Negotiating comprehension

I just had to include this entire blogpost from Academomia (written by my cousin,) because it's a fantastic example of negotiating for meaning--for sense-making. I'm afraid that a language learner might not be as persistent as 3-year-old Charlie:

On our way to church this morning Ryan and I were talking about our university's quarterback situation in which we lost a bunch of games, our starting QB was injured and taken out of a game that was not supposed to be that big of a deal but that we were barely hanging onto, our second string QB was put in, and we scored like a thousand points inside one quarter.
Ryan made the giant mistake of saying "Poor starting quarterback, that's a tough deal."
Charlie piped up from the back seat. "Wha happened to him?"
"Uh, our quarterback got hurt playing football."
"Wha happened to him?"
"He fell down during a football game and got a booboo. Now he is all better but the coach has to decide which quarterback is going to play the rest of the season."
"Wha happened to him?"
"Our quarterback fell down and hurt his leg, Buddy. He's fine, but now there are two good quarterbacks and the coach has to decide who gets to play."
"Wha happened to him?"
"Charlie, why don't you tell me what I've told you so far?"
"I don't know."
...
...
Ahhh.
"Wha happened to him?"
Sigh. "Our quarterback fell during the football game and hurt his leg. His mommy wrapped him up in a quilt, gave him some milk, and let him watch TV. Now he feels better."
"Oh."
Later after we picked him up from Sunday School Charlie skipped down the hall saying "The football player fell down and got a booboo and now there are two quarterbacks and his mommy wrapped him up in a quilt and let him watch George and that was SO NICE of her and now he feels ALL BETTER!"

Now that is real sense-making related to the experience of a three-year-old--comprehensible input, as it were! How do we recognize when our students haven't been able to make sense of what we're saying? A high school student is much less likely to persist, so we may not discover the problem before a test, unless we do careful and constant formative assessments.

Oakland campus caters to refugees, immigrants

The LATimes also had an article related to the topic of this blog today, Oakland campus caters to refugees, immigrants. The international high school provides an alternative to newcomers, some of whom have never been in a classroom. Many of the students at the Oakland International High School have had little or no education in their homelands, and most have endured the tragedy of refugee camps, absent parents and even being orphans before coming to this country. The school has an ambitious mission

... to provide quality alternative education for recently arrived immigrant students in English language acquisition and in preparation for college. Our diverse students become active participants in our community while learning in small groups through hands-on, interdisciplinary projects and collaboration.
(School website)

and a willingness to make it work, which isn't an easy job for either the students or their teachers. The article tells the story of some of its students:

Samuel Kanwea showed up for what should have been his freshman year in high school illiterate, malnourished and exhausted from years of living in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast. His family had never been able to afford the luxury of education, so he spent his early teenage years collecting firewood and selling fish. When the Liberian refugee started school in Oakland at the age of 17, it was the first time he had set foot in a classroom.
(Gorman, p 1)

Another student from Guatemala has a slightly easier time because she speaks Spanish, which is not her native language, and she had attended some school.

In one sense, Florinda -- who attended only two years of school in Guatemala before arriving in the United States in spring -- has an impressive gift. She speaks both Spanish and Mam, a Mayan dialect. But, like many new immigrants, she doesn't speak any English. Everything else in school -- geography, algebra, U.S. history -- will be out of reach until she learns the language. Classmates become both friends and translators.
(Gorman, p 1)

The principal Carmelita Reyes is very much aware of the difficulties students have when they are not literate in evey their native language. But Florinda at least has the advantage of already being bilingual, which we have read is always an advantage to learning a new language. She also can seek help in Spanish, while some students do not have fellow speakers of their language that they can turn to for a translation.

Hser Kaw, 15, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family fled Myanmar. He spent just a few years attending school in a bamboo building before coming to the United States as a refugee in 2007. Hser said he often skipped class at the camp.

When he first started at the Oakland school, Hser said, he felt intimidated because he couldn't read, write or speak English. He spoke some Thai and a little-known language called Karen. ...

In his first year, he received mostly Ds and Fs. He said he considered quitting, but knew that he would be able to find a better job if he graduated. So he sought out extra help and completed his missing work, and he's now in 11th grade. Reyes said Hser is often the first student to arrive on campus in the morning.
(Gorman, p 2)

I was shocked to read that these students even received grades at this level. Getting D's and F's in subjects you have no background to be able to understand can only knock away a student's motivation. Luckily many refugees are made of very strong stuff to get them this far.

Even though learning to read has been a tremendous struggle, Kanwea said getting discouraged hasn't been an option. His mother, Jessie Kanwea, said she is relying on him and his sisters.
(Gorman, p 2)

The article ends with a quote from President Obama's speech to schools, which the class was reading.

Even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you, don't ever give up on yourself. . . . The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

Inner City Boarding School

In my reflections on Chapter 1, where the concept of negotiating identity was introduced, I wrote about the boarding schools that have often been used to erase the identity of (usually) indigenous children so they could become "productive members of society." Thus I was struck by an article today in the New York Times Magazine "School Issue," The Inner-City Prep School Experience, about the SEED School in the Southeast section of Washington, DC. It sounds almost like the same sort of experience that these other children experienced. And yet it isn't entirely. The children go to their homes and neighborhoods every Friday afternoon and return Sunday evening to what become the sanctuary of the school, where they are dressed like the child in the picture, which would certainly not be accepted in the 'hood, and have to negotiate their identity all over again. According to their website:

SEED’s model is unique not only in that it is a boarding school for public school students, but also in that it is located within the students’ local community. Proximity to the local community nurtures positive contact with family and community leaders. It also provides students the opportunity to serve as role models and improve their own communities through service. SEED offers resources for local families, thereby strengthening both students’ support structure and the surrounding community.
(SEED School website/Experience)

But how do the kids manage their two identities, the school identity and the home one? For one thing, the Student-Parent Handbook says it "is is not the intention of the school to regulate every aspect of a student’s individuality.” (Jones, p. 1) so the students are permitted a certain amount of the hair styles, jewelry, etc. that is important to their home identity. One girl told the writer that

SEED was her refuge from the drama of the neighborhood, the bridge between home and the bigger world, the place that would help her be the first in her family to go to college. “I know what I gotta do when I’m at SEED,” she told me. She could move between worlds. But, she said, “I don’t mix my worlds.”
(Jones, p 2)

The students' need to negotiate their identities is very clear from this quote:

To survive that back and forth, many SEED students learn to code switch. A SEED student knows he can’t swagger through the hallways in baggy jeans, the rapper Ludacris blaring out of his iPod, while he avoids eye contact and a handshake with Mr. Adams [the head of the school.] But if he takes too much of SEED back to the neighborhood basketball court — the big words and pressed shirts — he could have troubles of a different sort. Rather than try to erase students’ street culture, Adams, who is 39 and biracial and was raised by a single African-American mother, talks to students about the particular value of it. “Someone who can navigate a dangerous neighborhood has a skill set that others lack,” he told me. “Why would I want to rid him of that?”
(Jones, p. 3)

Certainly Adams' attitude is the exact opposite of the leaders of the old boarding schools! These students are protected from needing to negotiate their identity constantly by being at the school 5 days every week, but their position at home is the same situation we described in blog reflections on another book for a CGU class this summer, The Adolescent Dilemma (which we tried to direct at high school students, but instead got reactions from other teachers.)

Language as a bridge and an identity

Hector Tobar's column in the LA Times today, Language as a bridge and an identity, provides a lot of wisdom on this topic. Tobar is of Latino origin, and spoke Spanish until he started school.

I know, from experience, that a second language is like a mental muscle that will turn flabby if you don't use it on a regular basis.

The first words I spoke were in Spanish. At 5, I was still fluent. But at 17, after a dozen years of only English in local public schools, I spoke Spanish like a 4-year-old.

