content and formal schemata in ESLreading; the effects of small-group learning methods on the acquisition oflanguage skills; the relationship between English language proficiency andacademic success in higher education; and cross-cultural research oncomplimenting behavior as the basis for classroom activities onrecognizing and using compliments in English.

• Lynn Goldstein, who received this year’s TESOL Research InterestSection/Newbury House Distinguished Research Award at the 1987TESOL Convention for the study reported in this article, examined“the implicit assumptions [of empirical studies of second languageacquisition] that the target language group to which the nonnativespeaker is exposed is homogeneous and that the target language issynonymous with standard English.” The study found that while therewas a significant relationship between extent of contact with blackAmericans and the frequency with which the 28 teenage Hispanic malesubjects assimilated grammatical variants of black English, “extensivepeer contact with blacks was a necessary but not sufficient conditionfor the acquisition of two features of black English.” Goldsteindiscusses the relevance of her study to research in this area andexamines the pedagogical implications of her findings.

• Donna Johnson reports on a study of the Migrant Education Program,a federally funded program designed to help migrant students inCalifornia overcome obstacles to academic success. This large-scale,multisite, multimethod study examined quantitative and qualitativedimensions of the organization of instruction for migrant students andthe nature of interactions among program participants. One of themain findings of the study was that “an effective partnership betweenmigrant program staff and other staff is a key factor in providingcontinuity and quality education to migrant students.” Like otherstudies of language minority children, this study suggests that “quali-fied second language specialists . . . need to inform administrators andteachers about the conditions necessary for integrated second language

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and intellectual development, and they need to take an active role inbecoming involved in the whole-day experiences of migrant students.”

• Patricia Carrell reports the results of a study which measured theeffects on ESL reading comprehension of both culture-specific contentschemata and formal schemata, as well as the interaction of these twotypes of schemata. Two groups (Muslim and Catholic/Spanish) ofhigh-intermediate ESL students read, recalled, and answered questionsabout two texts: one with culturally familiar content, one withculturally unfamiliar content. Within each group, half of the subjectsread the texts in a well-organized rhetorical format; half read the textsin an altered format. According to Carrell, “the overall finding of [the]study seems to be that when both content and rhetorical form arefactors in ESL reading comprehension, content is generally moreimportant than form . . . unfamiliar content poses more difficulties forthe reader than unfamiliar form.” Carrell also points out, however, that“each component—content and form—plays a significant, butdifferent, role” in text comprehension.

• The purpose of the study reported by Yael Bejarano was to “assess theeffects of two small-group learning methods and of the traditionalwhole-class method on the general achievement of junior high schoolEFL learners and on their acquisition of specific language skills.”Pretest-posttest comparisons of 665 seventh-grade students in Israelshowed that both small-group methods—Students Teams andAchievement Divisions, a peer-tutoring technique, and DiscussionGroups—led to greater gains during the 4½-month experimental periodthan did the whole-class method. According to Bejarano, “whatpromoted general higher language achievement . . . in the classesutilizing small-group techniques was apparently the active communi-cation approach”—an approach that the author describes in detail. Inaddition, the two small-group techniques appear to complement oneanother by serving different teaching objectives. For these reasons,Bejarano recommends the use for language teaching of a cooperativesmall-group methodology.

• Janet Graham’s summary of academic prediction studies underscoresthe difficulty of using findings “to generalize about the relationship ofEnglish proficiency to academic success.” Graham points out that anumber of problems—including different criteria for judgingacademic success, the validity of measures of English proficiency, themeans by which data are interpreted, and the large number ofuncontrolled variables involved in academic success—contribute to thelack of “clear-cut answers for the ESL professional who is looking forguidance in making recommendations to admissions offices.”However, while many factors other than English language proficiencyare clearly related to academic success and while “language test scoresshould therefore not play a disproportionate role in admissionsdecisions,” it is quite possible that for any institution or program, “there

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is a minimal level of English proficiency required before other factorsassume more importance. ” Graham’s article concludes with sugges-tions for what ESL practitioners should do when consulted aboutadmissions decisions.

• Janet Holmes and Dorothy Brown provide “examples of misunder-standings in compliment exchanges in different cultural contexts andanalyze them as instances of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmaticfailure.” On the basis of an analysis of norms of complimentingbehavior in the United States and New Zealand, the authors havedeveloped a number of language classroom exercises, the goal ofwhich is to “help learners to develop skill in recognizing compliments,in identifying the appropriate topics and contexts for compliments,and in interpreting their functions appropriately.” In arguing their viewthat sociolinguistic competence should be explicitly dealt with in thelanguage classroom, the authors recognize the need to achieve abalance: While ESL teachers “must provide information to learners sothat they may choose how to express themselves and do so withoutunintentionally giving offense,” they must not be “too prescriptive interms of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behavior.”

Also in this issue:

• Reviews: Constance walker reviews Carlos J. Ovando and Virginia P.Collier’s Bilingual and ESL Classrooms: Teaching in MulticulturalContexts and Arnulfo G. Ramírez’s Bilingualism Through Schooling:Cross-Cultural Education for Minority and Majority Students; PatriciaDunkel reviews Ralph Grishman’s Computational Linguistics: AnIntroduction; and Vance Stevens reviews William B. Richardson andSheldon Wise’s CAI Adaptation of Robert J. Dixson’s Essential Idiomsin English.

• Brief Reports and Summaries: Lynne Hansen-Strain reports theresults of a study that examined cultural differences in cognitivestyles and their effects on second language test performance; ElaineDehghanpisheh reports the findings of a survey of ESL programs inhigher education and describes four undergraduate ESL programmodels; and Martha Farmelo describes the D.C. Schools Project,which, under the auspices of the Center for Immigration Policy andRefugee Assistance at Georgetown University, operates severaltutoring programs for school-age and adult learners of English as asecond language.

• The Forum: Francis Cartier’s comments on Elsa Auerbachs recentTESOL Quarterly article, “Competency-Based ESL: One StepForward or Two Steps Back?” are accompanied by a response by theauthor.

IN THIS ISSUE

Stephen J. Gaies

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TESOL QUARTERLY, Vol. 21, No.3, September 1987

Standard English: The Only Targetfor Nonnative speakers of English?LYNN M. GOLDSTEINMonterey Institute of International Studies

An implicit assumption of most research on the acquisition ofEnglish as a second language is that standard English is the onlytarget for nonnative speakers of English. The study reported inthis article demonstrates that black English served as a target forHispanic boys acquiring English as a second language in the NewYork City metropolitan area. In addition, the study shows thatextensive peer contact with blacks was a necessary but notsufficient condition for the acquisition of two features of blackEnglish, negative concord and distributive be, and that choice ofblacks as a reference group played no role in the acquisition ofthese two features. However, since contact did not account for allthe variation and subjects made comments indicating that theyhad affective responses to input, the study suggests that theconcept of reference group should be revised rather thanabandoned.

White people, they talk different from black, and the teachers, they talkdifferent, you know.

(Carlos, a nonnative speaker of English)

Carlos and his peers know a lot about language; their knowledgeis reflected in comments such as the one above. They know thereare many varieties of English in their speech community: “Whites,they speak different from blacks” (Mario, a nonnative speaker ofEnglish). They understand that speakers may vary their Englishaccording to setting and interlocutors. “In the class, we have to speaknice you know, but not on the street . . . when some people in thestreet talk bad, you have to speak bad to him” (Luis, a nonnativespeaker of English). Some even suggest that they have madechoices about which variety they want to speak as their secondlanguage: “I speak like white Americans. That’s a choice” (Paul, anonnative speaker).

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Listen to the voices of Carlos, Mario, Luis, and Paul. They maynot use the accepted terminology of sociolinguistics or secondlanguage acquisition, but they understand the concepts. What isimportant is that they understand that their speech community isnot homogeneous, that they are exposed to many varieties ofEnglish, and that learners of English as a second language can makechoices among these varieties.

Yet, when we review empirical studies of second languageacquisition, we observe the implicit assumptions that the targetlanguage group to which the nonnative speaker is exposed ishomogeneous and that the target language is synonymous withstandard English. As a result, except in rare cases (Klein, 1986;Milon, 1975), researchers study the nonnative speaker’s language incomparison with standard English. In such a framework, formswhich deviate from standard English are viewed as either transferor developmental variants characteristic of the creative processes ofsecond language acquisition. Some deviations from standardEnglish, however, may not be errors at all. Instead, they may beforms characteristic of a different dialect, such as black English.

Let us look, for example, at data from two nonnative speakers ofEnglish who participated in the study reported in this article:

William: When I watch a movie, a scary movie, right, I be youknow, I sometimes be thinking of it, you know, how yousometimes be scared. . . . If I tell them a secret, they won’ttell nobody else.

Paternoster: No, it’s nothing, because if you got hit by a car, and youdon’t die, I mean you gonna, you may get hurt for a longtime . . . you may be crippled, you know, and that’s moredangerous . . . if you are swimming, you may drown . . .you don’t feel anything.

William, 16 years old, and Paternoster, 18, were both students at thesame high school in the New York City metropolitan area. Williamhad lived in Jersey City for 5, years, Paternoster for 3. Both wereborn in Ecuador, and both spoke Spanish as their first language. Intheir speech community they were exposed to many varieties ofEnglish, including standard English and black English.

William used distributive be, a form characteristic only of blackEnglish in which uninflected he is used to indicate qualities whichare intermittent rather than permanent; Paternoster never used thisform. William used negative concord within the clause, a rule whichincorporates a copy of the not in the main verb phrase (VP) or in apreverbal noun phrase onto all indefinite after the main VP. Heused this rule categorically (100% of the instances in which it could

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be used), similar to speakers of black English, who use negativeconcord within the clause semicategorically (95%-100% of theinstances in which it could be used) or categorically. WhilePaternoster did not use negative concord in this particular excerpt,an analysis of his data revealed that he used it 62.5% of the time, thatis, unlike speakers of black English, who use it 95%-100% of the time.William appeared to have acquired negative concord anddistributive be, while Paternoster had not. This is in spite of the factthat they attended the same school, lived in the same speechcommunity, came from the same country, spoke the same firstlanguage, and were in the same age group.

How, then, do we account for the differences between William’sand Paternoster’s speech? Why does black English seem to serve asa target for William, but not for Paternoster? Beebe (1985) suggeststhat

second language acquisition (SLA) must view non-native speakers(NNSs) not simply as passive recipients of comprehensible orincomprehensible input from native speakers (NSs) but as activeparticipants in choosing the target language models they prefer. . . .They do not simply acquire a language; they adopt a variety or varietiesof that language. (p. 404)

Yet almost no research to date has considered the possibility thatlearners may choose among target language models. Therefore, onegoal of the study reported in this article was to demonstrate thatnonnative speakers do have target language models other thanstandard English.

We also need to delineate the sociolinguistic factors which mightinfluence whether or not a particular variety will serve as a target.The second goal of the study, therefore, was to explore the relativeeffects of two factors—extent of contact and feelings ofidentification with black Americans—on nonnative speakers’frequency of use of selected features of black English. These factorsare most often mentioned as playing a role in the choice by nativespeakers of a particular variety as a target.

Some have suggested that a speaker’s extent of contact withmembers of the group who speak the variety may influence thedegree to which the speaker uses variants from that group’s variety(Labov, 1972a, 1972c, 1973; Reinstein & Hoffman, 1972; Silverman,1971; Wolfram, 1972, 1973a, 1973b). Others contend that feelings ofidentification with members of the target language group or thatgroup’s covert prestige may influence the degree to which a speakeruses features of that group’s language (Hewitt, 1982; Hudson, 1980;Kazazis, cited in Labov, 1972c; Labov, 1972c; LaFerriere, 1979;

STANDARD ENGLISH: THE ONLY TARGET? 419

LePage, Christie, Turdant, Weeks, & Tabouret-Keller, 1974;Nichols, 1981; Poplack, 1978; Trudgill, 1972).

No attempt has been made in second language acquisitionresearch, however, to address the roles these factors might play inthe acquisition of a particular variety of English as a secondlanguage. Those who have studied extent of contact (Dittmar &Klein, 1978; Mason, 1971; Seliger, 1977; Taylor, Meynard, &Rheault, 1977) or identification (d’Anglejan, 1978; Dulay & Burt,1978; Dulay, Burt, & Krashen, 1982; Ervin-Tripp, 1973; Gardner &Lambert, 1972; Plann, 1975; Schumann, 1978a, 1978b; Spolsky,1969) do so to further our understanding of why learners achievedifferent levels of success in second language acquisition; they donot study the roles these factors may play in nonnative speakers’acquisition of features from different dialects.

THE STUDYSubjects

Subjects were selected on the basis of replies to a demographicquestionnaire administered by the researcher to approximately 125students during seven advanced ESL classes at three urban highschools. The demographic questions were read and discussed as thestudents responded in writing to make sure they all understood thequestions. They were asked to supply the following information:age, place of birth, native language, age on arrival in New York Cityor Jersey City, address, English study prior to arrival (where, when,and how long), length of English study in New York City or JerseyCity, and the names of their friends (in the neighborhood and inESL classes). The answers to these questions were used to eliminatestudents who did not fit the controls of the study, discussed below,and to assign those who did to friendship pairs.

Although 55 students met the criteria for the study, 17 did notparticipate because they chose not to, could not be paired with afriend, or were unavailable to be interviewed. An additional 10students were eliminated after being interviewed because theywere not proficient enough. In all, 28 students participated in thestudy.

All subjects were nonnative speakers of English. For controlpurposes they were all males, all native speakers of Spanish, and allfrom the same age group (15-19, with a mean age of 17.4 years).Males were chosen because they appear to be less sensitive toprestige linguistic norms than are females (Labov, 1972b; Poplack,1978; Trudgill, 1972). Teenagers were chosen, since researchersclaim that they are the most subject to peer pressure and that the

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vernacular is the most uniform at this age (see Labov, Cohen,Robins, & Lewis, 1968). Teenage subjects also made it possible tocompare the results of this study with the findings of previousstudies of bilingual teenagers and adolescents (Poplack, 1978;Wolfram, 1973b).

Subjects were all proficient speakers of English, as demonstratedby their enrollment in or completion of the most advanced-levelESL course in their respective high schools. The researchercorroborated this assessment during the transcription of theinterview data. Advanced students were chosen to avoid, as muchas possible, the difficult task of differentiating among linguisticvariants which are developmental or transfer variants and thosewhich are variants from dialects other than standard English.

All subjects had lived in the New York metropolitan area (NewYork City and Jersey City) for at least 2 years (mean length ofresidency = 3.12 years), had arrived as teenagers, and had notstudied English before their arrival. Thus, they had acquiredEnglish in this area, which was important, since the study focusedon the use of variants characteristic of a dialect in this area.

The subjects attended three urban high schools, all of whichreflected a similar racial and ethnic makeup. Therefore, all subjectshad access to peers who were native speakers of the dialects in theirspeech community.

Procedures

After the demographic questionnaire had been administered,students were asked to complete measurement instruments forcontact and identification during class time. The contact measure-ment asked subjects to complete a chart on which they named theirfriends (up to 10) and indicated their ages, ethnicity, race, thelanguage spoken with each, the amount of time spent with each,and the extent of their relationship. The researcher first reviewedthe information being requested and examples of a completed chartso that the questions and procedures were understood. She alsocirculated among the students as they worked, to answer anyquestions and to check that the chart was being filled out correctly.

For the identification measurement, feelings of identificationwith black Americans were operationally defined as subjects’choosing black Americans as their reference group. This decisionwas based on the work of social psychologists who define referencegroup as a “group with which the individual identifies” (Sherif &Sherif, 1964, pp. 54-55) and claim that “a reference group becomes


such through an individual’s identification with it” ( White &Gordon, 1976, p. 21).

The instrument used to determine reference group was adaptedfrom Spolsky (1969). A subject rated how well each of 30descriptors fit his ideal self, black Americans, and white Americanson a 5-point scale ranging from very well to not at all. The subjectsfilled out the instrument three times: once for black Americans,once for ideal self, and last for white Americans. Before the subjectsbegan, the 5-point scale was translated for them into numerical in-dexes (very well = almost 100%; somewhat = 75%; average = 50%;only a little = 25%; not at all = 0%). The subjects then were givenexamples and instructions on how to complete the instrument.Definitions of the descriptors were supplied where needed, andsubjects also had written Spanish translations for each descriptor.1

The researcher circulated among the subjects, answering questions,supplying definitions, and checking to make sure that theinstrument was being completed correctly.

Linguistic data were obtained through interviews of pairs ofsubjects who were reciprocally named friends. This procedure wasintended to minimize the effect of the interview situation (Labov,1972a) and maximize the effect of peer norms on language(Poplack, 1978; Silverman, 1971). Interviews took place at thesubjects’ schools, but outside of class and in private. Each interviewlasted one class period (40-50 minutes) and was audiotaped on aSony TCS-350 stereo cassette recorder. This recorder allowed theresearcher to tape the subjects on separate channels and dif-ferentiate between them during the transcription of the interview.

The interviews were controlled for content. The researcher chose“friendship” as the topic for several reasons: (1) It would naturallyfollow from the questions asked on the demographic questionnaireand contact measurement; (b) it would provide a rationale for beinginterviewed with a friend; and (c) it would allow the researcher toask questions about friendships with Americans and about languageuse, without alerting the subjects to the linguistic purpose of theinterview. The primary motivation, however, was that the topic wasapplicable to the subjects’ everyday life and would most likely elicit1The 30 descriptors (and their Spanish translations) used on the instrument are as follows:

busy (atareado), helpful (servicial), sense of humor (iocoso), confident (con confianza ensu mismo), competitive (competitivo), broad-minded (con inclinaciones liberales),intellectual (intelectual), optimistic (optimisto), stubborn (cabezudo), kind (benévolo),clever (hábil), efficient (eficiente), considerate (considerado), studious (estudioso),nervous (nervioso), brave (bravo), reasonable (razonable), intelligent (inteligente),friendly (amicable), “cool” (“chévere”), sincere (sincero), fashionable (de moda),dependable (confiable), happy (felíz), generous (generoso), shy (timido), honest(honesto), good-looking (simpático), popular (popular), calm (calmado).

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less formal speech. In addition, woven into the interviews werequestions about the danger of death and about fighting, topicswhich have been shown to elicit vernacular speech (Labov, 1966;Wolfram, 1973b),

Role plays concerning interactions between friends were alsoincluded in the interview. Again, the primary motivation was thatthey would minimize the presence of the interviewer and producevernacular speech (see Poplack, 1978). The role plays wereinterspersed throughout the interview in a manner that made themappear to be a natural part of the interview. In each case, adiscussion led naturally into the role play, enabling the researcher toask the subjects if they had ever been in a similar situation andproviding a purpose for the subjects to enact the role play. Thesubjects were then given their roles, the situation and roles weredescribed and discussed, and the role play was acted out.

Linguistic Variables

The linguistic variables of negative concord (within the clause)and distributive be were analyzed as dependent variables. Thesevariables were chosen for the following reasons: (a) The specificvariants each group uses and the degree to which each group usesthe variants relative to the other group are not changing; and (b)they differentiate between speakers of black English and those ofeither standard English or nonstandard white English on the basis ofhow frequently each group uses the variant, ranging fromcategorically to not at all. They were also chosen because they havebeen cited in previous studies (Labov, 1973; Labov et al., 1968;Wolfram, 1973b) as differentiating between subjects who haveextensive black contact and those who have limited black contact orbetween those who are integral members of black peer groups andthose who are not.

Although copula deletion and deletion of final /d/ and /t/ inword-final consonant clusters were also selected as variables, theseare not discussed here because subjects did not produce enoughtokens of the former and because the analysis of the latter wasconfounded by processes of second language acquisition (for a fulldiscussion, see Goldstein, 1986).

Data Analysis

Extent of contact. Extent of contact with black Americans wasoperationally defined as a function of the number of black friends


a subject named (Silverman, 1971). Thus, for each subject thenumber of close black friends and the number of blackacquaintances were counted, and the amount of time spent witheach was determined. This information was obtained from thecontact measurement and from information supplied during theinterview.

Each subject received a score, from 1 to 10, which indicated hisextent of black contact. Those with two or more close black friendswere placed into the extensive contact group (n = 4) and receivedscores between 8 and 10. Those with one close black friend and fouror more black acquaintances with whom they spent time playingsports or in class were placed into the medium contact group (n =6) and received contact scores between 5 and 7. Subjects who hadno close black friends but who had black acquaintances with whomthey played sports or attended classes were placed into the limitedcontact group (n = 8) and received scores between 2 and 4. Finally,those who had no black peer contacts whatsoever were placed intothe no contact group (n = 10) and received a contact score of 1.

Reference group. Statistical procedures for finding degree ofsimilarity between groups were used to determine two similarityscores for each subject: one for how similar his ideal self was towhite Americans and one for how similar his ideal self was to blackAmericans. Each subject’s reference group was the group whichhad the lower similarity score. Of the subjects, 5 indicated blackAmericans as their reference group, and 23 indicated whiteAmericans as their reference group.

Linguistic analysis. Each tape was transcribed orthographically in itsentirety, and all instances of negative concord and distributive be inthe transcripts were underlined. The researcher listened to the tapesa second time and confirmed the transcriptions.

Labov’s (1966) definition of formality, in which styles can bearranged along a continuum ranging from the most formal style,which occurs when speakers pay the most attention to their speech,to the vernacular, which occurs when speakers pay the leastattention to their speech, was employed to analyze speech styles.Casual and careful styles are intermediate, with careful being moreformal than casual. For the purposes of this study, casual speechwas defined as speech which occurred during the role plays and inresponse to questions which attenuated the effects of the interview,such as answers to the “danger of death” question (Labov, 1966;Poplack, 1978). All other speech was defined as careful rather thanformal because of the familiarity of the interview topics, the

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interview setting outside of the classroom, and the presence of areciprocally named friend. However, casual and careful speechstyles are not differentiated in the analysis, in accordance withWolfram (1969), because the major concern was to elicit a less thanformal style (which both of these are) and because it is not alwayspossible to distinguish between them on the basis of channel clues.

After transcription, individual frequency scores were obtainedfor each subject. Quantitative analysis (see Hudson, 1980, for acomplete discussion of this type of analysis) was used to tabulatefrequencies for negative concord and distributive be. For theformer, the number of times negative concord (within the clause)was used was divided by the number of times it could have beenused. For the latter, the number of times uninflected be was usedwas tabulated.

A ratio formula was not used for distributive be for two reasons.First, in addition to distributive be, uninflected be also results whenwill or would are contracted and then deleted in sentences such asI will be here, yielding I be here. Without a time adverbial, as in Ibe here next week, it is not possible to determine whether I be heremeans I will be here or Sometimes I am here. Second, we cannottabulate be in relation to all present tense conjugated forms of be(is, am, are) because this would involve lumping together twogrammatically distinct uses of the verb to be. As a result of theabove two factors, Wolfram’s (1969) suggestion to tabulatedistributive be by counting the number of instances of uninflectedbe was adopted.

The score obtained for each of the subjects was used to determinefrequency scores for the six groups in the study (extensive contact,medium contact, limited contact, no contact, black referencegroup, white reference group). To determine group scores fornegative concord, the sum of the subjects’ (in the group) numeratorswas divided by the sum of the subjects’ (in the group) denomina-tors. The group frequency scores for distributive be were calculatedby adding up the total number of times the subjects in the groupused uninflected be.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Pearson product-moment correlations were carried out todetermine if a relationship existed between extent of contact withblack Americans and the frequency with which subjects usednegative concord and distributive be. The correlations weresignificant for both (see Table 1).


TABLE 1Use of Selected Variants From Black English According to Contact Group

Contact group

Extensive Medium Limited NoneLinguistic variant (n= 4) (n= 6) (n= 8) (n= 10)

Negative concord (NC) 80.00 67.86 49.09 32.69Distributive be (DB) 3.00 0.33 0.00 0.10

*NC = .3682, p <.05. *DB = .5544, p <.01.

One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAS) were employedseparately for each of the linguistic variables to determine if thedifference among the means of each of the contact groups wassignificant. The results for negative concord and distributive bewere significant (see Tables 2 and 3).

TABLE 2

ANOVA for Negative Concord and Extent of Black Catact

Source of variance ss df MS F

Between groups 11,836.97 3 3,945.66 3.32”

Witbin groups 26,542.04 24 1,189.25

* p <.05.

TABLE 3ANOVA for Distributive Be and Extent of Black Contact

Source of variance s df MS F

Between groups 14.803 3 7.321 24.54”

Within groups 7.162 24 0.298

0 p <.01 .

Point biserial correlations were employed to determine if acorrelation existed between choice of blacks as one’s referencegroup and how frequently subjects used negative concord anddistributive be. No correlations were found (see Table 4).

The correlations between extent of black contact and frequencyof negative concord and distributive be show that contact does playa role in grammatical assimilation. An analysis of individual subjects

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TABLE 4

Use of Selected Variants From Black English According to Reference Group

Reference group

Black Americans White AmericansLinguistic variant ( n = 5 ) (n= 23)

Negative concord (NC) 60.00 47.50Distributive be (DB) 1.40 0.30

‘NC = .13, n.s.rDB = 2 8 , n s .

demonstrates, in turn, that extensive or medium contact with blackAmericans was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for subjectsto use negative concord categorically (that is, like speakers of blackEnglish) and for subjects to use distributive be.

First, only speakers of black English use negative concordcategorically. An analysis of all the subjects reveals that only thosesubjects who had extensive black contact (William and Enrique)used negative concord in the same way as do speakers of blackEnglish (i.e., categorically). All the other subjects used negativeconcord in a way different from speakers of black English (i.e.,variably). On the other hand, 2 subjects who had extensive blackcontact did not use negative concord categorically; David andRoberto did not behave linguistically like blacks despite havingextensive black contact. Thus, only those subjects who hadextensive black contact used negative concord categorically, buthaving this contact did not ensure categorical use.

It is, however, possible that those who had extensive contact withblacks but did not use negative concord categorically were not asproficient in English as those who did use it categorically. Theinterlanguage of nonnative speakers often contains several variantsfor a target language form. One of these variants is usually the targetlanguage form, while the others are not. As the nonnative speakerbecomes more proficient in the target language, the frequency ofthe target language form will increase, and the frequency of thenontarget language forms will decrease. Thus, the nonnativespeaker might not use a target language form, such as negativeconcord, categorically until a high level of proficiency has beenattained.

Contact was necessary for the assimilation of distributive be, aswell. Only 5 subjects, 4 of whom had extensive or medium contactwith blacks, used distributive be. However, contact was not asufficient condition. Of the subjects who had extensive black


contact, one did not use distributive be at all. Pedro, however, wasan exception to the claim that extensive contact is a necessarycondition for the assimilation of grammatical variants; he had noblack contact whatsoever and yet used distributive be one time. Itis not at all clear from the data why he did, but given that 17 out of18 subjects who had limited or no black contact never useddistributive be, the evidence is very strong that contact is anecessary condition for grammatical assimilation.

These findings about the necessity, but insufficiency, of contactfor grammatical assimilation confirm those of Wolfram (1969,1973b). In his study of teenage Puerto Rican bilingual in New YorkCity, Wolfram (1973b) found that the majority of subjects who usednegative concord categorically had extensive black contact and thatonly those subjects who had extensive black contact useddistributive be. In addition, in Wolfram’s (1969) Detroit study ofblack native speakers of English, preadolescent and teenagesubjects who had predominantly white contact never useddistributive be and did not use negative concord categorically.Thus, Wolfram (1973b) states that “apparently, it is only throughdirect peer contact that extensive grammatical assimilation takesplace” (p. 205).

Yet, some of Wolfram’s New York City and Detroit subjects whohad extensive black contact did not use negative concordcategorically and did not use distributive be. In discussing theDetroit data, Wolfram (1969) claims that “the fact that a UMN[upper middle-class Negro] preadolescent or teenager may havepredominantly Negro contacts does not give assurance that one cannecessarily expect socially stigmatized grammatical variants”(p. 206).

While extent of contact with blacks did correlate with thefrequency of use of grammatical variants from black English,contact accounts for only 14% of the variation for negative concord(r2 = .1356) and only 31% of the variation for distributive be (r2 =.3074). Contact has also been shown, both in this study and inWolfram’s (1973b), not to be a sufficient condition for theassimilation of grammatical variants from black English. Thisindicates that other factors, in addition to extent of contact, arerelated to the assimilation of grammatical variants.

Clearly, reference group, as it was defined and measured in thisstudy, is not one of these factors, since no correlation was foundbetween reference group and either of the two linguistic variables.This may be because there is no relationship between referencegroup and grammatical assimilation or because the measurement ofreference group was not a valid one. One subject, Roberto,

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provides some indication that the measurement may not have reallytapped the subjects’ true reference groups. Roberto scored moresimilar to white Americans, yet stated during an interview that hefelt he had more in common with black Americans. This claim wasindependently corroborated by his teacher.

Comments subjects made during the interviews also indicate thattheir linguistic reference groups may or may not be the same as theirpersonal reference groups. Many subjects said that they wouldprefer to speak like white Americans rather than black Americans;a few said that they would prefer to speak like black Americans;and some said that it depended on whom they were speaking with.Paul, for example, when asked whom he spoke English like,answered, “The white Americans,” and then, when asked whetherthat was a choice or an accident, said, “No, that’s a choice . . .because the black Americans talk like ‘what’s up.’ ” Domingo, onthe other hand, said that whom he spoke like depended on whom hewas speaking with. He said, “I think we should learn to talkdifferent ways . . . when you outside, they talk different ways, so tothe right people you talk the right English.”

These linguistic reference groups may or may not match thesubjects’ general reference groups that were determined by thereference group measure. Paul and John both indicated, forexample, that white Americans were their linguistic referencegroup, as well as their general reference group. Paternoster, on theother hand, implied that whites were his linguistic reference group,but his general reference group was black Americans.

In addition, some of the subjects’ stated choice of linguisticreference group matched their linguistic behavior, and for others itdid not. Paul and John, whose linguistic reference group was whiteAmericans, behaved grammatically like white Americans: Theynever used distributive be, and they used negative concordvariably. Enrique, however, said that white Americans were hislinguistic reference group but used distributive be and usednegative concord categorically; Wilson said that black Americanswere his linguistic reference group but never used distributive beand used negative concord variably.

In sum, it is not possible to determine why there was norelationship between reference group, as it was measured in thisstudy, and the assimilation of grammatical variants. Conceivably,the instrument employed did not measure reference group, orperhaps reference group is not the same as linguistic referencegroup. Yet, linguistic reference group, like reference group, did notalways match the subjects’ linguistic behavior.


CONCLUSIONS

The discrepancies between what nonnative speakers are exposedto and the language they actually produce has led many to claimthat what speakers take in (i.e., intake) is not necessarily equal towhat they are exposed to (i.e., input). Most research concerned withthis issue has focused on the quantity and quality of the input andinteraction and the effects these have on second languagedevelopment and proficiency (see, for example, Long, 1980). Suchresearch is often based on the premise that standard English is theonly source of input and ignores “affective responses to input,” athird factor that Beebe (1985) and Dulay et al. (1982) claim affectswhether or not input becomes intake.

This study has demonstrated, through the subjects’ linguisticbehavior and their comments, that nonnative speakers are exposedto more than one source of input and that they do have affectiveresponses to this input. Subjects clearly stated preferences for eitherblack or standard English; and while all the subjects had access toinput from black English in their neighborhoods and schools, onlysome had black English variants in their English.

The results of this study have also confirmed Wolfram’s (1973b)findings that extensive contact with blacks is necessary for the as-similation of grammatical variants from black English. The remark-able similarity between the results of this investigation and those ofWolfram suggests that extensive contact may be necessary for theassimilation of grammatical variants from any group’s language.

While no relationship was found between reference group andgrammatical assimilation, the results for contact indicate thatfactors other than extent of contact must play a role in grammaticalassimilation. The results for reference group may not have beensignificant because the measurement may not have been valid.Although the choice of blacks as a subject’s reference group asdefined and measured in this study did not correlate with the use offeatures of black English, there may be other, as yet unstudied oreven undefined, aspects of identification that play a role ingrammatical assimilation. Feelings of identification do play a role inlanguage use, language maintenance, and language acquisition; it islogical to assume that they play some role in the acquisition bynonnative speakers of variants from a particular dialect within aspeech community.

FUTURE RESEARCH

Researchers in second language acquisition need to take intoaccount the social context in which their subjects are acquiring

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English. The practice in almost all such research—to comparesubjects’ output with that expected of a native speaker of standardEnglish—ignores the fact that speech communities are nothomogeneous and that nonnative speakers may have a target otherthan standard English. Such a practice can result in an inaccurateassessment of second language acquisition.

If, for example, a researcher is studying the acquisition ofnegation, it might be possible to conclude that a subject’scategorical use of negative concord over a long period of timemeans that the subject has not acquired this aspect of English andthat the subject’s use of negation has fossilized. While this iscertainly a possible explanation, it is not the only one. The subject’starget may be black English, and in that case, the language has notfossilized. The subject has already acquired negation–the blackEnglish pattern. Only by studying the speech community in whichsecond language acquisition takes place, by delineating possiblesecond language targets, and by determining subjects’ actual targetswill researchers obtain an accurate picture of second languageacquisition.

Future research must also elicit subjects’ vernacular speech toobtain an accurate measure of their use of variants from blackEnglish. Because black English is socially stigmatized, it wouldhardly be surprising if subjects decreased the frequency with whichthey used variants from black English, or even eliminated thesevariants, in an interview situation. Thus, we have no way ofknowing why 2 subjects with extensive black contact did not usenegative concord categorically and one did not use distributive be.They may not have used them because extensive black contact wasnot a sufficient condition for them to use these variants or becausethey reacted to the interview situation or the interviewer.

Future research should also study the full range of speech stylesnonnative speakers use. Poplack (1978) has demonstrated thatpeople exposed to more than one target may integrate variants frommore than one source in a socially appropriate manner. She wasable to determine this by eliciting speech from her subjects in morethan one speech style. We need to know whether or not nonnativespeakers integrate features of more than one dialect into theirEnglish and, if so, whether they do this in a socially appropriateway.

Whenever possible, ethnographic research methods should beemployed. One reason, as mentioned, is that it is important toobtain natural speech samples. Linguistic data obtained byparticipant-observers in natural settings such as at home, in class,and at play would provide such speech. Another reason is that while


subjects in this study verbally reported their friendships with blackand white Americans, a more reliable measure of extent and type ofcontact might be obtained through actual observations of suchcontact.

The findings of this research are based on data gathered fromteenage Hispanic males who lived in the New York metropolitanarea. Future research needs to determine if these findings have awider applicability. We need to study teenage girls, adults of bothgenders, different ethnic and first language groups, and groups indifferent geographic areas.

Finally, many more variables, in addition to extent of contact andidentification, might affect the adoption of a particular linguistictarget and the frequency with which the nonnative speaker usesvariants from that group’s language. These social and psychologicalvariables could include the covert prestige of the target languagegroup, the status of the target language group vis-à-vis one’s own orone’s desired status, the difficulty or ease of establishing andmaintaining relationships with members of the target languagegroup, the attitudes of one’s own ethnic group to the target languagegroup and vice versa, and the instrumental value of using the targetlanguage.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Teachers of English as a second language also need to understandthat standard English may not be the target for all their students.They need to recognize, for instance, that a student response such asI don’t have none may be an “error,” or it may be the correct use ofblack English negation. The teacher’s response to I don’t have none,if it is an error, is, of necessity, quite different from the response ifit is the correct use of black English negation. While in each casestudents may need to know the correct standard English form,teachers should give appropriate explanations to the student. In thefirst case, the student needs to know that what was said wasincorrect in standard English; in the second case, the student needsto know that while what was said was correct in black English, thereis an alternative in standard English. Furthermore, the student mustlearn in what contexts the black English version is appropriate andin what contexts the standard English version is appropriate.

Teachers, of course, should know what their students’ secondlanguage targets are, if they are to correctly analyze their students’linguistic behavior. The findings in this study suggest that this canbe accomplished by determining their students’ friendship patternswith native speakers, by eliciting the names of those they want to

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speak like, and by determining in what situations they interact withnative speakers. This will not guarantee that teachers will correctlyassess their students’ targets; yet, if a student uses features whichcould be attributed to black English, has indicated having mostlyblack American friends, and has shown a desire to speak like them,the teacher would have a strong indication that these features areindeed from black English and are not errors.

In the final analysis, however, teachers need to decide what to doif a student’s target is a nonstandard dialect of English. Certainly,teachers should not take it on themselves to manipulate students’friendships or feelings of identification in an attempt to changestudents’ targets to standard English. The only recourse teachershave, therefore, is to help their students determine whether or notstandard English is necessary to their public lives and to discusswith their students the situations in which they would need to usestandard English.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Kathi Bailey, Ruth Cathcart-Strong, and Leo vanLier for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, and Leslie Beebeand Frank Horowitz for their comments on the dissertation on which this article ispartly based. This article is dedicated to the memory of Bill Mooney, who wasinstrumental in helping the author locate subjects and who served willingly as asounding board throughout the study.

THE AUTHOR

Lynn M. Goldstein is Assistant Professor in the TESOL program at the MontereyInstitute of International Studies. Her research interests include sociolinguistics,second language acquisition, and composition.

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Beebe, L.M. (1985). Choosing the right stuff. In S.M. Gass & C.G. Madden(Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 404-414). Rowley, MA:Newbury House.


Dittmar, N., & Klein, W. (1978). The acquisition of German syntax byforeign workers. In D. Sankoff (Ed.), Linguistic variation: Models andmethods (pp. 1-21). New York: Academic Press.

Dulay, H., & Burt, M. (1978). Some remarks on creativity in languageacquisition. In W.C. Ritchie (Ed.), Second language acquisitionresearch: Issues and implications (pp. 65-69). New York: AcademicPress.

Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. New York:Oxford University Press.

