Second language acquisition (fwd)
Fred Genesee
genesee at ego.psych.mcgill.ca
Wed Dec 21 23:02:04 UTC 2005
I might add to all this that I,along with colleagues from thte U.S. (Kathryn
Lindholm-Leary, Bill Saunders, and Donna Christian) did a review of research on
the oral language, literacy and academic development of English language
learners in the U.S., and this will appear in print in January (Cambridge
University Press). The goal of this review was to discern what research has to
say about these domains of development in the case of minority language
learners in the U.S. IN Chapter 5 of this volume Kathryn reviews research that
evaluated alternative educational programs for English language learners and
compares the results of these programs with one another with respect to, among
other things, literacy. Aside from the interesting finding that initial
literacy instruction in the students' L1 did not hamper them from acquiring
literacy skills in English (and to the contrary sometimes produces better
results that instruction in only English), she also found that programs that
provide consistent, integrated, and high quality instruction across grade
levels, regardless of language of instruction, are more effective than programs
in which there is a lack of such consistency -- not surprising, but a point
that is often lost in the heat of debate about whether to use ELLs' native
language or not. In Chapter 3, we look at the more psycholinguistic side of
L2 reading acquisition.
IN addition, Diane August and Tim Shanahan chaired a panel of experts who
carried out an exhaustive review of research on literacy development in K-12
students who are learning to read a second language -- the panel was called the
National Literacy Panel. While the focus was on minority language students in
the U.S., there is also a lot of coverage on L2 literacy development in other
countries and in majority as well as minority language learners. The results of
that review are going to be published by Lawrence Erlbaum sometime in 2006.
This volume is exhaustive in its coverage and should be of interest to
researchers interested in L2 reading acquisition and instruction.
Katie asked if there are other bilingual programs with students' whose L1 is a
majority language locally, but a minority globally. Donna Christian and I
edited a book called Bilingual Education (TESOL, 2001) that includes a number
of case studies of such situations: trilingual programs for Ladin-speaking
students in Northern Italy; bilingual schools in Hungarian and Slovak for
Hungarian students in Slovakia; and Maori immersion porgrams in New Zealand.
It can be tricky defining what is minority -- for example, even in Quebec,
French which is clearly a majority language in the province (80% of Quebecers
are monlingual speakers of FRench), it nevertheless has many hallmarks of a
minority language and needs some of the same kinds of protections of even more
"minority languages".
Two things that seem pretty clear when talking about bilingual education for
minority language learners, almost however minority is defined; one is that
such students acquire the majority language well, especially if the majority
language is of global significance -- like English; and the other is that
quality of curriculum and instruction also matter.
Fred
At 01:51 PM 21/12/2005 -0500, Barbara Pearson wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> I have only two small comments to add to the excellent
> commentary already provided on this topic.
>
> 1. I think a good part of the animus against minority language
> programs in the U.S. is directed against programs that delay
> the introduction of English till 2nd and 3rd grade. Even someone
> like Rosalie Porter, who spearheaded the English-only
> referendum in Massachusetts, will say that two-way programs
> (L1 and L2 together) were not the target of her campaign
> (although they, too, got effectively crippled by it--
> but that is another question).
>
> With that in mind, I take a different perspective on the
> results that have been reported. I think the research shows
> that children learn both languages equally if they are presented
> equally. As Ginny Gathercole has pointed out, the poorly developed
> Spanish of even the children who had Spanish and English at
> school in Miami was not so much a function of the presence of the part-
> time English in their school, as of the overwhelming presence
> of English in their homes and communities. Their Spanish was
> improved by the time they spent in Spanish in school, and probably
> would have improved more with a greater percentage of the day
> in Spanish, (the minority language).
>
> I don't know the political situation in the James Bay Coast, but one may
> need to compromise with those English-teaching outsiders. If that
> happens, it may be comforting to look at the other side of
> the research coin--that learning to read in two languages at once
> is not confusing and may even be facilitating. (You might
> get the Oller & Eilers, 2002, on the Miami study for support of that.)
> You could end up including a little English from Kindergarten without
> completely compromising the program, if you are careful
> to safeguard the status of Cree in the children's minds.
>
> I think we've been saying that if English (or any language) is the
> majority language, more school time in it does not seem to be
> necessary; but if English is the minority language in the children's
> lives, more time in English will help it--as long as their L1 is
> supported as well. One needs to evaluate what the balance of
> power of the languages is in their community.
>
> 2. The second comment is a reaction/ realization of the power
> of literacy in all this. We are not talking just about waiting until
> children are 10, but waiting until they've had time to master reading
> and begin writing in the L1. We had a rule of thumb that among our
> college students it was rare for someone who had had
> basic literacy training in a language not to prefer to speak
> that language when presented with the opportunity (at college).
> (I think 2nd grade was my cut-off, but I didn't have enough data to
> contrast one grade or another.) By contrast, students who had not had
> literacy training in a language (i.e. 98% of most Spanish-background
> children born in Miami) generally preferred the other
> language, the one in which they had learned to read and had
> read extensively. I used to joke that the speed of light is
> that much faster than the speed of sound, but I'm wondering
> now if that isn't more than a metaphor, whether there is something
> more to the modality (or whether it's just the *added* modality,
> not that it's visual).
>
> Meanwhile, I'd like Ginny's references too!