When I went to college and mastered Spanish at age 20, worlds opened up to me. I had my first real conversations with my Guatemalan grandparents. Today, Spanish is essential to my profession -- I've interviewed peasants and presidents in the language.
(All quotes from Tobar)

In the article he interviews parents and students at a weekend Spanish class which helps the children hold on to their Spanish.

I was invited to speak on Sunday to a group of 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds, and to their odd, tiny "classmate" -- a stuffed bear. Like me, the children were all English speakers, born in the U.S. But the stuffed bear spoke only Spanish ... So the kids and I chatted in español -- just so el oso wouldn't feel left out.

One of the parents told him the reason he found it necessary to enroll his child in the school:

"As soon as my son went to preschool, all of his buddies were speaking to him in English ... English was powerful. And Spanish was for the people cleaning up the school."

It seems odd that the language of Cervantes and Neruda would be considered a second-rate tongue. But that's the reality of L.A.

Here, English is the language of success, while Spanish is the language of hard labor. Some people run away from it as fast as they can.

A small minority would like to erase Spanish from the city's life. That would be a grave mistake.

Spanish adds to our collective cultural sophistication, along with Korean, Mandarin and many more languages. Those tongues and the people who speak them make us a more cosmopolitan and economically competitive city.

It was certainly a lot easier for my children to stay bilingual in Denmark. English was a high status language that everyone needs to be able to speak, so they start it in school in 5th grade. But even though speaking English has high status, being American sometimes gave problems, particularly from the time of the Vietnam war, all the way to Clinton's presidency.

But cultural sophistication is not the only reason to keep your first language, which is Spanish for many of the residents of our area. All of your languages are part of your identity.

And being connected to the language of your ancestors is good for the soul. [One of the parents] says she sees the impact of not knowing Spanish on some of her relatives. "They don't know where they come from, or where they're going," she said. ... "I have all these cousins who are basically monolingual in Spanish," she told me. "But all their kids are monolingual in English. They can barely communicate with each other."

Being a hybrid

I asked a Taiwanese/American friend to look at this blog, and to comment on it. I asked her to tell me about her Chinese/American identity, remarking that in Denmark I used to feel like I was 75% Danish and 75% American (since there was certainly some overlap in the two cultures.) Linda said she understood the concept but considers herself 65% American and 35% Chinese hybrid (as a mathematician, she wants it to add up!)

Linda has very kindly shared a couple of sections from her Ethnographic analysis of her own background, which was a major assignment for our summer classes.

Family Background

I was born and raised in a middle class family with traditional Chinese values. My father was an entrepreneur who was the primary financial provider for our family. My mother was the traditional loving wife and mom. She focused most of her attention on instilling good values in her children, doing everything she can in her power to ensure that everything was done to the utmost of her ability. The house was spotless in her presence, the children were never left unattended and the household ran smoothly.

Growing up as a young child, I was exposed to several languages. My first language was Taiwanese. It was the primary language that was spoken within our household, and among friends and relatives. As I entered into my school years, I learned Mandarin, which was the formally accepted written language in Taiwan at the time. My father spoke Japanese as part of his professional dealings, and as a result, I was exposed to the Japanese language as well. It was not until my college years [in the U.S] that I actually spent some time formally studying the Japanese language. Throughout my secondary school years, I spent five years studying the Spanish language as part of my foreign language requirements.

My first introduction to the English language and the western culture was at the age of eight when my family immigrated to the United States. For the most part, my western influences came from the world outside of home. As a child, my teachers and friends at school played essential roles for shaping my acceptance of the Western culture into my life. It did not take long for me to embrace the openness of the Western culture, as it closely connected to my personality. Confused about my true identity, I was living a Western life by day and an Eastern life by night throughout most of my school years. The two sides of me did not mesh until I began to look within myself as a young adult. It was not until my late twenties that I actually accept myself as sort of a hybrid, someone who embraces the freedom of the western culture while still upholding some traditional Chinese values from within.

Today, I feel extremely lucky to have been exposed to both the Eastern and Western style of education. As a teacher, I will pick and chose from both styles of education. Depending on the needs of each student in my class, I can shift between the Eastern and Western style of teaching.

Language Acquisition

My first encounter with the English language occurred on my first day of class in America as a third-grade student, at Yorbita Elementary School in La Puente, California. No one in my immediate family spoke English, and thus, my first day of school in the United States was complete immersion in the most unexpected way.

As I recall, the teacher pointed to me during my first day of class and said, “Linda”. She pointed to herself and said, “Ms. Dubra”. Not being aware of the English name that I was just given at that time, I remember thinking the English language was so complicated. In Chinese, the simple words of “you” and “me” were just “ni” and “wo”. I thought to myself, “Why are there so many syllables for such simple words of communication?” After a few days of having this misconception, I finally made the connection that “Linda” was actually my name, and therefore, “Ms. Dubra” was the name of my teacher.

My experience as an ELL student in 1978 was one that was nurturing and encouraging. My teacher and the class aide were both more than supportive of my inability to understand the English language. They were also pleasantly surprised at my mathematical capabilities, as I had no problems comprehending formulas and equations that were based on the Greek system of numeration.

Differentiated instruction was used to teach me the English language. Initially, a student aide who I met with for approximately one hour per day taught me some basic English vocabulary using body language and picture cards. As I began to understand some verbal English instructions, I joined first grade students during the English portion of their class. My day consisted of two separate instructional parts. It was through this method of differentiated instruction that I learned to read in English.

It took only a few months before I was able to communicate verbally using some basic day-to-day English vocabulary. However, it took many years of practice before I felt confident writing in the English language. It was not until I fully immersed myself into the American culture as an adult that I was able to comfortably write in English. That meant I had to stop translating from Chinese to English and actually, think and write directly in English. It took almost twenty years of work in progress for me to achieve a fluid level of written communication in the English language.

On schools in Taiwan and the U.S.

(from the email, not the ethnography) Generally, school in the US was a lot easier in terms of academic expectations, and much more at ease (more freedom) with respect to the daily school life. The teachers were all super nice and caring, and they never really punished anyone. In Taiwan in the late 70's, the teachers [could] physically hit students for talking, doing something incorrectly,... as a form of punishment. Middle school students actually [had] to have their hair cut a certain way, a very specific length - I remember always laughing at my sister's silly cut when we were young. Can you believe that?

[Linda added in a later email that] the education system today in Taiwan has changed quite a bit as well. Students are allowed to have their own preferred hairstyles now, unlike before where they even had someone at school reshaping your haircut if it did not meet the stated requirements. Coloring hair is still not accepted in most schools. Teachers are also not allowed to hit students anymore today. I would estimate the change to be in the 90s, maybe a gradual change began in the late 80s as Taiwan opened its market to the outside world, receiving more western influences as a result.
(Emails from Linda - My emphasis)

I think Linda describes very clearly the conflicts of two cultures, how she negotiated her identity between home and school, as well as her own awareness of her lack of Academic English, as discussed in the book and earlier in this blog.

Since there were most likely very few Chinese students in her school, she learned entirely through immersion in English, with caring teachers. Since she had learned not only her family language Taiwanese, but the Academic Chinese of Mandarin in school and was adept at mathematics, she was able to pick up the language quite quickly and was encouraged in her studies. She was given maximum exposure to English by being placed in a regular classroom (albeit a couple of grades back) so that she could learn to read along with the first graders. Since her language was not European, she had to learn an entirely different code and had very little other than underlying language universals to help her learn English.

Chapter 8: Collaborative Empowerment

At the Preschool, Elementary and Secondary Levels

Our assignment permits skipping "Chapter 7: The Deep Structure of Educational Reform," which probably goes beyond "that which we can change;" "Chapter 9: From Doublethink to Disinformation: The Academic Critics of Bilingual Education," an attempt to give the other side the word and "Chapter 10: Babel Babble: Reframing the Discourse of Diversity," also a chapter on policy, which would be very useful to some, but not first-year math teachers. So I have not read these chapters now, but may come back to them some time.