Ervin-Tripp, S, (1973). Language acquisition and communicative choice.Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Gardner, R. C., & Lambert, W.E. (1972). Attitudes and motivation insecond language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Goldstein, L. (1986). Linguistic variation in English as a second language asa function of contact versus identification. Unpublished doctoraldissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

Hewitt, R. (1982). White adolescent Creole users and the politics offriendship. ]ournal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 3,217-232.

Hudson, R.A. (1980). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Klein, E. (1986). Koreans in Seoul and Honolulu: Aiming for differenttargets. Unpublished manuscript.

Labov, W. (1966). Social stratification of English in New York City.Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Labov, W. (1972a). Language in the inner city: Studies in black Englishvernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Labov, W. (1972b). The reflection of social processes in linguisticstructures. In J. Fishman (Ed.), Readings in the sociology of language(PP. 240-251). The Hague: Mouton.

Labov, W. (1972c), Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press.

Labov, W. (1973). The linguistic consequences of being a lame. Languagein Society, 2(1), 81-115.

Labov, W., Cohen, P., Robins, C., & Lewis, J. (1968). A study of the non-standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican speakers in New York City(Final Report, Cooperative Research Project 3288, Vols. 1-2).Philadelphia: United States Regional Survey.

LaFerriere, M. (1979). Ethnicity in phonological variation and change.Language, 55, 603-617.

LePage, R. B., Christie, P., Turdant, B., Weeks, J. J., & Tabouret-Keller, A.(1974). Further report on the sociolinguistic multilingual communities:Survey of Cayo District, British Honduras. Language in Society, 3 (l),1-32.

Long, M.H. (1980). Input, interaction, and second language acquisition.Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, LosAngeles.

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Mason, C. (1971). The relevance of intensive training in EFL for universitystudents. Language Learning, 21, 197-204.

Milon, J.P. (1975). Dialect in the TESOL program: If you never you better.In M. Burt and H. Dulay (Eds.), On TESOL ’75 (pp. 159-170).Washington, DC: TESOL.

Nichols, P.C. (1981). Creoles of the U.S.A. In C.A. Ferguson & S.B. Heath(Eds.), Language in the U.S.A. (pp. 69-91). New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Plann, S. (1975). Acquiring a second language in an immersion classroom.In H.D. Brown, C.A. Yorio, & R.H. Crymes (Eds.), Teaching andlearning English as a second language: Trends in research and practice(PP. 213-225). Washington, DC: TESOL.

Poplack, S. (1978). On dialect acquisition and communicative compe-tence: The case of Puerto Rican bilinguals. Language in Society, 7(l), 89-103.

Reinstein, S., & Hoffman, J. (1972). Dialect interaction between black andPuerto Rican children in New York City. Elementary English, 49, 190-196.

Schumann, J.H. (1978a). The acculturation model for second languageacquisition. In R.C. Gingras (Ed.), Second language acquisition andforeign language teaching (pp. 27-50). Arlington, VA: Center forApplied Linguistics.

Schumann, J.H. (1978b). The pidginization process: A model for secondlanguage acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Seliger, H. (1977). Does practice make perfect? A study of interactionpatterns and second language competence. Language Learning, 27, 263-278.

Sherif, M., & Sherif, C.W. (1964). Reference groups. New York: Harper&Row.

Silverman, S.H. (1971). The effects of peer group membership on PuertoRican English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yeshiva University,New York.

Spolsky, B. (1969). Aspects of second language learning. LanguageLearning, 19, 271-285.

Taylor, D. M., Meynard, R., & Rheault, E. (1977). Threat to ethnic identityand second language learning. In H. Giles (Ed.), Language, ethnicity,and intergroup relations (pp. 99-118). London: Academic Press.

Trudgill, P. (1972). Sex, covert prestige, and linguistic change in the urbanBritish English of Norwich. Language in Society, 1 (2), 179-195.

White, R. P., & Gordon, E.E. (1976). Reference groups and significantothers: Towards an interface. (ERIC Document Reproduction ServiceNo. ED 140 111)

Wolfram, W .A. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negrospeech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.


Wolfram, W.A. (1972). Overlapping influence and linguistic assimilation insecond generation Puerto Rican English. In D.A. Smith & R. W. Shuy(Eds.), Sociolinguistics in cross cultural analysis (pp. 15-46). Washington,DC: Georgetown University press.

Wolfram, W.A. (1973a). Objective and subjective parameters of languageassimilation among second generation Puerto Ricans in East Harlem. InR. Shuy & R. Fasold (Eds.), Language attitudes: Current trends andprospects (pp. 148-173). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Wolfram, W.A. (1973b). Sociolinguistic aspects of assimilation: PuertoRican English in New York City. Arlington, VA: Center for AppliedLinguistics.

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TESOL QUARTERLY, Vol. 21, No. 3, September 1987

The Organization of Instruction inMigrant Education: Assistance forChildren and Youth at RiskDONNA M. JOHNSONUniversity of Arizona

The Migrant Education Program is a major provider ofinstructional services to students whose schooling has beeninterrupted and who need to learn English as a second language.As part of a statewide evaluation of the program, a study focusingon the organization of instruction and interactions amongparticipants was conducted in 11 school districts in California. Arange of qualitative and quantitative data-collection and analysismethods was used. It was found that migrant supplementaryinstruction, focusing mainly on basic skills, was provided almostentirely by teacher aides. Migrant aides worked in the regularclassroom in 68% of the instructional sessions observed and in apullout setting in 32% of the sessions. Examination of theinstructional context of migrant instruction revealed that whenstudents were pulled out of the regular classroom for instruction,the regular teacher showed a very low level of awareness of themigrant students’ activities or progress in the migrant program.Collaborative planning and strong administrative support for suchplanning were found to be critical features of high-qualitysupplemental programs.

In the current climate of educational reform, attention is beingfocused on children and youth who may be “at risk” of not profitingfrom school as much as possible or of failing and dropping outaltogether (Cook-Gumperz, 1986; Tucker & Mandel, 1986; Tugend,1986). A major group of students that is considered to be at risk butthat has received little attention in the ESL literature is migrantstudents. This article describes an evaluation of the MigrantEducation Program in California which focused on the organizationof instruction, the organizational contexts for instruction, andinteractions among participants in the process.

In general, migrant students in California have at least threecharacteristics that make them one of the groups of children and

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youths at risk. First, migrant students, by definition, have had theirschooling interrupted because of moves. For this reason, they oftenfall behind in school. Migrant students’ families generally movebecause the parents are involved in seasonal agricultural and fishingindustries. In 1982-1983, for example, about one third to one half ofthe families of migrant students made at least one move during theschool year, while others tended to move during the summer orearly fall. Fortunately, many returned to the same town or schooldistrict, so that in some cases students were able to resume theirschooling with the same teachers.

Second, many migrant students are not fluent in the language ofthe school. Of all third-grade migrant students in California enrolledduring 1982-1983, the year in which data were collected, 57% wereclassified by the state as limited English proficient (LEP). Of thoseelementary school-age migrant students who enrolled in summerschool that year, 46% were classified as LEP.

Third, as a group, migrant students’ academic achievement islow. California migrant students in the third grade (excluding thosecategorized as non-English-speaking) performed between the 21stand 35th percentile on standardized achievement tests. As is oftenthe case with LEP students in bilingual programs (Douglas &Johnson, 1981), however, their math scores (35) were higher thantheir English scores (reading, 29; writing, 21). It appeared that thosewho suffered the most in achievement, as measured by standard-ized tests, were those students who were most mobile and whowere also classified as LEP. Statewide, only about half of allmigrant students passed. state proficiency tests in 1982, as comparedwith about three quarters of the student population as a whole.Moreover, at the upper grades, a lower proportion of migrantstudents was promoted to the next grade, and 10% fewer graduatedfrom high school than did students as a whole.

The Migrant Education Program is a federally funded programdesigned to assist migrant students in overcoming these obstacles tosuccess in school. In fiscal 1982, the State of California receivedabout $61 million in ESEA (Elementary and Secondary EducationAct) Chapter I funds for the program and served 80,000 studentsfrom preschool through high school (Noggle, Garza, Weiner,Abrica-Carrasco, & Johnson, 1982). More than three quarters (78%)of these students were in elementary schools. A total of 32,000migrant students were served in summer school programs.

At the time of the study, the program comprised 13 components:overall supplementary instructional services, supplementarysecondary instructional services, secondary education pupilpersonnel services, staff development, needs assessment, utilization

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of the Migrant Student Record Transfer System (a computerizedsystem designed to keep track of and transfer student records acrossstates and districts), identification and recruitment, parentinvolvement, health and supportive services, monitoring andreview, interstate and interagency coordination, fund allocation,and information and dissemination.

The instructional components were designed to be strictly“supplemental” to the regular school program and to focus on the“basic skills.” Because about half of all migrant students inCalifornia were acquiring English as a second language, much ofthe instruction was focused on improving English. Thus, whatoccurs in migrant education is of concern to the TESOL profession.At the time the study was conducted, there were, however, nospecific state policies regarding ESL or bilingual educationprogram models. Policy specified that migrant instruction was tosupplement whatever programs the district was providing.

The study of classroom practices reported in this article was partof a statewide evaluation conducted over a 2-year period by aneducational research corporation under contract to the StateDepartment of Education. It can be described as a multisite,multimethod, large-scale study, employing a range of qualitativeand quantitative methods. During the first year, the research stafffocused on all 13 components of the program, while in the secondyear (Noggle et al., 1982, 1983), instruction was one of the centralissues investigated, and classroom observations were a major meansof gathering data. This report focuses on results of the classroomobservations, but because it draws somewhat on findings from thebroader, second-year study, the sources and data-collectionmethods of the overall investigation are briefly described below.

For the overall evaluation study, a methodology based onmultiple sources of data was used. (See Fetterman, 1986, fordiscussions of studies employing similar methodologies and Miles&Huberman, 1984, for a discussion of multisite, multimethod, large-scale studies. ) Visits were made to each of 10 regional offices and tothe State Department of Education, and three 5-day site visits weremade to each of 11 districts over the course of the year. On-siteinterviews were conducted with 19 categories of respondent at thestate, regional, district, and school levels, including bothnonmigrant and migrant staff. A sample of 100 districts wassurveyed by mail to gather questionnaire data on programcharacteristics as well as data on the English language proficiency,grade advancement, graduation, and mobility of migrant students.Achievement data were also gathered from the statewide testingprogram, the California Assessment Program. Data obtained from

INSTRUCTION IN MIGRANT EDUCATION 439

one source in a particular manner (on-site interviews with aides, forexample) were used to cross-validate data obtained from a differentsource in a different manner (observations of classroom instructiondone during the second year, for example) in a continuouslyinteractive system (Noggle et al., 1982).

THE STUDY OF CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION

During the second year of the evaluation, 86 classroomobservations were conducted throughout the state to examine thenature of migrant classroom instruction. In addition to determiningwho teaches migrant students during migrant supplementalinstruction and what they teach, we were primarily interested indescribing the nature of the interactions among the variousparticipants in the students’ education: (a) between migrant staffand migrant students (where instruction is provided, what groupingstrategies are used, what general methods are used, and whatlanguage use policies and practices are employed); (b) between theregular classroom teachers and migrant students, as related tomigrant instruction (amount of interaction, teacher language use,and the extent to which the teacher is aware of the progress themigrant students are making during migrant instruction); and (c)between the migrant aide and the regular classroom teacher(communication, cooperation, evidence of joint planning). Overallwe were interested in identifying practices that contributed to high-quality instructional environments.

Sample

From each of the 11 districts to which site visits were madeduring the second year of the study, three or four schools, those thatserved the largest numbers of migrant students, were selected, andwithin each school two classes, on the average, were selected forobservation. While a broad range of subject areas and grade levelswas observed, 50 of the 86 observations (58%) were of Englishinstruction.

Instrumentation

The classroom observation instrument, constructed by theresearch staff to obtain a wide range of information, contained ahighly structured section, a semistructured section, and an open-ended section. The structured section allowed for the collection ofdata on classroom identity, classroom composition, use of staff with

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students, grouping procedures, type of instruction, language use ofmigrant aide, language use of regular teacher, and amount ofcommunication with migrant students. The semistructured sectioncontained questions dealing with the interactions between staff andstudents (rapport, teaching methods, engaged time, contribution ofinstruction to progress in regular class); between regular teacherand migrant students (knowledge of student progress, communica-tion); and between regular teacher and migrant staff (evidence ofjoint planning, team teaching, rapport). The unstructured sectionwas open-ended to allow for a qualitative, rich description ofclassroom atmosphere and events.

Procedures

The observations were conducted by a staff of professionalresearch associates or senior research associates with expertise in theeducation of language minority students and related areas. All butone had evaluated migrant programs the previous year, and as aresult, they were highly knowledgeable of the program’s goals,policies, and practices. Training sessions were held prior to sitevisits in order to clarify category definitions and finalizeobservation and interview procedures. In addition, while site visitswere in progress, the Director of the Study of Instruction contactedsite visitors by telephone to resolve any problems, such as lack ofclarity regarding the categorization or description of unanticipatedcircumstances or events.

In addition to the observations, both migrant staff and regular(nonmigrant) staff were interviewed regarding instructionalpractices. Of particular interest was the degree of coordinationbetween migrant staff and the regular classroom teacher. Thus,when migrant instruction was provided in a pullout setting outsideof the students’ regular classroom, the observer went back to theregular classroom to attempt to determine the relationship betweenthe migrant supplementary instruction and regular classroominstruction. In interviews with regular teachers, the extent ofcoordination was assessed. Coordination was also assessed at theschool level through interviews with principals, bilingual programpersonnel, Chapter I personnel, and other related programpersonnel.

Analysis of Classroom Observation Data

Classroom observation data were analyzed using both qualitativeand quantitative means. The data from each of the 86 classroom


observations were coded and categorized by two people, theobserver and the Director of the Study of Instruction, who alsoserved as the observer at some of the sites. The participation of theDirector in every coding session served to provide consistencyacross observers in the coding of the quantitative data and in thecategorizing of the qualitative information.

Quantitative data were analyzed using the Statistical AnalysisSystem, a statistical package capable of handling multiple databases. Analyses consisted primarily of the calculation of frequen-cies, means, standard deviations, cross tabulations of frequencies,and other descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were analyzed bysummarizing information by category and examining the informa-tion, along with related information from other sources, for themesor patterns and for examples of exemplary practices.

RESULTSAides as Teachers and Advocates

In 99% of the observations, the migrant staff person providingsupplemental instruction to migrant students was an aide. While theposition of migrant resource teacher was a common one, usuallythat person’s responsibility involved training and supervising aides,rather than teaching migrant students. However, both intervieweesand questionnaire respondents indicated that they would havepreferred more teaching by certified migrant staff, and indeedthere was a trend toward hiring more certified migrant teachers towork directly with migrant students. The programs judged to be ofthe highest quality by the research staff were those in whichcertified migrant teachers worked with students.

Most of the aides (96%) were bilingual and/or were at one timemembers of migrant families. Researchers observed and rated theapparent rapport between aides and their students and found that in98% of the classrooms observed, rapport was fair to excellent. Aidesseemed to have empathy for migrant students and were committedboth to helping them with their school work and to serving asadvocates for them in their total school experience. The extent towhich their advocacy was effective depended to a large degree onthe contextual factors discussed below.

The Content of Instruction

Instruction in the Migrant Education Program focused primarilyon English, math, and the information needed to pass proficiencytests. Of those programs surveyed by mail, 90% reported providing

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ESL instruction, and 40% reported providing assistance with readingand writing in Spanish. Only minor emphasis was placed onsupplemental instruction in science and social studies. When suchassistance did occur, it was more likely to occur in a bilingualeducation setting or in a high school. Respondents expressed a needfor increased assistance in social studies and science; however, it islikely that in the elementary schools there was not much scienceinstruction to supplement, as this area has been neglected inbilingual education (Horst et al., 1980) and in education in general(Rothman, 1986).

Interaction Between Migrant Staff and Migrant Students

Setting. Most of the migrant instruction was provided for one classperiod per day and integrated with mainstream instruction. In twothirds (68%) of the migrant sessions observed in Grades K-12,assistance was provided in the regular classroom, while in 32% of thesessions students were taught in a pullout setting outside of theregular classroom. The pullout groups met in a variety of locations,including resource rooms or laboratories (40%), unused classrooms(30%), designated “migrant classrooms” (20%), and sometimes evencafeterias (10%).

Because ESL teachers are sometimes required to teach ininadequate classroom settings, the research team subjectivelyassessed and rated the quality of the pullout setting. The pulloutlocation was judged to be nicer than the regular classroom 14% ofthe time, but 62% of the time it was judged to be not as nice as theregular classroom. Large closet-like settings and noisy cafeteriaswere among the least desirable settings used. Thus, there were someserious problems with the physical facilities provided to theprogram for pullout sessions, although these problems are notunusual in supplementary programs.

Grouping. Most of the migrant supplementary instruction wasprovided to students in small groups of two to five (48% of thesessions observed) and to individuals (40% of the sessions observed).Large-group instruction was encountered in only 12% of theobservations (see Table 1). Half of the migrant staff who workedwith small groups instructed them by pulling them aside in theregular classroom, and the other half met with them outside theregular classroom. Assistance to individuals at their own desks wasalso a common arrangement that was found in about one quarter ofthe observations. For example, in high school English and mathclasses the aide would often sit near the migrant students, listen to


the teacher’s lecture or instructions to the whole class, and thenmake sure that migrant students understood and were able to do theassignment.

TABLE 1

Location of Instruction by Group Size

Group size/location % of time obsetved

SmaIt group (2 to 5)Futl-aside 24Pullout 24

IndividualAt own desk 26PuMside 11Pullout 3

Huge group (6 or more)In-class 7Pullout 5

Totat 100

Method of instruction. Observers, using fairly standard generaleducational categories, focused on the types of techniques used bythe aides for instruction (see Table 2). The aides spent 46% of theirinstructional time conducting drill, practice, review, or translationactivities. A similar percentage of time (43%) was spent monitoringstudents’ work or explaining the work in progress. Only 5% of thetime was devoted to the introduction of new material or newconcepts, and 4% to discussing or correcting completed work. Theaides devoted 1% of their time to each of the following: assigningwork or giving directions; administering tests; off-task talk, play,discipline. As Table 2 shows, the nature of the instruction wasclearly supplemental. We observed many instances in which the in-class assistance provided, especially at the junior high and highschool levels, was highly relevant to helping students succeed intheir content classes.

Language use. Even though approximately 21% of the state’s migrantstudents in Grade 3 were categorized by the state as non-English-speaking and an additional 36% as limited English-speaking, therewas a strong program-wide, unwritten policy that English ratherthan the native language was to be used for content instruction tothe extent possible, unless the migrant program was supplementinga bilingual education program. This policy was carried out by aides.

Although the aides were bilingual and/or former migrants,classroom observations revealed that 26% of them never employedthe ESL students’ primary language in observed instruction. The

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TABLE 2Percentage of Time Spent by Migrant Instructional Aides

in Various Types of Instructional Activities

Instructional activity % of time observed

Note: Percentages do not total to 100 due to rounding.

other 74% used the L1 occasionally (28%), less than half the time(22%), more than half the time (18%), or the entire time (6%). Whenthe L1 was used, it was primarily for reviewing and translatingfunctions rather than for introducing new concepts or material.

The unstated language-use policy was “as much English aspossible” and the unstated bilingual education philosophy wastransitional. Questionnaire results indicated, however, that 80% ofschool-district staff were satisfied with the role of the MigrantEducation Program in assisting ESL students in the transition fromthe primary language into English. Although the policy of theprogram was merely to supplement regular instruction, programstaff often took the initiative in establishing an ESL program wherethere was none; they did not, however, take the initiative inestablishing a bilingual program where there was none.

Approaches to ESL. Migrant ESL instruction in the elementaryschools was most often viewed as a supplement to the standardEnglish language arts program and in some cases as a supplement tothe regular teacher’s ESL program. The most frequently used ESLmaterials were Quick Start in English, the Defense LanguageInstitute program, and the IDEA Kit. DISTAR, a highly structured,grammatically based oral language program, was in use in somedistricts.

Many Total Physical Response (TPR) workshops were beingprovided through staff development, and that method was beingwidely adopted. Several TPR lessons that were observed werecarried out in a very mechanical manner, with much emphasis onpracticing previously learned commands.

ESL was viewed as the application of a structured commercialoral curriculum, rather than as a broad plan for second language


and literacy development that could be implemented throughoutthe school day in either a bilingual or all-English program. Therewere few signs of the systematic integration of academic contentand language learning in the ESL lessons, and there was no evidenceof systematic plans for grouping students and structuringinteraction throughout the day in ways that would enhance theirsecond language development. Those ESL activities that wereobserved indicated little use of authentic materials and fewopportunities for students to create their own meanings either inwriting or speaking. ln addition to an emphasis on implementingTPR in inservice training, plans were being formulated, with someresistance, to train all regular elementary classroom teachers to“provide ESL” in the classroom.

In sum, most of the ESL instruction I observed was notcommunicative in nature and was conducted by teacher aides withdedication but limited training. It should be noted that theseapproaches to “providing ESL” are not unique to migrant educationbut are found in many other programs for ESL students.

interaction Between Migrant Students and Regular Teachers

Contact time with the regular teacher. Educators of languageminority students in the fields of ESL, bilingual education, andmigrant education have long been concerned about the largeamounts of time that students spend being instructed byparaprofessionals rather than by certified teachers. For this reason,researchers tabulated the amount of time regular classroomteachers, migrant aides, or both worked with migrant studentsduring supplemental instruction.

The regular teacher and the migrant aide worked together anaverage of 35% of the class time observed. The aide worked alonewith the students an average of 44% of the time, and regular teacherstaught alone, usually to the whole class with the aide standing by, anaverage of 19% of the time. Thus, the upper limit on contact timewith the teacher during migrant supplementary instruction was 54%(19% + 35%). When aides were in the regular classroom and theregular teacher and aide were working together collaboratively,instruction was usually closely related to regular classroomactivities.Language use by the regular teacher. As expected, regular classroomteachers used the primary language of the migrant ESL students lessthan did the aides. Only 35% of the regular teachers observed usedthe primary language of the ESL students. Most of those who

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did use the L1 used it not for introducing concepts, but forreviewing or translating material that had been presented inEnglish. This finding is similar to that for the aides and underscoresthe traditional subordinate role that is played by the non-Englishlanguage in the classroom.

Teacher awareness of student progress. An investigation of theregular teachers’ knowledge of the progress that migrant studentswere making during migrant supplementary instruction wasundertaken, in the belief that teachers’ knowledge of studentprogress is related to student achievement. The issue wasinvestigated by interviewing regular teachers regarding theprogress of their migrant students in migrant instruction and ratingthe extent of their knowledge on a scale of 1 (no awareness) to 4(considerable awareness). Because these interviews were con-ducted after researchers had observed the students and were awareof the nature of their supplementary assistance, it was easy to assigna fair and valid rating.

Over half the teachers (58%) had considerable awareness of theprogress that migrant students were making during migrantinstruction. Some 27% evidenced a general awareness, 9% were ableto offer no specific information about student progress, and 6% hadno awareness at all. Qualitative information from the interviewsindicated two reasons for a low level of awareness: (a) The regularteacher and the migrant personnel worked independently of oneanother, with little communication, and/or (b) the location ofmigrant instruction in a pullout setting contributed to the lack ofawareness.

To explore this issue further, the observation data were used toexamine the relationship between the regular teachers’ awareness ofstudent progress and the location of migrant instruction (see Table3). It was found that only 17% of those teachers who favored small-group pullouts were rated as having considerable awareness of theirstudents’ progress. In contrast, in situations where small-groupinstruction was provided within the regular classroom, 65% of theregular teachers had considerable awareness of the academicprogress of the migrant students. The findings were even morestriking for individual instruction; not a single regular teacher whohad individual migrant students pulled out was rated as havingconsiderable awareness of their progress. Those employing in-class-at-desk and in-class-pull-aside arrangements for individuals weremuch more knowledgeable about those students; 71% and 86%,respectively, showed considerable awareness of their migrantstudents’ progress.


TABLE 3Regular Teachers’ Awareness of ProgressCross-Tabulated With Grouping Patterns

These results indicate that pullout supplementary instruction wasassociated with a disjointedness in the students’ education. Pulloutarrangements as an organizational structure for migrant education,then, may be counterproductive in many situations, particularly ifthe goal of such instruction is to help students to get along in themainstream bilingual or all-English curriculum. Often this was asituation over which migrant educators had no control. Becausethey were to supplement regular instruction, they often could onlycomply with regular teachers’ requests about where supplementaryinstruction should occur.

Interaction Between Migrant Staff and Nonmigrant Staff

The major finding regarding interaction between migrant andnonmigrant staff, based on data from many sources, was that inmost programs there was little evidence of joint planning. Notsurprisingly, planning between aides and regular classroom teachersoccurred most often when the aide was working in the regular

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classroom. Clearly, the logistics of joint planning were less difficultto arrange in such situations, particularly if the appropriateadministrative support and structure for planning were nototherwise provided.

There was also, on the whole, a lack of planning at the programlevel among the various programs serving migrant students,including Chapter I, bilingual education, and migrant education.Joint planning, however, was found to be a critical ingredient in ahigh-quality program. Those migrant programs judged as mosteffective evidenced close communication and coordination amongmigrant and other staff. The schools that were successful atplanning across programs shared two important features oforganizational structure: (a) a principal who provided activeleadership in promoting planning or a resource teacher whoprovided the leadership with the support of the principal and (b)the provision of some type of structure for the planning process,such as a committee with regularly scheduled meetings. Thesefeatures created contexts in which collaboration for the benefit ofstudents was encouraged and supported.

DISCUSSION

Probably the most significant finding of the overall statewideevaluation study was that while members of the Migrant EducationProgram staff at all levels were making sincere and dedicatedefforts to provide educational continuity for migrant students, aneffective partnership between the Migrant Education Program staffand other staff was often missing. This finding was particularlyimportant for instruction. In general, the more migrant instructionwas integrated with mainstream bilingual or all-English instruction,the more effective it appeared to be in helping students succeed inschool.

In viewing the results of this study within the context of currentresearch on second language and literacy development, theconceptual development of language minority students, andsupplementary educational programs, a number of recommenda-tions can be made to improve supplementary instructional servicesto migrant students. The recommendations fall into three generalareas: (a) the goals and philosophy of the migrant program, (b) thecreation and implementation of what a school district might label itsplan for second language and literacy development (as opposed tosimply its ESL program), and (c) the organizational structure ofsupplementary instruction.


What’s Basic?

A major goal of the Migrant Education Program is to improvebasic skills. The findings of this study suggest that learning basicskills should be interpreted by migrant program staff much morebroadly. There are two important considerations here regardingwhat is basic. First, if the intent of the program is to help studentssucceed in school, then a focus on basic skills, narrowly defined, canbe counterproductive and create additional barriers for manychildren and youths who may already be at risk. Althoughprescriptions for effective schools often include more emphasis onbasic skills instruction and more time on task (see Bossert, 1985, fora critique), Cazden (1986) and many others have pointed out theproblems and consequences of a focus on reductionist concepts oflanguage and learning, especially for younger students.

Moreover, children vary in their ability to cope with and profitfrom poor-quality instruction (Urzúa, 1986; Wong Fillmore, 1986).A number of researchers and theorists from different fields agreethat basic skills and the discrete aspects of language are best learnedin the context of meaningful communication about important andinteresting topics and tasks (DeAvila, 1985; DeAvila, Cohen, &Intili, 1982; Goodman, 1986; Krashen, 1985; Mehan, Moll, & Riel,1985; Rigg & Enright, 1986; Wong Fillmore with Valadez, 1986).

Second, learning basic skills can be interpreted more broadly toinclude learning through the languages or varieties the studentsbring from home, as well as through English, and learning bybuilding on students’ rich cultural experiences. Migrant instructionin California focused primarily on English, math, and proficiency-test content with a transitional philosophy, and many migrant stafffelt that English language development was basic in some sense butthat Spanish or Punjabi language development, for example, wasnot basic. One might argue that allowing children and youths tolearn through the languages they bring from home and helpingthem to develop literacy in the languages used in the home, as wellas in the language of the wider environment, are basic in the mostfundamental sense of the term.

Some research on ESL students indicates that high levels ofdevelopment of the home language (Cummins, 1986), lots ofinteraction in the L1 (Neves, 1984), opportunities to discussconcepts in the L1 (Saville-Troike, 1984), experiences in a widevariety of oral and written genres in the L1 (Heath, 1986), andparticipation in bilingual programs (Ramirez, cited in Crawford,1986) can contribute not only to achievement in content areas, butto oral and written proficiency in English as well. Thus, migrant

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educators should consider contributing to conceptual, language,and literacy development by building more broadly on thelinguistic and cultural resources students bring to school (CaliforniaState Department of Education, 1986).

Although no statewide language-use policies existed regardingthis issue for the Migrant Education Program, there were at leasttwo reasons for the implicit language-use policy (a) the highlycontroversial nature of the federal and state role in promoting oreven tolerating native language development and instruction (see,for example, Melendez & Lyons, 1986) and (b) the view that nativelanguage instruction does not address basic skills. In a context ofstate laws requiring bilingual education and increasing coordinationacross programs in staff development programs, migrant staffwere, at the time of data collection, becoming informed about andinterested in promoting instruction through and development oflanguages in addition to English, especially for elementary schoolstudents. A study conducted in 1987 might find the opposite trendin a sociopolitical context of increased resistance to the use of non-English languages in schools.

On the whole, nevertheless, those migrant programs thatoperated in the context of a bilingual program were rated by theresearch staff as higher quality programs. In accordance with theMigrant Education Program’s emphasis on advocacy, migrant staffcould be stronger advocates for the initiation of both high-qualitybilingual or multilingual programs and effective ways of promotingsecond language and literacy development that build onJ students’strengths. Migrant students and other bilingual students are at adisadvantage “only if their linguistic strengths are underappreciatedand schools are failing to build on their strengths” (Goodman, 1986,p. 17).

A Plan for Second Language Development

In addition to eliminating a remedial and reductionist focus onbasic skills, other steps can be taken to improve ESL instruction inmigrant education. Significant improvements will require that theESL program be reconceptualized for language minority studentsin Grades K-12. In migrant education and in bilingual education, theESL program or component has usually been conceptualized as (a)the application of a structured, commercial ESL curriculum to thestudents (b) by a designated ESL provider (c) in a situation, definedby time and location, that is identifiable in the organizationalstructure of the school. This structure for ESL is well entrenched inpart because it seems logical to well-intentioned administrators and


in part because it demonstrates compliance with requirements forstudent services.

Current theory and research, however, suggest that the ESLprogram needs to be conceptualized as a flexible and dynamic planfor second language and literacy development. Unlike the threefeatures listed above, this plan would provide a structure foreducators to follow in creating, at various times throughout the day,functional second language learning environments and “literateoccasions” (Graves, 1986) involving the use of the second language.The goals of the plan should call for involving students in authenticwritten and oral communication (see, for example, Edelsky, 1986;Hayes, Bahruth, & Kessler, 1986) and for creating opportunities forrich language use aimed at the exploration of subject matter and thedevelopment of intellectual abilities (Heath & Branscombe, 1985;Milk, 1985; Rigg & Enright, 1986; Saville-Troike, 1984; Widdowson,1983; Willets, 1986; Wong Fillmore with Valadez, 1986). Thedevelopment of these goals must be done under the leadership of aqualified professional with expertise in these areas, but incollaboration with others who will be involved in implementationand who are knowledgeable about the broad goals and require-ments of multiple programs as well as the overall goals of theschool.

The design and procedures must be creative and flexible so thatthe plan can operate in different classroom contexts (bilingualeducation, ESL, Chapter I, etc. ) and so that resource teachers,teachers, and aides can adapt activities to students’ changinginterests and communicative needs. Chamot and O’Malley (1986),for example, have suggested an approach that incorporates a focuson learning strategies (a “cognitive academic language learningapproach”) to promote integrated language use and contentlearning, while Hudelson (1986) and others have proposed acontinual integration of second language and literacy developmentwith content learning.

There are numerous ways that opportunities for functionalsecond language use can be created and/or exploited at varioustimes throughout the day, including during integrated thematicunits, through content instruction, in the social environment,through classroom management procedures, during “the ESLlesson” if there is one, and through the use of computers as tools(see, for example, August, 1982; Cathcart-Strong, 1986; DeAvilaet al., 1982; Johnson, 1986; Milk, 1985; Miller, 1982). Dialogue jour-nals, learning logs, and peer writing groups are examples of highlyflexible techniques that can bridge gaps across instructional settingsand address the broad goals of the plan. Migrant educators and

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second language educators can serve as better advocates for ESLstudents by working with others to promote the planning of thesekinds of experiences for second language development.

The great potential of summer school programs for providinghigh-quality educational opportunities for migrant students,especially ESL students, should be recognized and exploited. Abouthalf of the nearly 32,000 migrant students served in summer schoolin 1983 were classified as limited in English proficiency. A numberof educators expressed the opinion to the research staff that summerschool provides excellent opportunities for students to “catch up.”Because migrant educators are free from many of the constraintsand coordination problems of the normal school year, they couldexplore creative innovations. Thus, summer school offersopportunities to develop innovative second language programs thatare part of the overall plan.

Organizational Structure

The successful development and implementation of a sound andflexible plan for second language and literacy development makedemands of the organizational structure of the school. While muchrecent work has focused on the relatedness of language and contentlearning, there has been little discussion of the broader organiza-tional contexts. Only in the wider context of modified organiza-tional arrangements can significant improvements in supplementaryinstruction for migrant students be achieved.

Our study results indicate that an effective partnership betweenmigrant program staff and other staff is a key factor in providingcontinuity and quality education to migrant students. To make thishappen, the school principal must provide strong leadership insupporting the program or must delegate that leadership to a strongresource teacher or qualified specialist who can achieve the types ofplanning and coordination necessary to carry out an effective andintegrated program of supplementary instruction. Joint planning isparticularly crucial for pullout programs.

The use of pullout instructional arrangements has long beencontroversial. The temptation is sometimes strong to set upinstructional arrangements that demonstrate compliance withexternal requirements but are not instructionally sound, and theentrenched compliance traditions of the school district oftenpreclude consideration of better instructional arrangements (Knapp& Neufeld, 1985). For example, Kimbrough and Hill (1981) studiedthe effects of multiple federal programs in school districts that have


trouble administering them. In some of these problem schools,Hispanic migrant students were pulled out for as many as six orseven special sessions per day, and Hispanic students who werelearning ESL typically spent half the school day in segregatedsituations. Similar multiple pullouts were found in bilingualprogram evaluations (Horst et al., 1980).

While problems of this magnitude were not found in this study,the vast majority of regular classroom teachers were clearly notknowledgeable about what their migrant students were doing andwhat progress they were making in the pullout settings. Manyteachers may prefer that ESL and other migrant instruction takeplace outside of the regular classroom for administrative reasons orbecause of organizational constraints (Eder, 1986), but the fact thatteachers tend to lose track of the content of that instruction and theirstudents’ progress makes it more difficult to create integratedlearning experiences and functional second language learningenvironments for those students in the regular classroom.

A key problem here is the attitude that by providing a few pulloutsessions per week “ESL is being taken care of. ” This is not to saythat ESL pullout should be eliminated across the board. Indeed,ESL pullout sessions, in some situations, might provide the highestquality experiences of the whole day. Urzúa (1986) found that thiswas true for some of the students she observed. Reporting on theeducational experiences of several intermediate-grade SoutheastAsian children who had been in the United States for 2 years, shecommented:

The Researcher [Urzúa] felt as though a match had been struck in a darkroom when she realized that the only time the boys ever wrote or spokeof their own experience, the only time they ever used the written wordto help themselves know what they could potentially know, the onlytime they ever had anyone listen and read something which was born oftheir own special lives was in the ESL classroom. (p. 106)

In working with teachers who rely totally on a combination ofwhole-class and silent-individual-seat-work participant structures(Carter & Canales, 1986; Miller, 1982) or who organize their classes inways that do not allow for the active participation of secondlanguage learners (Enright & McCloskey, 1985; Johnson, 1983), ESLpull-aside and pullout arrangements can be useful. As a plan forsecond language development is gradually implemented, however,the ESL specialist can work closely with teachers to demonstrate newways of organizing instruction. Joint planning, then, with administra-tive support is crucial to design arrangements that are flexible enoughto adapt to the varying conditions across classrooms.

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The findings of this study, along with those of other researcherswho have noted a lack of continuity, a disjointedness in theeducation of language minority children (Ventriglia, 1982, cited inCazden, 1986), provide a strong rationale for much more intentionaljoint planning as well as informal collaboration among the variouspersons involved in the students’ education. Discontinuity is greaterfor migrant students because it exists not only across the school daybut also over the months or years as their families move and theirschooling is interrupted.

Second language educators, in their advocacy for migrantstudents, should play a strong role in working to reduce thisdisjointedness. Cazden (1986) has called on ESL teachers, becauseof their knowledge of how language and literacy are developed andhow language can be used to develop intelligence, to play anintegrating role by helping to promote “deliberately arrangedcommunication” among teachers who are teaching the same ESLstudents. She points out that “without such integration, children’seducation will be limited not by their abilities or their language, butby the invisible walls between teachers built by categorical fundingand separate professional worlds” (p. 18).

Joint planning can work against migrant students, however, if itcontributes to more focus on isolated skills. For examlple, in thisstudy and in an evaluation I recently conducted of a Title VII-funded ESL program, there were cases in which teachers and ESLaides communicated regularly on an informal basis about students’needs. But when teachers (who were not knowledgeable about L2acquisition) asked aides (who had little training and littke power) tospend more time on spelling exercises and phonics lessons in orderto supplement regular class work, the result for the student wasmore time spent on nonproductive tasks and less time spent on richlearning experiences and the “academic discourse forms that lie atthe heart of success in the higher levels of schooling” (Heath &Branscombe, 1985, p. 3).