>
> Best,
> Barbara Pearson
>
> On Dec 20, 2005, at 8:26 PM, V.M.Gathercole wrote:
>
>>
>> I would like to second what Fred Genesee has said about immersion in the
>> minority language before the majority language. I have had considerable
>> experience, both in research and in living in the communities, with the
>> Spanish-English bilingual situation in Miami and the Welsh-English bilingual
>>
>> situation in North Wales. In both cases, the minority language--not the
>> majority language--is the one that is at risk of not being learned fully if
>> it
>> is not established firmly in the early years. North Wales is a particularly
>>
>> telling case in this regard. Although almost all Welsh-speaking adults are
>> fully bilingual, the educational system requires that all students begin
>> school
>> with total immersion in Welsh. That includes the children who come from
>> English-only homes. Most children have at least three full years of
>> schooling
>> in Welsh, and usually more, before they have any choice of instruction in
>> English. The end result is striking. Children who come from Welsh-speaking
>>
>> homes end up fully fluent in BOTH Welsh and English. Children who come from
>>
>> English-speaking homes end up either fairly or fully fluent in Welsh and
>> fully
>> fluent in English.
>>
>> What is clear from work we've been doing here is that no children are at
>> risk of
>> not learning English fully. That includes the children who come from
>> Welsh-only homes who do most of their schooling in Welsh. The majority
>> language is so dominant that children cannot help but learn it.
>>
>> If the educational system started with instruction in English, in all
>> likelihood, the Welsh language would gradually diminish, as it was doing
>> during
>> most of the 20th century. It was in the 1970s that the educational policy
>> changed, and this has had the effect of bolstering the Welsh language in the
>>
>> community. In the last census, the use of Welsh went up for the first time
>> in
>> decades throughout Wales.
>>
>> If you'd like copies of any of the work we have been doing on Welsh--e.g.,
>> we
>> recently completed a study of language transmission from parents to children
>>
>> throughout Wales that confirms what I've said above--I'd be happy to send
>> you
>> copies. You might also wish to consult work by Colin Baker, who has been
>> intimately involved with the Welsh bilingual education policy.
>>
>> In the case of the Cree children, I think it is clear from both the Miami
>> bilinguals' use of Spanish and Welsh bilinguals' use of Welsh that if the
>> use
>> of Cree is to be maintained in their community, it must be solidly
>> established
>> in the children's early years. The English will be acquired whatever
>> strategy
>> is taken.
>>
>> Best of luck in convincing the school system of this.
>>
>> Ginny Gathercole
>>
>>
>> Quoting Ann Peters <ann at hawaii.edu>:
>>
>>>
>>> Colleagues,
>>> I just received this query and I think some of youknow much more about
>>> this than I do. Please respond directly to him.
>>> thanks
>>> ann
>>>
>>> ****************************
>>> Dr. Ann M. Peters, Professor Emeritus
>>> Graduate Chair
>>> <http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/>http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/
>>> Department of Linguistics
>>> University of Hawai`i email: ann at hawaii.edu
>>> 1890 East West Road, Rm 569 phone: 808 956-3241
>>> Honolulu, HI 96822 fax: 808 956-9166
>>>
>>> <http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/faculty/ann/>http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/facu
>>> lty/ann/
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:35:54 -0500
>>> From: Vince Dumond <vince.dumond at afnea.com>
>>> To: ann at hawaii.edu
>>> Subject: Second language acquisition
>>>
>>> Good Morning
>>>
>>> My name is Vince Dumond. I am the principal of a First Nation School in
>>> northern Ontario, Canada, on the James Bay Coast. I found your email in a
>>> paper you wrote
>>> (<http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/topics/filler.pdf>http://childes.psy.cmu.ed
>>> u/topics/filler.pdf) while doing
>>> research on second language acquisition.
>>>
>>> In three years our community will have a new school and I want to start
>>> planning now for a seamless integration of day care, head start and
>>> kindergarten, all with highly qualified teachers.
>>>
>>> Do you know of research which supports solid foundation in first language
>>> until age 9, then immersion in the second language and the end product
>>> being
>>> a high achievement in both first and second languages by age 14?
>>>
>>> The aboriginal language is Cree and the second language is English.
>>>
>>> There is a fear among the elders, in this community, that the first
>>> language
>>> will be lost if children are not immersed in Cree for the first 3 years of
>>> school. There are qualified Cree teachers who can do so.
>>>
>>> The English teachers who come to this community see children who perform
>>> poorly in language scores in both Cree and English. The English teachers
>>> insist that the children be immersed in English first and learn the mother
>>> tongue, Cree, 40 minutes a day at school and also learn it at home so the
>>> children can have a higher achievement score in English upon graduation.
>>> Cree is not spoken outside of this isolated area.
>>>
>>> Can you help me find research which supports the acquisition of the first
>>> language as the well documented route to proceed in program planning?
>>>
>>> Planning for this important step is crucial.
>>>
>>> Please fee free to forward this email to the appropriate researcher.
>>>
>>> Many thanks
>>>
>>> Vince
>>>
>>>
>>> Vince Dumond
>>> Principal, JR Nakogee School
>>> Attawapiskat, Ontario, Canada.
>>> P0L 1A0
>>> Phone: (705) 997-2114
>>> Fax: (705) 997-1259
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> This mail sent through
>> <http://webmail.bangor.ac.uk>http://webmail.bangor.ac.uk
>>
>
>
> *****************************************
> Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph. D.
> Project Manager, Research Assistant
> Dept. of Communication Disorders
> University of Massachusetts
> Amherst MA 01003
>
> 413.545.5023
> fax: 545.0803
>
> bpearson at comdis.umass.edu
> <http://www.umass.edu/aae/>http://www.umass.edu/aae/
Psychology Department Phone: 1-514-398-6022
McGill University Fax: 1-514-398-4896
1205 Docteur Penfield Ave
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