---

In Chapter 7, Cummins gives practical examples of several schools at various levels where the concepts he has developed here are carried out in practice as inspiration to the rest of us. I quote first from his conclusion, and then return to the various schools to pick out certain practical elements I find particularly interesting.

They show also that empowerment is generated only through interactions that affirm students' identities and extend their conceptual horizons. The creation of power in these interactions is at the core of genuine educational reform.
One reason why much educational reform has remained at a safe surface level ... is that genuine reform ...is not safe.; it threatens structures of privilege and status within the society. Faced with the escalating rhetoric of diversity as the enemy within, it takes courage for educatios to assert the rights of children to develop their home languages and the importance for the nation of fostering these multilingual resources....
(Cummins, p. 253)

Cummins tells about a preschool run on Montessori principles developed by the Foundation Center for Phenomenological Research, which is apparently now the National Council of La Raza which now has a number of different programs, including the one linked here on Early Care & Education Programs. The major difference in the preschool in Winters, CA, described by Cummins is that the school recruited members of the community with no educational training, and taught them Montessori methods, creating a school that is part of the community, provides jobs for community members, trains whole families in health and literacy, and in general perpares the small students well for the school career. The students and their parents become empowered by the program and strenghten their identities as Latino/as and Americans. From the website I cannot determine if this school still exists nor any studies on its results.

For the Elemenary level, Cummins highlights the work of several different schools:

• The Oyster-Adams Bilingual School in Washington. D.C.is primarily Spanish/English, but also enrolls both Asian and African American students, as well as Spanish speaking students from many countries, making it very mulit-cultural, while retaining the students' identities.
  

  [The] School offers a ... bilingual program for grades pre-k to eighth. All instruction and school activities are conducted in a dual-language immersion environment, with equal weight given to learning in English and in Spanish. Both ... faculty and ... student body are balanced 50%-50% between native English and native Spanish speakers. In addition, by enrolling children from many neighborhoods, nationalities, cultures, and economic circumstances, Oyster provides a heterogeneous social environment that is essential to its multicultural mission. Oyster enjoys an unusual dual status as a DCPS neighborhood public school and as a school entirely devoted to a specialized program. Accordingly, all "in-boundary" children have a right to attend grades K-8, while "out-of-boundary" and pre-k applicants are admitted according to the school's selection criteria.
  (From school website)
  

• The Dual Language Program of Manhattan's District 3 has at least three types of bilingual education. Cummins was particularly interested in their pioneering Dual Language program.

  Bilingual
  Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs provide language arts and subject matter instruction in the student’s native language and English as well as intensive instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL). As the student develops English proficiency, instruction in English increases and native language instruction decreases.
  Dual Language
  Dual Language programs educate ELL students in need of English language instruction alongside English-speaking students who are interested in learning a second language. Programs continue to develop ELLs’ native language and English language skills throughout their schooling while enabling English-speaking students to become bilingual as well. Both groups provide good linguistic role models for each other, and through their interactions, support language development in both languages. Students receive half of their instruction in English and half in the target language.
  ESL
  Freestanding English as a Second Language (ESL) programs provide all classroom instruction in language arts and subject matters in English through the use of specific instructional strategies. Native language support is available to help students accelerate their understanding in subject areas. Native language assistance is supported by such activities as encouraging students to discuss subject matter with peers in the native language, allowing students to use the native language to write explanations of what they understand, and making native language textbooks, libraries, dictionaries, reference materials and technology resources available for students to use in the classroom.
  (PDF from District Website)
  

• The Bilingual Bicultural School, which occupies part of a larger school in East Harlem, uses multi-subject projects to teach both English and Spanish dominant students in both languages. They have been particularly known for the use of technology for these projects.

  The Bilingual Bicultural Mini School's Mission is to provide a performance standards-based curriculum that is of exceptionally high quality, challenging and intellectually enriching for all our students. OUR MISSION WILL BE ACHIEVED THROUGH THESE GOALS: 1) Students, parents, teacher, and administrators are treated with respect; 2) Trust, faith and belief in our children are ever present; 3) We recognize that all our students have gifts and talents; 4) Provide higher level of knowledge in all subject areas; 5) The integration of technology across the curriculum; 6) An arts program that gives all students access to art, music and dance instruction; and 7) Parents participate in schoolwide activities that emphasize scholastic growth for their children.
  (From school website)
  

At the Secondary School level, Cummins finds that the situation for bilingual students is acute for several reasons:

1. Students risk running out of time before they have caught up sufficiently in academic English...
2. traditional departmentalized high schools are organized in rigid way that often track ELL students into lower-level programs, and construct their bilingualism as an academic deficiency.
3. a large majority of secondary school teachers have had minimal training to eneable themto teach ELL students effectively.

The three programs profiled [in this chapter] have one major element in common: they all acknowledge that bilingual adolescents have "so much to say" ... and they provide organization of structures and interpersonal spaces within which students' voices can find expression.
(Cummins, p. 245)

• A Navajo-English Applied Literacy Program encourages students to create "specific products for specific audiences," such as their community. They produced articles about the community in both Navajo and English for the community weekly paper, and videos in both languages for the local TV station among other activities. By reporting on their community they learned more of their own culture, strengthened their Navajo language, and most importantly developed empowerment based on their Navajo/American identity.
• At a high school in Oxnard, CA, a single teacher, Bill Terrazas, encouraged students to have long dialogues around round tables to help them find their identities and position in the community. His students formed an organization called Students for Cultural and Linguistic Democracy, which I, unfortunately can find no current references for.
  
• The International High School at Laguardia Community College in NYC is truly international, with an ethnic break-down of 35% Asian, 48% Hispanic, 3% Black and 14% White of different nationalities. 63% have ELL status. As part of their Mission Statement, they list
  

We are committed to the following educational principles:

• Limited English proficient students require the ability to understand, speak, read and write English with near-native fluency to realize their full potential within an English-speaking society.
• In an increasingly interdependent world, fluency in a language other than English must be viewed as a resource for the student, the school and the society.
• Language skills are most effectively learned in context and emerge most naturally in purposeful, language-rich interdisciplinary study.
• The most successful educational programs are those that emphasize high expectations coupled with effective support systems.
• Individuals learn best from each other in heterogeneous, collaborative groupings.

(From school website)


• To this I would like to add the Internationals Network for Public Schools that I discussed in a post about Chapter 5, September 11, and Oakland International High School, which I discuss on Sept 27: Oakland campus caters to refugees.
  

---

This is the completion of my interactive journal about the required chapters from the book Negotiating Identities. However, if I should find something else related to this topic in the future, I will return with a new post. I consider this, like all journals, as a work in progress.
I would very much appreciate your comments, suggestions or additions to my posts. Perhaps, for example, you are working with a program that should be included here.

Chapter 6: Bilingual Education

The Role of First and Second Language Interdependence in Explaining the Outcomes of Bilingual Programs

When you learn to speak as a child, you are using some sort of innate cognitive abilities to understand language, which Noam Chomsky called the General Theory of Language in his revolutionary book from 1957, Syntactic Structures. He proposed that individual grammars of individual languages were based on a cognitive structure used by all languages. For example, all languages (except sign language, of course) use a variety of phonemes, which can be described by universal features, all express various concepts in some sort of semantic structure, words, prefixes, etc., and all have a certain syntactic structure (subjects, objects, verbs, etc.) This is why it is possible for us to learn a strange language by picking up objects to ask for their names and put the names into some sort of comprehensible structure. We still have to learn the specific rules for each language, but the main framework is already in place.