These kinds of problems can result when seconld languageinstruction is “taken care of” by nonprofessionals. Qualified secondlanguage specialists, then, need to inform administrators andteachers about the conditions necessary for integrated secondlanguage and intellectual development, and they need. to take anactive role in becoming involved in the whole-day experiences ofmigrant students. This is the direction educational reform shouldtake for language minority migrant students, rather than more timeon the wrong tasks.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article is a revised version of an invited paper presented at the Colloquium onClassroom Centered Research at the 19th Annual TESOL Convention, New York,1965. I would like to acknowledge the contributions of the entire research team andto thank the school personnel, students, and parents who participated in the study.I would also like to thank Pat Rigg and three TESOL Quarterly reviewers forhelpful comments.

THE AUTHOR

Donna M. Johnson is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at theUniversity of Arizona. Data were collected for this study while she was SeniorResearch Associate at RMC Research Corporation, Mountain View, CA. Herresearch has focused on social factors in second language learning, testing andprogram evaluation, and the organization of instruction for language minoritystudents.

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Rothman, R. (1986, September 17). Groups foster hands on approach toscience in early grades. Education Week, p. 10.

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Saville-Troike, M. (1984). What really matters in second language learningfor academic achievement? TESOL Quarterly, 18, 199-219.

Tucker, M., & Mandel, D. (1986). The Carnegie Report—A call forredesigning the schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 68, 24-27.

Tugend, A. (1986, September 17). Youth issues rise in prominence onnational agenda. Education Week, pp. 9, 13.

Urzúa, C. (1986). A children’s story. In P. Rigg & D.S. Enright (Eds.),Children and ESL: Integrating perspectives. Washington, DC: TESOL.

Widdowson, H.G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Willets, K.F. (Ed.). (1986). Integrating language and content instruction(Educational Report Series). Los Angeles: University of California,Center for Language Education and Research.

Wong Fillmore, L. (1986). Research currents: Equity or excellence?Language Arts, 63 (5), 74-81.

Wong Fillmore, L., with Valadez, C. (1986). Teaching bilingual learners.In M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.)(pp. 648-685). New York: Macmillan.



Content and Formal Schematain ESL ReadingPATRICIA L. CARRELLSouthern Illinois University

This article reports the results of an experiment investigating thesimultaneous effects on ESL reading comprehension of bothculture-specific content schemata and formal schemata, as well asany potential interaction between them. In the study, high-intermediate ESL students read, recalled, and answered questionsabout each of two texts. For each of two groups of readers(students of Muslim and Catholic/Spanish backgrounds), one texthad culturally familiar content, the other culturally unfamiliarcontent. Within each group, one half of the subjects read the textsin a familiar, well-organized rhetorical format, the other half readthe texts in an unfamiliar, altered rhetorical format. Resultsshowed the conditions expected to yield good reading compre-hension (familiar content, familiar rhetorical form) did so.Similarly, the conditions expected to yield poor readingcomprehension (unfamiliar content, unfamiliar rhetorical form)did so. More interestingly, the results for the “mixed” conditions(familiar content, unfamiliar rhetorical form; unfamiliar content,familiar rhetorical form) indicated that content schemata affectedreading comprehension to a greater extent than formal schemata.Specific results are presented and discussed, as are limitations ofthe study and teaching implications.

One type of schema, or background knowledge, a reader bringsto a text is a content schema, which is knowledge relative to thecontent domain of the text. Another type is a formal schema, orknowledge relative to the formal, rhetorical organizationalstructures of different types of texts.

In empirical tests of these two different types of schemata, it isfairly easy to separate out and to test for the effects of one type,while holding the effects of the other type constant. For example, intesting for the effects of content schemata, one keeps the formalrhetorical structure of a text constant, manipulates the content, andhas comparable groups of subjects process each different content.Any differences on the dependent measures (answers to literal or

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inferential questions, written or oral recall protocols, summaries,and so on) are then presumed to be due to the manipulation ofcontent and readers’ background knowledge of that content.

This type of research has in fact been typical in the field. Theseminal study of Steffensen, Joag-dev, and Anderson (1979) is agood example of this type of cross-cultural research on contentschemata. In that study, two groups of subjects with differentcultural heritages were investigated—a group of Asian Indiansliving in the United States and a group of Americans. Each subjectwas asked to read and recall two personal letters, both of whichwere constructed with similar rhetorical organization. However, thecultural content of the two letters differed; one described atraditional Indian wedding, the other a traditional Americanwedding. It was assumed that all adult members of a society wouldhave a well-developed system of background knowledge about themarriage customs of their own culture and a relative lack ofknowledge about the marriage customs of more distant cultures.This is exactly what Steffensen et al. found. Both the Indian andAmerican groups read the material dealing with their own culturalbackground faster and recalled more of the content. Furthermore,members of the culture provided appropriate cultural elaborations;nonmembers provided inappropriate cultural distortions, fre-quently outright intrusions from their own culture. In short, thestudy showed the clear and profound influence of cultural contentschemata on reading comprehension.

Johnson (1981), who also investigated content schemata whileholding formal schemata constant, used two authentic folktales andtwo groups of readers—a group of Iranian students studying in theUnited States and a group of Americans. Both groups read a MullahNasr-el-Din story from Iranian folklore and a story about BuffaloBill from American folklore. Of the two folktales, Johnson says,“both contained similar motifs which were culturally distinct yetwere equivalent in plot construction” (p. 170). Thus, as with theSteffensen et al. study, Johnson manipulated the content and heldthe form constant. Johnson’s results were much like those ofSteffensen et al. —superior performance on a given text bymembers of the cultural group, poorer performance by non-members of the cultural group—thus clearly showing strong effectsof cultural content schemata. (Johnson, 1982, was omitted fromconsideration because it was not possible to determine, on the basisof the author’s description, whether or not the two experimentallycontrived texts were rhetorically equivalent.) Thus, at least thesetwo studies clearly show the separate effects of content schemata,specifically cross-cultural content schemata, on ESL reading.

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Likewise, one can test for the effects of formal schemata bykeeping the content of a text constant, varying the rhetoricalorganization, and having comparable groups of subjects processeach different rhetorical pattern. Again, one measures differencesbetween the groups on some dependent measure(s) expected to beaffected by the differences in comprehension due to themanipulation of form. The same types of dependent measures havebeen used in this type of schema research: scoring recall protocolsor summaries for the number and types of propositions or idea unitsthey contain compared with the original text, or looking at the waydifferent types of literal and inferential questions about the text areanswered. At least two different studies of this type have beenconducted in ESL reading, one with narrative text (Carrell, 1984b)and one with expository text (Carrell, 1984a).

Carrell (1984b) investigated the effects of a simple narrativeformal schema on reading in ESL and found differences amongESL readers in the quantity and temporal sequence of their recallbetween standard and interleaved versions of simple stories.Quantity of recall was enhanced when the story’s rhetoricalorganization conformed to a simple story schema—one well-structured episode followed by another. When stories violated thestory schema, the temporal sequencing of the readers’ recallstended to reflect the story schematic order rather than the temporalorder of presentation in the story.

With expository prose, Carrell (1984a) has shown the effects offour different English rhetorical patterns on the reading recall ofESL readers of various native language backgrounds. Using texts inwhich identical content information was structured in four differentexpository patterns, that study showed that the more tightlyorganized patterns of comparison, causation, and problem/solutiongenerally facilitated the recall of specific ideas from a text morethan a more loosely organized pattern called collection ofdescriptions. There were, however, additional differences amongthe four native language groups and the four expository text types.

Some studies of schematic effects have apparently confoundedcontent and formal schemata—failing to distinguish clearly the twotypes of schemata. (See Carrell, 1983, for a more extensivediscussion of the problems of confounding content and formalschemata. ) Kintsch and Greene (1978), who argue that the simplestructural story grammars typical of stories of Europeanbackground may not be typical of stories of other cultural origins,reported differences in the comprehension by American collegestudents of texts of European origin (e.g., Grimm’s fairy tales) andtexts of American Indian origin (e.g., Apache Indian tales). They

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concluded from their results that the subjects’ prior familiarity withthe European-based rhetorical organization and their lack offamiliarity with the rhetorical organization of the American Indiantales—that is, their formal schemata—was the cause of theAmerican students’ better comprehension of the European texts.But since the texts differed not only in rhetorical organization butalso in cultural content, one cannot rule out the possibility that theAmericans’ superior performance on the Grimm’s fairy tales wasdue to the more familiar cultural content of those tales or to somecombination of formal and content schemata.

Finally, one of my own earlier studies (Carrell, 1981), with groupsof Japanese and Chinese subjects reading English translations offolktales from their own native culture, as well as from WesternEuropean culture and from American Indian culture, suffers fromthe same potential confounding of content and formal schemata.Although differences in performance related to the cultural originof the texts were found, it was not possible to determine to whatextent these differences were due to content schemata or formalschemata, or to an interaction of the two.

Thus, formal and content schemata have been investigatedseparately and have been confounded in a single study. But to date,no research has been reported which shows the combined effects ofboth content and formal schemata, in a single controlled study.Although Berkowitz and Taylor (1981) did combine both formaland content schemata in a single study, the design was incomplete.That study investigated the effects of text type (narrative versusexpository text) and content familiarity (familiar versus unfamiliar)on native English-speaking sixth graders, but content familiaritywas varied only for the expository texts, not the narrative texts.

Clearly, prior research on content schemata suggests that texts oncontent from the subjects’ cultural heritage, that is, texts withfamiliar content, should be easier to read and comprehend thantexts on content from a distant, unfamiliar cultural heritage.Similarly, research on formal schemata clearly suggests that textswith familiar rhetorical organization should be easier to read andcomprehend than texts with unfamiliar rhetorical organization.

However, without research on the combined, simultaneouseffects of content and formal schemata, no specific predictions canbe made about the separate or possibly interactive effects of thesetwo types of schemata. The relative strengths of content and formalschemata in relation to each other are unknown. While previousresearch leads to the prediction that reading a familiar content in afamiliar rhetorical form should be relatively easy and that readingan unfamiliar content in an unfamiliar rhetorical form should be

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relatively difficult, no specific hypotheses follow from the previousresearch about reading a familiar content in an unfamiliar rhetoricalform, or about an unfamiliar content in a familiar rhetorical form.The study reported in this article addressed the simultaneous effectsof both content and formal schemata in an attempt to formulate andtest hypotheses for these conditions.

METHODSubjects

This study was conducted with two groups of high-intermediate-level ESL students enrolled in Levels 4 and 5 in the intensive Englishprogram for foreign students at the Center for English as a SecondLanguage (CESL) at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.TOEFL scores of students in Levels 4 and 5 generally fall in therange of 450 to 525. The subjects included all Level 4 and 5 studentswho were of Catholic or Muslim religion and who participated inboth testing sessions for the study. To obtain large enough samplesizes for each group, the study was run in three separate CESLterms: two terms during the fall of 1985 and one term in the springof 1986.

Group 1 consisted of 28 students of Muslim background,approximately half of whom were Muslim Arabs: 7 from Iran; 4each from Saudi Arabia and Indonesia; 2 each from Jordan,Palestine, and Malaysia; and 1 each from Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait,Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, and Mali. Group 2 consisted of 24 studentsof Roman Catholic background, predominantly Catholic Spanishspeakers from Central and South America: 4 each from Colombiaand Panama; 2 each from Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, andKorea; and 1 each from Mexico, Peru, Honduras, Venezuela,Argentina, Malaysia, Poland, and Senegal.

Muslim and Catholic were the two cultural groups targeted. Forthe purposes of this study, religion was considered the definingcharacteristic of each cultural group. The cultural origin of the textswas also based on religion. This does not mean that for otherpurposes and in other contexts, religion would necessarily be astronger determinant of cultural affiliation or identification than, forexample, national origin. For example, on nonreligious content, aCatholic from Malaysia may have more in common with a Muslimfrom Malaysia than with a Catholic from Colombia. (For otherstudies with religion as the culture-specific determinant, see Lipson,1983, and Markham & Latham, 1987.)


Materials

Texts. The two texts, originally authentic historical biographies oflittle-known religious personages, were fictionalized in terms of themain character and the events surrounding the main character. Thiswas done to assure that aside from the general cultural-religiousknowledge each reader would bring to the text, no one would havespecific information about the particular individual or the particularevents. Each text carried the name of the fictionalized maincharacter as its title: The Muslim text was entitled “Ali Affani”; theCatholic text was entitled “Saint Catherine.”

The fictionalized texts preserved the overall rhetorical structureof the original texts—historical narrative. Each text was editeddown, however, to two episodes. Therefore, each text began with ahistorical setting, introducing the main character and setting thetime in history. The setting was followed by a two-episode narrativeabout events in the life of the fictional character. Episode 1concerned events in the life of the character as a young person;Episode 2 concerned events in the latter part of the character’s life.Each text concluded with the death of the character. Thus, theseversions were well-formed historical narratives, a common type ofrhetorical organization. Furthermore, since the texts each originatedfrom the respective religions/cultures, each represented a rhetoricalorganization presumed to be familiar to the subjects in the study.

To manipulate the rhetorical form of these texts, altered versionswere created by interleaving the events from Episode 1 (about thecharacter as a young person) with the events from Episode 2 (aboutthe character as an older person). To assist the reader in keepingtrack of the different times and/or locations from each episode, thealtered texts contained a few additional phrases to help clarify timeand place. The texts were considered “fair” because these phraseswere sufficient to enable a careful reader to keep track of thesequence of events surrounding the main character. The settingsand conclusions of the texts remained unchanged. Thus, thesesystematically altered versions of the texts presumably representedan unfamiliar rhetorical organization for this type of historical,biographical narrative.

The unaltered and altered rhetorical organizations of these texts(straight temporal order/interleaved order) are presumed to berelated to formal schemata the reader has internalized (Mandler1978a, 1978b; Mandler & Johnson, 1977). The relative ease ordifficulty of cognitively processing one rhetorical organizationversus another is claimed to be due to, and to be explicable by, theformal schemata of the reader. The reader’s internalized formalschema for straight temporal sequencing of simple narratives is

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what should make processing such texts relatively easy. Theabsence in the reader of a formal schema for interleaved, orscrambled-order, texts is what should make processing such textsrelatively difficult. Hence, it is not the rhetorical structure of the textper se which makes it relatively easy or difficult to process, but howthat structure relates to a reader’s internalized formal schemata.

In fact, in the case of both content and form, what we areinterested in is the interaction between the content and form of textsand the content schemata and formal schemata, respectively, ofreaders. (This use of the word interaction—to describe an assumedrelationship between reader and text—should not be confused withthe other way that word is used in this article—to describe apotential statistical relationship between the two independentvariables, content and form, in a two-factor research design.) Thetitle of this article is taken from the perspective of the reader, theresearch design of the study manipulates the text, but the constructs(familiar and unfamiliar content, familiar and unfamiliar form)must be interpreted in terms of the interaction. A text is neitherfamiliar nor unfamiliar, neither easy nor difficult in an absolutesense, but only as a function of the interaction between a reader andthat text.

Familiar content and familiar form in this study were defined astexts which reflected the content domain of the reader’s cultural-religious group membership and a well-organized temporalsequence ordering, both presumed to be related to the reader’scontent and formal schemata, respectively. Unfamiliar content andunfamiliar form in this study were defined as texts which reflecteda content domain opposite to the reader’s cultural-religious groupmembership and an interleaved/scrambled organization, bothpresumed to be unrelated to the reader’s content and formalschemata, respectively.

In addition, various other formal aspects of the texts werecontrolled. Both versions of both texts were of approximately equallength (between 250 and 257 words), consisted of approximatelythe same number of clauses (34 or 35), the same number of T-units(18-22), the same average number of clauses per T-unit (1.6-1.9),and the same average number of words per T-unit (11.4-14.3)(Flahive & Snow, 1980; Hunt, 1965). On the Dale-Chall (1948)readability formula, the texts were determined to be at the fifth-sixth grade reading level. Both versions of both texts appear in theAppendix.

Multiple-choice questions. A set of 14 multiple-choice comprehen-sion-inference questions was also developed for each text. The


questions were based upon factual information in the text and couldnot be answered correctly without having read and understood therelevant part of the text. However, each question required thesubject to combine the factual information in the text withappropriate inferences.

Among the five answer options for each question, the correctchoice included culturally appropriate extensions of the informationgiven in the text, and the distracters contained culturally in-appropriate extensions of the information given in the text,including some with a probable basis in the opposite cultural-religious group. For example, the “Ali Affani” text said: “Towardsthe end of the year 405. . .” One question on this text said:

Ali’s story most likely took place . . .(a) 405 years after Mohammed left Mecca. [the culturally correct

answer](b) 405 years after the birth of Mohammed.(c) 405 years after Mohammed came to Mecca.(d) 405 B.C.(e) 405 years after the death of Mohammed.

It was anticipated that those foreign to the culture of the text butfamiliar with Catholicism-Christianity might choose the distracterinvolving B.C. or those involving the birth or death of Mohammed.Such choices might result from schema transfer from the Christiancalendar, which dates events relative to the birth of Christ.

In another part of the “Ali Affani” text, Ali is in the sanctuary, Al-Haram, in the Holy City, and, the text said, he “prayed constantly.”One question about this part of the text was as follows:

While praying, Ali probably faced . . .(a) Mecca.(b) the Great Mosque.(c) the Kaaba. [the culturally appropriate answer](d) the west.(e) the east.

It was anticipated that those who were unfamiliar with howMuslims pray once they are inside Mecca but who knew somethingabout Muslims facing Mecca or facing the east when they praywould select those distracters. It was anticipated that only insidersto the culture/religion would know the culturally appropriateanswer.Debriefing questionnaire. A one-page debriefing questionnaire wasdeveloped to elicit relevant information on the subjects’ country,native language, religion, degree of religiousness (on a 1-10 scale),

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degree of prior familiarity with the information in the text (on a 1-5scale), knowledge of the religion represented by the text (on a 1-5scale), and ratings of the difficulty of the grammar, vocabulary,content, and overall organization of the text (all on 1-5 scales).

Procedures

Subjects were tested on 2 successive days in their regular CESLreading classes. Both groups of subjects were exposed to “AliAffani” on the first day and to “Saint Catherine” on the second day.Rather than counterbalance the order of presentation of the twotexts, it was decided to control for possible contamination whichmight result from subjects who were exposed to a text on the firstday discussing the content with other subjects who would bereceiving that text the next day.

Both groups of subjects—Muslims and Catholics—read, recalled,and then answered the questions about each text. Subjects wereinstructed to read the passage at their own reading rate, not to try tomemorize the text but to understand it. They were also informedthat they would be asked about the passage later. Recall instructionsasked the subjects to write down as much as they could rememberfrom the passage, as exactly as they could, using completesentences. They could use the words from the texts or their ownwords, but they were not allowed to refer back to the passageduring recall.

Within each group, one half of the subjects read the familiar,rhetorically well-organized version, and the other half read theunfamiliar, rhetorically altered version. In addition, between thereading and recall tasks, the debriefing questionnaire served tominimize the effects of short-term memory as well as to elicitrelevant information on the subjects.

Analyses

Data in the study consisted of the answers to the multiple-choicecomprehension-inference questions, the variables from thedebriefings, and various analyses performed on the written recallprotocols.

The recall protocols were analyzed for the quantity of idea unitsrecalled from the original text and the quality of the idea units—thatis, whether the ideas recalled were top-level ideas representing thetwo central episodes; high-level, or main, ideas within each episode;midlevel ideas, or subtopics; or low-level ideas, or details. Analysisof the reading passages into idea units and into levels of idea unitswas accomplished by the researcher, with cross-validation by two


research assistants, one familiar with Catholic/Spanish culture/religion and the other familiar with Muslim culture/religion.

In addition, the recall protocols were scored for elaborations anddistortions, as well as other errors of recall. Elaborations areculturally appropriate extensions of the text, produced whensomeone knowledgeable about the culture provides additionalculturally correct information not found in or logically inferablefrom the text; distortions are culturally inappropriate modificationsof the text, often outright intrusions from another culture, in whichunfamiliar ideas are interpreted, remembered, and recalled in termsof another cultural schema.

Because of the cross-cultural nature of the study, every recallprotocol was analyzed by two different scorers, one intimatelyfamiliar with Catholic/Spanish culture/religion and one intimatelyfamiliar with Muslim culture/religion. Reliability between the twojudges in scoring the recalls was r = .94. Conflicting scores on theideas recalled and on elaborations and distortions were resolved bydiscussion among these two scorers and the experimenter.

Statistical analyses were performed with the SAS package ofstatistical programs on Southern Illinois University’s IBM 3081-370computer, using the General Linear Models procedure, which iscomparable with analysis of variance. An alpha level of .05 waschosen as the significance level. Nonsignificant results are indicatedby n.s.; significant results have the exact probability levels reported.

RESULTSAnalysis of Debriefing Questionnaires

Analysis of subjects’ responses to the debriefing questionnaireenabled us to check and compare the two groups of subjects. First,there was the expected significant interaction between the groupsand their reported degree of knowledge of the religion reflected inthe texts, F = 53.62, p = .0001. Subjects were asked to indicate, ona 1-5 scale (1 = nothing, 5 = very much), how much knowledgethey had of the religion reflected in the text. The Muslims reportedsignificantly greater knowledge of the Muslim religion (M = 4.11)than of the Catholic religion (M= 1.80), and the Catholics reportedsignificantly greater knowledge of the Catholic religion (M = 3.13)than of the Muslim religion (M= 1.94).

Second, when asked to indicate, on a 1-10 scale (1 = not at allreligious, 10 = very religious), how religious they felt they were, thetwo groups were significantly different: Muslims, M = 6.5;Catholics, M = 5.6; F = 4.29, p = .0410. Thus, the Muslimsperceived themselves to be more religious than did the Catholics.

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There was the expected significant interaction between thegroups and their reported degree of prior familiarity with theinformation in the text, F = 67.36, p = .0001. They were asked toreport, on a 1-5 scale (1 = all of it, 5 = none of it), how much of theinformation in the reading was familiar to them before they read it.The Muslims reported significantly greater prior familiarity withthe information in the Muslim text (M = 2.39) than that in theCatholic text (M = 4.04), and the Catholics similarly reportedsignificantly greater prior familiarity with the information in theCatholic text (M = 3.29) than that in the Muslim text (M = 4.04).

Subjects also assessed, on a 1-5 scale (1 = very easy, 5 = verydifficult), the degree of difficulty of each reading in terms ofgrammar, vocabulary, content, and overall organization. Subjects’assessments of the relative ease or difficulty of content weresignificantly related to the difference in content—f amiliar versusunfamiliar—and subjects’ assessments of the relative ease ordifficulty of overall organization were significantly related to thedifference in form–familiar versus unfamiliar (see Table 1).

TABLE 1Difficulty Ratings as a Function of Familiar and UnfamiliarForm, Content, and the Interaction of Form and Content

Criterion

OverallGrammar Vocabulary Content organization

Form n.s. n.s. n.s. F = 4.60b

p = .0369Content n.s. n.s. F = 4.72b n.s.

p = .0346Form x Content n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s.

Note: The scale of difficulty was 1 (very easy) -5 (very difficult).a Familiar form M = 2.09, unfamiliar form M = 2.69.b Familiar content M = 1.83, unfamiliar content M = 2.04.

It is noteworthy that this effect, while statistically significant atthe .05 level, is not as robust as the other statistical differences foundin this study, most of which are significant at .0001. This relativelyweak effect on the part of subjects reporting differences in thedifficulty of the texts due to content and form may be related to asimilar finding by Carrell and Wallace (1983). In that study, neithercontext nor prior familiarity significantly affected ESL readers’ratings of text comprehensibility. Carrell and Wallace concluded


that as a group, the ESL readers tended not to have a sharply honedsense of how easy or difficult a text was for them to understand andthat they tended to overrate their comprehension relative to thelevel of their recall. Texts perceived as equally “easy” were notrecalled equally well. The weak effect here may be due to the samelack of metacognitive sensitivity.

Analysis of Question Answers and Recall Protocols

Descriptive data for the mean number of questions answeredcorrectly and the mean percentage of idea units recalled from theoriginal texts are reported in Table 2. Even superficial inspection of

TABLE 2Mean Scores for Question Answers and Quantity of Recall

Passage type M

Question answersFamiliar content, familiar form 6.58Unfamiliar content, familiar form 3.38Familiar content, unfamiliar form 6.08Unfamiliar content, unfamiliar form 3.62

Quantity of recallFamiliar content, familiar form 43.35Unfamiliar content, familiar form 35.73Familiar content, unfamiliar form 39.58Unfamiliar content, unfamiliar form 33.15

these data shows that content was a stronger predictor ofperformance than was form or any interaction between the two.And indeed, inferential statistical analysis confirms that impression(see Table 3). In other words, based on these results, not only are

TABLE 3Question Answers and Quantity of Recall as a Function of Familiar and

Unfamiliar Form, Content, and the Interaction of Form and Content

Question answers Quantity of recall

Form n.s. n.s.Content F = 64.43 F = 13.65

p = .0001 p = .0005Form x Content n.s. n.s.

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the predictions of the original hypotheses confirmed (familiarcontent-familiar form = easy; unfamiliar content-unfamiliar form =difficult), but it would appear that reading familiar content even inan unfamiliar rhetorical form is relatively easy, whereas readingunfamiliar content even in a familiar rhetorical form is relativelydifficult.

However, lest we conclude too hastily that the rhetorical form ofa text has no effect on ESL reading comprehension, whenfamiliarity of content is also a factor, the analysis of the type ofinformation, or the kinds of idea units, recalled revealed one veryinteresting, significant effect of form (see Table 4). When recalls

TABLE 4Type of Idea Units Recalled as a Function of Familiar and Unfamiliar

Form, Content, and the Interaction of Form and Content

Type of idea unit

were scored for whether they clearly expressed the two top ideas ofeach text, that is, the two central and separate episodes in each text,the form of the text was found to be a significant factor. Subjectswho read the versions of the texts in which the events from the twoepisodes were interleaved failed to express clearly the separatenessof these two episodes in their recalls. It appears that these subjectsdid not clearly understand that each text was about two separatetime periods in the life of the main character. Events from thesecond episode, the latter part of the character’s life, were confusedwith events from the first episode, the early part of the character’slife. Subjects in this condition tended to recall the text as one singleepisode and had no sensitivity to the time differences of the events.

Table 4 also shows a significant main effect for familiarity ofcontent at the high level of idea units, that is, at the level of mainideas within each episode. Subjects familiar with the content of atext recalled significantly more main topics and major idea units


from each episode than did subjects unfamiliar with the content.Familiar versus unfamiliar content and form had nonsignificanteffects on the recall of midlevel idea units (subtopics within eachepisode) and of low-level idea units (details).

The results of scoring culturally appropriate elaborations andculturally inappropriate distortions and other errors are shown inTable 5. Superficial inspection of the data in Table 5 indicates that

TABLE 5Mean Number of Idea Units Elaborated or Distorted per Recall Protocol

Passage type M

ElaborationsFamiliar content, familiar form 2.35Unfamiliar content, familiar form 0.19Familiar content, unfamifiar form 2.42Unfamiliar content, unfamiliar form 0.31

DistortionsFamiliar content, familiar form 0.08Unfamiliar content, familiar form 3.38Familiar content, unfamiliar form 0.15Unfamiliar content, unfamiliar form 3.15

content is a stronger source of elaborations and distortions thanform, and indeed inferential statistical analysis confirms thisimpression (see Table 6). Those familiar with the cultural-religiousbackground of the text engaged in culturally appropriateelaborations in their recall protocols; those unfamiliar with thecultural-religious background of the text made culturallyinappropriate modifications of the text, including obvious intrusionsfrom their own cultural-religious background. Whether the formwas rhetorically familiar or unfamiliar had no significant effect onsubjects’ engaging in culturally based elaborations or distortions.

TABLE 6Elaborations and Distortions as a Function of

Form, Content, and the Interaction of Form and Content

Elaborations Distortions

Form n.s. n.s.Content F = 65.80 F = 80.43

p= .0001 p= .0001Form x Content n.s. n.s.

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Examples of culturally appropriate elaborations provided byinsiders to the culture/religion include the following from a Muslimon the “Ali Affani” text “he went to Mecca because he wanted topray in Al Haram, because when you pray one time in Mecca it’sequal one thousand than other place.” The following elaborationswere provided by Catholics on the “Saint Catherine” text: “Shewanted to join the Dominican Order, a religious order,” “Shecarried for the sick in a Catholic hospital,” “when she was 21 shebecame a nun,” and “Catherine died at 33 years old, the same agethan Christ.” One Catholic even ended his recall protocol with theword Amen. Examples of culturally inappropriate distortions bythose outside the culture/religion of the text include the followingfrom Catholics on the “Ali Affani” text: “when he was walking to thechurch” and “he went to live in a monastery.” The following wastypical of the distortions provided by Muslims on the “SaintCatherine” text: “She lived in Italy with her holy family.”

Finally, recall protocols were scored for three different kinds oferrors: (a) sequence errors, that is, the number of idea units whichwere involved in distortions of the chronological sequence ofevents; (b) blends, that is, the number of pairs or sets of idea unitsblended together in recall; and (c) other errors, including lexicalerrors, syntactic errors, and errors whose source was otherwiseinexplicable. The third category included such errors as a subject’srecalling that Ali Affani found his mother in a tree or in a chair,rather than in the street, or recalling about St. Catherine that “shedidn’t nurse sick” instead of “when she was not nursing the sick.”

As can be seen in Table 7, no significant effects were obtained forblends or other errors. Only sequence errors showed significanteffects, and these were due to form. As previously mentioned, those

TABLE 7Errors as a Function of Form, Content, and the

Interaction of Form and Content

Form x Content n.s. n.s. n.s.a Familiar form M = 0.62, unfamiliar form M = 6.00).


who read the unfamiliar, rhetorically altered forms of the textstended to confuse sequences of events and relationships betweenevents. For example, in the Saint Catherine text, Catherine told herparents that she wanted to become a nun, and did become a nun,before she had a vision. Readers of the unfamiliar, rhetoricallyaltered form often recalled her telling her parents she wanted tobecome a nun after she had had her vision.

DISCUSSION

The overall finding of this study seems to be that when bothcontent and rhetorical form are factors in ESL reading comprehen-sion, content is generally more important than form. Whenboth form and content are familiar, the reading is relatively easy;when both form and content are unfamiliar, the reading is relativelydifficult. When either form or content is unfamiliar, unfamiliarcontent poses more clifficulties for the reader than unfamiliar form.However, perhaps not too surprisingly, rhetorical form is asignificant factor, more important than content, in the comprehen-sion of the top-level episodic structure of a text and in thecomprehension of event sequences and temporal relationshipsamong events. In other words, each component—content andform—plays a significant, but different, role in the comprehensionof text.

Further research on the combined effects of content and form inESL reading comprehension is clearly needed. This study is a firstof its kind and involved only one particular manipulation of contentand only one particular manipulation of form, with rather specificcultural groups of ESL readers at one proficiency level (high-intermediate). Further studies are needed to examine otherproficiency levels, other cultural groups, and other types ofmanipulation of content and form. For example, other kinds ofmanipulations of a text’s rhetorical organization, related to theformal schemata of various types of readers, may yield resultsdifferent from those obtained in this study.

Failing this additional research, the teaching implications of thisstudy should not be overstated. However, I do not believe it wouldbe an overstatement to say that this study suggests, as have othersbefore it (for example, Carrell& Eisterhold, 1983), that in the ESLreading classroom, content is of primary importance. As Steffensenet al. (1979) have said, “the schemata embodying backgroundknowledge about the content of a discourse exert a profoundinfluence on how well the discourse will be comprehended,learned, and remembered” (p. 19).

Teachers of ESL reading need to be aware of the important role

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in ESL reading of background knowledge of text content,especially cultural content, and they must often be facilitators of theacquisition of appropriate cultural content knowledge. Stevens’s(1982) observation about L1 reading teachers applies equally, if notmore so, to ESL reading teachers: “A teacher of reading might thusbe viewed as a teacher of relevant information as well as a teacherof reading skills” (p. 328). In addition, however, as I have suggestedelsewhere (Carrell, 1985) based on related research, ESL readingteachers also need to be cognizant of the rhetorical organization oftexts and should teach students to recognize and use the top-levelrhetorical organization of text to facilitate comprehension andrecall.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my research assistants, Jo Ellen Rayyan and Aida Pérez, for theirassistance with various aspects of this project. I also thank my colleagues in theCenter for English as a Second Language who facilitated my access to theinternational students who took part in the study. Further, I would like to thanktwo colleagues, Sandra Silberstein and Ulla Connor, for reading and commentingon an earlier draft of this article; they bear no responsibility for any remainingdifficulties. Finally, this article has benefited from the comments of twoanonymous reviewers, to whom I am grateful. This research was partiallysupported by an internal grant from the Office of Research Development andAdministration at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

THE AUTHOR

Patricia L. Carrell is Professor of Linguistics/ESL and Psychology and AssociateDean of the Graduate School at Southern Illinois University. Her previous researchon content and formal schemata and ESL reading, for which she was awarded the1985 Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education by theAmerican Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, has been published inthe TESOL Quarterly, Language Learning, and The Modern Language Journaland will also appear in forthcoming volumes co-edited with Dave Eskey andJoanne Devine.

REFERENCES

Berkowitz, S., & Taylor, B. (1981). The effects of text type and familiarityon the nature of information recalled by readers. In M.L. Kamil (Ed.),Directions in reading: Research and instruction (pp. 157-161).Washington, DC: National Reading Conference.


Carrell, P.L. (1981). Culture-specific schemata in L2 comprehension. In R.Orem & J. Haskell (Eds.), Selected papers from the Ninth IllinoisTESOL/BE Annual Convention, First Midwest TESOL Conference(pp. 123-132). Chicago: Illinois TESOL/BE.

Carrell, P.L. (1983). Some issues in studying the role of schemata, orbackground knowledge, in second language comprehension. Reading ina Foreign Language, 1, 81-92.

Carrell, P.L. (1984a). The effects of rhetorical organization on ESLreaders. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 441-469.

Carrell, P.L. (1984b). Evidence of a formal schema in second languagecomprehension. Language Learning, 34, 87-112.

Carrell, P.L. (1985). Facilitating ESL reading by teaching text structure.TESOL Quarterly, 19, 727-752.

Carrell, P. L., & Eisterhold, J.C. (1983). Schema theory and ESL readingpedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 553-573.

Carrell, P. L., & Wallace, B. (1983). Background knowledge: Context andfamiliarity in reading comprehension. In M.A. Clarke &J. Handscombe(Eds.), On TESOL ’82 (pp. 295-308). Washington, DC: TESOL.

Dale, E., & Chall, J.S. (1948). A formula for predicting readability:Instructions. Educational Research Bulletin, 27, 37-54.

Flahive, D. E., & Snow, B.G. (1980). Measures of syntactic complexity inevaluating ESL compositions. In J. W. Oller, Jr., & K. Perkins (Eds.),Research in language testing (pp. 171-176). Rowley, MA: NewburyHouse.

Hunt, K. W. (1965). Grammatical structures written at 3 grade leuels.Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Johnson, P. (1981). Effects on reading comprehension of languagecomplexity and cultural background of a text. TESOL Quarterly, 15,169-181.

Johnson, P. (1982). Effects on reading comprehension of buildingbackground knowledge. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 503-516.

Kintsch, W., & Greene, E. (1978). The role of culture-specific schemata inthe comprehension and recall of stories. Discourse Processes, 1, 1-13.

Lipson, M.Y. (1983). The influence of religious affiliation on children’smemory for text information. Reading Research Quarterly, 18, 448-457.

Mandler, J.M. (1978a). Categorical and schematic organization in memory(Tech. Rep. No. 16). San Diego: University of California, Center forHuman Information Processing.

Mandler, J.M. (1978b). A code in the node: The use of a story schema inretrieval. Discourse Processes, 1, 14-35.

Mandler, J. M., & Johnson, N.S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed:Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 111-151.

Markham, P., & Latham, M. (1987). The influence of religion-specificbackground knowledge on the listening comprehension of adult second-language students. Language Learning, 37, 157-170.

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Steffensen, M. S., Joag-dev, C., & Anderson, R.C, (1979). A cross-culturalperspective on reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 15,10-29.

Stevens, K. (1982). Can we improve reading by teaching backgroundinformation? Journal of Reading, 25, 326-329.

APPENDIXSaint Catherine

(Familiar, Well-Organized Form)

About six hundred years ago, there was a young woman namedCatherine. She lived with her parents in Italy.

As a young child, because she was born on the Feast of theAnnunciation, Catherine loved the Blessed Mother and the Holy Familyvery much. Whenever she climbed up or down stairs, she would kneel oneach step and say a Hail Mary. She never went anywhere without herrosary.

When she was sixteen years old, a rich man was eager to marryCatherine. Her parents liked him and wanted her to marry him, butCatherine did not want to. After refusing to marry the rich man, Catherinetold her parents she wanted to become the bride of Christ. Her parentswere angry, but they finally agreed.

When she was twenty-one years old, Catherine joined the Dominicanorder. She worked in the hospitals with the other young women of theorder. When she was not nursing the sick, she was at Mass. One day, onAsh Wednesday, after receiving communion as a Dominican, Catherinehad a remarkable vision. While looking at the cross, five blood-red rays oflight came from the cross and touched her hands, feet, and chest. After hervision, Catherine fainted. She got better quickly, but the scars remained onher body for the rest of her life. This was not long, however; she died whenshe was thirty-three.

Because of this, and other remarkable things about her life, she is knowntoday as Saint Catherine.

Saint Catherine(Unfamiliar, Altered Form)

About six hundred years ago, there was a young woman namedCatherine. She lived with her parents in Italy.

As a young child, because she was born on the Feast of theAnnunciation, Catherine loved the Blessed Mother and the Holy Familyvery much. Whenever she climbed up or down stairs, she would kneel oneach step and say a Hail Mary. She never went anywhere without herrosary. When she was twenty-one years old, Catherine joined theDominican order. She worked in the hospitals with the other youngwomen of the order. When she was not nursing the sick, she was at Mass.


When she was sixteen years old, a rich man was eager to marryCatherine. Her parents liked him and wanted her to marry him, butCatherine did not want to. One day, on Ash Wednesday, after receivingcommunion as a Dominican, Catherine had a remarkable vision. Whilelooking at the cross, five blood-red rays of light came from the cross andtouched her hands, feet, and chest.

After refusing to marry the rich man, Catherine told her parents shewanted to become the bride of Christ. Her parents were angry, but theyfinally agreed. After her vision, Catherine fainted. She got better quickly,but the scars remained on her body for the rest of her life. This was notlong, however; she died when she was thirty-three.

Because of this, and other remarkable things about her life, she is knowntoday as Saint Catherine.

(Familiar, With &@zed Form)

Ali Affani

There once was a young man named Ali Affani. He lived in Jidda withhis widowed mother.

Towards the end of the year 405, young Ali’s mother agreed that hecould go to Mecca as all good men do. While in the desert, on his way toMecca, something happened which made young Ali unfit to continue histrip. Believing that his trip had begun badly, he returned to Jidda. Uponreturning to Jidda, young Ali found his mother sitting in the street, cryingand tearing her clothes and hair like a crazy woman. She told Ali that sincehe had left, she had been in the street. She would not enter the housewithout her son. Ali really wanted to go to Mecca, but could not leave hersitting outside, so he stayed home.

Ali was finally able to go to Mecca, several years later, after his motherdied, in the year of 420. Ali spent the rest of his life in the sanctuary, Al-Haram, in the Holy City. He only left once each day to buy food. He didnot need to buy water because God provided it. As an old man, Ali wasvery religious and prayed constantly. Each day he would read from theKoran while walking around the Kaaba a number of times. In the sanctuaryin Mecca, whenever Ali walked around the Kaaba, he would show hisrespect for the precious stone.

Ali died in the Great Mosque, his home for thirty years.

Ali Affani(Unfamiliar, Altered Form)

There once was a young man named Ali Affani. He lived in Jidda withhis widowed mother.

Towards the end of the year 405, young Ali’s mother agreed that hecould go to Mecca as all good men do. Ali was finally able to go to Mecca,several years later, after his mother died, in the year of 420. Ali spent therest of his life in the sanctuary, Al-Haram, in the Holy City. He only left

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once each day to buy food. He did not need to buy water because Godprovided it.

While in the desert, on his way to Mecca the first time, somethinghappened which made young Ali unfit to continue his trip. Believing thathis trip had begun badly, he returned to Jidda. As an old man in Mecca, Aliwas very religious and prayed constantly. Each day he would read fromthe Koran while walking around the Kaaba a number of times.

Upon returning to Jidda, young Ali found his mother sitting in the street,crying and tearing her clothes and hair like a crazy woman. She told Alithat since he had left, she had been in the street. She would not enter thehouse without her son. Ali really wanted to go to Mecca, but could notleave her sitting outside, so he stayed home. In the sanctuary in Mecca atlast, whenever Ali walked around the Kaaba, he would show his respectfor the precious stone.

Ali died in the Great Mosque, his home for thirty years.



A Cooperative Small-Group Methodologyin the Language ClassroomYAEL BEJARANOEveryman’s University, The Open University of Israel

The study reported in this article assessed the effects of twosmall-group cooperative techniques (Discussion Group; StudentTeams and Achievement Divisions) and the whole-class methodon academic achievement in EFL for 665 pupils in 33 seventh-grade classes. The students were taught by 18 teachers (assigned atrandom to one of the three methods), who participated in trainingworkshops followed up by in-class coaching. Evaluation of pupils’achievement was conducted by observation and by specialachievement tests administered before and after the experiment.Particularly noteworthy are the findings revealing that both groupmethods registered significantly greater improvement than thewhole-class method on the total score of the test and on thelistening comprehension scale. These findings support the linkbetween the communicative approach to foreign languageinstruction and cooperative learning in small groups. The studydemonstrates how to forge a link between the content and theprocess of instruction.

The emphasis in language teaching has recently shifted frompurely structural competence to communicative competence—from the ability to merely manipulate the linguistic structurescorrectly to the ability to use the language appropriately in realcommunication. It is generally agreed that there should be a balancebetween grammatical accuracy and communicative effectiveness(Littlewood, 1981), between “use” and “usage” (Widdowson, 1978).In Hymes’s (1972) words, “There are rules of use without which therules of grammar would be useless” (p. 275).

Thus, it is reasonable to predict that language instruction whichemphasizes interpersonal communication will be more effectivethan instructional methods concentrating on having students learnrules of grammar (Breen & Candlin, 1980; Brumfit, 1980; Brumfit &Johnson, 1979; Krashen, 1981; Littlewood, 1981). The bestclassroom lessons in English are therefore those in which pupils

483

understand what is said to them and in which they are directly andactively involved in a natural process of communication withothers.

Along this line of thought, Littlewood (1981) has suggested theincorporation of three perspectives in the communicativecurriculum: structural, functional, and communicative. Thestructural perspective involves the rules of grammar, and thefunctional perspective is the way structure is related to itscommunicative functions (e.g., note the use of the modal may inasking for permission in the sentence, May I borrow your pen?);these two perspectives can be taught formally. The communicativeperspective, which is the appropriate use of language as aninstrument for social communication, is acquired informally byactually participating in such communication. This perspectiveentails a more informal and natural acquisition of strategies forcommunication, which include the ability to use the languagesystem creatively and to relate forms to function appropriately insituations involving real meaning, real time, and actual interaction.

These three perspectives, as outlined by Littlewood, will enablelearners to communicate appropriately in the new language. Theyillustrate the linguistic content the communicative syllabus aims toattain—or the what. But the problem for designers and providers oflanguage instruction has been to determine how to apply this newapproach in the language classroom (Johnson & Morrow, 1981;Krahnke & Christison, 1983; Krashen, 1981; Stevick, 1980). Amethodology is needed which will bridge the gap between thelanguage content we teach (the what) and the instructionalmethodology (the how). A few attempts have been made bymethodologists like Curran (1972, 1976), Gattegno (1972, 1976),Lozanov (1979), Asher (1977a, 1977b), and Winitz and Reeds (1973),but they are hardly applicable on a large scale. Moreover, none ofthese methodologists has drawn any systematic conclusions on theresults of broad-based research in applying their methodologies.

This article reports the results of a study designed to assess acooperative-group methodology that combines the what and thehow in the language classroom and was thus intended to answermany of the pedagogical questions ESL/EFL teachers are facedwith as a result of the content/process dichotomy discussed above.

In effect, two levels of theoretical principles guided this study.One relates to the instructional content—based on theories oflanguage and language acquisition. The other relates to thepsychological dimension of classroom life, to the problems ofhuman interaction in the small-group social setting and toorganizing task-oriented groups of pupils so that they can functionproductively.

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One of the most prominent bodies of research and practiceconcentrating on changing the traditional classroom in order toimprove learning and social relations among classmates is that ofcooperative learning (Sharan, 1980; Slavin, 1980a). Cooperativelearning methods were designed to provide teachers with small-group techniques for daily instruction in the classroom.

SMALL-GROUP TEACHING

The educational approach of small-group teaching defines theclass as a group of groups (or an aggregate of groups). The class isorganized in groups of two to six students in order to fulfill a learningtask cooperatively. The learning task is based on interaction andreciprocal interdependence among the members of the group andrequires mutual help. In this educational approach, students andteacher are in a state of dynamic cooperation and together buildupan intimate learning and social atmosphere in the classroom. Thetextbook and the teacher are no longer the only sources of informa-tion but are replaced by a variety of other sources—such as books,journals, and consultation with other people.

The roles of teacher and students are different from those in thewhole-class setup. The teacher is no longer a lecturer or transmitterof material, but rather a facilitator of learning who focuses on thelearning process by encouraging cooperation among the students;the students are no longer trying to impress their teacher but arebusy learning actively.

Small-group teaching is a flexible tool that can be adapted to boththe affective and the learning needs of students. It is not oneparticular teaching technique but rather an overall method whichcan serve different needs in the language classroom depending onthe technique used: Slavin’s (1978a) Student Teams and Achieve-ment Divisions (STAD), Sharan and Lazarowitz’s (1978) DiscussionGroup (DG), and Aaronson, Blaney, Sikes, and Shapp’s (1978)Jigsaw.

The fundamental principles and operational features of theSTAD and DG techniques, which were .implemented in the study,are described below. In the Jigsaw, which is beyond the scope ofthis article, each student acquires expertise in only one portion ofthe material given to the whole group. The students who have thesame portion form an “expert team” in which they help each othermaster their common section. They then return to their own groups,and all teach their expertise to their group mates. When all thestudents have studied all the portions of the material, they take anindividual quiz.

A COOPERATIVE SMALL-GROUP METHODOLOGY 485

The STAD Technique

STAD, a peer-tutoring technique, is based on raising students’motivation for learning by focusing on cooperation of memberswithin each team, followed by competition among the teams in theclass. The technique follows six stages: (a) organizing smallheterogeneous groups, (b) presenting the teaching unit, (c) assigningcooperative peer group work on a worksheet, (d) giving anindividual quiz, (e) computing students’ scores, and (f) announcingthe group scores on the bulletin board and rewarding the winninggroup.

The teacher, using whatever information is available (e.g., testscores, grades, or personal judgment), makes a list of the students inthe class, ranking them from highest to lowest; these scores serve asthe students’ base scores. The list is divided into four equal parts.The teacher assigns the students to teams of four and balances themso that each team is composed of a representative from each of thefour performance-based divisions. Thus, students with differentachievement levels within a team can tutor each other, and becausethe teams are balanced, no single team has an advantage in thecompetition phase. Students are not informed of their divisionalrankings, which are used only as reference groups for the teacher.Every 2-3 months the divisions are reevaluated. Students may moveto a different division on the basis of their achievement.

The teacher presents the teaching unit in any suitable way.Worksheets are then distributed, and the group members proceedto study together, first in pairs and then in fours. Each pair gets oneworksheet and one answer sheet. The items on the worksheets alldeal with a specific teaching point such as vocabulary, grammar, oreven reading or listening for specific information. All the items areobjective; that is, they have only one correct answer. The studentsstudy the material together to be sure that all team members learnthe material and are prepared for the individual quiz that follows. Itis in the interest of the whole team that each student does well.

Each student’s contribution to the team score is figured on thebasis of his or her base score. If the quiz score is higher than the basescore by 2 points, for example, the student’s contribution will be 2points; if the quiz score is equal to the base score or lower, thestudent will not contribute any points to the team score. No pointsare taken off for lower achievement. Thus, students compete withthemselves (i.e., with their own base scores) and not with theirpeers. This gives each student an equal opportunity to contribute tothe team score. (See Slavin, 1978b, 1980b, for a detailed descriptionof the scoring system. ) The team score is computed and publicizedon the class bulletin board, and the winning team is rewarded. Thisact has strong motivational power.

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The STAD technique, as described above, aims at raising studentmotivation according to Atkinson’s (1958) theory of motivation,which posits a multiplicative relationship between the incentivevalue of success and the probability of success. The establishmentof a social game environment via competition between groupsoffers students an incentive for success, and equal opportunity forsuccess via the special scoring system makes students aware of theprobability of success and thus of the fact that everyone’s additionaleffort is worthwhile and pays.

This does not happen in the traditional grading system, in whichhigh grade marks are hard to acquire by the low-learning-statusstudent and easy to acquire by the high-learning-status student. Bythis system students’ motivation is not necessarily raised, since, as iswell known, motivation is low when it is either too easy or toodifficult to succeed (Atkinson, 1958). By offering each individual anequal opportunity to contribute to the group grade, the STADtechnique raises the motivation of all students and prevents adanger that might occur in small-group learning, namely that thecontribution of lower level students is not appreciated at all (Slavin,1983) .

The DG Technique

The DC technique and its principles are derived largely from thephilosophical outlook of John Dewey, further developed by Sharanand Sharan (1975) and Sharan and Lazarowitz (1978) and adaptedfor EFL needs by Bejarano (1985). The technique follows six stages:(a) choosing the topic of interest and organizing in interest groups,(b) examining the learning task and planning the way to carry it out,(c) using a variety of resources within and outside the school to helpcarry out the learning task, (d) planning a summing-up groupreport, (e) reporting the group product to the whole class, and (f)evaluating the overall group product.

Effective study in DC necessitates the social skills and functionsrequisite for group participation, such as attentive listening,effective implementation of peers’ ideas, cooperation and sharingof information, mutual help, talking in turn, serving as group leader,and so on (Sharan & Sharan, 1975, p. 65). All of these are basic skillsfor interpersonal and multilateral communication. The EFLteacher’s role is to set up tasks that facilitate the acquisition of theseskills and that at the same time serve a language teaching goal. Thefollowing activity is an example of a task, the purpose of which is topractice reported speech and to train for attentive listening.


1. The class is divided into groups of four.2. The teacher sets up the task by explaining that each student

should tell his or her group peers about things the student likes ordislikes and about a personality the student respects and why.Each speaker must report what the preceding speaker saidbefore beginning his or her own talk. Inaccurate reports arecorrected by the group.

3. The teacher allows the activity to continue for about 10 minutes.Each group then discusses how well its members listened to eachother.

4. The entire class discusses the exercise. The following questionsmay be used as a guide: Was it difficult to report your peer’stalk? Was the difficulty due to the lack of clarity in the statementitself, to the length of the statement, or to the number of ideasexpressed in it?

5. The class discusses ways to improve attentive listening andconsequently more efficient communication among the students.

Learning tasks suitable for the DG technique are usually based ontopics for discussion or problem-solving issues which requirebilateral or multilateral communication, negotiation, and interactionamong participants.

It is the structure of the learning task which stimulates students’active participation in mutual communication. The task is dividedinto subtasks, with each participant responsible only for his or hershare (Sharan & Lazarowitz, 1978). The task creates mutualdependence among the group members, since it cannot becompleted without each individual’s contribution. This results inobligatory and instrumental multilateral communication within thegroup (Barnes, 1976; Johnson & Johnson, 1975; Joyce& Weil, 1972;Sharan & Lazarowitz, 1978) and is an effective cohesive elementboth socially and in terms of the need to carry out the group task(Pepitone, 1980; Schmuck& Schmuck, 1979).

The learning task can be of different kinds:

1. Topics for research: These are divided into subtopics, each ofwhich is investigated thoroughly by an individual or a pair ofstudents. A variety of resources (e.g., personal interviews, books,articles, radio and television programs, etc. ) is used. All membersthen share and combine their individual products and synthesizethem into a group product.

2. Topics for discussion: These are based on information gaps.Each individual holds different pieces of information, and thetask cannot be completed until all members of the group have

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exchanged and shared all of their pieces of information. Thisstimulates active participation in the discussion. Such activitiesinclude problem solving, simulation games, and role playing.

The differences and similarities between the three methods usedin the experiment and their relevance to EFL are presented in theAppendix.

THE STUDY

Although the use of group work in the EFL classroom has beenrecommended in the last few years and teaching materials havebeen developed accordingly, little or no attention has been given todescribing the roles of the teacher and the students; the social skillsrequired for participating in small-group tasks; and the planning,structuring, and management of the learning tasks, which should bebased on the underlying principles of the techniques as they arepracticed in the classroom (see Long & Porter, 1985, p. 224).

The effect of carefully outlined group methods on the achieve-ment of EFL learners has received little attention from researchers.This is also true of the relationship between group work and whole-class, teacher-led instruction (see Long & Porter, 1985, p. 225). Thepurpose of this study was (a) to assess the effect of two cooperativesmall-group learning methods (DG and STAD) and of the traditionalwhole-class method on the general achievement of junior high schoolEFL learners and on their acquisition of specific language skills and(b) to check whether there is a differential effect of small-groupmethods on the acquisition of different language skills.

Subjects Teachers and Pupils

A total of 781 students studying English in 33 seventh-gradeclasses in three junior high schools participated in the experiment(see Table 1). The students, who were in their third year of Englishin school, represented average levels of achievement in Israel. Theexperiment was conducted during five school periods a week, for4½ months. Of the 781 students, 665 were present for both the pre-and posttests. Only these 665 cases with complete data wereincluded in the statistical analysis.

The 18 participating teachers, who represented the entire English-teaching staff at the three schools, were assigned to methods andclasses at random, most of them teaching more than one class. Allteachers participated in a very intensive preexperiment training


TABLE 1Number of Students and Classes in

Each of the Three Teaching Situations

Whole-DG STAD class Total

program. This consisted of 12 workshops, each lasting 2½ hours, ledby experts in EFL and in the specific teaching methods to be usedin the study. The teachers were trained both for the specific skillsrequired to utilize the method to which they were assigned and forthe immediate implementation of that method in the EFLclassroom. Under the guidance of the researcher, the teachersdeveloped specialized activities and materials based on theprinciples underlying those teaching methods. During theexperiment, the researcher and a colleague continued to visit theclassrooms for in-class follow-up and coaching. Teachers assignedto the whole-class method also went through a training period,despite their claim that they had nothing to change. The purposewas to ensure that teachers’ skills in this group were sharpened andthat their classes could serve as “enriched” control groups.

The Achievement Test

A specially constructed achievement test was given twice, as bothpre- and posttest. Thus, we could evaluate certain areas of languagefunctioning and note the changes that occurred during theexperimental period. The test included three components: twointegrative tests (listening comprehension and reading comprehen-sion) and a discrete-point grammar and vocabulary test (see Oller,1979, p. 25).

The listening comprehension test assessed (a) comprehension ofrecorded statements describing the details in pictures in the testbook, (b) the ability to carry out recorded instructions byperforming tasks on given pictures, (c) understanding of a recordedinformative text, and (d) understanding of a recorded narrativetext.

The reading comprehension test assessed (a) the ability to read asentence and match its content to a given picture, (b) reading and

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understanding of an informative text, and (c) reading andunderstanding of a narrative text.

The aim of the discrete-point grammar and vocabulary test wasto assess (a) proper use of basic grammatical structures andquestion formation (with which Hebrew speakers experienceparticular difficulty) and (b) appropriate use of vocabulary items.

Classroom Observations

To gather systematic data on the implementation of the threeteaching methods, three trained observers visited every class twiceduring the experimental period. (These observations werecompletely independent of the follow-up and coaching visits. )Interrater reliability, after a period of training with videotapes andclassrooms not participating in the project, was 85% on two separatetrials. Each observation was carried out during classroom sessionswhen no tests or quizzes were in progress. Raters used a 20-itemobservation schedule adapted from the method evolved by Thew(1975). Ratings were recorded every 15 seconds for a 7-minuteperiod at the beginning, middle, and end of a classroom session.

These observations were studied to determine whether STAD orDG teachers were implementing the assigned methods. Twoteachers were found to have failed to implement the DGtechniques; data gathered in their classes were included in thewhole-class data. (This change is reflected in the figures presentedin Table 1.) The observers were also asked to write an impression-istic report of whatever they could detect in the classes concerningstudents’ behaviors while they were carrying out the variousactivities.

ANALYSES AND RESULTS

Table 2 presents pre- and posttest means of each of the threestudent groups for each of the scales of the achievement testseparately (listening comprehension, reading comprehension, andthe discrete-point scale) as well as for the scores from the test as awhole (total). An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that therewas a significant difference in the degree of improvement from pre-to posttest generated by the different methods on two out of thefour scales: the total score, F (2, 662) = 3.75, p <.05, and thelistening comprehension scale, F = 6.88, p <.005. No significantdifferences were found between the three methods on either thereading comprehension scale or the discrete-point scale.


TABLE 2Descriptive Statistics for Pre- and Posttest Performance of

Students in the Three Teaching Situations

STAD Whole-class(n = 29) (n= 198) (n= 238)

Scale (range of scores) Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post

DG

TotalM 50.52 57.28 53.94 61.39 57.58 62.45SD 19.59 20.87 19.94 21.35 17.49 18.31

Listeningcomprehension (0-57)M 31.51 36.00 34.46 38.80 36.74 38.97SD 11.78 12.91 11.83 13.02 10.47 11.15

Readingcomprehension (0-19)M 10.97 12.48 11.63 13.39 12.23 14.10SD 5.43 5.36 5.19 5.37 4.10 4.70

Discrete-point (0-15)M 8.04 8.80 7.85 9.20 8.61 9.38SD 4.30 4.35 4.49 4.54 4.48 4.28

To determine the relative extent of the change fostered by thevarious instructional methods, three 2 x 2 ANOVAs were carriedout, with methods (2) the between-group variable and time(repeated measures of pre- and posttest) a within-group variable.The three comparisons were DG versus whole-class, STAD versuswhole-class, and DG versus STAD. These analyses were carried outon the total test score, on the listening comprehension score, and onthe discrete-point score, with the following results:

1.

2.

3.

Pupils in the DG classes registered greater improvement thantheir peers in the whole-class setting on both the total test, F (l,465) = 4.23, p <.05, and on the listening comprehension scale,F (1, 465) = 11.99, p <.001.Pupils in the STAD classes also achieved higher scores than thosein the whole-class setting on the total test, F (l, 434) = 6.27,p <.05, and on the listening comprehension scale, F (l ,434) = 8.60, p <.005.Pupils in the STAD classes achieved higher scores than did pupilsin the DG classes on the discrete-point test, with the differenceapproaching the significance level, F (l, 425) = 3.33, p = .06.

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4. No significant difference was found on the achievement scoresof pupils in the DG classes compared with those of pupils in theSTAD classes on the total test score or on the listeningcomprehension score. Thus, both small-group methods provedsuperior to the whole-class method on these scales, and the twogroup methods emerged as equally effective.

To summarize, on the listening comprehension scale, the size ofthe change that occurred in the DG and STAD classes from pretestto posttest (4.49 and 4.34, respectively) was bigger than that in thewhole-class setting (2.23). The change that occurred on the discrete-point scale was bigger in the STAD classes (1.35) than in the DGclasses (0.76) and in the whole-class setting (0.77). These findingsillustrate the greater effectiveness of the two group methods indeveloping listening comprehension skills and the greatereffectiveness of the STAD technique compared with the DG andwhole-class methods in teaching and learning discrete points (suchas grammar and vocabulary) in the EFL classroom.

DISCUSSIONThe Effect of Small-Group Teaching on General Achievement

What promoted general higher language achievement (the totaltest score) in the classes utilizing small-group techniques wasapparently the active communication approach (see Figure 1) usedin this experiment; the processing of both the instructional contentand the social and communicative skills, which occurs within theexperiential context of the small-group setting, was enhanced bymeans of appropriate learning tasks. Indeed, these social processesencouraged the active participation of all members of the groupand intensive interaction among them.

This interaction was clearly discerned by the observers, whoreported that the students were actively involved in real communica-tion rather than in using answers taken out of texts or manipulatinggiven information or set linguistic structures. This real, or instrumen-tal, communication was a result of an immediate need for interper-sonal contact. Since the communication activities in which they wereinvolved were meaningful, the students were motivated to sustainthat communication in order to accomplish the group task. This is inline with Taylor’s (1983, p. 72) view of the features classroominstruction should incorporate. It is also in accordance with thecommunicative approach to language teaching, which assumes thatlanguage acquisition occurs with intensive engagement in extendeddiscourse in real communicative contexts (Breen & Candlin, 1980;Krashen, 1981; Morrow, 1981; Taylor, 1983; Widdowson, 1978).


FIGURE 1

Active Communication Approach

I

Processing ofinstructiomd content

1. Structural component2. Functional component3. Communicative component

\

Appropriate learning tasks

t

Academicwhich facilitate I and II achievementwithin experiential context

I I I

II

processing of sociaI andcommunicative skikin small group

This approach actually dictated the structuring of the learningtasks by taking into consideration the linguistic content to be taught(what) and the process of teaching the linguistic content (how). Thelearning tasks provided for the incorporation of the three linguisticcomponents (structural, functional, and communicative), as well asfor the processing of social factors in the small-group setting, anappropriate social and learning atmosphere. Extended linguisticpractice was thus facilitated in a cooperative setting, in which theroles of teacher and students differed significantly from those in thewhole-class setting.

The fulfillment of the learning task, entailing a successfulbridging of information gaps, depended on the active participationof each student in the group, in an atmosphere of interdependence,cooperation, and mutual help (Sharan & Lazarowitz, 1978). The

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tasks, constructed so as to fulfill the linguistic aim, on the one hand,and to suit the specific features of the group method, on the other,included (a) practice of discrete linguistic points (such as grammarand vocabulary) via STAD, whose specific features facilitate theteaching of these basic skills, and (b) involvement in globalcommunication, facilitated by using the DG technique in such tasksas role playing, simulation, problem solving, and so on.

The observation carried out in all classes indicated that allstudents were involved in interaction and communication amongthemselves during at least 40% (and sometimes up to 80%) of classtime, whereas in the traditional classes the teacher lectured duringat least 80% of class time. The extended active use of the languageprovided learners with opportunities to practice linguistic structurestaught formally in the classroom and also to acquire structures nottaught formally. During group interaction, the learners apparentlyused new linguistic structures necessary for specific task com-munication, and these enriched their linguistic competence. Beinginvolved in meaningful discussion, they probably investedintellectual resources to receive and transmit messages, despitedifficulties in expressing themselves in the new language. Thelearning tasks in the present study indeed fostered languageacquisition as well as language learning by setting up an immediateneed for the active participation of every individual in the group.This agrees with Hatch’s (1978) finding that “linguistic forms areacquired and used productively only when it assumes a critical rolein transmitting essential information” (p. 472).

In addition to the learning task, the change in the roles of teacherand students apparently also contributed to the positive resultsobtained in this study. The teacher’s role changed from that ofcriticizing authority to that of adviser and facilitator. This providedample opportunity for mutual, unmediated, and spontaneouscommunication ( Widdowson’s aspect of “use”). In the whole-classsetting, teachers spent a considerable amount of time askingquestions which pupils were expected to answer in linguisticallyaccurate form—in what Barnes (1976) calls “final draft” formula-tion—thus limiting spontaneous and uninhibited language use. Incontrast, peer discourse in the small-group setting apparentlypermitted pupils to think aloud and, by necessity, to talk in lesspolished language. There was far less inhibition and tension underthese circumstances because discourse served communicative needsrather than the demands of public recitation.

The opportunity for mutual communication exchange amongpeers, despite the “danger” of students’ hearing and producing manyerrors, is at least as important for language acquisition as the “error-


free” lesson presented by the teacher in the traditional setting. Peercommunication is also more likely to relate the content of the verbalmessage to the pupils’ experience outside the domain of thelinguistic forms per se. It is widely acknowledged that secondlanguage learning should focus on relations between language andexperiential contexts which provide meanings to words, anargument proposed by John Dewey decades ago. Furthermore,peers in small groups are more likely to employ languagecomprehensible to each other than is the teacher and, when theneed arises, to ask each other to clarify meanings.

On all these accounts, small-group discussion appears to be apotentially more meaningful social environment for promotinglanguage use and comprehension than the traditional classroom.The precise manner in which the process of language learningunfolds in the small-group setting deserves intensive research,which only microanalytic studies of peer interactions in groups candocument.

The Effect of Small-Group Teaching onListening Comprehension and Discrete Points

The finding that the group techniques attained superior results onthe listening comprehension scale seems to be due to the fact thatthe learning tasks (especially in the DG classes) required verbalcommunication which involved speaking and listening intermit-tently rather than reciting as called upon by the teacher in thetraditional classroom. This kind of communication, in which everyindividual had to participate actively, required instrumentallistening and attention in order to react in time. Thus, studentslearning in small groups spent more time in active, instrumentallistening than did students in the whole-class setting, where theteacher very often speaks over the students’ heads. Krashen (1981)also found that students prefer to listen to their friends rather thanto the teacher, and Cohen (1984) reported that in the whole-classlesson only 2-5%50% of the students actually listen to the teacher.

The positive social environment on which the group techniquesare based must also have contributed to these results. It is verypossible that the speaking ability of the students improved togetherwith their listening ability, but this was not tested in the presentstudy.

The findings that the two group methods promoted significantlysuperior achievement compared with the whole-class method onthe listening comprehension scale and that the STAD techniquepromoted higher achievement on the discrete-point scale serve as

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partial support for the hypothesis that different group techniquesserve different instructional objectives in the language classroom.

The fact that no differences were found between the two grouptechniques on the listeniug comprehension scale, despite the basicdifference between the two techniques—STAD emphasizinglearning of structural language material presented initially by theteacher and DG emphasizing global use of language in realcommunication—requires explanation. The observations carriedout in the classes indicated that although the STAD teachers wereinstructed not to allow multilateral communication within thegroups but to ensure concentration on peer tutoring of previouslytaught material, such group conversations did develop, and theteachers did not want to interrupt them. This probably had its effectand may explain the similar results obtained for both groupmethods on the listening comprehension scale.

The Effect of Small-Group Teaching on Reading Comprehension

The fact that no significant differences between the small-groupand the whole-class methods were observed on the readingcomprehension scale also requires attention. It seems that thespecific tasks constructed on the principles of the small-groupteaching techniques employed in this study did not promote theacquisition and practice of reading strategies. Moreover, thestudents in the small-group classes were neither given tasksdesigned to develop reading strategies, nor were they encouragedto do so in any way. The Jigsaw technique, not used in this study,might prove to be effective in the acquisition of reading compre-hension skills.

SUMMARY

The results obtained here, in which the STAD technique promotedhigher results on the discrete-point scale, indicate that STADsupplements and complements the DG technique, which, despite thestatistical findings, seemed to be more efficient for practicing globallanguage skills. These results answer the basic requirements of themodern communicative approach to language teaching: basicknowledge of grammar and vocabulary (Widdowson’s “usage” andLittlewood’s “grammatical component”), on the one hand, andfunctional competence, which entails the ability to implement thelinguistic knowledge in natural, authentic communicative situations(Widdowson’s “use” and Littlewood’s “functional/communicativecomponent”), on the other (see Figure 2).


FIGURE 2

A Cooperative Small-Group Methodology in the Language Class

I Appropriate learning tasks

I

Based on the theoretical principles underlying this research andthe findings reported here, a cooperative small-group methodologyin the language classroom is recommended. The different grouptechniques complement one another; they serve different teachingobjectives in the language class and thus form the link between theteaching content (what) and the teaching process (how).Implementation of this approach requires intensive teacher trainingfor use of the techniques, both in terms of operational procedures inthe classroom and in terms of appropriate design of the learningtasks.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The study reported here is based on a PhD dissertation carried out as part of alarger project directed by Professor Shlomo Sharan (School of Education, Tel-AvivUniversity). Dr. E. Olshtain served as a consultant for the study.

THE AUTHOR

Yael Bejarano, PhD, is the head of the EFL Department at the Open University ofIsrael, where she administers language programs and is involved in teacher trainingand materials development. Her research focuses on small-group teaching andsecond language testing. She is currently serving as the ISRATESOL newslettereditor.

REFERENCES

Aaronson, E., Blaney, N., Sikes, J., & Shapp, M. (1978). The jigsawclassroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Asher, J.J. (1977a). Children learning another language: A developmentalhypothesis. Child Development, 48, 1040-1048.

Asher, J.J. (1977b). Learning another language through actions: Thecomplete teacher’s guidebook. Los Gates, CA: Sky Oaks Productions.

Atkinson, J. W. (1958). Towards experimental analysis of humanmotivation in terms of motives, expectancies and incentives. In J. W.Atkinson (Ed.), Motives in fantasy, action and society (pp. 288-305).Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.

Barnes, D. (1976). From communication to curriculum. Middlesex,England: Penguin Books.

Bejarano, Y. (1985). The effects of teaching English as a foreign languagein small cooperative groups on the achievement of pupils in themultiethnic classroom. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Tel-AvivUniversity.

Breen, M. P., & Candlin, C.N. (1980). The essentials of a communicativecurriculum. Applied Linguistics, 1, 89-112.

Brumfit, C. (1980). Problems and principles in English teaching. N e wYork: Pergamon Press.

Brumfit, C., & Johnson, K. (1979). The communicative approach tolanguage teaching. London: Oxford University Press.

Cohen, A. (1984, March). Introspecting about second language learning.Paper presented at the Ninth ILASH Conference, Netanya, Israel.

Curran, C.A. (1972). Counseling learning: A whole person model foreducation. New York: Grune and Stratton.

Curran, C.A. (1976). Counseling learning in a second language. AppleRiver, IL: Apple River Press.

Gattegno, C. (1972). Teaching foreign languages in schools: The silentwag. New York: Educational Solutions.

Gattegno, C. (1976). The common sense of teaching foreign languages.New York: Educational Solutions.


Hatch, E. (1978). Second language acquisition. Rowley, MA: NewburyHouse.

Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J.B. Pride & J.Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: Selected readings (pp. 269-293).Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

Johnson, K., & Johnson, R. (1975). Learning together and alone.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Johnson, K., & Morrow, K. (Eds.). (1981). Communication in theclassroom. London: Longman Group.

Joyce, B., & Weil, M. (1972). Models of teaching. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall.

Krahnke, K.J., & Christison M.A. (1983). Recent language research andsome language teaching principles. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 625-649.

Krashen, S. (1981). Second language acquisition and second languagelearning. New York: Pergamon Press.

Littlewood, W. (1981). Communicative language teacher: An introduction.New York: Cambridge University Press.

Long, M. H., & Porter, P.A. (1985). Group work, interlanguage talk, andsecond language acquisition. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 207-227.

Lozanov, G. (1979). Suggestology and outlines of suggestopedy. N e wYork: Gordon and Breach.

Morrow, K. (1981). Principles of communicative methodology. In K.Johnson & K. Morrow (Eds.), Communication in the classroom (pp. 59-70). London: Longman Group.

Oller, J. (1979). Language tests at school. London: Longman Group.Pepitone, E. (1980). Children in cooperation and competition. Lexington,

MA: Lexington Books.Schmuck, R., & Schmuck, P. (1979). Group processes in the classroom (3rd

cd.). Dubuque, IA: Brown.Sharan, S. (1980). Cooperative learning in small groups: Recent methods

and effects on achievement, attitudes and ethnic relations. Review ofEducational Research, 50, 241-271.

Sharan, S., & Lazarowitz, R. (1978). Cooperation and communication inschool [in Hebrew]. Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem: Shocken.

Sharan, S., & Sharan, Y. (1975). Small group teaching [in Hebrew]. Tel-Aviv: Shocken.

Slavin, R.E. (1978a). Student teams and achievement divisions. Journal ofResearch and Development in Education, 12, 39-49.

Slavin, R.E. (1978b). Using student team learning (The Johns Hopkinsteam learning project). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University.

Slavin, R.E. (1980a). Effect of student teams and peer tutoring onacademic achievement and time on task. Journal of ExperimentalEducation, 48, 252-257.

Slavin, R.E. (1980b). Student team learning A manual for teachers. In S.Sharan, D. Hare, C. Webb, & R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (Eds.), Cooperationin education (pp. 82-135). Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

Slavin, R.E. (1983). Cooperative learning. New York: Longman Group.

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Stevick, E.W. (1980). Teaching languages: A way and ways. Rowley, MA:Newbury House.

Taylor, B.P. (1983). Teaching ESL: Incorporating a communicative,student-centered component. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 69-88.

Thew, D. (1975). The classroom social organization category system. TheClassroom Interaction Newsletter, 2, 18-24.

Widdowson, H.G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. London:Oxford University Press.

Winitz, H., & Reeds, J. (1973). Rapid acquisition of a foreign language(German) by avoidance of speaking. International Review of AppliedLinguistics, 2, 295-317.


APPENDIX

Differences and Similarities Between DG, STAD, and Whole-Class Methodsand Their Relevance to EFL

. Instructional method

Element Relevance of small-group methodscompared DG STAD Whole-class to EFL

Source and Information gatheredvariety of by the pupils;information learning sources

varied in numberand kind.

Nature of Tasks stresslearning tasks problem solving,

interpretation,synthesis, andapplication ofinformation.

Completion of Task is subdivided;learning task cannot be completed

unless all individualcontributions tofinal group productare made.

The teaching taskInformation transmitted . .by the teacher or a text;learning sources limitedto cards, worksheets, orlecture.

Information transmittedby the teacher or a text.

In DG method students’relative control of infor-mation sources providesmotivation.

Tasks emphasizeacquisition ofinformation or basiclanguage skills.

Each individual isinterested in thesuccess of group peersin final quiz; resultsadd up to the groupscore.

Tasks stress passiveunderstanding andinternalizing teacher-taught or textmaterial.

All students are assignedidentical tasks;individuals pursuetheir own success.

Both group methods encourageactive participation throughmutual exchange based oninformation gaps or peertutoring and drilling.

Both group methodsnecessitate activeparticipation.

Group goal Group memberscooperate andcoordinate activitieson a group-wide basisto achieve thecommon goal: completingthe learning task.

Use of language Both receptive andskills productive skills are

used simultaneously.

Group members cooper- There is no common In both group methods theate to achieve the com- group goal. common group goal serves asmon goal: a high group a means of motivation.score in order to competewith the other groups.

Both receptive and Language skills are In both group methods there isproductive skills are used used in an integrative active and integrative usesimultaneously but in manner. of both receptive anda more controlled productive skills.manner than in DG.

Interpersonal communication and relationsKind of Peer communication Peer communication Primarily unilateral; Bilateral and multilateral

communication within teams: within teams primarily sometimes develops into communication in both groupbilateral or unilateral and bilateral: methods.multilateral. bilateral; sometimes (student <—> teacher)

multilateral. though theseinteractions areusually very short.

Goal of Mutual exchangecommunication for problem

clarification,interpretation, andexchange of ideas.

Rehearsal of teacher- Primarily for Intensive and active usetaught material or clarification of of the new languagefilling in worksheets teaching points. in both group methods,and quizzes. especially in DG.