[Linguists] must be concerned with the problem of determining the fundamental underlying properties of successful grammars [of specific languages.] The ultimate outcome of these investigations should be a theory of linguistic structure in which the descriptive devices utilized in particular grammars are presented and studied abstractly, with no specific reference to particular languages.
(Chomsky, p. 11)

Chomsky's book arrived the same year that a symposium on Universals in Linguistic Theory was held at the University of Texas. These books were the "bibles" when I studied linguistics back in the 1960's. I was pleased to see that Chomsky's book has been republished, and that the topic is still of interest. Nowadays, of course, there are bio-neurological theories of language that weren't possible when I studied linguistics, such as the works of Steven Pinker, which I will have to study some day.

So learning a language is learning those specifics about the particular language; learning math is learning math concepts, which are language independent.) We can appreciate a picture drawn by someone no matter what language she was thinking in when she painted the picture; people who speak different languages can plan sports, even on the same team.

Just as a football player has no difficulty learning the rules of basketball or soccer, because they have some general "sports rules" and a pianist can learn to play a violin or flute because he already understands the musical concepts behind playing instruments, then every language that a student learns builds on her cognitive understanding about what the general language rules are that govern all languages. In each case, the person compares and contrasts the sport, or instrument or language with what s/he already knows, to figure out which new parts still have to be learned.

For example, a Spanish speaker discovers very quickly that English has a lot of recognizable vocabulary, and figures out rules so that he can automatically "invent" correct words in English using those rules. He learns by trial and error when these invented words work and when they are incomprehensible, buiilding his cognitive understanding of both languages.

According to Cummins, there are still people who believe in a "Separate underlying proficiency (SUP) model of bilingual proficiency", which apparently believe that you start from scratch when you learn a new language. Cummins is supported by the early theorists in the theory of Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) model, which assumes that a good part of learning is common, no matter what language you speak, as he shows in this figure:

Figure 6.4 The "Dual Iceberg" Representation of Bilingual Proficiency
(Cummins, p 174)

Cummins reports on numerous studies representing many language combinations that prove this point, that by learning one new language, a student builds a cognitive representation of language learning that aids him in learning new languages. This is why some people can speak enormous numbers of languages - since a large part of each language is common cognitive representation.

The Ramirez Report (1991), the Thomas/Collier Study (1997) and various International Evaluations

Cummins goes into more detail on a four convincing studies, where large numbers of students taught in different types of bilingual programs were studied, both in the U.S. and internationally. All of the studies he describes provide good support to the thesis that the longer students have good training in their L1 as well as the L2, they will become proficient in both, and in some cases more proficient than their monolingual peers, supporting the additive enrichment principle.

Chapter 6: Bilingual Education

Theory Proposed by Bilingual Education Advocates

Additive Bilingualism Enrichment Principle

Figure 6.1: Effects of Bilingualism
(Cummins, p. 171)

Bilingualism and Metalinguistic Abilities. Researchers have found that bilingual students gain cognitive skills from their bilingualism, including learning a third language faster. Because they are constantly comparing and contrasting their two (or more) languages, they become cognitively aware of the structure of the languages, and how they are similar or how much they differ. They consistently score higher on "measures reflecting creative thinking (the Torrance Fluency and Imagination measures), metalinguistic awareness (Word Order Correction), and verbal and non-verbal awareness."(Cummins, p. 165)

Cummins tells about conclusive studies in Italy and in India, where

studies show a clear positive relationship between bilingualism and cognitive performance, instuding measures of metalinguistic ability. [The researcher] suggests that bilinguals' awareness of language and their cognitive stragegies are enhanced as a result of the challenging communicative environment in which their bilingual abilities have developed.
(Cumins, p. 166)

My bilingual children are decidedly more creative than I am. Although my artist grandmother was sure I would be an artist, my creations were very down-to-earth and concrete, while my children produced much more fanciful drawings and writings. My son is now a very creative developer. I expect that my own social creativity has also advanced because of my late bilingualism. After inital protestations about how strange things were done in Denmark, I learned to accept cultural and food differences them, which I have carried over to my new life in the "new" culture of California, 30 years later.

A variety of explanations have been suggested to account for the observed superiority of bilingual children on certain types of cognitive and linguistic measures: for example, the fact that bilinguals have two words for the same idea or object and two ways of expressing the same through may lead them to "objectivfy" or become more aware of their linguistic operations...
(Cummins, p. 167)

This would indicate that we not only should encourage those of our students who are fortunate to become bilingual to keep their two languages equally strong (as in the illustration), but encourage monolingual students of the advantages of becoming bilingual. Possibly the some of the members of the organization U.S. English realize the advantages of bilingualism, and fear that bilinguals will become to strong in our culture. Interesting enough, since this is a country of immigrants, maybe the creativity of those immigrants can be attributed to their bilingual backgrounds. Are monolinguals too complacent without the challenge and contrast of bilingualism? Interesting enough, the origins of U.S. English are among the foreign born who has "made it" here in this country. According to the website

Mauro E. Mujica ... Chairman of the Board and CEO of U.S.ENGLISH since January of 1993 ... [who] immigrated to the United States from his native Chile, has a firsthand understanding of the obstacles facing non-English speakers upon their arrival in this country. His insight into the linguistic isolation of non-English speakers and his determination to help tear down these barriers made him a perfect successor to the late Senator S.I. Hayakawa, who founded the organization in 1983.
(U.S. English, About)

The organization is apparently working to pass legislation in states (and being somewhat successful) to make English the Official Language of this country, but they claim that this does not mean "English Only."

As evidenced in our legislation, official English would not affect the diversity of languages spoken in the home, foreign languages learned in classrooms, mottoes, Native American languages and the like. Making English the official language of the United States refers solely to the language of the government, not of the people, private business, classrooms, etc. Passage of official English legislation would not make the United States “English-Only,” just as Nigeria is not “English-Only” and Mexico is not “Spanish-Only."
(U.S.English, Official English)

This message doesn't sound as terrible as Cummins suggests. As with all organizations, the initial concepts of the founders may have been lead astray by xenophobic followers, who are trying to limit the amount of bilingual education in schools, so that the students do not get the support they need to become truly fluent in both languages, also in Academic language.

Enhancement of Third Language Learning. Studies comparing how well bilingual students learn a third language compared with monolingual students (for example, Basque students in Spain who are bilingual in Spanish, who are learning English in classes with monolingual Spanish speakers) have consistently shown the advantage of bilingual students, who can draw on their enhanced metalinguistic abilities. However, Cummins reports that just bilingualism isn't enough. The students apparently must reach a certain threshold (in Academic Language) for this to be effective.

Specifically, there may be threshold levels of proficiency in both languages that students must attain in order to participate effectively in instruction and avoid falling behind academincally and in a second, higher, threshold necessary to reap the lingistic and intellectual benefits of bilingualism and biliteracy.
...
[The] research strongly suggests that, rather than "shutting doors" as Schlenger (1991) claimed, literacy in two languages enhances the intellectual and academic resources of bilingual students. At an instructional level, we should be ... [building] on this potential advantage...by focusing students' attention on language and helping them become more adept at manipulating language in abstract academic situations.
(Cummins, p. 170)

I have known examples of students who evidently did not manage to cross the threshold in both languages giving them decided linguistic problems in school. The one student was the youngest child of (divorced) Canadian immigrants to Denmark. The parents both spoke inadequate Danish, as far as I could see, also with their children. I think that the older children had no difficulties, so they possibly had an English-speaking environment at home before the divorce. The youngest, however, had no good role models of either English or Danish at home. Luckily he was very musical and sang in various groups, so he was learning correct language through songs. However, he had not advantage from these two languages when I was trying to teach him German.

In the next post, I will take up the final topic in this chapter, the role of the first and second language interdependence.

Chapter 6: Bilingual Education

What does the Research Say?