APPENDIX (Continued)

Differences and Similarities Between DG, STAD, and Whole-Class Methodsand Their Relevance to EFL

Instructional method

Elementcompared DG STAD

Extent of Free and global use More limited use of thecommunication of the language— language compared with

especially in topics DG, though used freely infor discussion. connection with the spe-

cific material taught.

Relevance of small-group methodsWhole-class to EFL

Almost impossible for Intensive and active useevery student to of the new languageparticipate actively in both group methods,in whole-class especially in DG.discussion.

Interpersonal Unmediated interaction Unmediated interaction Almost no interaction Cooperation and mutualinteraction among members of the among members of the among students; when help in a positive social

small group, usually small group, usuallybased on cooperation

occurring, it is in front atmosphere in both groupbased on cooperation of the teacher and methods.

and mutual help. and mutual help. classmates.

Interpersonal Positive. Positive. Individuals pursue own Positive social atmosphere inrelations learning tasks and vie both group methods.

for personal statuswith teacher.

Role of the Guide, consultant, and Major source of Main source of In both group methodsteacher facilitator. knowledge but encourages knowledge and the teacher is no longer

interpersonal the high authority in the only authority, butcommunication, inter- the system. serves as a consultantaction, and mutual help. and facilitator.


English Language Proficiency andthe Prediction of Academic SuccessJANET G. GRAHAMUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article discusses the relationship between English languageproficiency and academic success in universities and colleges inwhich English is the language of instruction. It points out some ofthe difficulties associated with determining this relationship andsummarizes previous investigations of the issue. It is argued thatwhile the research clearly shows that many factors other thanEnglish proficiency are important to academic success, there maybe for each institution, or even for each program within aninstitution, a minimum level below which lack of sufficientproficiency in English contributes significantly to lack ofacademic success. Such a level can be determined by eachinstitution individually, but until it is determined, a number ofsteps can be taken for establishing reasonable English languageproficiency requirements.

At many colleges and universities, ESL professionals are calledupon by admissions officers for help in making admissions decisionsfor nonnative speakers of English. ESL professionals may be askedwhat cutoff scores should be used on standardized tests that havealready been administered, such as the Test of English as a ForeignLanguage (TOEFL) or the Michigan Test of English LanguageProficiency (MTELP). Or they may be asked to test the Englishlanguage of applicants who do not already have standardized testscores and, on the basis of these tests, to make judgments about theadequacy of the applicants’ English.

In both these situations, two assumptions are being made. Thefirst is that a certain level of proficiency is necessary for successfulcollege-level work where English is the language of instruction. Thesecond is that an ESL professional can be expected to know whatthat level is. A conscientious ESL professional might look to theliterature on language proficiency and academic performance for

505

help in determining appropriate levels. Unfortunately, a search ofthis literature will reveal that the relationship between Englishlanguage proficiency and academic success is murky indeed.

This article considers some of the problems associated withinterpreting research on the relationship between English languageproficiency and academic success. It provides a brief review ofsome of the research of this type, discusses the implications of theresearch, and offers some suggestions for ways to advise admissionsoffices in regard to nonnative English-speaking applicants.

PROBLEMS WITH ACADEMIC PREDICTION STUDIES

Most research into the relationship between English languageproficiency and academic success falls under the rubric ofacademic prediction studies. Such studies investigate relationshipsbetween various kinds of information—such as test scores,personality factors, previous academic ratings—and academicsuccess. Typically, prediction studies of English languageproficiency and academic success calculate correlation coefficientsbetween English proficiency test scores and first-semester gradepoint average (GPA).

There are a number of problems with both the design andinterpretation of such studies, including (a) the criterion for judgingacademic success, (b) the validity of measures of Englishproficiency, (c) the interpretation of any relationships found, and(d) the large number of uncontrolled variables involved inacademic success.

While GPA is the most commonly used criterion for academicsuccess, some researchers have noted that it is not always a validindicator of academic achievement. Heil and Aleamoni (1974), forexample, point out that GPA does not take into account the numberof courses taken. Students may be able to handle only two coursesat a time, due to poor English proficiency, for example, but theirGPAs would not reflect this. Heil and Aleamoni also allude to thewidely recognized problem of teachers’ giving sympathy orgoodwill grades to nonnative speakers. For studies of graduatestudents, an additional problem is the limited spread of gradestypically given in graduate schools, which means that significantcorrelations are less likely to be found. Ho and Spinks (1985) arguethat GPAs are “composed of heterogeneous or divergent elements,”especially at the university level, where “various academic subjectsdemand divergent competencies or dispositions” (p. 258). Forexample, some students might have a gift for logical argument,which would serve them well in one course, and a deficiency of

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math skills, which would doom them in another. In defense of theuse of GPA, it should be pointed out that a study of 2,075 foreignstudents at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),found that first-semester GPA was “the best index of the student’seventual success” (Sugimoto, 1966).

Some prediction studies use other measures of academic success(as can be seen in the brief descriptions in the following section).This variability of the criterion for academic success must be bornein mind when the results of one study are compared with those ofanother.

Another problem with prediction studies has to do with thedefinition of English language proficiency. Usually, scores onvarious commercial tests, such as the TOEFL, the MTELP, or theComprehensive English Language Test (CELT), are used as themeasure of proficiency, and proficiency is defined by performanceon the test. Therefore, the definition of proficiency is somewhatdifferent in a study using TOEFL scores from that in a study usingCELT scores.

This may not be as big a problem as it first appears, however.Many studies have found very high correlations between the variouswell-known tests (J.B. Carroll, 1972; Cervenka, 1978; Dizney, 1965).But with the recent attention to communicative competence (asopposed to linguistic knowledge), the value of traditional multiple-choice proficiency tests, such as the ones named above, forpredicting the ability to use the language competently has beenseverely questioned. B.J. Carroll (1980), for example, argues thatwhen the aim is to measure the ability to use the language (asopposed to knowing the proper usage), tests should not be based on“a selection of items chosen on linguistic grounds alone” (p. 8).Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982) lend support to this argument.

As rationally appealing as this argument is, however, it has yet tobe conclusively demonstrated that traditional tests do not predictlanguage performance. To the contrary, a number of studies haveshown high correlations between traditional multiple-choice testsand integrative tests (such as cloze tests) and performance tests(such as a writing test) (see Hanania & Shikhani, 1986). At least onestudy (Farhady, 1983) showed fairly strong relationships betweenan especially designed functional test for university students andvarious more traditional tests, including tests of grammar.

While a number of studies do show very strong correlationsbetween various measures of English language proficiency, the factthat the prediction studies reviewed in the following section usedifferent measures must be remembered when attempting tointerpret the results.

ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND ACADEMIC SUCCESS 507

Another problem in interpreting results is determining the realsignificance of a relationship (as expressed by a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, for example) as opposed to itsstatistical significance. A statistically significant relationship doesnot necessarily indicate a strong relationship, and in fact differentresearchers will use different cutoff points for claiming “strong” and“weak” correlations. Rather than accepting a researcher’sassessment of the strength of a relationship, it is more useful tointerpret a correlation coefficient by squaring it to obtain thecommon variance between two measures. A correlation coefficientof .40 between TOEFL scores and GPA, for example, explains only16% of the variance (.42 = .16); 84% of the variance is not accountedfor by the TOEFL score. (See Hatch& Farhady, 1982, pp. 201-203,for a more complete explanation of common variance.)

Other factors may influence the results of prediction studies,including the number of subjects, their countries of origin, theirnative language, whether or not they are visiting foreign students orpermanent residents or refugees, whether they are undergraduateor graduate students, their majors or areas of specialization, and thedesign of the study. Not only do variables such as these affect theoutcomes of the studies, they limit the generalizability of the studiesand make direct comparisons difficult.

A REVIEW OF SOME PREDICTION STUDIES

The following summaries give an idea of the variety of academicprediction studies that have been done and the difficulty of usingtheir findings to generalize about the relationship of Englishproficiency to academic success. Because the studies are notdirectly comparable, they have been grouped not according tonumerical criteria such as correlation coefficients, but according tothe conclusions drawn by the researchers, which in some cases maydiffer from the conclusions readers would draw from the samedata. The studies have been grouped in the interest of clarity, not toadvance any particular argument.

Negative Conclusions

A number of researchers have concluded that there is littlerelationship between English language proficiency and academicsuccess. Mulligan’s (1966) study of 669 students at the School ofBusiness and Public Administration of the City College of NewYork produced results which ran counter to the researcher’sassumption “that there would be a strong correlation between

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English proficiency and college performance” (p. 310). Thesestudents had all been educated abroad but were immigrants orrefugees rather than visiting foreign students. English proficiencywas defined by placement in the freshman remedial English class orin the regular freshman English class. Academic success wasdefined as performing above a C average. There was no significantrelationship between English placement and a GPA of C or above,leading Mulligan to conclude that “deficiency in English was not asignificant deterrent to scholastic achievement” (p. 313).

Similar results were obtained in a study of 2,075 foreign studentsat UCLA in 1964-1965 which ran correlations between a number ofdifferent variables and academic success (Sugimoto, 1966).Academic success in this study was defined in terms of whether ornot the student had obtained a degree, certificate, or credential orhad obtained permission to continue university studies at a higherlevel. English language proficiency, as measured by the institution’sown tests, was one of the least predictive of the variables in thestudy (r = –.046), leading the researcher to recommend giving lessemphasis to English examination scores in the making of admissionsdecisions.

Hwang and Dizney (1970) also found that English language testscores were poor predictors of academic performance. They foundno significant correlation between TOEFL scores and the first-termGPA for 63 Chinese graduate students at the University of Oregon(r = .19). It should be noted that most of these students werespecializing in areas requiring significant use of English: 21 ineducation, 16 in social sciences, and 6 in architecture. Interestingly,Hwang and Dizney found a correlation of .66 between ESL coursegrades and overall GPA, but the course grades almost certainlymeasured academic skills and nonacademic factors as well asEnglish proficiency.

Sharon (1972) attempted to determine whether the TOEFLadded to the predictive value of the Verbal Ability section of theGraduate Record Exam (GRE-V). The subjects were 975 foreigngraduate students from 24 schools. A relatively high correlation( r= .70) was found between the GRE-V and the TOEFL, but notbetween the TOEFL and GPA (r = .26) or between the TOEFLcombined with the GRE-V and GPA (r = .27). The GraduateRecord Exam of Quantitative Ability (GRE-Q) turned out to be thebest single predictor (r = .32); combining TOEFL with GRE-Qraised the correlation to .34. According to Sharon, “it appears thatforeign students with low English verbal aptitude can succeed inAmerican graduate schools” (p. 431).


Another study of the TOEFL and GRE-V as predictors wasconducted by Shay (1975), who also found that these tests failed topredict academic performance. The correlations between TOEFLand GPA ranged from .08 to .12 and between GRE-V and GPAfrom .06 to .09; none of the correlations was statistically significant.

A study of foreign undergraduates by Wilcox (1975) revealedsignificant correlations between high school GPA and academicsuccess (about .50), math aptitude and academic success (about.50), and the combination of math aptitude, high school GPA, andacademic success (about .60) but found that correlations betweenTOEFL and GPA were considerably different for the two groups ofstudents in the sample. For the group from Hong Kong, thecorrelation was .00; for the group from Vietnam, however, thecorrelation was .46. Wilcox’s conclusion was that overall, “neitherverbal aptitude nor English proficiency contributed to prediction”(p. 6084B).

Gue and Holdaway (1973) reached a similar conclusion. Theyfound statistically significant but not strong correlations betweenTOEFL and GPA for their 123 Thai education majors. Thesestudents were tested both before and after a summer languageprogram. The correlation between the summer TOEFL scores andGPA was .49 and between the fall TOEFL scores and GPA was .59,both significant at the .01 level. While some researchers might labelthese correlations rather strong, Gue and Holdaway concluded thatEnglish proficiency was simply not a good predictor because anumber of other factors, such as motivation and homesickness, maycombine to “offset good language proficiency, or to overcomeinitially lower proficiency” (p. 102).

Mixed Conclusions

A number of studies of the relationship between English languageproficiency and academic success have led the researchers to mixedor qualified conclusions. Slark and Bateman (1982) used the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and the Listening section of the CELT tomeasure the English proficiency of nonnative undergraduates.Vietnamese was the most common language of the subjects,followed by Spanish. Class grades, rather than GPA, were used asthe criterion for academic success. The Nelson-Denny total scorescorrelated significantly with success in 4 out of 22 courses, whileVocabulary subscores and Comprehension subscores correlatedsignificantly with course grades in 6 out of 22 and 8 out of 22courses, respectively (the significant Spearman rho rank-order

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correlation coefficients ranged from .388 to .590). CELT Listeningscores correlated significantly with grades in 9 out of 22 courses.

With a sample of 154 freshman foreign students, a study of thepredictive value of the TOEFL as it is used in Oklahoma collegesand universities for freshman admissions (Bostic, 1981) foundsignificant but not large positive correlations (r = .169) betweenTOEFL scores and overall GPA. An interesting wrinkle in this studywas that the researcher looked at the relationship between theTOEFL scores and both “language oriented fields” and “scientifi-cally oriented fields” and found significant positive correlationswith the scientifically oriented field GPA (r = .50) but not with thelanguage-oriented field GPA (r = –.08).

Mestre (1981), who investigated the relationship of a number ofmathematics and language variables to academic success among 60bilingual Hispanic students, found significant correlations (rangingfrom .30 to .48) between all sections of a reading test (Manuel, 1962)and GPA. However, the Verbal Ability section of the ScholasticAptitude Test (SAT-V) did not correlate significantly with GPA(r = .12) among the bilingual students, even though it did withmonolingual students in the study (r = .35). This finding led Mestreto question the validity of using the SAT-V as a basis for admissionsdecisions for bilingual students.

TOEFL scores and grades in a preuniversity English programwere used as the measures of English proficiency in a study of 159undergraduates and graduates at the University of Arizona (Stover,1982). “Conflicting outcomes” were found: Both undergraduatesand graduates with TOEFL scores of less than 500 were able toachieve at “an acceptable level” in their first semester. However,while the TOEFL scores and the GPAs in the preuniversity Englishprogram were significantly related to academic success in the caseof the undergraduates (r = .21, p = .05), they were not significantin the case of the graduate students (r = .13).

A recent study of the value of the TOEFL score as a predictor ofacademic success for 376 graduate students at the State Universityof New York at Albany (Light, Xu, & Mossop, 1987) found astatistically significant but weak correlation (r = .14) betweenTOEFL scores and GPA. This study is particularly interestingbecause of two other significant findings: (a) The relationshipbetween TOEFL and CPA varied considerably when students weregrouped by major area of study, and (b) the higher the TOEFLscore, the more graduate credits tended to be earned during the firstsemester.


Positive Conclusions

About the same number of researchers appear to have concludedthat English language proficiency is a useful predictor of academicsuccess as have not.

Burgess and Greis (1970), using a sample of 17 college students,found that TOEFL did correlate significantly with grade pointaverage, particularly when grades for courses requiring littleEnglish (such as art, music, and math) were deleted from the gradesbeing averaged (TOEFL with total GPA, r = .53; TOEFL withweighted GPA, r = .56). Writing was also found to be a goodpredictor of the total GPA, r = .64; with weighted GPA, r = .66),while listening ability was not (.30 and .57). They concluded thatproficiency in reading and writing English was important to collegesuccess.

Heil and Aleamoni (1974) also found significant correlationsbetween TOEFL and GPA, although the correlations were notstrong (r = .270 with first-semester GPA, .336 with second-semesterGPA). They decided that the TOEFL was about as useful forpredicting success for nonnative English speakers as otheradmissions tests are for native speakers.

Baldauf and Dawson (1980), after doing a prediction study ofstudents in a teacher-training college in Papua, New Guinea, whereEnglish was the language of instruction, concluded that the MTELPwas a reliable and valid predictor of general academic attainmentfor their students. They found correlations ranging from .33 to .74.

The MTELP was also used in a validity study of 42 CubanAmerican students in a teacher education program at FloridaInternational University (Freidenberg & Curry, 1981). Test scoreswere significantly but, in the opinion of the researchers, not stronglyrelated (r = .41) to GPA. Ayers and Peters (1977) found a similarcorrelation between TOEFL and GPA (r = .40) in a study of 50male Asian graduate students of engineering, chemistry, andmathematics.

Odunze’s (1982) study of 118 Nigerian students in Missouri foundno significant correlation (r = .259) between the TOEFL and first-year grades. This result led him to question the suitability of theTOEFL as a measure of English language proficiency for Nigerianstudents. Notwithstanding the data from the study, Odunze did notquestion the importance of English language proficiency toacademic achievement.

Ho and Spinks (1985) studied the predictive value of Englishlanguage skills scores (obtained by tests of reading, writing,listening, and speaking) and a number of other measures for 230university students in Hong Kong. Theirs was a complicated study

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including many variables which were submitted to canonicalcorrelation and multiple correlational analyses. From theseanalyses, it was concluded that scores on the English tests had themost predictive value, accounting for about 10% of the variance ofthe measures of academic success, in this case a combination ofexamination scores and course grades. According to Ho and Spinks,

it is quite certain that students who are deficient in English (exceptingthose concentrating on Chinese language or nonlinguistically-dependentsubjects [e.g., mathematics]) would be handicapped in their learning atthe University, and might avoid choosing subjects highly dependent onEnglish proficiency. (p. 258)

To summarize, a review of the studies of the relationship betweenEnglish proficiency and academic success does not reveal clear-cutanswers for the ESL professional who is looking for guidance inmaking recommendations to admissions offices.

LIMITATIONS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY TESTS

Does the seemingly erratic ability of English proficiency testscores to predict academic success mean that the tests are not validmeasures of English language proficiency? Not necessarily. Animpressive number of researchers and writers have concluded thatthe tests commonly used are valid as measures of English languageproficiency,

Gershman (1977) reported the findings of a Toronto Board ofEducation study of the validity of the TOEFL and the MTELP. Thesubjects were 338 Grade 13 students who reflected the diversity ofethnic, national, and linguistic backgrounds of Canadian residents:Some were native speakers who had always lived in Canada; somewere nonnative speakers who had always lived in Canada; otherswere native English-speaking or nonnative English-speakingimmigrants. The main conclusion of the study was that while theEnglish scores did not predict GPA, they successfully identifiedthose who had learned English as a second language.

Further support for the construct validity of traditional Englishproficiency tests comes from the authors of a study (Duran, Canale,Penfield, Stansfield, & Liskin-Gasparro, 1985) that is critical of theTOEFL and that offers suggestions for its improvement. Despitetheir criticisms and suggestions, they state unequivocally that“research on the test [TOEFL] has clearly demonstrated its value asan instrument for assessing the language proficiency of incomingforeign college students” (p. 61).


If the TOEFL is valid as a measure of English proficiency, thenthe MTELP and the CELT are also very likely valid. As Palmer andWoodford (1978) have pointed out, all the “high level proficiencytests [such as the TOEFL, the MTELP, and the American LanguageInstitute at Georgetown University test] measure pretty much thesame thing. As a consequence, they all tend to correlate” (p. 509).Examples of this kind of correlation are many: Dizney (1965) founda correlation of .97 between the TOEFL and the MTELP in a studyinvolving 20 students; Cervenka (1978) reported correlations in the.80s between the TOEFL and the MTELP; and J.B. Carroll (1972)reported a correlation of .91 between the TOEFL and the CELT inone study involving 29 students.

In spite of this kind of evidence, some critics will argue that adifferent sort of English test, one that focused on testingcommunicative competence rather than formal knowledge, wouldbe a better measure for college and university applicants. In arecent invitational conference called by the Educational TestingService, a number of experts in the field gave suggestions forimproving the TOEFL. Among the suggestions were (a) to providemore cohesive and coherent context for the items in the test; (b) toemphasize substance and meaning rather than form; (c) to increasethe authenticity of the language of the test, making it morerepresentative of the real-life language of the academic setting(Savignon, 1986); and (d) to devote a portion of the test for thecandidates to demonstrate, in Gallegno’s (cited in Larsen-Freeman,1986) words, “what they do know, not being penalized for whatthey don’t know” (p. 34). Despite these kinds of suggestions, whichare based on theoretical constructs of communicative competence,the fact remains, according to Oller (1986), that “everything pointsto the conclusion that the TOEFL is presently a fairly good measureof communicative competence” (p. 149).

It is possible that tests which require the participants todemonstrate that they can use English rather than simplydemonstrate that they can recognize correct linguistic items wouldbe better predictors of academic success, but it is not at all certain.Saville-Troike (1984), in a study of elementary school children,found that some students who virtually never spoke English withschoolmates did the best academically. And she found thatvocabulary knowledge was the best language skill predictor ofacademic success. Hanania and Shikhani (1986) reported thatadding an essay to the regular proficiency test used at the AmericanUniversity of Beirut, a test resembling the TOEFL, added “onlymarginally” to the predictive value of the scores (p. 99).

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What Does the Lack of Consistently High Correlations Mean?

First, it seems clear that many factors other than English languageproficiency determine academic success. As Palmer and Woodford(1978) have pointed out, “All TOEFL can indicate if it is workingright, is, ‘can the person function in the language?’” (pp. 501-502).They stress that a test designed to measure language ability is notnecessarily going to predict success in an academic program.

The lack of consistently high correlations between Englishproficiency scores and academic success may also result in partfrom the fact that foreign students with low levels of proficiency arenot usually admitted to colleges and universities. As the TOEFLTest Manual (Educational Testing Service, 1985) explains, “If aninstitution admits to academic work only those foreign applicantswho have demonstrated a high level of language competence, onewould expect that English proficiency would not be a major factorin influencing academic success” (p. 16). If students with lowerlevels of English language proficiency were regularly admitted intoacademic programs, it is entirely possible that correlations betweenEnglish proficiency scores and academic success would be stronger.

This hypothesis receives limited support from two of the studiessummarized earlier. Some of the strongest correlations betweenTOEFL and GPA were found by Gue and Holdaway (1973)(r = .49 and r = .59); the students in their sample had relatively lowmean TOEFL scores: 424.6 and 447.8 respectively. In contrast,Light, Xu, and Mossup (1987) obtained a correlation of only .14between TOEFL and GPA in their study, but their sample had ahigh mean TOEFL score: 561.

Some researchers offer another explanation for the lack ofconsistently high correlations. Typical proficiency tests are flawed inthat they do not take sociolinguistic factors into account. Odunze(1982) explained the failure of the TOEFL to predict academicperformance of his Nigerian subjects by citing their strong dislike formultiple-choice tests. Similarly, Canale (1984) has claimed that“performance on language proficiency tests may be influenced byindividuals’ attitudes toward and acceptance of certain [test] tasks”(p. 38).

One clear conclusion that the lack of consistently high cor-relations between English test scores and academic success leads tois that English proficiency is only one among many factors thataffect academic success.

Factors Influencing Academic Success

Intuitively, one would expect that general intelligence andacademic skill in areas other than English language would have an


effect on academic performance. Support for this intuition isprovided by Sharon’s (1972) finding that for the 975 foreigngraduate students in his study, the best predictor was thequantitative portion of the GRE. Wilcox (1975) found that mathaptitude scores, high school GPAs, and subject-matter achievementtest scores all showed significant correlations with academicsuccess, while English proficiency did not. A study conducted at theUniversity of Maryland (Graham, 1984) showed that for thenonnative English speakers at the Baltimore County campus, mathSATS and high school grade point averages were the bestpredictors. (Many prediction studies of American college studentshave found high school grades or rank in class to be betterpredictors than any aptitude test, often with correlations of about.50 between these measures of academic achievement and successin college [Wigdor & Garner, 1982]).

Several of the researchers who have done predictive studies ofEnglish language proficiency tests have come to the conclusion thatnonacademic, as well as academic, factors play a role in academicachievement. Ho and Spinks (1985) claim that nonacademic factorsconnected with personality and attitude may well affect academicperformance and that admissions schemes perhaps ought to takethese into account, as well as more traditional academic criteria.Gue and Holdaway (1973) mention a number of nonacademicfactors which they believe might influence success: “Motivation,homesickness, friendships, acceptance by the Western culture, andattitudes to learning, may combine to offset good languageproficiency, or to overcome initially lower proficiency” (p. 102).

The Proper Use of Language Tests

Does all this mean that English proficiency is not important toacademic success in English-language colleges and universities? Notat all. What the research does show is that the relationship betweenEnglish proficiency and academic success is complex and unclearand that language test scores should not therefore play adisproportionate role in admissions decisions. The EducationalTesting Service (1985, p. 16) itself urges institutions not to useTOEFL scores as the sole basis for admissions decisions, not to userigid cutoff scores, and not to use the scores for predictingacademic performance. According to Palmer and Woodford (1978),it makes the Educational Testing Service “very nervous” when theTOEFL is used for admissions (p. 505), and they remind collegeadministrators that it gives information about just one aspect of a

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candidate. The same, of course, can be said for any languageproficiency test.

But while proficiency scores should not be given excessiveweight, some evidence seems to show that the lower the averageEnglish proficiency is, the greater a factor it is in students’ success orlack of it. This may be particularly true when definitions ofacademic success include the amount of academic work success-fully completed, rather than simply the GPA (see Light, Xu, &Mossop, 1987). In other words, it seems likely that there is a minimallevel of English proficiency required before other factors assumemore importance. What that minimal level is will almost certainlyvary from institution to institution and, indeed, from program toprogram.

WHAT THE ESL PROFESSIONAL CAN DO

Given both the ambiguity of the relationship between Englishproficiency and academic success and the lack of clear guidelines asto minimal levels of proficiency required for success, what shouldconscientious ESL practitioners do when consulted aboutadmissions decisions? The following suggestions are offered:

1.

2.

3.

Establish some initial guidelines. If asked for an opinion aboutcutoff scores, ESL practitioners can refer to the TOEFL TestManual (Educational Testing Service, 1985), which lists TOEFLranges in the 900 institutions surveyed by the EducationalTesting Service. (They should also share with admissions peoplethe Educational Testing Service’s warning about the use ofcutoff scores.) For scores of standardized tests other thanTOEFL, they can consult institutions similar to their own aboutthe score ranges used for admissions decisions.Attempt to find the minimal level of English proficiency neededat the institution. To do this, ESL practitioners can monitor theacademic achievement of students with limited English-speakingability in their institution and study their scores on Englishproficiency measures. Palmer and Woodford (1978) have arguedthat each institution needs to do its own studies to establishappropriate levels; given the varying expectations and standardsof different institutions, that advice seems well taken.Design tests for the institution to supplement commercial tests orindeed to replace them. This last should be done only afterconsiderable reading and with support from testing experts,however.


4. Keep in mind that visiting foreign students and limited English-speaking immigrants or permanent residents may be twopopulations with distinctly different backgrounds and character-istics. While little research has been done on these differences,some studies indicate that tests which give useful results forforeign students may be worthless for immigrants or permanentresidents (Verts, 1984).

5. Continue to read relevant articles and books and to attendconference sessions dealing with English proficiency andacademic success. Research on testing is an active field, andbreakthroughs in testing are possible. But above all, ESLpractitioners must remember that there will never be a single,ideal test and that the necessary level of English proficiency willalmost certainly vary according to the particular program that astudent enters and according to attributes other than Englishproficiency that the student brings to academic pursuits.

While it may be discouraging that the whole question of Englishproficiency and its relationship to academic performance is ascomplex as it is, admissions decisions must be made. Since bothcommon sense and empirical evidence suggest that there arevarying threshold levels of English proficiency necessary foracademic success in different programs, recommendations can bemade with this in mind. One solution, for example, might be tomake English proficiency requirements so high for all applicantsthat proficiency ceases to be a factor in success or lack of success.Another solution is to adapt the proficiency requirements to thenumber of ESL support services available on a particular campus. Athird solution is to adjust the level of proficiency requirementsaccording to the strength of an individual applicant’s otherqualifications, such as mathematics scores or high school GPA. Afourth solution is to recommend that certain applicants be admittedprovisionally, that is, with restrictions (such as a limit on the numberof courses they are allowed to register for) or requirements (such assigning up for an ESL course or tutor),

Undoubtedly, even with the best guidelines, errors willoccasionally occur: Students will be admitted who do not succeed,and others will be kept out who could have succeeded. Whatconscientious ESL professionals must do is to keep up with currentresearch, study the relationship between English proficiency scoresand success on their own campuses, and make sure that theirrecommendations are made on the basis of careful considerationand the best information available.

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THE AUTHOR

Janet G. Graham (PhD, English Education, University of Maryland) is theLanguage Coordinator at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whereshe teaches ESL and administers ESL programs. Her primary research interests areEnglish for specific purposes, fossilization, and writing development. She is aformer president of Baltimore Area TESOL.

REFERENCES

Ayers, J. B., & Peters, R.M. (1977). Predictive validity of the test of Englishas a foreign language for Asian graduate students in engineering,chemistry, or mathematics. Educational and Psychological Measure-ment, 37, 461-463.

Baldauf, R. B., Jr., & Dawson, R.L.T. (1980). The predictive validity of theMichigan test of English language proficiency for teacher trainees inPapua New Guinea. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 40,1201-1205.

Bostic, M.L. (1981). A correlational study of academic achievement andthe test of English as a second [sic] language (TOEFL). DissertationAbstracts International, 42, 468A. (University Microfilms No. 81-16, 851)

Burgess, T. C., & Greis, N.B. (1970). English language proficiency andacademic achievement among students of English as a second languageat the college level. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 074812)

Canale, M. (1984). On some theoretical frameworks for languageproficiency. In C. Rivera (Ed.), Multilingual Matters, 10, 28-40. (ERICDocument Reproduction Service No. ED 240 882)

Carroll, B.J. (1980). Testing communicative competence: An interimstudy. Oxford: Pergamon.

Carroll, J.B. (1972). A comprehensive English language test for speakers ofEnglish as a second language. In O.K. Buros (Ed.), The seventh mentalmeasurements yearbook (Vol. 1, p. 260). Highland Park, NJ: Gryphon.

Cervenka, E.J. (1978). Michigan test of English language proficiency. InO.K. Buros (Ed.), The eighth mental measurements yearbook (Vol. 1,pp. 104-106). Highland Park, NJ: Gryphon.

Dizney, H. (1965). Concurrent validity of the test of English as a foreignlanguage at an American university. Educational and PsychologicalMeasurement, 25, 1129-1131.

Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. New York:Oxford University Press.

Duran, R. P., Canale, M., Penfield, J., Stansfield, C. W., & Liskin-Gasparro,J.E. (1985). TOEFL from a communicative viewpoint on languageproficiency: A working paper (Research Rep. No. 17). Princeton, NJ;Educational Testing Service.

Educational Testing Service. (1985). TOEFL test manual: Princeton, NJ:Author.


Farhady, H. (1983). New directions in ESL proficiency testing. In J.W.Oller, Jr. (Ed.), Issues in language testing research (pp. 253-269).Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Freidenburg, J. E., & Curry, W.C. (1981, May). English proficiency andthe bilingual university student. Paper presented at the AnnualInternational Bilingual Bicultural Education Conference, Boston. (ERICDocument Reproduction Service No. ED 208 657)

Gershman, J. (1977). Testing English as a foreign language: Michigan/TOEFL study. Toronto: Toronto Board of Education. (ERIC DocumentReproduction Service No. ED 145 693)

Graham, J.G. (1984). Predictors of ESL student academic success.Unpublished manuscript, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Gue, L. R., & Holdaway, E.A. (1973). English proficiency tests aspredictors of success in graduate studies in education. LanguageL e a r n i n g , 2 3 , 8 9 - 1 0 3 .

Hanania, E., & Shikhani, M. (1986). Interrelationships among three tests oflanguage proficiency. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 97-109.

Hatch, E., & Farhady, H. (1982). Research design and statistics for appliedlinguistics. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Heil, D. K., & Aleamoni, L.M. (1974). Assessment of the proficiency in theuse and understanding of English by foreign students as measured bythe test of English as a foreign language (ERIC Research Rep. No. 350).(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 093 948)

Ho, D. Y. F., & Spinks, J.A. (1985). Multivariate prediction of academicperformance by Hong Kong University students. ContemporaryEducational Psychology, 10, 249-259.

Hwang, K., & Dizney, H.F. (1970). Predictive validity of the test ofEnglish as a foreign language for Chinese graduate students at anAmerican university. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 30,475-477.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (1986). A response to S. Savignon’s “The meaning ofcommunicative competence in relation to the TOEFL program.” InC. W. Stansfield (Ed.), Toward communicative competence testing:Proceedings of the second TOEFL invitational conference (ResearchRep. No. 21) (pp. 31-37). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Light, R.L., Xu, M., & Mossop, J. (1987). English proficiency andacademic performance of international students. TESOL Quarterly, 21,251-261.

Manuel, H.T. (1962). Test of reading and number: Inter-American series.San Antonio: Guidance Testing Associates.

Mestre, J.P. (1981). Predicting academic achievement among bilingualHispanic college technical students. Educational and PsychologicalMeasurement, 41, 1255-1264.

Mulligan, A.C. (1966). Evaluating foreign credentials. College andUniversity, 41, 307-313.

Odunze, O.J. (1982). Test of English as a foreign language and first yearGPA of Nigerian students. Dissertation Abstracts International, 42,3419A-3420A. (University Microfilms No. 82-02, 657)

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Oller, J. W., Jr. (1986). Communication theory and testing: What and how.In C. W. Stansfield (Ed.), Toward communicative competence testing:Proceedings of the second TOEFL invitational conference (ResearchRep. No. 21) (pp. 104-155). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service,

Palmer, L. A., & Woodford, P.E. (1978). English tests: Their credibility inforeign student admissions. College and University, 53, 500-510.

Savignon, S.J. (1986). The meaning of communicative competence inrelation to the TOEFL program. In C. W. Stansfield (Ed.), Towardcommunicative competence testing: Proceedings of the second TOEFLinvitational conference (Research Rep. No. 21) (pp. 17-30). Princeton,NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Saville-Troike, M. (1984). What really matters in second language learningfor academic achievement? TESOL Quarterly, 18, 199-219.

Sharon, A.T. (1972). English proficiency, verbal aptitude, and foreignstudent success in American graduate school. Educational andPsychological Measurement, 32, 425-431.

Shay, H.R. (1975). Effect of foreign students’ language proficiency onacademic performance. Dissertation Abstracts International, 36, 1983A.(University Microfilms No. 75-21, 931)

Slark, J., & Bateman, H. (1982). A study of non-native English speakers’academic performance at Santa Ana College. (ERIC DocumentReproduction Service No. ED 206 368)

Stover, A.D. (1982). Effects of language admission criteria on academicperformance of non-native English-speaking students. DissertationAbstracts International, 42, 4374A-4375A. (University Microfilms No. 82-07, 017)

Sugimoto, R.A. (1966). The relationship of selected predictive variables toforeign students’ achievement at the University of California, LosAngeles. Dissertation Abstracts, 28, 65A. (University Microfilms No. 67-8032)

Verts, L.J. (1984, July). Integration of ESL/LEP students into theuniversity. Paper presented at the Sixth TESOL Summer Meeting,Corvallis, OR.

Wigdor, A. K., & Garner, W.R. (Eds.). (1982). Ability testing: Uses,consequences, and controversies (Part II). Washington, DC: NationalAcademy.

Wilcox, L.O. (1975). The prediction of academic success of undergraduateforeign students. Dissertation Abstracts International, 38, 6084B.(University Microfilms No. 75-12, 178)



Teachers and StudentsLearning About Compliments

JANET HOLMESVictoria University of Wellington

DOROTHY F. BROWNSydney College of Advanced Education

Paying appropriate compliments and identifying them accuratelyis an aspect of communicative competence which may differ in avariety of ways from one culture to another. This article providesexamples of misunderstandings in compliment exchanges indifferent cultural contexts and analyzes them as instances ofpragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure. An analysis ofpragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms of complimentingbehavior in two English-speaking communities forms the basis ofa set of exercises designed to assist learners in developing theability to recognize and use compliments appropriately.

Considerable debate has focused on the extent to which it ispossible to teach communicative competence. Some argue thatcommunicative aspects of language, such as expressing oneselfpolitely and participating smoothly in a conversation, are absorbedunconsciously in the process of learning more obviously teachablefeatures (e.g., George, 1978; Jakobovits & Gordon, 1980; Rintell,1979; Terrell, 1977). Indeed, George goes further, arguing thattolerance, not teaching, is all that is required:

More people than ever before move from one language speaking area toanother—and learn the languages they need to the extent they needthem. . . . It seems that there is no need for such “norms” to benormative, provided there is tolerance. Conversely, a “sociolinguisticerror” is an error only when there is enough lack of tolerance to make itone. More than ever before language learning is taking place outsideclassrooms. (p, 9)

Others suggest that these components of competence willdevelop naturally, provided the classroom environment is properly

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structured (Munby, 1978; Vogel, 1977). Still others believe thatlearners should be made aware of the ways native speakers uselanguage to understand not only the forms, but also the appropriatesituations in which to use them (e.g., Edmondson, House, Kasper, &Stemmer, 1984; House & Kasper, 1981; Thomas, 1983; Wolfson,1981). Edmondson et al., for instance, emphasize the importance of“ ‘cognitive learning’—i.e. of knowledge about communicativenorms, values and presuppositions of one’s own and the targetculture” (p, 124), and Thomas points out that teachers should be“sensitizing learners to expect cross-cultural differences in thelinguistic realizations of politeness, truthfulness, etc.” (p. 110).

We subscribe to this latter view. This article provides data oncomplimenting and suggests how teachers can help ESL learnersacquire the information they need to understand and usecompliments in some English-speaking speech communities. Dataon two speech communities are used to illustrate the sociolinguisticrules relating to complimenting behavior. The research of Wolfson(1981, 1983a, 1983b), Manes (1983), and Manes and Wolfson (1981)on complimenting behavior in U.S. middle-class adult societyappears to describe norms which extend over wide areas of theUnited States. This is supplemented by data on compliments in thespeech of white middle-class adult New Zealanders (Holmes, inpress).