Politicians are not usually in agreement about what to do with English Learners in their school systems; and according to Cummins, they figure they have enough experiential evidence to make their decisions. Where there have been many studies about education bilinguals, from all over the world, and a few theories about what is best for the students, politicians have rarely used the results of research that has tested the theoretical hypotheses against all the different studies. Chapter 6 relates the theories with types of bilingual education programs and the studies made about these programs, to find the methods that most researchers (and fewer policy makers) have discovered work best.

Types of Bilingual Education Programs

In Bilingual Education, two (or more) languages of instruction during parts of the student's school career. This is not the same as teaching three years of high school Spanish to English speakers, where Spanish is the subject being taught, not (necessarily) the language of instruction.According to Cummins, this can be interpreted in two ways:

• The method is used as a means by which other educational goals are achieved. Students are often taught in bilingual classes only up to the point where they are deemed able to participate in regular classes with their peers. The bilinguaal education is used to provide a transition from L1 to L2. Real proficiency in L2 is expected to develop while the student uses it in regular classes along with L2-speaking peers.
• In some bilingual programs, however, bilingual proficiency is the goal, rather than the means. Students are expected to become academically proficient in both (or all three) languages. These programs are often found in two types:
  1. Second language immersion, such as French programs taught in Canada, where students may be taught entirely in French for the first few classes, gradually moving toward 50% English and 50% French as the language of instruction of all subjects.
  2. Dual language (two-way) bilingual programs, where students with two different L1s are taught in each other's languages, sometimes starting with about 90% in one language and sometimes 50/50, with perhaps the one language in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
  Thus the students gain academic language proficiency in both languages.

Typologies of bilingual education programs

Different researchers have classified programs according to "goals, status of the student group... , proportions of instructional time through each language, sociolinguistic and sociopolitical situation in the immediate community and wider society." (Cummins, pp 160-161) Cummins divides these into five types, based on the status of the L1 and L2:

• Type I use indigenous or Native languages as the medium of instruction, often aiming at reviving and revitalizing languages that have been endangered through earlier abusive educational programs . Besides in the US and Canada, these can be found with Maoris in New Zealand and other similar countries.
• Type II use a national minority language, like Welsh in Wales (which might also be motivated as a Type I program; French, German or Italian in Switzerland; Swedish in Finland, and Basque in Spain.
  
• Type III use international minority languages used by relatively recent immigrants to a country. These are common in places like the Netherlands and Sweden, as well as the U.S., and are mostly used to transition students into the dominant language. In some case, Type II and III merge, as with Spanish/English schools in the U.S.
  
• Type IV are bilingual/bicultural programs for the deaf or hard-of-hearing.
  
• Type V are for majority/dominant group students, who can see an advantage becoming bilingual. These include the French immersion programs for English speakers (the already bilingual English/Swedish daughter of friends in Montreal enjoyed participating in such a program) as well as some duo-language programs in the U.S.
  

Theories of bilingual education

There seem to be four major theories about bilingual education. The first two are favored by policy makers who oppose comprehensive bilingual education, while the last two are based on cognitive theory, and are favored by Cummins:

1. Linguistic Mismatch: where there is considered to be a mismatch between a student's L1 (and culture) and the language and culture of the school, the student is instructed in the L2 to minimize or erase the mismatch, assuming that students would encounter academic difficulties because of a mismatch. (Cummins, p. 158.) Cummins dismisses this assumption with short shrift later:

   While the claim that children cannot learn through a language they do not understand has been persuasive to many policy-makers and educatiors (and, in fact, underlies the quick-exit transitional focus of most U.S. bilingual education), it ...fails to account either for the success of English background children in ... dual language programs...
   (Cummins, p. 164.)

2. Maximum Exposure: students learn the L2 best by being completely immersed in it as soon as possible, providing maximum "time on task" for learning English, and leaving the L1 for home use alone. This is the method that has been taught in schools for Native Americans here, as well as similar schools in many other countries where a native population was dominated by another (as discussed in my blog post about Chapter I,) where children were kept in boarding schools in an attempt to "save them from their heathen culture." Cummins quotes several claims that purport to prove that time on task learning the predominant language (and this means, in particular, the spoken language) is the greatest predictor of learning this language, claiming that bilingual education spends too little time teaching English. (Cummins, p 163)
3. Additive Bilingualism Enrichment Principle: bilingual students gain cognitive skills from their bilingualism, including learning a third language faster.
   
4. Linguistic Interdependence (or Common Underlying Proficiency) Principle: cognitive skills are independent of the language being spoken (i.e. it doesn't matter what language you speak to learn to drive a car) so the cognitive skills of language learning are interdependent on each other. (Cummins, p. 159.)
   

These last two theories are discussed and supported in the rest of the chapter, so I will cover them in the next blog post.

Chapter 5: Understanding Academic Language - 4

Focus on Use

If the students learn their math and Academic Language enough to get good test scores, but never use the logical skills of math or the persuasive skills of Academic Language outside the classroom, then their education remains in the classroom, and has no connection with the rest of their identity. Therefore students must use these skills for authentic purposes. As Cummins says:

Language must be used to amplify students' intellectual aesthetic, and social identities if it is to contribute to student empowerment, understood as the collaborative creation of power.
(Cummins, p. 144)

So we have to make sure that students are actually using this language. For math, this would have been an alien concept not too long ago. Students worked problems, including word problems, which require a certain mastery of English, but they never wrote more than a geometry proof. Nowadays students may be expected to keep a Math Journal, where they keep track of the steps to do various problems, for example, and maybe even are asked to reflect on how a math concept can be used in real life. By using written Academic Language, according to Cummins:

• Students must ... figure out sophisticated aspects of [English] ...to express what they want to communicate;
• [Students and teachers become aware of] ... what aspects of language they need assistence with;
• [Teachers get] the opportunity to provide corrective feedback...
  (Cummins, p. 144)

Although Cummins recommends such great literacy tools as drama/role play, creative writing and critical autobiographies, these will always play a smaller role in a mathematics classroom. However, using language in structured groups to provide and strengthen background knowledge and in various forms of journals can be used in math. Asking students to explain the steps they have taken to solve a problem in writing, much like writing geometry proofs, can help activate Academic Written language, which is useful for all students, not just ELLs. Using more authentic projects for learning math is certainly a challenge to a first-year teacher like I will be, but is by far the best way for students to see how both math and Academic Language can be used outside the classroom.

ELLs might be permitted to discuss a topic first in their L1, if there is more than one speaker of that language in the classroom, and then produce a written report in English. They may even be permitted to write their outline in their E1 first, while they are gathering their thought. In my experience, however, they should be discouraged from trying to write first in the L1 and then translating to English, because they will translate idioms directly.

Scott J. Cech in another Education Week article, Weigh Proficiency, Assess Content, discusses NCLB requirements that ELL students test scores be included for adequate-yearly-progress purposes after only one year, although most research would indicate that students need up to seven years to master English at a level with their peers, even in math.

Students whose state NCLB test grades are consistently lower than their peers are automatically in for feelings of inferiority. Their schools have difficulty reaching expected results when their total scores are pulled down because of their lower scores.

The obvious thing, of course, is to set in everything to figure out how to bring these scores up, but the article can only report on a few practical studies, where different approaches have been used to improve ELL students' Academic English. For everyone agrees that that is the path to be taken.