The New Zealand data were collected by 10 students, using theethnographic method described in Manes and Wolfson (1981). Eachof the students simply noted, without selection or editing, asequence of 20 compliments in the order in which they naturallyoccurred. They noted the exact words of the compliment and of thecompliment response, the sex and relative status of the participants,and the context in which the compliment occurred. Though thismethod is not as accurate as tape-recording, it is perfectly adequatefor collecting compliment sequences when phonology is not thefocus of study, and it is very much more productive than attemptsto record a sufficiently rich and varied sample on tape.

Thus, the New Zealand corpus of 200 compliments analyzed forthis study was collected from New Zealand adults in a wide rangeof informal contexts. Exactly 50% (i.e., 100) of the New Zealandcompliments occurred between female participants, and almost aquarter more (i.e., 46) were given by females to males. The numberof compliments given by males was considerably fewer. Males gave37 (18.5%) compliments to women and 17 (8.5%) to other men. Theresults are presented in more detail in Holmes (1987, in press).

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CROSS-CULTURAL MISCOMMUNICATION

There is evidence that paying compliments is a troublesomeaspect of English for learners from different cultural backgrounds.1

Wolfson (1981) describes some of the problems encountered byESL learners in the United States. Some learners simply find itdifficult to understand why, from their point of view, Americansuse compliments so frequently. In Indonesian culture, for example,Wolfson reports, compliments are relatively rare and are used onlyamong members of the educated class who have been exposed toWestern customs. Malaysian students in New Zealand confirm thisobservation, commenting that they were very surprised andsomewhat discomfited by the frequency of compliments betweenNew Zealanders. Even within English-speaking cultures, there aredifferences in the frequency with which it is acceptable to givecompliments, New Zealanders, for instance, tend to feel thatAmericans pay far too many compliments and, judging by theirown norms, assume that American compliments are often insincere.

In some cases, Wolfson points out, it is not even clear thatdifferent cultural groups would agree on what counts as acompliment. Comments on appearance by Americans, for example,are often interpreted by those from other cultures as criticisms,implying the addressee did not normally look good. Wolfson (1981)cites the following example:

1. “Hey, what’s the occasion? You look really nice today.” (p. 119)

A non-American addressee is likely to be hurt by the suggestion thathis or her appearance is unusual and will respond accordingly. Insuch cases there is a risk of offense both to the addressee and to thecompliment-giver, for if an intended compliment is not recognized,it will not be responded to appropriately.

In New Zealand (as well as in Australia), we have noted examplesof amusement, embarrassment, or offense unwittingly caused by orgiven to ESL learners from different cultural backgrounds. In thefollowing example, a Malaysian male student compliments hisuniversity tutor as she enters the classroom.

2. Complimenter: You are wearing a very lovely dress. It fits you.Recipient: Oh—thank you.

1 Responses to compliments are also an area of potential misunderstanding. Malaysianstudents in New Zealand comment that they find it very difficult to accept a complimentand that their preferred strategy, adopted from Malay, is to disagree. Further research isbeing undertaken on this component of the compliment routine (see Holmes, 1987).

LEARNING ABOUT COMPLIMENTS 525

This example illustrates an obvious linguistic error, a “covertgrammatical error,” in Thomas’s (1983, p. 94) terms, in that thecomplimenter almost certainly intended to express the meaning ofsuits rather than of fits. However, the recipient reported being takenaback at receiving this compliment, commenting that it seemed toofamiliar from a young male student but that she felt it might havebeen acceptable from a female student. Example 3, in which afemale Pakeha (New Zealander of European descent) complimentsa Samoan friend whom she is visiting, illustrates another suchmiscommunication:

3. Complimenter: What an unusual necklace. It’s beautiful.Recipient: Please take it.

In this case, the complimenter was very embarrassed at beingoffered as a gift the object she had admired. This would have beenperfectly predictable, however, to anyone familiar with Samoancultural norms with respect to complimenting behavior.

In formal settings, too, careful attention must be paid to culturalnorms, as the following excerpt from a Sydney newspaperillustrates:

4. Bob Hawke’s eyes grew wider and wider as he was introduced by anofficial of the Japan National Press Club at a news conference onFriday. The 150 or so Japanese and Australian journalists heard thatthe Prime Minister’s golf handicap was a “State secret so we shouldnot enquire about it.” His popularity among ladies and lady voters isa pronounced phenomenon and also in the past he prided himself onhis large capacity for alcoholic intake. (Sydney Morning Herald,1986, p. 1)

While the Japanese official undoubtedly intended the remarks to becomplimentary, Mr. Hawke was clearly disconcerted by theircontent in such a formal setting. The speaker’s lack of sociolinguisticas opposed to grammatical competence lay at the heart of Mr.Hawke’s discomfiture.

ANALYZING COMPLIMENTS

In analyzing the causes of cross-cultural misunderstandingsarising from complimenting behavior, the distinction made byThomas (1983) between pragmalinguistic failure and socioprag-matic failure is a very useful one. Pragmalinguistic failure refers toa misunderstanding of the intended illocutionary, or pragmatic,force of an utterance, as illustrated by Example 5, in which aTokelau woman’s comment to a Pakeha woman visiting her ismisinterpreted by the latter as a compliment:

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5. Complimenter: You’ve lost a lot of weight. What have you beendoing?

Recipient: Thank you. I’ve started jogging regularly and it seems towork.

Complimenter: You shouldn’t overdo it. You are looking quite thin.

Although the Pakeha woman interpreted her friend’s comment onher weight as a compliment, it becomes clear that it was intended asan expression of concern. The basis for the misunderstanding in thiscase lies in different perceptions of appropriate topics forcompliments. Weight loss is considered by some cultures to be acause for concern, whereas in others it is a cause for congratulation.Even in Pakeha culture, however, severe and sudden weight losswould cause concern. Moreover, what counts as desirable andundesirable weight loss will vary from individual to individual.Though Example 5 happened to involve people from differentcultural backgrounds, it might easily have occurred between nativespeakers with different views about the Pakeha woman’s idealweight, such as her mother and herself.

Accurate interpretation of illocutionary force involves knowledgeof subtle cultural norms. The following two examples also illustratepragmalinguistic failures. In Example 6, the complimented, from aculture where large families are considered an asset, is visiting aNew Zealander who interprets the person’s remark as critical.

6, Complimenter: What a big family you have!Recipient: Yes, but it has its advantages, too.

The complimented in Example 7 is a young Chinese interpreter whois aware the addressee knows only a very few Chinese phrases. Therecipient therefore believes the compliment is insincere (in herjudgment, it offends against Grice’s [1975] maxim “Be truthful”),and so she assumes the interpreter is simply fishing for acompliment on her English.

7. Complimenter: Your Chinese is very good.Recipient: Oh no it’s not, but your English is really very good.

Though such misunderstandings are possible between nativespeakers, they occur much more frequently and systematicallybetween members of different cultural groups. Identifying thepotential sources of predictable misunderstandings is the languageteacher’s task. According to Thomas (1983), the language teacher’sconcern is appropriately directed to cases in which

the pragmatic force mapped by S [the speaker] onto a given utteranceis systematically different from the force most frequently assigned to it


by native speakers of the target language, or when speech act strategiesare inappropriately transferred from L1 to L2. (p. 99)

The language teacher will need to listen for and note such casesbecause the best examples for a particular class will be those drawnfrom the personal experiences of class members as they are learningEnglish.

Sociopragmatic failure, which can also be accounted for byinadequate knowledge of relevant cultural and social values, occurswhen a speaker selects an inappropriate linguistic strategy toexpress a speech act in a particular context. Example 2 illustratesthis kind of miscommunication. The utterance uses a perfectlyacceptable linguistic strategy for expressing a compliment; therecipient had no trouble in interpreting its intended pragmaticforce. The problem was that the compliment was perceived as toointimate, given the social context and the relationship between theparticipants.

Thomas (1983) describes causes of sociopragmatic failure interms of Brown and Levinson’s (1978) universal criteria for assessingthe relative politeness of different speech acts:

It is cross-cultural mismatches in the assessment of social distance, ofwhat constitutes an imposition, of when an attempt at a “face-threatening act” should be abandoned, and in evaluating relative power,rights, and obligations, etc., which cause socio-pragmatic failure.(p. 104)

Knowing whether a compliment is appropriate at all, as well aswhich linguistic strategy to select to express it, is part of thecommunicative competence learners need to acquire. This isillustrated by Example 8, in which a 4-year-old girl on a bus loudlyand clearly addresses an elderly woman whom she does not know.

8. Complimenter: That’s a nice hat.Recipient: Oh—thank you.

The recipient was visibly embarrassed, as was the 4-year-old’smother. The child selected a perfectly appropriate linguisticstrategy for encoding a compliment it was her assessment of therelevant social factors in the situation which betrayed hercommunicative inexperience. She had not yet learned to takeproper account of factors such as the relationship between theparticipants and the publicness of the situation.

Moreover, compliments on some topics may be more acceptablethan others in a particular context. For example, a male learner whoexpresses appreciation to a teacher after a lesson he has enjoyed isunlikely to cause embarrassment of the sort caused by a comment

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on the teacher’s appearance, as in Example 2. Wolfson (1983a)suggests that in the United States, the safest compliments to offer tostrangers relate to “possessions (e.g., That’s a beautiful car)” or to“some aspect of performance intended to be publicly observed (Ireally enjoyed your talk yesterday)” (p. 90). Judging whichpossessions and which aspects of performance are appropriatetopics for compliments, however, may require extensive knowledgeof the relevant culture. Distinctions in Maori culture betweenpossessions which are tapu (i.e., sacred, invested with a power thatcan be positive or negative) and those which are noa (i.e., not tapu),for instance, affect the kind of comments which may beappropriately made about them, and a thorough understanding ofthe distinction and its significance requires a deep knowledge ofMaori culture (Benton, 1985; Metge, 1967, 1979).

Pragmalinguistic Competence

Manes and Wolfson (1981) found that compliments areremarkably formulaic speech acts: A very small number of lexicalitems and syntactic patterns account for the great majority of the686 compliments in their corpus. This finding was replicated in theNew Zealand corpus of 200 compliments analyzed for this study.Table 1 summarizes the three most commonly occurring syntacticpatterns in the U.S. and New Zealand data. These three patternsaccount for 85% of the U.S. and 78% of the New Zealand data.

TABLE 1Relative Frequency in Percentage of Three Syntactic Patterns Used in Compliments


Compliments also draw on a very restricted range of lexicalitems. Wolfson (1984) notes that 80% of the compliments in hercorpus “depended upon an adjective to carry the positive semanticload” (p. 236). Moreover, “while the number of positive adjectiveswhich may be used is virtually unlimited . . , two thirds of alladjectival compliments in the corpus made use of only fiveadjectives: nice, good, beautiful, pretty and great” (p. 236). In theNew Zealand data, the five most frequently occurring adjectiveswere nice, good, beautiful, lovely, and wonderful. Most of thenonadjectival compliments also depended upon just a fewsemantically positive verbs (like, love, enjoy, admire, and b eimpressed by), with like and love alone accounting for 86% of theAmerican data and 80% of the New Zealand data. The similaritiesbetween the U.S. and New Zealand data confirm Wolfson’s claimthat the formulaic nature of this speech act may extend to otherEnglish-speaking communities.

Another noteworthy aspect of pragmalinguistic competenceinvolves the topics which may appropriately serve as the focus of acompliment. To be interpreted as a compliment, an utterance mustrefer to something which is positively valued by the participantsand attributed to the addressee. Once again, the U.S. and NewZealand data suggest that though the range of possible topics is verybroad, the vast majority of compliments refer to just a few generaltopics.

For the U.S. data, Wolfson (1983a) says, “with respect to topic,compliments fall into two major categories—those having to dowith appearance and those which comment on ability” (p. 90).Manes (1983), discussing the first of these categories, comments onthe “overwhelming number of compliments on personal appear-ance, most particularly clothes and hair-dos” (p. 98) and points outthat aspects of appearance “which are the result of deliberate effort”(p. 99) are particularly likely to attract comment, as are new items.The second most frequent topic in the U.S. data, identified byWolfson as “ability,” is described more fully by Manes as “thequality of something produced through the addressee’s skill oreffort: a well-done job, a skillfully-played game, a good meal”(p. 101).

These two topics are also the most commonly occurring ones inthe New Zealand data: Compliments on appearance account for45.0% of the total, and compliments on ability or performance makeup 27.5% of the data. Compliments on possessions (e. g., I love yournew bike) and those having to do with personality/friendship (e.g.,That was kind) account for 10.5% and 13.5%, respectively.

Compliments tend to occur at the openings and closings ofspeech events, often preceded by greetings and followed by

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farewells, as illustrated in Example 9, in which two colleaguesencounter each other for the first time one workday

9. Recipient: Hi, how’s things?Complimenter: Fine. You’re looking very smart today.Recipient: Thanks. I decided it was time to splash out on something

new.

Compliments may also occur at transition points within a speechevent, and there are a number of other interesting restrictions onwhere compliments may occur (see Holmes, 1987). While researchis needed on this aspect of pragmatic knowledge, it appears that acompliment in the middle of a conversation requires specialjustification. This is illustrated in Example 10, in which thecomplimented interrupts two students who had been discussingtheir work outside the library.

10. Complimenter: . . . it’s really time I finished it though—oh I justrealized you’ve had your hair cut.

Recipient: Yes, I had it done yesterday.Complimenter: I knew there was something different but I couldn’t

quite work out what. It looks great.Recipient: Well, it feels a lot better I must say.

Finally, it should be noted that compliments can serve as bivalentor plurivalent speech acts, expressing more than one illocutionary orpragmatic force (Thomas, 1985). In general, they serve to reinforcedesired behavior (Manes, 1983). Hence, compliments are often usedin English-speaking communities to express encouragement. You’redoing well, good work, and well done are typical of complimentsexpressed in classrooms. Example 11, in which a primary schoolteacher addresses a class of 5-year-olds, illustrates a particularlycommon device used by teachers, namely, a compliment thatprovides encouraging feedback to the recipient while also servingas an indirect directive to the rest of the class:

11. Complimenter: Mary’s sitting up nicely.Recipient: [Nonverbal response: Mary sits up even straighter,

looking pleased.]

Compliments can also be used as expressions of gratitude, asillustrated in Example 12, in which a guest compliments the hostwhen leaving after a dinner party.

12. Complimenter: I loved the tacos. I’ll be back tomorrow for somemore.

Recipient: Hope they weren’t too hot.


Wolfson (1983a) points out that compliments serve as “sociallubricants” and often accompany or even replace other speech actformulas, such as apologies, thanks, and greetings. They may alsoprecede, and so soften, a criticism. Wolfson suggests that the exactconditions under which a compliment may replace other speechfunctions, such as expressions of gratitude, are by no means self-evident, and she notes that social factors such as role and statusrelations must be carefully considered.

Sociopragmatic Competence

The selection of appropriate topics and the use of compliments toperform additional functions depend on factors which are relevantto developing sociopragmatic competence, too. As Thomas (1983)has remarked, misunderstandings are not always clearly attribut-able to pragmalinguistic, as opposed to sociopragmatic, failure:There is some overlap between the concepts. Cultural beliefs andsocial values become the major focus, however, when we considerhow native speakers select appropriate compliments in particularsocial contexts. Who compliments whom in which contexts and onwhat topics?

When responding to this question, we must treat our datacircumspectly, since compliments rnay be easier to collect in somecontexts than in others and there is no guarantee that the corpora arerepresentative in this respect. We have little data on children’sinteractions, for example, and most of the data available have beencollected by female researchers. Nevertheless, some generalizationsseem to be justified.

Wolfson (1983a) points out that “the overwhelming majority of allcompliments are given to people of the same age and status as thespeaker” (p. 91). The New Zealand data support this observation.As mentioned above, compliments tend to occur at certain points ininteraction, and when colleagues or friends meet for the first timeon a particular day, an exchange of compliments relating toappearance as part of the greeting exchange—e.g., I like your dress;what a wonderful jersey; you look nice—is likely.

Compliments also occur in encounters between status unequals,however. Contrary to the popular view that the participant withlower status will be more likely to use compliments to flatter ormanipulate, Wolfson (1983a) points out that “the great majority ofcompliments which occur in interactions between status unequalsare given by the person in the high position” (p. 91). Similarly, in theNew Zealand data it was interesting to find that compliments“upwards” were fewer than those “downwards.” Compliments

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upwards tended to occur only when the participants knew eachother reasonably well and the complimented was often a maturerather than a young person. Compliments to someone of superiorstatus seem to require some confidence on the part of thecomplimenter—presumably to counteract the possibility of anegative interpretation.

Wolfson also notes that compliments downwards were oftenwork related and were twice as likely to focus on ability orperformance as on appearance or possessions, whereas the reversewas the case between status equals or for compliments upwards.This tendency was observable in the New Zealand data too andpartly explains why teachers report feeling uncomfortable orpatronized by young overseas students who compliment them ontheir performance regularly and, it seems to the teacher, profusely.

As Example 2 suggested, the sex of participants is an importantsocial factor in complimenting behavior. Part of the sociopragmaticknowledge that native speakers use in interpreting and expressingcompliments appropriately involves an awareness of the relevanceof the sex of the participants. Wolfson (1983a) comments that in theAmerican data “women appear both to give and receivecompliments much more frequently than men do” (p. 92). This wascertainly true for the New Zealand data as well. Women gave 73.0%of all the compliments recorded (50.0% to other women and 23.0% tomen) and received 68.5% of them (50.0% from other women and18.5% from men). Compliments between males were relatively rare(only 8.5%). While this may have been partly a reflection of the factthat the researchers were female and thus may not have beenpresent in contexts where male-male compliments occurredfrequently, its general accuracy is confirmed by Wolfson’s data andby discussions with male students and colleagues.

Another pattern which emerges clearly from both the U.S. andthe New Zealand data is the tendency for females to receivecompliments relating to their appearance. Of all the complimentswomen received in the New Zealand data, 47% relate to aspects oftheir appearance (see Table 2).

New Zealand men also receive compliments on their appearance(40% of all compliments they receive), but it is interesting to notethat the vast majority of these (88%) are given by women. The U.S.pattern appears to be different. Though men rarely complimenteach other on appearance in either community, the appearance ofAmerican men seems not to be an appropriate topic of complimentsfrom men or from women. Wolfson (1983a) comments that onlywhen the male is much younger than the female does this occur atall, and in general she says, “there seems to be a rather strong if not


TABLE 2Compliment Data Analyzed According to

Topic and Sex of Participants

Complimenter- Ability/per- Personality/recipient Appearance formance Possessions friendship Other Total

Female-female 55 24 11 10 100Female-male 22 9 5 10 — 46Male-female 10 20 — 2 5 37Male-male 3 2 5 5 2 17Total 90 55 21 27 7 200

categorical constraint against the giving of appearance-relatedcompliments to higher-status males, especially in work-relatedsettings” (p. 93).

Clearly, there are decided patterns concerning acceptable topicsfor compliments involving both the relative status and sex of theaddressee and the complimented. Complimenting one’s male bosson his appearance in America is likely to cause embarrassment orelicit disapproval, and complimenting a male on his clothes orhairstyle is likely to attract attention in either community if thespeaker is male.

CLASSROOM EXERCISES ON COMPLIMENTSThe data analyzed above provided the basis for the following sets

of exercises, which can help learners to develop skill in recognizingcompliments, in identifying the appropriate topics and contexts forcompliments, and in interpreting their functions appropriately. Thefirst group of exercises outlined below focuses on pragmalinguisticaspects of complimenting, and the second group aims to developsociopragmatic skills, though the distinction is of course by nomeans absolute. In general, the earlier exercises give the teachermore control, whereas the later ones encourage students to take theinitiative in developing their sociolinguistic awareness.

Some may feel that the exercises place a great deal of emphasison talk about language at the expense of practice in using language,a criticism that was directed at the grammar-translation method andone that led to the popularity of more “direct” methods of languageteaching. In teaching students how to use language appropriately,however, there is very good reason to encourage them to reflect onthe reasons for selecting one utterance rather than another. It is

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important, as Thomas (1983) says, that “teachers should develop astudent’s metapragmatic ability—the ability to analyse language ina conscious manner” (p. 98). Unless learners pay conscious attentionto the relevant social factors in a particular context, they are likelyto lapse automatically into the norms of their native language andculture and may thereby cause unintended offense. The kind ofexercises we provide are of precisely the kind recommended byCandlin (1976, p. 251), House and Kasper (1981, p. 184), andThomas (1983, p. 98). They are aimed at achieving sociopragmaticconsciousness-raising rather than simply providing unreflectingpractice of particular linguistic formulas.

Developing Pragmalinguistic Competence

The formulaic nature of compliments—their syntactic and lexicalpredictability—makes them attractive ESL teaching material andprovides an easy solution to the problem of how to express thisspeech act in English. Though indirect compliments may take alimitless variety of forms, they are proportionately so infrequent(less than 5%) that learners can legitimately use a formulaic linguisticstrategy without this suggesting inadequate pragmatic competence.Hence, this aspect of pragmalinguistic competence can be taught inthe same way as any other linguistic formulas, such as greetings,leave-takings, and expressions of gratitude and apology. Since justthree formulas will provide for learners’ basic needs in this respect,the learners’ efforts can largely be directed at the more complicatedaspects of using compliments.

Exercise 1: Learning compliment formulasDirections: Distribute a copy of the chart in Table 1 and the exercisebelow to each student. Instruct students to identify, by writing theformula number in the space provided on the exercise sheet, whichformula, if any, is being used and also to indicate the relative frequencyof that formula in the New Zealand data.

Formula Relativenumber frequency

1. You look very nice.2. That’s a good essay.3. I really like your hair.4. He seems pretty unreliable.5. I really love your garden.6. You were so kind.7. That’s a very nice cake you made.8. I like your view.9. Your new house is looking great.

10. That skirt is splendid.


Another aspect of handling compliments well which involveslinguistic rather than social knowledge is coping with thecollocational complexities of intensifiers. Second language learnersoften have problems with the collocations of intensifiers andadjectives that are so crucial to compliment formulas. Somecollocations, such as very excellent and very perfect, are un-acceptable because in general very should not occur withnongradable or nonsalable adjectives.

Other intensifiers are slippery, in that they vary in meaning withscalable and nonsalable adjectives (e.g., quite perfect versus quitegood), as well as according to the relative positions of adjectives ona scale (e.g., quite beautiful versus quite pretty). In each of thepreceding pairs of examples, quite in the first member of the pairwould generally be interpreted as intensifying the meaning,whereas in the second it attenuates the meaning of the followingadjective, A Samoan bridegroom illustrated the confusion learnerscan experience with such words when he thanked a prestigious NewZealander for his speech by saying “Thank you for your quite goodspeech.” Though quite can substitute for very or really beforewords like outstanding or wonderful, it cannot be used as anintensifier before adjectives at a less extreme point on the scale,such as good. In fact quite is probably best avoided by learnersinitially. To raise students’ awareness of such collocationalproblems, the following exercise is useful.

Exercise 2: Coping with compliment collocationsDirections: Group students in pairs, and give each pair a copy of thechart in Figure 1. Instruct students to indicate with a check mark whichintensifiers can precede which adjectives. Ask them if they need to knowwhat is being referred to before they can make these judgments. Uponcompletion, each pair of students should check their answers withanother pair, and then discuss their results with the class as a whole.

FIGURE 1Collocations of Intensifiers and Adjectives

nice good beautiful pretty great lovely wonderful kind

veryreallyjustabsolutelyprettyso

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Distinguishing between compliments and other speech actswhich may use similar linguistic formulas is an importantpragmalinguistic skill the learner must develop. Manes and Wolfson(1981) comment, for example, that compliment formulas “can beadapted with minimal effort to a wide variety of situations in whicha favorable comment is required or desired” (p. 123). Although it istrue that simply substituting an appropriate noun phrase is often allthat is needed, it is also necessary for the learner to know whichnoun phrases are appropriate topics of compliments.

The following exercise provides examples which will generatediscussion of the crucial clues to whether or not an utterance isintended as a compliment. Relevant factors include the topic of theutterance, its placing in the discourse, and its relevance to theaddressee, as discussed earlier.

Exercise 3: Identifying possible complimentsDirections: Ask students to consider the following utterances andwhether they could serve as compliments. Tell them to note the cluesthey use in making their decision and to provide a context to justify it.Before students begin the exercise, present the following example:That’s a neat bike. Explain that this could be a compliment, since it fitsFormula 3. To function as a compliment, it would have to be addressedto the owner of the bike or to someone who could be considered“responsible” for it in some way. It would thus refer to a common topicof compliments—possessions. It could be said by one friend to anotheron the first occasion that the complimented saw the bike.

1. I simply adore pavlovas.2. That’s a very nice thing to say.3. You look cheerful.4. We should do this more often.5. You’re very rich.6. I love fish and chips.7. That’s a good piece of work.8. I really enjoy opera.9. That car looks terrifically expensive.

10. Your parents are extremely old.11. This picnic was a very good idea.12. You’re really well organized.

Each of the preceding statements could of course be qualified,and it is precisely this which generates valuable discussion in theclassroom. Exercise 4 is a similar exercise which explores theplurivalent nature of speech acts.

Exercise 4: Considering plurivalent speech actsDirections: Ask students to consider how many different speech actseach of the following utterances could serve. Instruct them to


provide relevant contextual information to support their differentinterpretations. (The utterances in Exercise 3 can also be used for thisexercise. ) The example of What neat writing you’ve done can beoffered, with “compliment from teacher to child” given as the context.Point out that this utterance also acts as praise serving as encouragementto maintain good work and serves as an indirect directive to other pupilsto reach similar standards.

1. I really admire your energy.2. That’s a very bright skirt.3. You look very happy this morning.4. David's really good at washing dishes.5. Your house is nice and big for entertaining.6. How lovely to see you.7. That’s a very clever idea.8. Your children are so well behaved.9. That was a beautiful meal.

10. You’re nice to have around.

Developing Sociopragmatic Competence

Developing awareness of acceptable topics of English compli-ments will lead to some discussion of the differences between thecultural and social values of the learner and the English-speakingcommunity in which the learner wants to communicate. As astarting point, the following exercise is a useful way of raisingawareness of the most frequent topics used as a focus forcompliments in Enghsh-speaking cultures as well as providing anopportunity for social interaction. In addition, it exposes students togenuine sociolinguistic data in a commonly encountered format andthus provides them with practice in interpreting authentic material,a skill of great value to many adult learners.

Exercise 5: Noting common compliment topicsDirections: Group students in pairs, and give one member of each pair acopy of the table in Figure 2 and the other a copy of the table in Figure 3.Each table has five missing figures, which are replaced by a questionmark. Instruct students to ask each other questions to complete theirtable but not to show their table to their partner. Present the followingsample questions to students:1. How many compliments were analyzed in total in this study?2. How many of the compliments were about appearance?3. Which topic is the most common one for paying compliments about?When the students in a pair have completed both tables, they shouldcheck them against the teacher’s master copy and then together answerthese questions:

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FIGURE 2Compliment Data Analyzed According to Topic and Sex


Female-female 55 24 11 10 100Female-male 22 ? 5 ? — 46Male-female 10 20 — 2 5 37Male-male 3 2 5 5 2 ?Total 90 55 ? 27 7 ?

FIGURE 3Compliment Data Analyzed According to Topic and Sex


4. What do males compliment each other about most frequently? Giveone example of such compliments.

5. What percentage of all compliments are given by females to otherfemales?

6. Why do you think females compliment males more often than malescompliment females in the New Zealand data? Would this pattern bethe same in your society?

7a.

b.

c.

Collect 10 examples of compliments from short stories in a popularmagazine such as the Women’s Weekly, and classify them using thecategories provided in the table.Do your data show the same distribution by topic and sex ofparticipants as the New Zealand data? If not, why do you think yourdata are different?Do you think similar compliments would be used in your owncultural community? -

Information concerning the frequency of compliments betweendifferent participants and in different contexts can be very useful tothe ESL learner, since it reflects the values and cultural assumptionsof the community. The ESL teacher can use such information to


develop learners’ awareness of similarities and differences inacceptable complimenting behavior in their own languagecompared with English.

Learning to be a good participant-observer is an invaluable skillfor the language learner to develop, as Saville-Troike’s (1982)comment about children suggests: “Children are essentiallyparticipant-observers of communication, like small ethnographers,learning and inductively developing the rules of their speechcommunity through processes of observation and interaction”(p. 205). In addition, adult learners bring their superior cognitiveand reflective skills to such observation. The following exercisesuggests some ways in which teachers can make use of thesestrengths and assist students to become aware of culturaldifferences in complimenting.

Exercise 6: Collecting compliment dataDirections: The aim of this exercise is to help students learn how tocollect their own data so that they can become aware for themselves ofthe contexts in which compliments occur and the appropriate topics andpossible functions of compliments. The teacher should provide goodexamples initially in order to give students practice in noting the relevantfeatures. The following data sources are useful and easily gradable interms of their difficulty for students.1.

2.3.

4.5.

Transcripts of spoken interaction from inside the classroom. Thesemay include praise which illustrates compliments being used forencouragement by the teacher (That’s good work), complimentslinked to greetings between students (Hi. You’ve had your hair done.It looks great), or compliments linked to farewells (You’ve workedwell today. See you tomorrow).Selected written material such as magazine stories and novels.Selected video sections of television situation-comedies andadvertisements for analysis and discussion in class.Unmonitored television or film material to be reported back to class.Naturally occurring data in contexts outside the classroom to bereported back to C1aSS.

Students collecting naturally occurring data should be instructed tomake a record of the next 20 compliments they hear, using the format inFigure 4 to note relevant information. This should include the exactlinguistic form of the compliment as well as any other contextualinformation they consider relevant to interpreting it.

In some teaching contexts it may be possible, once students havepracticed collecting English compliment data, to use the format inFigure 4 to collect compliments in the students’ mother tongues.Where the local language is not English or where a large group oflearners use the same mother tongue, for example, such data can be

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FIGURE 4Recording Compliment Data

Comptirnent feature Example

Linguistic formResponseTopicContextComplimenter

age/sex/roleRecipient

age/ex/roleDiscourse positionAlternative function

What a great hat.Thanks I like it too.Appearance: clothesEarly winter morning in the street

Male student, age 24, friend of R.

Male student, age 20, friend of C.Following a greetingSubstitute for greeting

Note The categories in this table can obviously be modified or extended to suit learners’ andteachers’ needs.

collected and used for comparative purposes. This approach isextremely fruitful in focusing on and generating discussion ofsociocultural variables which differ in emphasis between cultures.

A further productive source of comparative data is role playing inthe classroom, which can also provide information about possibleareas of sociolinguistic interference. Moreover, role plays providethe teacher with a great deal of control over the complexity of thematerial. Gubbay (1980) provides examples of how role playsimulates “real life situations in the classroom under controlledconditions” (p. 3). The teacher can first give compliments, thuscontrolling the range used and providing students with practice inresponding—a less demanding role. Then students can practicegiving compliments to each other.

The kind of role play which is appropriate will depend on thecomposition of the class. Role play should draw on the out-of-classexperience of students. Exercise 7 provides an example of how roleplay may be used to encourage adult students in a second languagesituation to reflect on the number of variables that are relevant toselecting an appropriate compliment and lead them toward anawareness of the ways these variables may interact. The exercisewould need to be adapted for use with different students.


Exercise 7: Developing knowledge of factors relevant in role playDirections: Students should be given a list of situations, such as the threeprovided below. They should make notes on the range of possible topicsand linguistic formulas for compliments in each situation, and thenconsider how, leaving the setting the same, these would change ifvariables such as sex, age, relative status of participants, and degree offamiliarity are changed.Situation l—Male teacher to 13-year-old female pupil in classroomWould there be any alteration in the possible topics and kinds ofcompliments which would be appropriate if (a) both participants weremale, (b) both participants were female, (c) both participants wereadult, or (d) the two met each other in the supermarket?Situation 2—30-year-old woman to male acquaintance she has met in

shopping centerWould there be any alteration in the possible topics and kinds ofcompliments which would be appropriate if (a) both participants weremale, (b) both participants were female, (c) addressee was compliment-er’s boss, or (d) addressee was 6 years old?Situation 3—Elderly male shop assistant to unfamiliar middle-age

female customerWould there be any alteration in the possible topics and kinds ofcompliments which would be appropriate if (a) the participants wereboth in their teens, (b) the customer was the local mayor, or (c) theparticipants were very good friends?

Since native speakers appear to have reliable intuitions about themost commonly occurring formulas which may be used incompliments, role plays can be used to elicit two different kinds ofdata from ESL learners: data in English and data in the learner’snative language. These data can form the basis for valuablediscussion, Using English can provide information on the extent towhich the learners have acquired the formulas being discussed, androle plays using the learner’s mother tongue can provideinformation on the syntactic and lexical constraints whichcharacterize compliments in that language. This information canthen be used for comparative purposes both in relation topragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms. Situations in whichlearners feel compliments would be inappropriate in their nativeculture, for instance, are likely to cause comment which can lead touseful insights for both teachers and learners. In selecting role plays,it is obviously important, as this discussion has suggested, to ensurethat a range of role and status relationships are included, as well asopportunities for same-sex and cross-sex interactions.

Once learners have collected data from a variety of sources, theyshould feel confident enough to try out what they have learned. At

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this stage students can practice giving compliments and be secure inthe knowledge that even if they make some mistakes, their positiveintentions will generally be clear to their recipients and shouldgenerate the goodwill so valuable to learners in an unfamiliarculture. Practicing giving compliments should be a pleasantexperience for all concerned.

CONCLUSION

Teaching sociolinguistic competence is by no means a straightfor-ward task. As Littlewood (1983) points out, “a communicativeapproach is concerned with the internal needs of the learner torelate to the language, integrate it with his own cognitive make-up,use it to express his own self, and so on” (p. 94). Learners must alsobe able to integrate what they are learning with their own culturaland social values. By being too prescriptive in terms of whatconstitutes appropriate linguistic behavior, teachers may deprivelearners of the opportunity to find ways of using the secondlanguage which they personally find comfortable. Teaching aboutsociolinguistic competence requires sensitivity, since “socioprag-matic decisions are social before they are linguistic, and while foreign learners are fairly amenable to corrections which theyregard as linguistic, they are justifiably sensitive about having theirsocial . . . judgment called into question” (Thomas, 1983, p. 104).

On the other hand, the ESL teacher must provide information tolearners so that they may choose how to express themselves and doso without unintentionally giving offense. Thomas (1983) expressesthis point well:

It is the teacher’s job to equip the student to express her/himself inexactly the way s/he chooses to do so—rudely, tactfully, or in anelaborate polite manner. What we want to prevent is her/his beingunintentionally rude or subservient. (p. 96)

The approach we have taken in this article aims to provideinformation on norms and patterns that have been observed, as wellas suggestions on how learners can make use of this information toextend their sociolinguistic competence. Learners can then decidewhether to break the rules and so deliberately cause offense oramusement. They can also interpret the significance of compli-ments accurately. A laissez-faire, or osmotic, approach, in which theteacher expects students to simply “pick up” or absorb relevantknowledge without explicit teaching, risks disempowering learners,depriving them of choice and sophistication in their use of English.


Finally, it is important to stress that much more research isneeded to assist ESL teachers and learners to develop competencein using language appropriately. While it is clear, for instance, thatsome aspects of complimenting behavior differ greatly from onecommunity to another, the research available paints with a verybroad brush. Finer analysis is needed. In many societies, forexample, it is acceptable to compliment people on their possessions,but what counts as a possession varies from one culture to another.In New Zealand, for instance, compliments to a male on his wifewhich reflect a view of her as a possession would be consideredunacceptable, except perhaps in jest between good friends; eventhen, not all women would be willing to see the joke! Comments onappearance are also subject to further refinement. It is notacceptable to compliment an acquaintance on simply any aspect ofappearance. I like your new false teeth, for example, would beappropriate only between family members or very close friends.Comments on age or wealth are acceptable in some cultures, butnot in others (Gao, 1984). Further research along these and otherlines, adapted and integrated into exercises of the kind outlined inthis article, will improve the quality of the information we can offerESL learners.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the following students for their contributions to the data:S. Cotterall, M. Cranko, M. Davey, H. Drummond, G. Free, S. Gibbons, C.McCausland, F. McMichael, L. Minshall, and L. Sheung.

THE AUTHORS

Janet Holmes is a Reader in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington. Shehas published a number of articles which combine her interests in sociolinguisticsand applied linguistics. As well as research on compliments, she has also researchedsex differences in language use.

Dorothy F. Brown trains teachers of English as a second language at the SydneyCollege of Advanced Education. She has published in the area of appliedlinguistics and is interested in the relevance of sociolinguistics for migranteducation in Australia.

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REFERENCES

Benton, R.A. (1985). Maori, English and Maori English. In J.B. Pride (Ed.),Cross-cultural encounters: Communication and mis-communication(pp. 110-120). Melbourne River Seine.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politenessphenomena. In E.N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategiesin social interaction (pp. 56-289). Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Candlin, C.N. (1976). Communicative language teaching and the debt topragmatics. In C. Rameh (Ed.), Georgetown Universitg Round Table onLanguages and Linguistics 1976 (pp. 237-256). Washington, DC:Georgetown University Press.

Edmondson, W., House, J., Kasper, G., & Stemmer, B. (1984). Learningthe pragmatics of discourse: A project report. Applied Linguistics, 5,113-127.

Gao, W. (1984). Compliment and its reaction in Chinese and Englishcultures. Working Papers in Discourse in English and Chinese (pp. 32-37). Canberra: Canberra College of Advanced Education.

George, H.V. (1978). Asian ELT: The relevance and irrelevance ofsociolinguistics. Regional English Language Centre Journal, 9 (l), 1-12.

Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J.L. Morgan(Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41-58). New York:Academic Press.