Education Week has been running a blog by Mary Ann Zehr called Learning the Language, which "will tackle difficult policy questions, explore learning innovations, and share stories about different cultural groups on her beat." The most interesting post I read from recent times is High School for Newly Arrived ELLs Opens in San Francisco. The school is part of the Internationals Network for Public Schools which has 11 schools in New York and more recently one in Oakland and now San Francisco. Their students have all lived fewer than four years in this country. This is what their website says about their Approach:

At International high schools, a badge of prestige replaces the “stigma” of immigrant status for students, families, and faculty. It is understood that near native fluency in English and proficiency in a second language are valuable resources when it comes to achieving professional and social success in the United States and the global economy and participating fully in democratic society. Within our network, every teacher is a language teacher as well as a teacher of academic content and skills. The educational process takes place in a heterogeneous, learner-centered, collaborative, and activity-based environment. Students are organized in diverse clusters that work with the same team of teachers over 1-2 years. Classes are mixed according to age, grade, academic ability, prior schooling, native language, and linguistic proficiency. They are interdisciplinary and rigorous, and the curriculum includes literature, social studies, math, science, the arts, technology, and physical education

The Internationals’ pedagogical approach to educating English language learners is based upon five major tenets:

• Heterogeneity and collaboration: schools and classrooms are heterogeneous and collaborative structures that build on the strengths of each member of the school community to optimize learning
• Experiential learning: expansion of the 21st century schools beyond the four walls of the building motivates adolescents and enhances their capacity to successfully participate in modern society
• Language and content integration: strong language skills develop most effectively in context and emerge most naturally in a purposeful, language-rich, interdisciplinary, and experiential program
• Localized autonomy and responsibility: linking autonomy and responsibility at every level within a learning community allows all members to contribute to their fullest potential
• One learning model for all: every member of our school community experiences the same learning model, maximizing an environment of mutual academic support. Thus all members of our school community work in diverse, collaborative groups on hands-on projects; put another way, the model for adult learning and student learning mirror each other.
  (Internationals, Our Philosophy - my emphasis)

These students are learning English while they are learning content. They are not being held back until their English is good enough. The schools emphasize their bilingualism as a "badge of prestige" and empowers them to become active citizens.

What an exciting place to work and learn, and what an inspiration! I will continue to explore their website. It has a wealth of inspiration!

Chapter 5: Understanding Academic Language - 3

Focus on Language

One of the main reasons bilingual students end up having trouble keeping up with their fellow students is perhaps that they have learned conversational English so well that teachers and counselors figure they are generally fluent. However, students do not learn Academic English from their friends. They learn it in the classroom. Their friends have had a number of years to build a advantage that the ELL students have to catch up with. Of course there are some Standard English speakers in their classes who didn't quite catch on either when Academic Language was being presented, so any activity to strengthen Academic English is good for the whole class.

In an article from Education Week Research Hones Focus on ELLs Debra Viadero reports on how even the best ELL students tend to fall behind their peers with English as L1, and that researchers agreed that it has something to do with learning Academic English. Following are some short quotes from the article:

What they have yet to nail down is how to help this vulnerable and challenging population of students over the learning hump that comes later in elementary school; how to teach higher-order reading skills, such as comprehension; how to teach adolescents who are new to English; and how to boost achievement in academic subjects other than English.
...
Making matters worse, the existing research on the topic has been dominated by a single, politically explosive question: Should English-language learners be taught, either initially or for an extended period of time, in their native languages?

...five independent research reviews addressing that question over the last 25 years conclude that teaching students in bilingual settings is more effective—at least modestly so—than teaching them only in English.

“I think the evidence is there,” says Diane August, a senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Linguistics, a private research center in Washington. “There’s a lot of transfer that occurs from the first language to the second language.”

...Scholarly views diverge even more over how long it should take for students to master English, with estimates ranging from three to eight years.

...To prod students to talk more, especially in the academic arena, many experts recommend setting up structured cooperative-learning groups so that students can practice speaking under less-threatening circumstances. In fact, a research-based practice guide published last year by the Institute of Education Sciences calls for English-learners to spend at least 90 minutes a week working one-on-one on carefully designed activities with students of different ability and English-proficiency levels.

...the bottom line is that the research suggests that English-learners need some sort of classroom support if they are ever going to succeed in American classrooms. ...Yet he estimates that 10 percent to 50 percent of ELLs are in classrooms where few, if any, modifications are made to help them overcome their language difficulties. And their numbers are growing, ... even as pressure builds in some states to enact policies that block teachers from using students’ primary language in classes or limit instructional modifications for English-learners.
(Viadero)

Cummins says that ELL students need to develop "critical language awareness, which encompasses exploration of the relationships between language and power." (Cummins, p. 137) In other words, students have to become aware of the differences between colloquial, usually oral, language, and the language of power, which is generally Academic Language. (Even powerful speakers of Ebonics or Latino/American use a different language to convince people, than they in daily conversations.) He suggest turning the students into "language detectives" who discover the differences between colloquial language and the language of power - and academic English, to see how different forms of language are used in different contexts. In this way, there is no denigrating colloquial language, the language of the student's home identity, but the students learn how to use language flexibly.

He talks of enabling students to "harvest the language" (Cummins, p. 139) by being aware of grammatical structures and vocabulary. While most of his suggestions would be more applicable in a more text-based subject than mathematics, there is undeniably a math vocabulary that students must learn to be successful. We must be careful not to dumb down the mathematical vocabulary for these students, but teach it to them instead. (This summer I discovered this while teaching division of polynomial fractions. We were saying that they should "flip" the divisor, until it occurred to us that the students actually knew the term "invert.")

Cummins suggests working with the Graeco-Latin vocabulary, which of course, is prevalent in mathematics, and points out that students with Romance language backgrounds like Spanish are accustomed to using these words. We should have them discover the small differences between the English and Spanish cognate terms. The computer program HELP Math that I discussed in the previous post has an excellent glossary that compares the English and Spanish terms. For students with other languages, we will have to help them build this understanding of the vocabulary and word-building functions of prefixes and suffixes.

Chapter 5: Understanding Academic Language - 2

Focus on Meaning

Of course, when you are teaching a subject, the most important thing you want the student to understand is your content, in other words, the meaning of what you are teaching.

If the student does not have (or realize that she has) sufficient embedded context to understand the meaning, it is the teacher's job to make sure that the she has the background information necessary to take on the challenge of learning new content.

Since I will be teaching Math (I haven't found a job yet, so I have no classes where i can try out these things) whatever I write here will be theoretical when it comes to Math.

As I quoted in the previous post, if you're a great teacher of, say, math, to the "standard" student, but leaving the Standard English language learners behind, you're not a great teacher. If most of your kids get it somehow, there's still that group who didn't, and maybe could have, if they'd had the necessary background to understand it.

With math the problem could be poor preparation in elementary or middle school. It could be a parent who told the child that she always hated math. It could be that the child missed out on some important part of math because he moved from one district to another and they were doing things in a different order. (That happened to me. I moved from Ohio to Pennsylvania in April of my Junior year. I had no problems in most of my subjects, but in math, they had already had coordinate geometry and we were just about to get to it in my Ohio school, so I had to learn it on my own. Even now, many years and many math classes later, I still feel some strange insecurity there.)

So what's a math teacher supposed to do?

The good thing is that math is very symbolic, and pretty much the same despite the language. Of course, there are differences.

• Where we write 2,456.25 most of the rest of the world writes 2.456,25, which is certainly confusing. In some countries, division is not indicated by / but by :
• In Denmark, subtraction is indicated by ÷.
• In Denmark, Ø is a letter (and also the word for "island," not a number.
• Many Europeans write one with a little flag to the left (like our 7) and cross their 7's so they don't look like ones.
• Since I had math in school and college prior to the advent of calculators and computers, we never talked about negative numbers as "negative two" but as "minus two." I think the new nomenclature came partly because of the advent of number lines (which we also didn't use) and the different keys for "negative" and "minus" on a calculator keyboard (which have been a hassle for me!)

Those are just simple things that might floor a good math student from another country.

For students L1 is a European language, they probably know a lot of the math vocabulary already, or at least they will recognize most of it. But a student from an Asian country most likely has to learn the entire math vocabulary even though she can do the symbolic math.

In most cases the students have some prior knowledge of math that the teacher can help them activate in various ways that have already been discussed. If a student has not been exposed to the necessary mathematical background, then it is necessary to find help to bring the child up to speed. Since the rest of the class will be moving on, this puts an enormous pressure on the child who is trying to catch up.