Gubbay, D. (1980). Role-play: The theory and practice of a method forincreasing language awareness. Southall, England: National Centre forIndustrial Language Training.

Holmes, J. (1987). Compliments and compliment responses in NewZealand English. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Holmes, J. (in press). Sex differences and language use in the ESLclassroom. In B.K. Das (Ed.), Communication and learning in theclassroom community. Singapore: Regional English Language Centre.

House, J., & Kasper, G. (1981). Politeness markers in English and German.In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routine (pp. 157-185). Mouton: TheHague.

Jakobovits, L., & Gordon, B. (1980). Language teaching vs. the teaching oftalk. International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 6 (4), 5-22.

Littlewood, W.T. (1983). Contrastive pragmatics and the foreign languagelearner’s personality. In C. Brumfit (Ed.), Learning and teachinglanguages for communication (pp. 90-97). London: Centre forInformation on Language Teaching.

Manes, J. (1983). Compliments: A mirror of cultural values. In N. Wolfson&E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language acquisition (pp. 96-102).Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Manes, J., & Wolfson, N. (1981). The compliment formula. In F. Coulmas(Ed.), Conversational routine (pp. 115-132). Mouton: The Hague.


Metge, J. (1967). The Maoris of New Zealand: Rautahi. L o n d o n :Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Metge, J. (1979, January). The translation of culture. Paper presented atthe Symposium on Cross-Cultural Aspects of Cognition, 49th Australianand New Zealand Association for the Advancement of ScienceCongress, Auckland.

Munby, J. (1978). Communicative syllabus design. C a m b r i d g e :Cambridge University Press.

Rintell, E. (1979). Getting your speech act together: The pragmatic abilityof second language learners. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 17, 97-106.

Saville-Troike, M. (1982). The ethnography of communication. Oxford:Basil Blackwell.

Sydney Morning Herald staff. (1986, May 19). Column 8 [recurringfeature]. Sydney Morning Hearld, p. 1.

Terrell, T.D. (1977). A natural approach to second language acquisitionand learning. Modern Language Journal, 61, 325-337.

Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics, 4,91-112.

Thomas, J. (1985). Complex illocutionary acts and the analysis of discourse(Lancaster Papers in Linguistics No. 11). Lancaster, England: LancasterUniversity.

Vogel, K. (1977). Communicative competence as a performance objectiveand its realization in foreign language teaching. System, 5, 46-57.

Wolfson, N. (1981). Compliments in cross-cultural perspective. TESOLQuarterly, 15, 117-124.

Wolfson, N. (1983a). An empirically based analysis of complimenting inAmerican English. In N. Wolfson & E. Judd (Eds.), Sociolingui.sties andlanguage acquisition (pp. 82-95). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Wolfson, N. (1983b). Rules of speaking. In J.C. Richards (Ed.), Languageand communication (pp. 61-87). London Longman.

Wolfson, N. (1984). Pretty is as pretty does. Applied Linguistics, 5, 236-244.

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REVIEWSThe TESOL Quarterly welcomes evaluative reviews of publications of relevanceto TESOL professionals. In addition to textbooks and reference materials, theseinclude computer and video software, testing instruments, and other forms ofnonprint materials.

Edited by VIVIAN ZAMELUniversity of Massachusetts/Boston

Bilingual and ESL Classrooms:Teaching in Multicultural ContextsCarlos J. Ovando and Virginia P. Collier. New York: McGraw-Hill,1985. Pp. xi+ 354.

Bilingualism Through Schooling: Cross-CulturalEducation for Minority and Majority StudentsArnulfo G. Ramírez. Albany: State University of New York Press,1985. Pp. xiii + 275.

Bilingual education has long been in need of a comprehensiveintroductory text that succeeds at sorting out the multitude ofcomplex issues inherent in the field. The years since the publicationof two early volumes on bilingual education, Anderson and Boyer’sBilingual Schooling in the United States (1970) and Cordasco’sBilingual Schooling in the U.S. (1972), have been characterized byprofound changes in every area related to the instruction of limitedEnglish proficient students in American schools.

During this period, those who teach courses in bilingual educationhave relied on groups of readings on such topics as sociohistoricalperspectives, law and legislation, language acquisition, languageteaching and assessment, the influences of culture on learning, andthe implementation of instructional programs. To that end, we havedeveloped our own collections of readings for course use andutilized edited volumes of such readings (Center for AppliedLinguistics, 1977; LaFontaine, Persky, & Golubchick, 1978; Trueba& Barnett-Mizrahi, 1979) to present the issues. There has clearlybeen a need for a unified text. Thus, it is encouraging that therehave been two recent attempts to develop primary texts onbilingual education.

549

An introductory course on the nature of bilingual schooling in theUnited States must include a large amount of information from anumber of differing fields. This might certainly help to explain thedearth of texts which can adequately address the needs of teacherspreparing to work with language minority populations. The idealtext must cover substantial amounts of information on the bilinguallearner, issues in L1 and L2 instruction and proficiency,sociocultural influences on school achievement, school/communityvariables, and instructional programs and strategies. In addition, thetreatment of the historical and international development ofbilingualism and bilingual schooling must set the stage fordiscussion of social and political implications of bilingualism andbilingual education in the United States. Clearly, the major task is toorganize such material in a manner that informs the reader, ties theinformation together, and leads the reader to other sources forfurther investigation.

How well do these volumes accomplish such a comprehensivetask? The Ramírez volume falls short of this goal, while the Ovandoand Collier text may in fact be one of the first texts in recent yearsto offer comprehensive and current exposure to the issues ofbilingual education.

Ovando and Collier indicate in the preface that their volume isdirected to bilingual and ESL teachers, that the text “combinestheory and research with practical classroom applications” (p. ix),and that as an authored text, it seeks to avoid the difficultiesinherent in anthologies. Finally, they emphasize that language andculture, integral components in bilingual and ESL classrooms, formthe foundation of their discussion of the options for instructionoffered both language minority and language majority students.

By contrast, the preface of the Ramíez text makes no mention ofthe intended audience. Listing the variety of topics presented in thebook, Ramírez states that “the many studies reviewed vary . . . buteach contributes to our understanding of the many dimensions oflanguage and bilingual schooling” (p. xii). The book jacketdescribes it as a “comprehensive survey of bilingual education.”

An examination of each of these books must address threeprimary questions: (1) How does the volume present and organizethe myriad topics that it must include? (2) Does the work il-luminate the issues surrounding bilingual education in the UnitedStates and assist the reader in beginning to see the complexinterrelationships between social, political, economic, and linguisticvariables that impinge on the education of language minoritystudents? and (3) Because the topics cannot be covered in depth,

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does the book cover the basic issues and also lead the reader tooriginal sources, other readings, and primary documents?

Bilingualism Through Schooling contains a large amount ofinformation. Material has been gathered from research studies,government reports, doctoral dissertations, and conferenceproceedings, with the result that skeletal reviews of each topic arepresented, organized by chapter subheadings that are often notmatched by their content. Such individual subheadings (the 214-page book, excluding appendixes, contains 72 such headings) oftenreduce complex topics to objects of almost passing interest. Forexample, the discussion of communicative competence tests iscontained in one paragraph; developments in language teaching arediscussed in two paragraphs.

A text on bilingual schooling cannot be expected to treat eachtopic covered with the same depth as that of the original sources.Yet such complex topics—for example, the latest developments insecond language teaching methodology—demand more than justcursory coverage. A careful synthesis is required, one that toucheson primary issues and their implications for bilingual instruction.Such synthesis is absent from this volume, and the result is a choppyand awkward style that at best makes for tedious reading and atworst contributes to misinterpretation of the information presented.In many cases, no interpretation or definitions are offered for termsor concepts within the cited material, and no synthesis is offered tofacilitate the reader’s understanding of the topic or why it relates tobilingual schooling.

The poor organization of Bilingualism Through Schooling isevident throughout. The chapter summaries merely reflect lists inthe chapter headings themselves. Little or no integration is evidentin the volume, even though a great variety of research material hasbeen summarized and categorized. Studies are cited, yet the authordoes not tie them together in an attempt to draw major implications.Tables are included to document conclusions of some studies, butmany are simply impossible to interpret without more completeinformation. The compounding of meaningless detail in studycitations and in incompletely explained tables is not helpful. Onlyrarely is there a synthesis of research that both illuminates a studyand offers insight into larger issues.

To compare how the two volumes treat important issues in thefield of education and language minority students, I chose tworesearchers research groups that have made significant contribu-tions to our understanding of both linguistic and cultural issues inbilingual schooling. One might expect a current work to includemention of the contributions of Skutnabb-Kangas, a prolific

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researcher on European bilingualism and language minority issues.Her most recent volume, Bilingualism or Not (1983), is a substantivediscussion of the issues related to minority and majority languagestudents and the development of bilingualism in individuals andsocieties. Mention of her earlier work (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1979) andthe importance of linking discussions of bilingualism in the UnitedStates with larger issues of minority-majority relations is notincluded in the Ramírez text. Ovando and Collier, on the otherhand, cite her work in their discussion of the contexts in which firstand second languages develop.

It would be difficult to discuss instruction for students who areculturally and/or linguistically different from the mainstreamwithout mentioning the work of the Kamehameha EducationResearch Institute (see Au & Jordan, 1981). The work of this group,which is central to discussions of the nature of cultural influences onlearning styles and the classroom implications of these preferences,is discussed by Ovando and Collier, along with related research. Bycontrast, the Ramírez volume contains relatively little informationon the relationship between language, culture, and education.Cultural information is covered in a chapter titled “AttitudesToward Language and Cultural Groups,” which concerns itself withlanguage attitudes.

I also considered it important to compare the treatment of aparticular topic that was included in both texts. The discussion of“communicative competence” demonstrated in microcosm thedifficulties with the Ramírez text. Research studies are organizedaround the topic areas in a “cut and paste” format that does notprovide context for the reader. In the Ovando and Collier volume,however, concepts are presented and synthesized; then researchwhich illuminates the issues is examined. The development of acontext for discussion in the Ovando and Collier text results in aclear exposition of the concept of communicative competence. TheRamírez text leaves much of the work of synthesis to the reader.The volume suffers, moreover, from a lack of balance. Some studiesare briefly mentioned in terms of how they relate to the topic underdiscussion, but other studies (primarily those in which the authorparticipated) are described in such minute detail that the motive forsuch a lengthy treatment and the relevance to general points are notalways clear.

Much of one’s understanding of the Ramírez work dependson prior exposure to the topics discussed. As an assigned text forstudent reading, Bilingualism Through Schooling would requiremuch in the way of interpretation. Beyond a beginning level,however, readers would be well advised to seek original sources to

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get a more accurate picture of a particular research study. Thus,beginning-level students would find the lack of careful synthesis aserious drawback, while more advanced students would havealready met with much of the material in its original form.

Much of the difficulty in research and evaluation of bilingualprograms stems from the false notion that bilingual education is acurriculum model rather than a curricular concept. Ovando andCollier, in Bilingual and ESL Classrooms, recognize the source ofthis difficulty. Thus, they stress the complexity of bilingualschooling and the need to consider and integrate a large number ofvariables, which may not always produce the same results for eachlocal community or school. The integration of theory with thereality of teaching and learning in bilingual contexts is the strongpoint of this volume.

While Bilingual and ESL Classrooms has the same goal as theRamírez text—to integrate substantial amounts of diversetheoretical and practical information—it proves much moresuccessful in doing so. Its eight major chapters, each with severalsubsections, are well written, cohesive, and carefully edited. Thefirst chapter, “Students,” addresses the nature of limited Englishproficient student populations and, in doing so, lets teachers andstudents speak for themselves. Subsequent chapters cover politics,programs, and resources; language; culture; social studies, music,and art; mathematics and science; assessment; and school andcommunity. The practical realities of schooling, rather thantheoretical topics, guide the organization of the text.

A strong point of the text is the integration of concerns in bothbilingual education and ESL. Historically, the relationship betweenthe two fields has been one of mutual suspicion and animosity.While there is still strong belief on both sides about the need for L1instruction, several important areas of study have recently emergedin which issues in bilingual education, foreign language education,and ESL overlap (Cummins, 1981, 1986; Saville-Troike, 1980; WongFillmore, 1982, 1986). Perhaps the rift will heal further as wecontinue to realize the complementary nature of our work and theneed for our clients to be our primary focus. An attempt to bringtogether the perspectives and outcomes of all three areas in order toexamine the academic needs of language minority students occursin Bilingual and ESL Classrooms.

An essential and often overlooked premise underlying bilingualeducation is the contribution of both language and culture to theinstructional process. Bilingual and ESL Classrooms attends to thelinguistic and sociolinguistic issues that might affect day-to-dayclassroom instruction. It very succinctly acquaints students with the

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nature of language acquisition (first and second language learningfor both children and adults) and the major theories contributing toour knowledge of those areas: The theories of Krashen and ofCummins, as well as the nature of bilingualism, are carefullyoutlined in a way that informs and amplifies. Language develop-ment in first and second languages is presented in a way thatpermits the reader to see the contribution of psycholinguistics,sociolinguistics, and second language acquisition research to thestudy of bilingualism.

While the Ovando and Collier book is generally current in termsof both theory and resources, it is possible to fault the volume forthe inclusion of information on federal programs concerning thesupport networks for bilingual instruction in the United States—Evaluation, Dissemination, and Assessment Centers; BilingualEducation Service Centers; and so on. Generally such structuresappear to change form approximately every 5 years as federal rulesand regulations reorganize funding requirements. Inclusion of suchinforrnation is usually fruitless, since it tends to be outdated almostimmediately.

Both books offer, at the end of each chapter, a list ofrecommended readings in specific topic areas. While Ramírezoffers a short list of such sources, Ovando and Collier provide topic-specific recommendations for areas covered in the chapter. Thequality and quantity of resources included in their book make itcomprehensive, and sources of information are also given in severalof the chapters. The reference section, too, is extensive andcomprehensive. The suggested readings, which integrate theoryand practice, almost preclude the requirement of a coursebibliography, which has been such a necessary part of bilingualeducation foundations courses in the past.

Clearly, the task of capturing and integrating the wealth ofinformation needed to describe and discuss the reality of decisionsconcerning language minority students in the United States is adifficult one. Success at such a task can only enrich the resources fortraining teachers to work with language minority students. Moreimportant, it can serve to inform those outside the field of resourcesand options available for instructing bilingual students.

Of these two current texts in the field of bilingual education,Bilingual and ESL Classroom can be recommended for success-fully organizing a complex array of theory, research data, policy,and practice. Teacher education programs for bilingual educationand English as a second language would find it an excellent primaryintroductory text. It might also be recommended for those

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educators who want an understanding ofdecisions to be made regarding teachingchildren.

REFERENCES

the complexity oflanguage minority

Anderson, T., & Boyer, M. (Eds.) (1970). Bilingual schooling in the UnitedStates. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Au, K. H., & Jordan, C. (1981). Teaching reading to Hawaiian children:Finding a culturally appropriate solution. In H.T. Trueba, G.P. Guthrie,& K.H. Au (Eds.), Culture and the bilingual classroom: Studies inclassroom ethnography (pp. 139-152). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Center for Applied Linguistics. (1977). Bilingual education: Currentperspectives. Arlington, VA: Author.

Cordasco, F. (1972). Bilingual schooling in the U. S.: A sourcebook foreducational personnel. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Cummins, J. (1981). The entry and exit fallacy in bilingual education.NABE Journal, 4 (3), 26-60,

Cummins, J. (1986). Empowering minority students A framework forintervention. Harvard Educational Review, 56, 18-35.

LaFontaine, H., Persky, B., & Golubchick, L. (1978). Bilingual education.Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Saville-Troike, M. (1980). Cross-cultural communication in the classroom.In J.E. Alatis (Ed.), Georgetown University Round Table on Languagesand Linguistics 1980 (pp. 348-355). Washington, DC: GeorgetownUniversity Press.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1979). Language in the process of culturalassimilation and structural incorporation of linguistic minorities.Rosslyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1983). Bilingualism or not. Clevedon, England:Multilingual Matters.

Trueba, H. T., & Barnett-Mizrahi, C. (1979). Bilingual multiculturaleducation and the professional: From theory to practice. Rowley, MA:Newbury House.

Wong Fillmore, L. (1982). Language minority students and schoolparticipation: What kind of English is needed? Journal of Education,164, 143-156.

Wong Fillmore, L. (1986). Research currents: Equity or excellence?Language Arts, 63, 474-480.

CONSTANCE WALKERUniversity of Minnesota

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Computational Linguistics: An IntroductionRalph Grishman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Pp. viii + 193.

Computational linguistics is the study of computer systems forunderstanding and generating natural language. By understandingnatural language generation in procedural terms, scientists canendow computer systems with the ability to generate and interpretnatural language. This would make it possible for computers to (a)accomplish machine translation, (b) retrieve information fromnatural language texts, (c) engage in interactive communicationwith humans (e.g., for natural-language data-base retrieval withcommand language operations). These three classes of applicationshave been central in the development of computational linguistics,though the objectives of computational linguistics reach beyondthese three goals. For example, with the assistance of computationallinguistics, psychologists hope to build procedural models of thepsychological processes underlying language acquisition andunderstanding, according to Grishman.

“Constructing a fluent, robust natural language interface is adifficult and complex task,” notes Grishman (p. 7). To accomplishthis task requires a thorough understanding of the roles that syntax,semantics, discourse, and information structuring play in thecomprehension and generation of natural language. Reading andstudying the chapters on these topics in Computational Linguisticswill provide a framework for examining these roles. It will alsofamiliarize the novice to the field with computational linguists’work with several parsers.

A parser scans an input line character by character in the attemptto derive a syntactic and grammatical meaning from the input.Christie and Christie (1984) state that a parser is a computer routinethat controls decoding of an external program statement byestablishing its syntactic tree, according to the specified syntax ofthe programming language (e.g., LISP). As Sippl and Sippl (1980)note, all compilers, assemblers, and interpreters use parsing routinesto convert program source lines into a form the computer canunderstand. (According to Christie and Christie, a compiler is aprogram used to translate a programming language, e.g., BASIC orFORTRAN, into machine language that is understandable to aprocessor; an assembler converts the BASIC or FORTRAN into aform suitable for execution on a computer and provides errormessages if needed; and an interpreter executes the BASIC orFORTRAN program by scanning, or parsing, each line of the

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BASIC or FORTRAN code and changing it into machine code—binary one and zeroes the computer understands—each time theprogram is run.) Grishman presents a brief description of severalparsers used by linguists: context-free grammar parsers (e.g., theHarvard Predictive Analyzer), transformational parsers (e.g.,Petrick’s parser), augmented context-free parsers (e.g., the NewYork University Linguistic String Parser), and context-sensitiveparsers (e.g., General Electric’s DEACON).

The text also presents a discussion, albeit a rather cursory one, ofthe following: (a) the programming languages used to implementlanguage analysis procedures (e.g., LISP and PROLOG); (b) thevarious types of logic (e.g., propositional and predictive) and themanner in which formal languages associated with these types oflogic can be used to represent the meanings of sentences; and (c) theanalysis of discourse, and knowledge organization and structuring(e.g., in terms of discourse frames, scripts, plans, and memoryorganization packets, or MOPS). Grishman provides, in otherwords, a conspectus of various issues dealing with the analysis andgeneration of natural language, issues which comprise the fulcrumof the investigations of computational linguists.

Little background in computer science and finite mathematics isrequired for nascent computational linguists who will use the bookas a course text or for curious readers from applied linguistics,psychology, or communication theory who pickup the book to gaininsight into the field of computational linguistics. However, abackground in transformational grammar will certainly help thereader understand the elucidation of sentential-level syntactic andsemantic analyses. The chapter on discourse analysis andinformation structuring is the most “reader friendly” of all. Itactually seems as though it was written with the nonlinguist in mind,but then it may be that discussion of scripts, information formats,and dialogue analysis contains language and content that is moreaccessible to the second language acquisition researcher, appliedlinguist, or cognitive psychologist.

For those interested in obtaining in-depth information about thefield of computational linguistics, Grishman’s book will not suffice.According to the author himself, it will not provide the reader witha detailed survey of the grammatical theories and parsingalgorithms used in computational linguistics (as does Winograd’sLanguage as a Cognitive Process: Vol. I. Syntax [1983]). Nor will itprovide the reader with a large number of “case studies” anddescriptions of specific systems to illustrate particular aspects ofnatural language processing (as does Tennant’s Natural LanguageProcessing [1981]). However, it will provide the uninitiated with a

REVIEWS 557

keyhole view of the major theoretical and procedural concerns ofcomputational linguists. These linguists seek to understand naturallanguage processes in order to create more natural computer-human interaction. It is a valuable book for those interested in suchinteraction.

REFERENCES

Christie, L. G., & Christie, J. (1984). The encyclopedia of microcomputerterminology: A sourcebook for business and professional people.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Sippl, C. J., & Sippl, R. J. (1980). Computer dictionary and handbook (3rded.). Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams.

Tennant, H. (1981). Natural language processing. New York: Petrocelli.Winograd, T. (1983). Language as a cognitive process: Vol. I. Syntax.

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

PATRICIA DUNKELThe Pennsylvania State University

CAI Adaptation of Robert J. Dixson’sEssential Idioms in EnglishWilliam B. Richardson and Sheldon Wise. New York: Regents/ALA, 1985.

■ Essential Idioms in English is a textbook with an accompanyingsoftware package whose purpose is to teach 468 idioms to ESLstudents. The book and software (Apple II series; 48K minimum,DOS 3.3) may be used independently or in conjunction with eachother. The three disks in the software package cover materialcorresponding closely to the 39 lessons in the book. Each of the 39lessons on disk is further subdivided into four modules, or exercisetypes. Students need about 15 minutes to work a given module, sothe entire package could involve students in 40 hours of interactivelearning.

The four modules that comprise each lesson on disk are calledLearn the Idiom, Choose the Idiom, Write the Idiom, and Idio-matic. These modules drill students on a dozen idioms at a time inpresentation, recognition, production, and quiz-game formats,respectively. This sequence of module presentation is subtlysuggested; however, students may omit any of the modules or varythe order of presentation according to their individual learningstyles by selecting from the menu.

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The software also includes a Teacher’s Module, which allowsteachers to activate or deactivate scoring, to invoke certain utilityfunctions, and to set parameters which customize lesson delivery.Hence, this module is accessible to teachers but not to students. It ismenu driven and transparent enough to allow easy experimentation(although the lessons are ready to run without resort to this module).

Many practitioners of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) feelthat the perceived threat to students of using computers to keeptrack of their scores outweighs any benefits derived; nevertheless,score keeping is one feature of the Teacher’s Module. This functionis rather limited: Only 10 students may be registered, and a disk thusconfigured cannot be used by any but those 10 students unless theteacher turns the scoring off.

Second, the Teacher’s Module may be used as a utility; forexample, teachers can print (to screen or printer) student scores orlists of idioms used in any given lesson. Teachers may alsoconveniently “preview” the text employed in each module withoutactually working the problems in student mode.

The third function of the Teacher’s Module is that it allowsteachers to regulate how the lessons will be presented to thestudents. Features in this category include a “quit option” that canprevent students from leaving a module before completing it. Inaddition, the teacher can set the “skip option” so that when studentschoose to skip around difficult problems, these will reappear at theend of the lesson. The Teacher’s Module can also be configured sothat students can turn off the sound effects.

Unfortunately, these last options are of dubious value, unlesstesting is desired. The skip option is not very effective in learningmode because, with or without this option, students may skiparound any items with the press of an arrow key; the skip optiononly ensures that these items will reappear (which, oddly, is not thedefault setting). Similarly, the quit option need not be set by theteacher, given that students working on their own ultimately havecontrol over program exit via the on-off switch. Finally, since soundserves to motivate, distract, or even embarrass individual students,it seems inappropriate for teachers to infringe on the individual’sright to turn it on or off. However, throughout these lessons, and nomatter what the sound setting, the computer still makes a raspingsound each time there is an incorrect answer.

I do not object to granting options to teachers, nor do I advocateimposing certain modes of using these lessons. However, on thebasis of the hypothesis that computers are primarily learning (asopposed to teaching) devices, I believe that students should begiven more options than teachers over their use of CAI. A prime

REVIEWS 559

advantage of computers is that they can be adapted to individuallearning styles through options available to students (Doughty,1985; Jamieson & Chapelle, 1984; Stevens, 1984). Yet teachers aregiven the power here of overriding the student options purposelygranted by the developers of this software if, through misconcep-tion or design, they choose to do so.

Students using this software, unaware of the existence of aTeacher’s Module, are put directly into the lessons. Although theycan choose from any of the modules, the first module in thesuggested sequence is Learn the Idiom. The purpose of this moduleis to introduce the dozen idioms that will be drilled in each lesson insuch a way that prior student preparation by teacher or text is notabsolutely necessary.

In each such module, the idioms are presented and defined, andexamples of use given. Students can then examine the 12 idioms inor out of sequence, see the directions again (including an animatedillustration of two-part verb separability), or quit this module bytyping “CTRL-Q.” (However, if the quit option has beendisallowed by the teacher, students must review all 12 idiomsbefore they can exit.) On quitting this or any module, students seea histogram chart (in this case showing the number of idiomsreviewed and the number skipped) before being prompted for theirnext activity choice.

In the next module in the suggested sequence, Choose the Idiom,students select from triads of idioms those that will fit the blanks ina series of sentences. They can experiment, trying out any or all thephrases in the blanks, and press “RETURN” when the sentence“looks right.” At this point, the phrase literally falls out of thesentence and is either caught by a little man, who tosses the idiomback into the sentence and announces “Correct!” or the phrasedisintegrates into dust, and the little man comes out with a broomand rapidly sweeps the piles of dust away. Here, the computer isused to make feedback catchy and immediate in a unique andappropriate application of computers to language learning.

Once students have studied the idioms and completed therecognition exercise, they have a chance, with Write the Idiom, toproduce the idioms from recall. Here again, the computer is used togood advantage providing progressively more feedback as studentsneed it. Initially, there is no feedback; students are confronted witha continuous blank line in the middle of a sentence, in which theyare to type one of the idioms they have learned. But on eachsubsequent attempt at the problem, more information is given.First, the continuous line becomes as many blanks as there areletters in the answer. Then, correct letters are left in place, and

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students can see a list of idioms practiced in that lesson. Eventually,students are guided to the answer, or they can skip to the nextproblem.

The final lesson module, Idio-matic, invites students to race aclock in determining which of three idioms fits in a blank in a givensentence. As sentences appear on the screen, students can toggle thethree possible answers, one after another, into the blank until theythink one is correct. Students may vary the speed; the faster thegame, the higher the point value, but the faster the points are tickedoff during periods of indecision. The exercise is challenging and fastpaced; some students become truly excited while attempting torack up points at this game. This exercise is another whichappropriately exploits the medium.

These lessons take good advantage of many aspects of computerswhich make them uniquely suited to language learning. On theother hand, the lessons are not immune from what might be calledthe “tyranny” of computers. One example is the Title Page routine,which students are presented with from time to time, for example,on exiting one of the four modules. While entertaining at first, thisroutine eventually becomes tedious because a quick and easy exit isneither provided nor clearly noted on the screen.

Scoring also imposes a subtle tyranny on these lessons, apart fromthe test-like rigidity possible with the quit and skip options alreadynoted. For instance, as students exit the Choose the Idiom moduleand see the histogram telling them how they have done, they findthat even if they have worked constructively with the computer toget a problem right at the second or third attempt, all problems notanswered correctly on the first try have been counted wrong. Thisdecidedly negative feedback and lack of credit for effort couldcancel out student willingness to use the program in the cooperativeway its designers intended.

A third tyranny is imposed by the medium itself, by the fact thatthere is only so much programming that can be put on a floppy disk.This constraint is most obvious in Learn the Idiom, in which theintent is clearly to introduce the idioms independently of any othermaterial, but idiom definitions sometimes seem incomplete orenigmatic, and there is little interaction with students. The fact thatthis particular module takes so little advantage of the medium overwhat is possible with a book is in part a consequence of limitationsof memory and disk space (Sheldon Wise, personal communication,July 10, 1985), In this event, I am concerned that memory spacewhich could have otherwise been devoted to enhancing lessoninteractivity has been allocated to options of limited value toteachers and of almost no value to students. I believe this to be a

REVIEWS 561

serious issue, as it suggests conflicting perceptions of educationalsoftware from marketing and pedagogical perspectives.

A final problem encountered with all Regents/ALA materials isthat despite their consistently high quality relative to competitiveofferings in the field, the programs are rendered difficult to workwith due to strict backup and copy protection policies. This toucheson another controversy in commercial educational software: Atwhat point does an institution’s need to duplicate software for in-house use infringe on the rights of authors to profit from theirefforts?

Institutions need to duplicate software to preserve masters and tofurnish copies in numbers needed by students working at individualstations. Regents/ALA will provide backup copies at reducedprices, but only if these are purchased at the same time as theoriginal courseware. As for multiple student copies, the position ofthe publishers is made clear in the documentation that accompaniesthis packet:

Multiple copies may not be made under any circumstances. Additionaldiskettes may be purchased from Regents/ALA. The diskettes areprotected by a sophisticated anti-duplication system; any unlawfulattempts to duplicate them may damage the diskettes, voiding thewarranty and licensing agreement. (p. 2)

This policy makes it an expensive proposition to use this packetlawfully in any educational setting other than as part of a library ofmaterials available to students on a check-out basis.

Despite its inevitable deficiencies, I find this to be a respectableoffering in the area of computer-assisted language learning and oneworthy of high recommendation. The integrity of lesson content ishigh; that is, the exercises are generally meaningful and wellcontextualized, instructions are clear, and the text is devoid oftypographical errors. The lessons are motivating, make imaginativeand proper use of features inherent in the medium (e. g., immediateand constructive feedback; appropriate use of graphics andanimation), and use language and methodology suitable to ESL.Furthermore, the package is highly professional in its programmingand presentation and apparently has been thoroughly tested. (Ifound only one “bug”: If the program is aborted prematurely, thescreen fails to clear, and “Goodbye” is written over the lesson menuon the screen. Since the program runs normally after that, this bugis of little consequence. ) The shortcomings mentioned regarddepartures from my conception of an “ideal” software packet, andmy remarks neither address marketing considerations nor dealthoroughly with limitations of memory and disk space, which

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constrained the developers of this software and which are a major,if “invisible,” consideration in any CAI implementation.

The quality of this software is also high relative to othercommercial software currently available for ESL which teachesdiscrete skills.1 One such program (Layton, 1985) requires studentsto contrive grammatically correct English sentences in response torebus-like formulas, a practice weighted more toward tedium thantoward communication. Another program for ESL (Hamilton &Hombs, 1985) combines stick-like figure graphics with drill-bookexercises. This combination, its producers claim, merges left- andright-brain activities in integrated learning. Such programs supportDaiute’s (1985) remark concerning commercial software: that whenteachers “see the available programs . . . they are often disap-pointed” (p. 15). In contrast, Essential Idioms is motivating,challenging, relevant, and imaginatively programmed.

It is not yet common for textbooks to be accompanied bysoftware; more often they are paired with workbooks, audio-cassettes, or video materials. But as computers continue toproliferate and as more and more constructive uses are discoveredfor them in language learning, it seems logical that an increasingnumber of textbook authors will consider the possibilities ofsupplementing their work with courseware, either to serve asinteractive workbooks, along the lines of the software reviewedhere, or in even more imaginative capacities. Looked at in thisperspective, Essential Idioms is an innovative and welcomeprototype.

REFERENCES

Baltra, A. (1984). An EFL classroom in a mystery house. T E S O LNewsletter, 18 (6), 15.

Biggie, L. (1984). Public domain software. TESOL Newsletter, 18 (3), 11.Daiute, C. (1985). Writing and computers. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Doughty, C. (1985, April). Computer-assisted instruction based on

individual learner strategies. Paper presented at the 19th Annual TESOLConvention, New York.

Dutra, I. (1985, April). Hypothesis testing and problem-solving softwarefor ESL students. Paper presented at the 19th Annual TESOLConvention, New York.

1 Many programs exist for ESL besides commercial software teaching discrete skills.Examples of more communicative programs are detailed in Higgins and Johns (1984);Underwood (1984); Ferreira, Sklar, and Kagan (1984); Baltra (1984); Dutra (1985); andJohnson (1987). In addition, numerous programs in the public domain are suitable for ESL,as reported in Biggie (1984) and Stevens (1985).

REVIEWS 563

Ferreira, L., Sklar, S., & Kagan, A. (1984, March). Computers as realia:Using existing software to develop ESL communication skills. Paperpresented at the 18th Annual TESOL Convention, Houston.

Hamilton, P., & Hombs, B. (1985). Core reading and vocabularydevelopment. Freeport, NY: Educational Activities.

Higgins, J., & Johns, T. (1984). Computers in language learning. Reading,MA: Addison-Wesley.

Jamieson, J., & Chapelle, C. (1984, March). Computer assisted languagelearning: Is it for everyone? Paper presented at the 18th Annual TESOLConvention, Houston.

Johnson, N. (1987). Task-based CALL activities. C.A.L.L. Digest, 3 (2), 1-2 .Layton, T. (1985). ESL picture grammar. New York: Gessler Educational

Software.Stevens, V. (1984). Implications of research and theory concerning the

influence of choice and control on the effectiveness of CALL. CALICOJournal, 2(l), 28-33,48.

Stevens, V. (1985). You’d be surprised at how much public domainsoftware you can adapt to ESL and language learning. TESL Reporter,18 (l), 8-15.

Underwood, J.H. (1984). Linguistics, computers, and the languageteacher: A communicative approach. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

VANCE STEVENSSultan Qaboos University, Oman

564 TESOL QUARTERLY

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIESThe TESOL Quarterly invites readers to submit short reports and updates on theirwork. These summaries may address any areas of interest to Quarterly readers.Authors’ addresses are printed with these reports to enable interested readers tocontact the authors for more details.

Edited by D. SCOTT ENRIGHTGeorgia State University

Cognitive Style and First Language Background inSecond Language Test Performance

LYNNE HANSEN-STRAINBrigham Young University—Hawaii Campus

The influence of adult second language learners’ first languagebackground on language test performance has received recent attention inthe testing literature. Different group performance profiles emerge onlanguage test batteries, and this suggests that language background shouldbe incorporated into a redefinition of language proficiency (Brutten,Mouw, & Perkins, 1986; Farhady, 1982; L. Hansen, 1984a). Attention hasalso been called to the need for awareness of possible group bias in testselection and interpretation (L. Hansen, 1984b).

The influence of test takers’ cultural background has been shown to bea factor in performance on particular types of language test. On dictations,for example, Filipino and South Pacific island students were found toperform significantly better than EFL Asian groups; at the same time, nosignificant differences in the performance of the groups emerged on mostof the other measures in an ESL test battery (Evans & L. Hansen, 1986).Test profiles of these groups suggest that the island students, from ESLbackgrounds in cultures characterized by strong oral traditions, may tendto score higher on tests which involve spoken English, while theperformance of the EFL Asians may be relatively better on tests limited tothe written word (L. Hansen, 1984a).

The two groups also differed in performance on cloze, although at alower level of significance than on the dictation (Evans & L. Hansen,1986). Other research suggests that cognitive style may contribute to suchvariation between groups (L. Hansen, 1984b; Stansfield & J. Hansen,1983); quite apart from their proficiency in the language being tested,individuals with a field-independent cognitive style appear to have a slightadvantage over those with a field-dependent style. In multicultural groups,therefore, a bias in the cloze testing technique may work to thedisadvantage of more field-dependent individuals or groups.

565

The study reported here sought to discover further evidence of culturaldifferences in cognitive styles and of the effects of these differences onsecond language test performance by examining the following questions:(a) Are there significant differences between South Pacific and EFL andESL Asian groups in their levels of field dependence-independence(FD/I) and in their reflectivity-impulsivity (R/I)? and (b) How do the twocognitive styles relate to the language test performance of the students?

METHODSubjects were enrolled in the English Language Institute (ELI) at

Brigham Young University—Hawaii Campus. The 108 female and 101male subjects were divided into three demographic groups: (a) 63 SouthPacific (Tonga 28, Samoa 20, Micronesia 15); (b) 77 EFL Asian (Japan 26,Korea 28, Republic of China 8, People’s Republic of China 6, Indonesia 5,Thailand 3, Vietnam 1); and (c) 69 ESL Asian (Hong Kong 53, Philippines16).

The measure of FD/I, the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT)(Witkin & Goodenough, 1981), was administered to the students in theirELI classrooms. The GEFT is an 18-point test on which a high scoreindicates a high level of field independence. The measure of cognitivetempo, the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT) (Messer, 1976), wasadministered individually to a randomly selected subgroup of 53 studentsfrom the larger group: 18 South Pacific islanders, 20 EFL Asians, and 15ESL Asians. Two measures were obtained from this match-to-standardtest: (a) response latency, that is, the time between presentation of the itemand the subject’s first response, and (b) response accuracy, the number oferrors. A double-median split procedure was employed for theclassification of conceptual tempo: Those scoring above the median onresponse latency and below the median on errors were classified asreflective (slow/accurate); those scoring below the median on responselatency and above the median on errors were classified as impulsive (fast/inaccurate).

The ELI final examination battery included (a) the Michigan Test ofEnglish Language Proficiency (MTELP); (b) the Michigan Test of AuralComprehension (MTAC); (c) an essay which was graded by two readerson a 10-point scale; (d) a dictation, read three times, the second withpauses for writing; (e) a cloze passage with every seventh word deletedand scored by the acceptable-synonym method; and (f) a speaking testconsisting of subtests for conversation, reading pronunciation, and aprepared speech. These three subtests were administered on threeconsecutive days, and each was rated by a different pair of examiners.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONThe mean scores on the GEFT were generally higher for the Asians than

for the island students (Table 1). To determine the statistical significanceof the differences, a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run, in

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which the data were partitioned into three groups as described above. Theresults, presented in Table 2, show that the F value for culture is significantat the .001 level, and the F value for sex at the .01 level. Thus, FD/Icognitive style was associated with cultural background as well as sex. TheAsians tended to be more FI than the South Pacific islanders, and the malestudents more than the female.

TABLE 1GEFT Descriptive Statistics by Culture and Sex

Culture n M SD Male M Female M

TonganSamoanMicronesiaFilipinoOther AsianKoreanHong KongJapanese

TABLE 2Two-Way ANOVA for Culture and sex With GEFT as Dependent Variable

Source SS df MS F

* p <.01. ** p <.001.

TABLE 3MFFT Mean Response Latency Times and Error Totals by Cultural Groupings

The mean response latency times (in minutes) and error totals, asmeasured by the MFFT, are presented in Table 3. The statisticalsignificance of group differences in conceptual tempo was determined bytwo-way ANOVAs, which were run for latency time and for error. Theresults, given in Table 4, show that for time, the F value for culture is

BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES 567

significant at the .01 level, while that for sex is not significant. Similarly, thecultures differed significantly in number of errors, at a level of .001, againwith no sex differences. Thus, it appears that the cognitive tempo of theseESL students is associated with cultural background. The South Pacificislanders tended to be more impulsive, the Asians more reflective.

TABLE 4Two-Way ANOVAs for Culture and Sex

With MFFT Latency Time and Error

The second question examined in the study concerned the relationshipbetween the cognitive variables and second language test performance.Correlational procedures (Pearson product-moment) were therefore usedto determine the direction and strength of the relationship between scoreson the cognitive measures and the English test scores (see Table 5).

TABLE 5Correlations Between GEFT, MFFT Time and Errors

and the Language Test Scores

All of the GEFT correlations, though of low magnitude, are positive,indicating that a higher level of field independence tends to be associatedwith higher scores on language tests. The slightly higher correlation of theGEFT with the cloze test than with the other tests seems to supportprevious findings of a small bias in favor of field-independent learners onthis test format. Cognitive tempo, on the other hand, showed no apparentrelationship with performance on the language tests, as seen in thenonsignificant correlations between the test scores and both MFFT timeand errors.

Correlational research has limitations, however, in the search for effectsof learner characteristics on such a complex phenomenon as language testperformance. Because so many factors interact to influence the testingprocess, some of these factors may not have a consistent and statisticallyobvious relationship to language test scores for all learners and in all testingsituations. To achieve a useful understanding of the consequences ofvarious cognitive-style profiles for language test performance, researchmay need to go beyond correlational studies which look only for a simplemain effect. Factorial research designs, for example, would facilitate thesorting out of interaction effects.

REFERENCES

Brutten, S. R., Mouw, J. T., & Perkins, K. (1986). The effects of language group,proficiency level, and instruction on ESL subjects’ control of the {D} and {Z}morphemes. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 553-559.

Evans, N., & Hansen, L. (1986, March). Dictation: A test of what? Paper presentedat the 20th Annual TESOL Convention, Anaheim, CA.

Farhady, H. (1982). Measures of language proficiency from the learner’sperspective. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 43-59.

Hansen, L. (1984a). The ESL noise test: Cultural differences in affect andperformance. In P. Larson, E.L. Judd, & D.S, Messerschmitt (Eds.), On TESOL’84 (pp. 55-61). Washington, DC: TESOL.

Hansen, L. (1984b). Field dependence-independence and language testing:Evidence from six Pacific island cultures. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 311-324.

Messer, S.B. (1976). Reflection-impulsivity: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 83,1026-1052.

Stansfield, C., & Hansen, J. (1983). Field dependence-independence as a variablein second language cloze test performance. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 29-38.

Witkin, H. A., & Goodenough, D.R. (1981). Cognitive styles: Essence and origins.New York: International Universities Press.

Author’s Address: Box 1870, Brigham Young University—Hawaii Campus, Laie,HI 96762-1294

569BRIEF REPORTS AND SUMMARIES

An Overview of Undergraduate ESL Program Models:A Comparison of Administrative Policies forInternational Students

ELAINE DEHGHANPISHEHArizona State University

The focus of most research in academic ESL has been on methodologyand applied linguistics—the classroom and the textbook. Little attentionhas been paid to the larger issue of how ESL programs as a whole serve theneeds of the university and the international student. Thus, ESL teachers oradministrators attempting to gain an overview of their own local programin regard to national trends have been hampered by the inaccessibility ofdata in this area.

To help overcome this obstacle to effective program evaluation andinnovation, a survey of ESL programs in higher education was undertakento explore the following issues:

1.

2.

What are the features of ESL programs in higher education, and how dothe programs compare with one another in seeking to meet institutionaland student needs?Can similar programs be grouped to form representative constructs or. - - .models? Can these models demonstrate how-the programs function inregard to admissions (i.e., TOEFL score requirements), course options,and the coordination of intensive English classes with freshman Englishcourses?

MODELS OF ESL PROGRAMS

A survey of ESL programs at 28 American universities, including thosein the 10-member Pacific Athletic Conference, the Big Ten, and the BigEight Conferences, was conducted in 1985 and updated in the fall of 1986and the spring of 1987. Since it was not possible to conduct a large-scalesurvey of the majority of universities in the nation, these 28 were chosen aspeer institutions whose policies were of interest to the administration ofArizona State University.

When information relating to the questions above was tabulated, it wasfound that the majority of the 28 ESL freshman English programs studiedcould be classified according to four models: the conservative model, thetraditional model, the bridging model, and the progressive model.Northwestern University, the University of Oklahoma, and StanfordUniversity were not included in the classification, as these universities haveno special program for undergraduate international students, who aremainstreamed with native English-speaking students.

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Conservative Model

Conservative commonly means tending to preserve existing conditionsor resisting change. The conservative model does, in fact, maintain thesame program for ESL students as that designed for native English-speaking students, with minimal modifications to accommodate thespecial needs of international students (see Figure 1). In this model, thesimplest of the four, there are only two options. Students who have notattained the required TOEFL score take intensive English classes fornonadmitted students, while those with the required TOEFL score take acredit-bearing freshman English class for international students that issupposed to parallel the standard freshman English course for nativespeakers. These students meanwhile carry full academic loads. There is noon-site post-TOEFL testing of international students and no bridgingprogram for admitted students. Arizona State University and OklahomaState University follow this model.

FIGURE 1Conservative Model

Intensive English ( noncredit ) TOEFL

Note: The programs of Arizona State University and Oklahoma State University(nonprofessional students) conformed to this model.

Traditional Model

Traditional usually means following customs or conventions previouslyestablished. The traditional model has followed the tradition establishedfor native speakers with weak skills by adding remedial writing courses tothe curriculum (see Figure 2). In this model, the three main options are (a)


full-time intensive English courses for nonadmitted students, (b) aprefreshman English course or courses for conditionally admitted studentsor for regularly admitted students with low scores on the on-site placementtest, and (c) a credit-bearing freshman English course for admittedstudents with higher scores on the placement exam. Students withexceptionally high scores may be exempt from freshman English.

FIGURE 2Traditional Model

). I

Intensive English TOEFL

Note: At the time of the survey, the programs of the University of Arizona, the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, the University of California, Los Angeles, Iowa State University,Kansas State University, The Ohio State University, the University of Oregon, andWashington State University conformed to this model. Recently, Purdue Universityhas instituted a credit-bearing, prefreshman English course for international students.

At the time of the survey, 3 universities offered a prefreshman Englishcourse for conditionally admitted students, while 5 institutions provided aprefreshman English course for low-scoring admitted students. PurdueUniversity has recently instituted a two-option variation on this model.While there is no intensive English program at Purdue and no on-sitetesting, undergraduate international students in the freshman Englishcourse who are found to have poor English skills are transferred into acredit-bearing, prefreshman English course by teacher recommendation.

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Bridging Model

Bridging usually means providing a connection or transition betweentwo points. The bridging model provides a transition between theintensive English classes and freshman English (see Figure 3). It is the mostpopular model and has been adopted by 12 universities. While there areagain three main tracks, additional options are offered within these tracks.The first track is the intensive English program for nonadmitted students,the second is a series of semi-intensive English classes (either credit ornoncredit), and the third is freshman English.

FIGURE 3Bridging Model

Note Of the programs which conformed to this model, those at the University of Colorado,the University of Illinois, Indiana University, the University of Iowa, the University ofMichigan, the University of Nebraska, Oregon State University, and the University ofWisconsin offer credit for semi-intensive English courses; those at Michigan StateUniversity, the University of Minnesota, the University of Missouri, and the Universityof Washington do not. The University of Michigan program previously fit this model;recently, however, the intensive English classes have been eliminated.

An intensive English program is here defined as a full-time program ofEnglish classes teaching all four skills on varying levels; students attendapproximately 20 hours of classes a week. A semi-intensive tract is a part-time program in which conditionally admitted or regularly admittedstudents with low scores on the on-site placement test may spend from 5-15 hours a week in English classes. Instruction on each of the four skills(reading, writing, speaking, and listening) is presented in separate classes,but students often take only those skill classes in which they are weakest,as determined by on-site testing. Freshman English is usually a one- or


two-semester course emphasizing essay writing and a research paper. Thiscourse usually meets 3 hours a week and carries 3 credits a semester.

The bridging model differs from the traditional model, in whichintermediary courses usually correspond to traditional remedial Englishcourses for native speakers. These courses can be classified as prefreshmanEnglish, since they concentrate on writing rather than on the four majorskills included in ESL courses in the bridging model.

The schools adopting the bridging model can be further divided intothose that grant credit for these semi-intensive English courses (8) andthose that do not (4). A further option at many of the universities using thebridging model is admission to the university upon completion of theintensive English program, in lieu of the TOEFL requirement. Usuallythese students must be recommended by the ESL department and musthave a TOEFL score close to the university TOEFL cutoff score.

Progressive Model

Progressive generally means favoring progress, change, improvement,or reform as opposed to wanting to preserve things as they are. Theprogressive model has eliminated the common barrier of the TOEFLexam for entrance to the university, allowing students to ease into full-timeuniversity work as English skills improve (see Figure 4). This model hasbeen adopted by 2 of the schools in the survey—the University of Kansasand the University of Southern California.

FIGURE 4Progressive Model

Note: The programs of the University of Kansas (in which no credit is offered for intensiveEnglish) and of the University of Southern California (in which up to 12 credits maybe earned in intensive English) conformed to this model.

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In this model an open undergraduate admissions policy is followed:Students are not barred from university admission by failure to meet orexceed a TOEFL cutoff score; they are admitted on the basis of theirprevious academic records. Again, there is a three-track program for theadmitted students, depending on the results of the placement exam: (a)Those with low scores go into a full-time intensive English program; (b)those with middle scores (the majority of students) go into semi-intensiveEnglish courses, with a reduced load of university classes; and (c) thosewith high scores go into freshman English classes.

DISCUSSION

The four models above can be compared and evaluated on the basis ofhow well they serve the needs of both the university and the internationalstudent. Probably the weakest of the models is the original one developedfor ESL in the university, the conservative model. This model has beencalled the “sink or swim” model by Hargett and Olswag (1984), since thestudent is given little help in making the adjustment from full-timelanguage classes to full-time university classes. It is assumed that afterstudents have attained a specified TOEFL score, their language abilitiesare ,then fully adequate for university work, and students are given a loadand schedule identical to that of a native speaker.

In fact, as the majority of ESL administrators and teachers contacted forthis survey pointed out, a fairly high TOEFL score does not guaranteeacademic success. A score of 500 or even 550 does not ensure that studentswill have the speaking, writing, and note-taking skills necessary to carry onuniversity work (Huckin & Olsen, 1984). The freshman English course forinternational students in the conservative model, parallel in objectives tothe native-speaker course, would seem to exact high standards from thestudents immediately. In fact, because of the diverse skill levels of the classmembers, the goals of the course are often difficult to meet (Gaffney &Mason, 1983), and international students will almost certainly exit withoutskills comparable with those of native speakers completing a regularfreshman English course.

The traditional model, with prefreshman English as a transition betweenintensive English classes and freshman English, still has certain drawbacks,although it is superior to the conservative model. According to Pearson(1981), “students supposedly ready to begin university work need to readwith speed and comprehension, to write cogent essays and reports, tounderstand and take notes from lectures, and to employ effective studytechniques” (p. 413). Studies by Johns (1981) and Ostler (1980) also pointup the need for listening and reading skills. Thus, a major weakness of therigid 3-credit, 3-hour writing course in the traditional model is that it doesnot attack deficiencies in speaking, reading, and note-taking skills essentialfor academic success.

Perhaps the most flexible model is the bridging model, which allowsstudents with low scores on the placement test as well as conditionally


admitted students to take a series of courses to bring their academicEnglish skills up to a level at which they can succeed in their universityclasses. Since students often carry a reduced academic load while takingthe semi-intensive classes, they are allowed a period of transition.

This model differs from the traditional model in that the semi-intensiveEnglish courses are usually taught by ESL specialists familiar with theproblems of international students, often faculty from the intensiveEnglish program. Unlike the traditional model, the bridging modeldevelops not only writing but other skills as well. The University ofWashington, for example, has a two-track listening/reading-writingprogram, and students usually test into one of these two tracks. AtMichigan State University, students may take several possible courses(grammar, listening/speaking, language lab, reading, and writing).

The advantage of the bridging model over the progressive model is thatthere is still control over admissions. Most of the ESL specialists contactedseemed to feel that on-site testing addressed limitations of the TOEFL butthat the TOEFL, as a standardized test available all over the world, serveda definite purpose.

However, the innovative progressive model offers special opportunitiesfor the international student that are not available with the other models.Since students in universities using the progressive model are admitted tothe university on the basis of their academic records, they are not heldback by their present English ability. Also, students in these programs aregiven a university schedule geared specifically to their needs and mayimmediately begin to take one or two university courses such asmathematics, if they place in the high-intermediate or advanced level.

These characteristics of the progressive model make it appealing inthree ways: (a) It can be considered more democratic, since Englishlanguage instruction programs are only available to the upper classes inmany countries (Kaplan, 1968); (b) it dispenses with problems andcomplaints sometimes leveled at the TOEFL, such as language bias(Farhady, 1979; Hosley, 1978) and cultural bias (Traynor, 1985); and (c)itrelies on the assumption that academic success in the university dependsmore on previous academic success than present English ability (Kaplan,1968; Valdes, 1977).

The main administrative drawbacks of this model may be the pressureput on the ESL program to bring all students up to a very high level ofEnglish proficiency in a short time and the problem of eliminating thosestudents who, for one reason or another, are unable to attain this level.

CONCLUSION

The results of the survey reported here suggest that the 28 programswhich participated have clear-cut differences which generally can becharacterized by four distinct models. This finding points to the conclusionthat while methodology and linguistic theory are legitimate concerns forESL teachers and administrators, attention must also be paid to the overallESL program format.

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Most ESL educators would agree that the goal of the ESL program inhigher education is to produce students whose listening, speaking, reading,and writing skills in English allow them to succeed in their universityclasses and, in Ostler’s (1980) terms, “to compete on an equal basis withAmerican students” (p. 501). The ability to reach such a goal and toproduce such students stretches beyond the classroom to the ESL programas a whole.

It is hoped that this overview of undergraduate ESL program modelswill provide a preliminary framework to assist in the evaluation andimprovement of ESL programs. It is also hoped that other studies outsideof the traditional methodological and linguistic boundaries will beundertaken to point to new directions for the development of ESL inhigher education.

REFERENCES

Farhady, H. (1979). Test bias in language placement examinations. In C. Yorio &J. Schachter (Eds.), On TESOL ’79 (pp. 162-170). Washington, DC: TESOL.

Gaffney, J., & Mason, V. (1983). Rationalizing placement and promotion decisionsin a major ELT program. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 97-108.

Hargett, G. R., & Olswag, S.G. (1984). An institutional approach to improvingEnglish proficiency of foreign students: The modified transitional model. TheAmerican Language Journal, 2(l), 67-83.

Hosley, D. (1978). Performance differences of foreign students on the TOEFL.TESOL Quarterly, 13,209-217.

Huckin, T. N., & Olsen, L.A. (1984). The need for professionally oriented ESLinstruction in the United States. TESOL Quarterly, 18, 273-294.

Johns, A. (1981). Necessary English: A faculty survey. TESOL Quarterly, 15, 51-57.Kaplan, R. (1968, Winter). Teaching English and international exchange.

Exchange, pp. 43-47. Washington, DC: U.S. Information Agency, U.S. AdvisoryCommission on International Education and Cultural Affairs.

Ostler, S.E. (1980). A survey of academic needs for advanced ESL. TESOLQuarterly, 14, 489-502.

Pearson, C.R. (1981). Advanced academic skills in the low-level ESL class. TESOLQuarterly, 15, 413-423.

Traynor, R. (1985). The TOEFL: An appraisal. ELT Journal, 39, 43-47.Valdes, J. (1977). Assessing English proficiency in the foreign student admission

process. College and University, 52, 521-528.

Author’s Address: American Language and Culture Program, Arizona StateUniversity, Tempe, AZ 85287


The D. C. Schools Project

MARTHA FARMELOCenter for Immigration Policy and Refugee AssistanceGeorgetown University

Since January 1984, the D.C. Schools Project of the Center forImmigration Policy and Refugee Assistance (CIPRA) at GeorgetownUniversity has developed a pool of approximately 200 volunteers who helpnon-English-speaking children and adults enrolled in D.C. public schoolsto learn English as a second language and adjust to North American life.The volunteers work as tutors in several local public schools, onGeorgetown’s campus on Saturdays, and in the homes of recently arrivedfamilies. The project serves as an adjunct to the Division of BilingualEducation of the D.C. Public School System and, because of its ef-fectiveness, is recognized as an official volunteer program of the D.C.Public School System.

The project was initiated in response to a media report describing howa large influx of non-English-speaking students was overwhelming theDistrict of Columbia Public School System (Guillermoprieto, 1983). Mostof these students arrive with little or no formal education and often sufferthe psychological trauma associated with violence in their native country,the harrowing experience of migration to the United States, and indefiniteseparation from family members. Moreover, oftentimes financial prob-lems not only force parents to work two full-time jobs but also pressure thestudents into entering the work force at a young age.

The decision to initiate a tutorial program was based on (a) the immigrantstudents’ immediate need for survival English language skills, as well asgeneral academic assistance, and (b) the teachers’ and administrators’ needfor continual reinforcement of their efforts to retain and educate thesestudents with unique educational and developmental needs.

The principal roles of the volunteers in the D.C. Schools Project are (a)to provide students with the individualized attention they are not affordedin their crowded classrooms, (b) to act as a liaison between the studentsand families and the various human service agencies in the community,and (c) to serve as role models and friends to students. Volunteers areencouraged to develop relationships that extend beyond the tutoringsetting and in this way to assist in the students’ personal as well as academicdevelopment. Through the encouragement and support of their tutors, thestudents gain confidence in themselves and their abilities and becomemore aware of the importance of learning English and excelling in schoolin order to better their future educational and employment opportunities.

PROGRAMS

The D.C. Schools Project actually consists of four youth tutoringprograms (In-School, One-to-One, Saturday Morning, Peer-Tutoring) and

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two adult tutoring programs (Gordon Adult Education Center, EmployeeEducation).

For the In-School program, volunteers go to the schools once or twice aweek, Monday through Friday, in 1 l/2-hour segments, either at 9:30 a.m.or 1:30 p.m. Transportation is provided from Georgetown University.Working under the supervision of the ESL teachers, volunteers tutor one ortwo ESL students in basic or intermediate English. Because volunteers alsoseek to establish themselves as friends and role models to the students,each tutor usually works with the same student(s) each time. Tutors areencouraged to meet the student’s family and to participate in groupoutings organized by the CIPRA staff or other project volunteers. Thevolunteers are part of the school system’s Operation Rescue and OperationOutreach programs, which are designed to assist all elementary andsecondary students.

In the One-to-One program, volunteers visit students’ homes for an hourand a half twice a week for individual tutoring. In addition to trying toestablish themselves as role models and friends to the children, volunteersalso attempt to serve as resource persons for the family. Volunteers areencouraged to meet with their students outside of the regular tutoring timeand environment. Transportation is provided from the Georgetowncampus, Monday through Thursday evenings.

The Saturday Morning program consists of volunteers who, workingunder the supervision of the CIPRA staff, tutor non-English-speakingjunior high school students on the Georgetown campus. In the morning,they provide the students with one-on-one assistance in speaking andwriting English; at noon, volunteers and students eat lunch in a largegroup; and in the afternoon, tutors and students visit museums, playgames, or partake in other activities.

In the Peer-Tutoring program, junior high school students tutorelementary-age peers in basic English language skills on 2 afternoons aweek from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The peer tutors, who have taken part inthe activities of the D.C. Schools Project and who have excelled in theirESL program, work under the supervision of the Program Coordinators.Through preprogram training and one-on-one tutoring, the tutors as wellas the students refine these language skills. The tutors have the opportunityto establish themselves as role models and develop leadership skills.

In the Gordon Adult Education Center program, volunteers, workingunder the supervision of the Center’s Volunteer Coordinator, serve asteacher assistants in the ESL classroom. (The Gordon Adult EducationCenter is administered by the D.C. Public School System.) These studentsare preparing for college placement exams or are learning basic skillsnecessary for job placement.

The Employee Education program involves volunteers’ providing basicEnglish instruction twice a week to non-English-speaking GeorgetownUniversity employees. This program functions Monday through Fridayfrom roughly 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.


STAFFING AND TRAINING

The majority of the volunteers are undergraduate students atGeorgetown, and the balance is made up of alumni of the University,graduate students, young professionals in the D.C. area, and students fromlocal senior high schools.

Volunteers are recruited by (a) word of mouth (as current or recentstudents, the Project and Program Coordinators maintain wide contacts atthe University), (b) flyers, (c) presentations in classes, (d) projectparticipation in the annual Student Activities Fair, as well as informationand recruitment tables in the student center and outside of the library andthe cafeteria at the beginning of each semester, and (e) contacts with localhigh school counselors and teachers who help to enlist students for theSaturday Morning program.

In anticipation of a lack of Georgetown University student volunteersduring the summer periods, volunteers have been recruited for theseperiods by (a) a letter sent to over 2,000 area University alumni each Mayasking them to volunteer for the summer and then encouraging them tocontinue during the academic year, (b) a similar letter sent to currentundergraduate students whose permanent address is in the Washingtonarea, (c) posters and notices in University publications, and (d) word ofmouth.

In a given year, over 300 volunteers participate in the various programs,assisting well over 500 limited English proficient students. In the One-to-One program, the largest each year, approximately 150 volunteers tutorover 300 students. Approximately 80 volunteers tutor the same number ofstudents in the Saturday program, and about 60 volunteers tutorapproximately 100 students in the In-School program. In addition, about20 peer tutors work with an equal number of students in that program, and10 volunteers tutor at the Gordon Adult Education Center and about thesame number in the Employee Education program.

The exact number of students being tutored is difficult to record, sincevolunteers in the One-to-One program are assigned to work with particularstudents but often find themselves working with several other familymembers and since volunteers in the In-School and Gordon Centerprograms may work with individual students, serve as teachers’ assistantsin ESL classes, or rotate among small groups of students, all according tothe needs of the individual teachers.

Each volunteer participates in a four-step training and orientationprogram consisting of an individual orientation, training seminar,volunteer dinner, and individualized follow-up.

In the first step, one of the Coordinators discusses the project forapproximately 30 minutes with each volunteer before the volunteer beginswork. The discussion covers the history of the program, including itsrelationship with the D.C. Public School System, the continueddemonstrated need for the service to be provided by the volunteers,experiences of other volunteers, and the particular aspects of the specificprogram in which they are to participate. Through both the distribution of

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a booklet on human services available in the Adams Morgan neighborhoodand discussion with the Program Coordinators, volunteers are also madeaware of the services provided by the school system and community to thestudents and their families.

Several times during the semester, a 2- hour training session on ESLtutoring is provided by Education Specialists from the Bilingual EducationDivision, the Office of Volunteer Services and Training of the D.C. publicschools, and ESL teachers from the various schools that are serviced.Approximately 20 to 30 volunteers attend each session.

During every semester, each volunteer is encouraged to attend a dinnerwith eight or nine other volunteers to discuss issues and problemsassociated with the work. On occasion, representatives of the Division ofBilingual Education or ESL teachers are present at these dinners. CIPRAstaff members also attend the sessions to provide information about otherCIPRA programs.

Individualized follow-up is accomplished by monitoring eachvolunteer’s progress, either by direct contact with a member of the projectstaff during transportation to and from the tutoring site or by monthlyphone calls.

In the fall of 1985, the project implemented a data base to computerizevolunteer files. This system provides instant access to current informationon all volunteers and the operation of all programs. The system is anefficient means for organizing and managing complex programoperations, such as scheduling participants into 17 driving shifts a weekand keeping track of individual volunteers within the various programs.

CONCLUSION

The D.C. Schools Project is currently in its fourth year of operation atGeorgetown University. Floretta Dukes McKenzie, Superintendent ofSchools for the District of Columbia (personal communication to FatherBradley, September 4, 1986), recently lauded the program as “successful inhelping the students improve their English, and consequently, theirclassroom performance, and in helping them gain self-confidence andremain in school” (p. 1). On a project evaluation form, Mike Bell, an ESLteacher at Francis Junior High School, stated that “the difference in thestudents’ progress is always noticeable and often dramatic.” To rateparticipants’ progress in a formal, quantitative manner, Georgetown isdeveloping a monthly evaluation system to gather data from teachers andcounselors.

The program is unique in bringing together a university and a publicschool system to attack a grave and ongoing problem for a specialpopulation of underprivileged immigrant students and for the schools ingeneral, which are strapped by limited resources. Moreover, it is aprogram that can be duplicated on two important levels. First, thevolunteer force can be increased in size by initiating similar programs atother area colleges and universities that also work with the D.C. Public


School System. The Rev. John P. Whalen, Executive Director of theConsortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area (personalcommunication, January 27, 1987), has voiced support for expanding theprogram within that group. Steps have already been taken to bring studentleaders from area universities to observe and participate in theGeorgetown programs as a prelude to establishing their own programs.

Second, the program can be duplicated in other similarly impacted areasacross the nation. Following a recent report (NCBE Forum, 1987) of theprogram, the D.C. Schools Project has received indications of interest andrequests for information from school teachers, universities, and publicschool districts.

The D.C. Schools Project and Georgetown University, also recognizingthe value of the program to the educational growth process of theirparticipating students and alumni, stand prepared to maintain andimprove their commitment to assisting the D,C. Public School System andimmigrant students, as well as to offer assistance to those institutions thatwish to establish similar programs.

REFERENCES

Guillermoprieto, A. (1983, October 2). Salvadoran refugees straining D.C. publicschools. Washington Post, p. 1.

NCBE Forum staff. (1987). Programs that make a difference. NCBE Forum,10 (2), 3.

Author’s Address: D.C. Schools Project, Center for Immigration Policy andRefugee Assistance, Box 2298, Georgetown University,Washington, DC 20057

582 TESOL QUARTERLY

THE FORUMThe TESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in theTESOL profession. It also welcomes responses or rebuttals to any articles orremarks published here in The Forum or elsewhere in the Quarterly.

Comments on Elsa Roberts Aurbach’s“Competency-Based ESL:One Step Forward or Two Steps Back?’

A Reader Reacts. . .

FRANCIS CARTIERPacific Grove, California

People engaged in education and people engaged in trainingseldom understand each other or each other’s approaches, methods,and techniques. No better evidence of this has recently beenpublished than Elsa Roberts Auerbach’s recent article in the TESOLQuarterly (Vol. 20, No. 3, September 1986).

I doubt that anyone will dispute her motives in arguing foreducational goals for adult learners of English, but Auerbach’sarguments are subtly chauvinistic. Also, she does not seem tounderstand that competency-based instruction in general andcompetency-based education (CBE) in particular are noteducational programs at all, but training programs. The distinctionis complex and has been widely debated, but she cites one pivotalpoint in the distinction when she quotes Stenhouse: “Education asinduction into knowledge is successful to the extent that it makes thebehavioral outcomes of the students unpredictable” (p. 420).Exactly! The goal of training, on the other hand, is to make thebehavioral outcomes predictable!

Most of what goes on in universities is not education, buttraining—training that is requisite to the later achievement ofeducational goals. To cite an example of which I have personalknowledge, students of speech therapy must first be trained inseveral skills, including the ability to use the International Phonet-ic Alphabet to discriminate and record misarticulations. (ESLteachers would profit from it, too.) That is pure training, butessential for the subsequent (educational) courses in communication

583

therapy. In training programs, we know fairly precisely what wewant the learner to be able to do and can devise very specific andobjective evaluation devices to determine when the necessary skillshave been achieved.

So, although she does not say so, the questions addressed inAuerbachs article are what adult learners of English need: training,education, or both. The answer seems obvious to me. They needboth! But when they arrive, their first need is usually training. Theymust become economically viable as quickly as possible; that iscertain, unless they are to live with poverty and loss of pride.

Then, in order to partake fully of the American culture andeconomy, they must have education. But does every one of themneed to be educated in the United States? Auerbach seems to fallinto the same trap for which she severely criticizes CBE: theassumption that they must be educated here, that is, taught Westernways of thinking. Many adult ESL students have brought with themall the education they need. What they lack is training in the basicEnglish skills of survival until they can put their education to workfor themselves and the nation’s economy.

But these criticisms would not have been sufficient to cause me towrite this rebuttal. The truly fundamental flaw in Auerbachsreasoning is that she grandly generalizes against the CBE approachbecause she has found flaws in most—perhaps all—the existingCBE programs. Several years ago, when I was active in EFL/ESL,I looked into some of the CBE programs and found none thatsatisfied me, either, none that consistently manifested the approachthat CBE espouses. So you might think that I agree with Auerbach.I do not! The proposed CBE approach is still valid. It is only that theCBE programs need more persons competent to design andimplement them—people, perhaps, who have Auerbach’s skills andperception and who understand the separate and vastly differentroles of training and education.

Furthermore, Auerbach seems to assume that “educational”programs, including educationally oriented ESL programs, actuallyteach students independent thinking. Some do, but it is the grossestof generalizations to imply that they all and necessarily do. Manyeducational institutions do not achieve this goal even with theirstudents who are native English speakers, let alone students withlimited English.

It is certainly not uncommon for educators to look down ontraining as a lesser activity. I have engaged in both and find themequally challenging and equally rewarding, though in quitedifferent ways.

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One of the most satisfying aspects of working in an EFL programwhich is clearly identified as a training program is that it operates toa proficiency criterion. Both instructor and student know fairlyexactly when the student has reached the degree of proficiencynecessary to progress to the next stage of training—or of education.If a trainer has learned from experience that a particular type ofstudent will require 16 weeks or 20 weeks (or whatever) ofintensive, 6-hours-a-day English training, then that is what he or shewill get. In my experience, at least, the so-called educationalprograms give instruction for fixed periods of time and hope for thebest. But when the purpose of education in ESL is made ambiguousto the extent described in Stenhouse’s perceptive statement (above),the educator can never be quite sure when that “best” has beenachieved.

Auerbach’s article seems to advocate this ambiguity and even tocriticize a navigator for deciding precisely on his or her destination.I sense, however, that she has the capability of rethinking thematter.

The Author Responds. . .

ELSA ROBERTS AUERBACHUniversity of Massachusetts at Boston

Francis Cartier makes a valid point when he argues thatcompetency-based adult education (CBAE), despite its name, is noteducation at all, but rather training. This is precisely what I amcritiquing about CBAE as an approach to adult ESL. There areseveral problems with the focus on training rather than educationfor adult ESL students.

A training orientation, focusing on predictable outcomes, reduceslanguage learning to a mechanistic, behavioral task which separateslanguage from thought and from the creation of meaning. Whiletraining may be appropriate for the transfer of skills (e.g., in speechtherapy), equating language acquisition with the acquisition of asequence of skills is reductionist at best, running counter to recentsecond language acquisition theory and to adult learning theory.Nevertheless, Cartier implies that this approach is valid for earlystages of language acquisition and for certain types of students. Arewe, then, to reserve creative, communicative language acquisition

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environments for higher levels of acquisition and for selectstudents?

Second, the training orientation equates language proficiencywith employability. This narrow definition, which sees proficiencyas merely the language necessary for limited types of interaction,may guarantee that students never gain access to “education.”Cummins’s (1981) distinction between basic interpersonalcommunication skills and cognitive academic language skills maybe analogous here. He argues that in bilingual education, all toooften proficiency is equated with ability to interact in face-to-face,context-embedded situations and that bilingual education stopsbefore students have a chance to develop context-reduced languageproficiency. Particularly in the current funding climate, there is asimilar danger in viewing adult ESL as training for employment: Alltoo often students are passed from programs when they are seen as“employable” and they never get to “education.”

Third, there is no evidence to support the view that training infact leads to employment. As Tollefson (1986) points out, there is nocorrelation between successful performance on language tests andsuccessful resettlement (as measured by rates of employment versusdependence on public assistance). Clearly, factors other than abilityto communicate appropriately in specified situations mediate whogets what kind of job.

What Cartier misses is the key argument of my article—that thekind of language teaching we provide reflects a stance with regardto the broader socioeconomic context. As Skutnabb-Kangas (1979)has shown, language programs or policies which are justified by theargument that they promote rapid economic assimilation may infact serve to reproduce existing class relationships. In the case ofSweden, she showed how just such a policy perpetuated theexistence of an economically necessary underclass.

The argument of my article is that we need to question whether,under the guise of training for economic access, we are not in factserving very similar needs. Muller and Espenshade, in The FourthWave: California’s Newest Immigrants (1985), make a strong casefor the argument that the new immigrants are vitally necessary tothe economy precisely because they do jobs for which there is noother source of labor. This leaves us as ESL professionals with somehard questions: What is our role? Is it enough to provide training forimmediate access to entry-level jobs? Bluntly put, are we beingpressured to become agents in producing a new source of cheaplabor? How can the transition between training and education takeplace?

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This leads to Cartier’s final point about the implementation ofCBAE. He argues that we should not throw out the baby with thebath water: Just because so few people can put CBAE into practicecorrectly does not mean the approach is flawed. I would shift theblame from practitioners of CBAE to the context it takes place in.Perhaps it is not that those trying to implement CBAE areincompetent, but rather that the approach itself has inherentcontradictions that make it difficult to implement. Teachers arecaught in a bind of wanting to strive for broadly defined languageproficiency but having to focus on language/skills for employment,given the current climate of funding. The focus on prespecifiedproficiency criteria may not fit the complexities of real-worlddemands on students.

Questions about CBAE will not disappear by changing ter-minology or by blaming those who implement it. We need to lookat the debate about CBAE in the same way that primary andsecondary educators see the debate about bilingual education—asone of language policy.

REFERENCES

Cummins, J. (1981). The role of primary language development inpromoting educational success for language minority students. InSchooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework (pp.3-50). Los Angeles: California State University, Evaluation, Dissemina-tion and Assessment Center.

Muller, T., & Espenshade, T.J. (1985). The fourth wave: California’snewest immigrants. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press.

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1979). Language in the process of culturalassimilation and structural incorporation of linguistic minorities.Rosslyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

Tollefson, J.W. (1986). Functional competencies in the U.S. refugeeprogram: Theoretical and practical problems. TESOL Quarterly, 20,649-664.

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and review articles, which discuss materials in greater depth than in atypical review, are particularly welcome. Reviews should generally beno longer than 5 double-spaced pages, although comparative reviews orreview articles may be somewhat longer. Submit two copies of reviewsto the Review Editor:

Polly UlichnyEnglish DepartmentUniversity of Massachusetts/BostonHarbor CampusBoston, MA 02125

Brief Reports and Summaries. The TESOL Quarterly also invites shortdescriptions of completed work or work in progress on any aspect oftheory and practice in our profession. Reports of work in the areas ofcurriculum and materials development, methodology, teaching, testing,teacher preparation, and administration are encouraged, as are reportsof research projects of a pilot nature or which focus on topics ofspecialized interest. In all cases, the discussion of issues should besupported by empirical evidence, collected through either formal orinformal investigation. Although all reports and summaries submitted tothis section will be considered, preference will be given to manuscriptsof 5 double-spaced pages or fewer (including references and notes).Longer articles do not appear in this section and should be submitted tothe Editor of the TESOL Quarterly for review. Send two copies ofreports and summaries to the Editor, Brief Reports and Summaries:

D. Scott EnrightDepartment of Early Childhood EducationUniversity PlazaGeorgia State UniversityAtlanta, GA 30303

The Forum. The TESOL Quarterly welcomes comments and reactionsfrom readers regarding specific aspects or practices of our profession.Responses to published articles and reviews are also welcome. Contribu-tions to The Forum should generally be no longer than 5 double-spacedpages. Submit two copies to the Editor of the TESOL Quarterly at theabove address.

2. All submissions to the Quarterly should conform to the requirements ofthe Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association(Third Edition), which can be obtained from the Order Department,American Psychological Association, 1200 Seventeenth Street, N.W.,Washington, D.C. 20036. The Publication Manual is also available inmany libraries and bookstores.

3. All submissions to the TESOL Quarterly should be accompanied by acover letter which includes a full mailing address and both a daytime andan evening telephone number.

4. Authors of full-length articles should include two copies of a very briefbiographical statement (in sentence form, maximum 50 words), plus any

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special notations or acknowledgments which they would like to haveincluded. Double spacing should be used throughout.

5. The TESOL Quarterly provides 25 free reprints of published full-lengtharticles and 10 reprints of published reviews.

6. Manuscripts submitted to the TESOL Quarterly cannot be returned toauthors. Authors should be sure to keep a copy for themselves.

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9. The Editor of the TESOL Quarterly reserves the right to make editorialchanges in any manuscript accepted for publication to enhance clarityor style. The author will be consulted only if the editing has beensubstantial.

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