Cummins suggests a sequence for introducing new content, which can also have some application in math:

1. Experiential phase - to activate background knowledge
2. Literal phase - finding out what the text in the book says literally (as in explaining what a word problem is looking for.)
3. Personal phase - relating to the student's own experience (which might be difficult in some areas of math.)
4. Critical phase - drawing inferences and exploring generalizations.
5. Creative phase - translating the previous phases into creative action, like solving the problem or extending a math concept to something else.
   (Cummins, p 134)

Other ideas he suggests which could be used in math are

• Use visuals to stimulate discussion
• Use manipulatives and multimedia presentation
• Share prior experiences with people of diverse backgrounds (like those number and operator difficulties I mentioned above.)
• Writing activities that focus students' prior knowledge - a bell-work assignment?
• Linking prior knowledge to knew concepts, which is something so basic for teaching that I wonder why it's even mentioned.
  (Cummins, p 135-6)

HELP Math for Spanish/English bilingual students

I happened on an interesting website the other day, called HELP, aimed at Spanish/ English bilingual children learning math in grades 3-8. I signed on for the 21-day free trial so I could see how it works. There is a little story with animal-like children doing things in real life, and then transfering that to a math lesson. For this page, Maria walks every day and keeps track of how far she goes in a table of values and a bar graph. When the student clicks the the button "En esta pagina" at the top right, a speaker tells about the page or the sequence in Spanish, giving an oral background to what the student is learning. The middle button on the bottom is a glossary of key terms with explanation in English and Spanish and always an example.So the student gets background knowledge in Spanish, hears the story in English, and can check key terms in both languages, which is right after the book! Evidently it is possible to aquire the program for your school with Title I, II, etc. grants. It looks like a useful program.

But what do we do for the children who speak a language that isn't Spanish?

I plan to look for textbooks in the languages of my bilingual students, so they have a reference work to check with. Conceivably there will also be math materials in those languages on line. My students could help search for materials in their languages.

Chapter 5: Understanding Academic Language - 1

Making It Happen in the Classroom

This is the nuts and bolts chapter, with more concrete ideas about how to teach Academic Language in the classroom.

A high school teacher may take pride in her ability to teach science but unless she knows how to teach science to students who are at varying stages of acquiring academic English, her science teaching skills may amount to very little.
Her role definition must change from being an effective science teacher of the "generic"...student to being an effective teacher of science and English academic skills to the new culturally and linguistically diverse mainstream student.

Cummins has developed a framework incorporating both identity negotiation and cognitive challenge intersecting with "patterns of societal power" which were the topics of the previous chapters. This then focuses on three areas: the meaning/comprehension of the content matter, demystifying / "harvesting" language so students can use it, and opportunities for students to express themselves. I will be presenting these topics over several blog posts to keep them shorter, relating them to my own experience, and to becoming "an effective teacher of math and English academic skills."

A Framework for Academic Language Learning

The Development of Academic Expertise

Focus on Meaning

Making input comprehensible
Developing critical Literacy

Focus on Language

Awareness of language forms & uses
Critical analysis of language forms & uses

Focus on Use

Use language to:
Generate new knowledge
Create literature & art
Act on social realities

(Figure, Cummins, p 125)

With this framework, Cummins centers on what he calls the Interpersonal Space of Cognitive Engagement and Identity Investment, which is what all the previous chapters have been about. It is in this zone of proximal development (Cummins, Chapter 1, note 14) that learning occurs. However

these [teacher student] are never neutral; they either challenge the operation of coercive relations of power in the wider society or they reinforce [them.]
(Cummins, p 125)

Cummins asserts that students' engagement in the cognitive work of the class must be maximized, and this can only happen with the affirmation and respect of the teacher.

The best way to do this is by activating prior knowledge, perhaps through brainstorming in small groups, so that students are aware that the knowledge they gained in their L1 in their life outside school or in their home country is valid knowledge. In this way their identity is strengthened, because it is affirmed by the teacher. Sometimes they get the idea that they have had their slate wiped clean when they moved here. It is important that they realize that their background is still of value to them.

The teacher can use the results of the brainstorming to find out how much the different students know about the subject, so she can provide background knowledge or supplement where there are holes.

If a student has little or no prior knowledge on a subject, then the teacher can work with her to build background knowledge, possibly using her L1, so that she can be on a level with her fellow students. This could be done by giving the student a text with background knowledge in her L1 prior to the class where the knowledge is needed. In that way, although the student hasn't discussed the topic in English before, the content is already embedded and thus more comprehensible, so she just has to work with the language of the topic. She is able to make intelligent guesses about the meaning, since she knows it is related to the prior or freshly built knowledge of the subject.

She also knows that the teacher acknowledges her knowledge, or lack thereof, and respects her enough to help her use or build that knowledge. The rest of the class can also respect her prior knowledge of the subject as just as valid as their own.

The teacher has to present material to the students in a way that targets Quadrant B: context-embedded and cognitively demanding (See Blog on Chapter 3.) If the material isn't demanding (Quadrant C), for example rote worksheets, or is not context-embedded (Quadrant D) where the student has too many unknowns that are not sufficient comprensible material and thus learns nothing. We have to remember that just because a student is not fluent in English, or even just because the student has an inadequate school background, does not mean that he cannot learn cognitavely challenging subjects. They just have to be presented to him at a level he can work with. This is also showing respect from the teacher, meeting the student where he is, but expecting that he will go far. As Cummins reminds us,

second language learners ... may be trying to find their way in the borderland between cultures. They frequently don't have either the means or the desire to go back to their original culture, but don't have the language skills or cultural understanding to participate fully in their new culture.
(Cummins, p. 132)

This concept was well-described in my blog entry A culture shift isn't always what you expected either. Our students need to feel our respect and affirmation to keep going.

[This] implies that teachers must see their role as creating instructional context in which second language learners can become active partners in the learning process; seocond, ...that teachers must view themselves as learners - in order to teach effectively they must learn from their students about students' culture, background and experience.
(Cummins, p. 133)

Part of the requirements for my teaching credential from Claremont Graduate University is the Ethnography thesis, where we first study ourselves ethnographically, then 5 or more of our students, their community and the school. This will be a challenging but certainly rewarding part of my first year of teaching.

I will discuss the three foci of meaning, language and use in the next entries.

Long-Term English Language Learners

I was intrigued by the title of an up-coming chat on EdWeek: Educating Long-Term English Language Learners, with this little blurb:

Many school districts are at a loss on how to best educate long-term English-language learners-students who have been enrolled in special programs to learn English for years but who have never tested as fluent in the language. Kate Menken, an assistant professor of linguistics at the City University of New York who wrote the book English Learners Left Behind: Standardized Testing as Language Policy, will answer questions about what she's learned during three years of researching long-term ELLs in New York City. The study also included an intervention in two high schools with long-term ELLs that is showing promising results.

This problem hasn't been covered in any of the books we've read so far, so I decided to investigate further, particularly since this is a seconday school problem, and (I assume) I'll be teaching secondary math. Evidently we can assume three levels of ELLs in high school:

1. Newly Arrived with Adequate Schooling
2. Newly Arrived with Limited/Interrupted Formal Schooling (also known as Students with Interrupted Formal Education or SIFE)
3. Long-Term English Language Learners...the focus of this study.

[LTELLs] are distinct from the two other groups because they are not new arrivals, but rather have been in the U.S. for seven or more years, and some are in fact U.S.-born ... As a result, they are usually orally proficient in English and often sound like native speakers ... [Which Cummins warns about.] In spite of their oral proficiency in English, these students are characterized by low levels of academic literacy in both English and their home language. As such, their reading and writing is usually below grade level in either language, and they often experience poor overall academic performance and high course failure rates ... These students are frequently misperceived as ‘failures’ of ESL and bilingual programs.
There is a fair amount of overlap between long-term ELLs and students termed “generation 1.5,” a population of mainly U.S.-educated English learners that has received attention within TESOL scholarship, particularly in studies of higher education.
(Mencken, et al, p. 2, her references removed. My comment in italics)

The typical high school assumes that ELLs have sufficient academic background from their previous school. They are not well prepared to have students in academic classes who do not have this background. I think that I, too, have been assuming that a student in Algebra I has had enough math previously to have the cognitive background to learn the difficult content. Since these students are often quite fluent in BICS speech, teachers, administrators and councilors have been assuming that they must have congenital cognitive limitations, rather than experiential limitations from inadequate schooling.

The LTELLs in NYC high schools that the authors interview for her study have a variety of backgrounds: "The vast majority of our student participants (90%) speak Spanish... [most] from the Dominican Republic, while others come from Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, and Venezuela. The sample also included speakers of Twi, Chinese, and Garífuna." (Mencken, et al p. 7-8)

The educational experiences of the majority of LTELLs are characterized by inconsistency and transience across countries, schools, and programs. ...[W]e have identified three categories of LTELLs ...: 1) vaivén students, who have moved back and forth between the U.S. and their family’s country of origin, 2) students with inconsistent U.S. schooling, who have shifted between bilingual education, ESL programs, and mainstream classrooms with no language support programming, and 3) transitioning students, who simply require additional time to acquire another language while they are developing academic content knowledge.

As the first two categories ... make up the overwhelming majority of the students in this study, it becomes apparent that LTELLs lack stability in their schooling experiences, compounding the already difficult task of learning a language for academic use.
(Mencken, et al, p. 8-9)

The researchers quote several of the students in the paper. This one is a good example:

The changes that I been going back and forth like being in DR, then coming over here, I’m getting used to class being all in English then I go back over there and it all in Spanish… It’s that like since I been going back and forth and studying here and studying over there. Like the History Regents it’s difficult ‘cuz my mind with the history over there I know it more than here. And then I come here I’m studying the history but I don’t get everything, you know? Like there’s my head, crazy sometimes. I was telling my teacher I wish the Regents was about DR, that way I would pass it [laughs].
(Tatiana, 10th Grade LTELL, School 1, interview transcript)
(Menken, et al, p. 11)

The authors list several different causes for these students besides vaivén wbo have moved back and forth between countries:
Inconsistent U.S. Schooling

• ‘School Hoppers’
• Programming Differences from School to School
• Inconsistent School-Based Language Policies
• Absence of ELL Programming

A much smaller group were categorized as Transitioning. Generally they had just not been here long enough to get their English up to par, but because of excellent school back home, were doing quite well in most content course. The authors expect these students to move on easily.

It looks like we have to be very careful not to be taken in by a student's fluent conversational skills. When a student is having content difficulty, we should be very careful to check his background to see if he just hasn't had enough schooling. For our class, we will be writing an "Ethnography," which will include interviews with several challenged students and their families. I will try to find an LTELL for the project.

Chapter 4: Reading and the Bilingual Student:

Fact and Friction

This chapter is one of the longest in the book, but with the least usefulness to me. From the subhead you can gather that it's about controversy - the controversy of "phonics" over "whole language." Cummins' general conclusion, through many pages of text, is that both are important - phonics initially to help the student "decode" the written word, and then as soon as possible reading, which doesn't have to be all "decodable text." This applies for both the L1 and the L2. However, if students have already learned to read in one language, they have a cognitive context for learning to read much more quickly in the second language.

Once students get the gist of reading, they can also guess the words in between. I observed this with my bilingual daughter, who was exposed to books - both Danish and English - all her early childhood, but who really broke the reading barrier after starting first grade - in Danish. The following summer, when we visited my parents, who had collected a lot of children's books for the grandchildren, my daughter picked up a Dr. Seuss book with a reading emphasis on the difficult ough words. Even though she had never been taught to distinguish the different sounds of this letter combination, she read the book fluently with correct pronunciation.

Cummins constantly repeats that the job of the teacher is to "support ELL students [I would say, all students!] in developing strong reading skills, because reading is the primary way in which students get access to academic language." (Cummins, p. 85) Reading, of course, is not enough if the students don't actually comprehend what they are reading, so we have to work with them on comprehension skills as well, although just doing a lot of reading is the major issue.

Simply put, books are the only place where students get access to the low frequency Graeco-Latin lexicon of English. It follows that a diet of engaging books works much better than a diet of worksheets and drills in developing reading, comprehension and academic language.
(Cummins, p. 87)

Cummins goes on with a quick review of how people acquire a second language. The most important issue is that a learner must be presented with sufficiently comprehensible input, a term that was introduced by Stephen Krashen in his 1981 book, Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, now available online. Reviewing Krashen's discussion, Cummins writes:

Exposure by itself is not enough - it must be exposure that learners can understand [i.e. be comprehensible input.] Furthermore, the input should contain structures that are a little beyond what the learner already knows [for otherwise the learner isn't learning anything new - about language at any rate.] Despite the presence of "unknown" words and/or structures, learners can utilize context, extra-linguistic information, and their knowledge of the world to understand the meaning.
(Cummins, p. 88, with my comments in brackets)

This is confirmed with the observations of my daughter mentioned above, and my own learning experience of German described in the previous blog post.

Cummins goes further to ask how we can get bilingual students to invest in their learning process, to activate their language through speaking and writing, "so that they come to see themselves as powerful users of language with additional insights about language and its potential in comparison to monolingual students." (Cummins, p. 89, my emphasis) This, I think, is a crucial reason to emphasize bilingualism, that the students gain a knowledge about culture that is more fully developed because they are cognizant of the similarities and differences between the two languages and cultures. If they are taught that their own language and culture are inferior, they lose the cognitive background to contrast and compare. Later he writes that "the fuel that drives the development of reading competence is the extent to which students are enabled to invest their identities fully in the process of becoming powerfully literate." (Cummins, p. 91, my emphasis.) If they lose part of their identity, they can no longer use it to interpret the world (or their reading.)

In a long section called Decoding, Cummins reaches the conclusion that phonetic awareness is necessary to start decoding written language (in other words, reading), but it is not necessary to get into all the details that pure phonetics advocates impart to unsuspecting students. As my daughter clearly demonstrated with the ough words, she was ready to take on such challenges with her Danish reading skill and her knowledge of English. Obviously some students may gain an advantage with more formal training in decoding, but most students will learn much faster with challenging original texts. On the other hand, students who have been immersed in a literate background in the home (no matter what language) have an advantage that we teachers must offer all the students in class.

In a section on Reading Comprehension, Cummins (p. 110) lists two emphases that improve comprehension:

• focus on extensive reading and writing for self-expression
• development of explicit awareness of how language works [discrete language skills]

Academic language includes structures (like the passive voice) and vocabulary that are rarely found in conversational language. High frequency words used in conversation are primarily of Anglo-Saxon origin, while the more high-frequency academic vocabulary tends to be Graeco-Latin.

This is of course an advantage to students with languages of European, particularly Romance, roots, like Spanish, because they have a very similar academic vocabulary. I assume that non-European languages, like the languages of Asia, do not use the Graeco-Latin vocabulary, which presents a greater challenge to these students.

Of course each academic field has its own specialized jargon, which must be learned in connection with the concepts of that field. Besides these three types of vocabulary, English has an enormous trove of extremely low-frequency words, which speakers learn through their reading in particular. One study (by Laufer in 1992) determined that "[w}hen the proportion of words in a text known by the reader falls below [a] 95% threshold, the possibility of inferring the unknown words decreases significantly." (Cummins, p. 114)

As a teacher of secondary mathematics, I can expect that my ELL students may have already been exposed to the mathematical vocabulary that their English-speaking peers have learned if they have had good school experiences in their home country. I plan to provide textbooks in some of the students' home languages if they are available, so that they can continue their bilingualism in academic language.