Second language acquisition

[Fred Genesee]

There are immersion type programs in Hawaii and in the Mohawk community
outside Montreal that use the minority language for extensive instruction
throughout elementary and into secondary school. I am not sure I recall
exactly how it works in either program but my recollection is that they
provide up to 80% instruction in Hawaiian and in Mohawk throughout the
elementary grades and perhaps up to 50% in the secondary grades. These
programs could provide information about teh students' literacy skills at
the secondary level in the societal language and in the indigenous
language.  Both of these programs are in societies that are highly
literate, but, as you point out, even in these cases finding appropriate
materials is difficult since these languages have traditionally not be used
in their written forms (although Hawaiians had an extremely high rate of
literacy before the monarchy was overthrown in 1899). 

My own research and experience with any type of immersion program for
students who speak Enlgish at home and live in predominantly English
communities has been that these students acquire English language skills,
including literacy, to the same level as comparable studnets in all-English
programs regardless of the amount of exposure to English in school. This
seems to be true whethere the students are from a majority or minority
culture group -- as long as they speak English at home. In short, there is
often no correlation between how much exposure students have to Enlgish in
school and their proficiency in English (even in literacy) in English
dominant societies. In contrast, there is usually a link between the amount
of exposure to the minority language and attainment in that language -- not
surprising given the overall lack of exposure to the minoirty langauge in
the community at large. 

To be more specific, we did evaluations of a total immersion porgram in
Mohawk for Mohawk background children who spoke English at home and found
that even total immersion in Mohawk during the primary grades did not
hamper their English language development. These programs have since
expanded and provided lots of exposure to Mohawk throughout elementary and
secondary school. 

The same pattern has been documented even in the case of Spanish-English
bilingual programs for Enlgish language learners in the U.S. who speak
Spanish predominantly outside of school and have extensive exposure to
Spanish in the home. These students acquire the same or higher levels of
proficiency in English as similar Spanish speaking students in all English
programs.  At the same time, the students in the Spanish programs achieve
higher levels of oral language and literacy skills in Spanish.

Thus, this appears to be a fairly robust finding in bilingual programs and
has been found in Canada and the U.S. and for minority language as well as
majority language sutdnets. I can send references to these findings if you
are interested.

Fred


At 01:31 PM 21/12/2005 +0000, Katie Alcock wrote:
>Does anyone have any information on studies where the minority language is
>the language of instruction for all of compulsory schooling (e.g. to 16 or
>18), which I am informed is the current situation in the Basque country,
>where all public schooling is apparently in Basque, although most families
>speak exclusively Spanish or speak both languages.
>
>Likewise does anyone have any information on literacy at secondary and
>higher education levels in the non-instructed language, where all primary
>and secondary education is in the minority language?  Is there any effect on
>performance at these higher levels if the transition to the majority
>language is made in the teens, and if there hasn't been very much formal
>literacy instruction in the majority language?
>
>It strikes me that most of the current programmes involve only a few years
>of primary education; however I know adults whose schooling has mainly been
>in a language other than the language of the community (for example, where
>instruction has been in Kiswahili and English while all day-to-day
>communication takes place in another African language), who have trouble
>with literacy materials in their home language, despite the fact that they
>are more fluent in speaking it.
>
>I realise that this is a slightly different situation, as there are rarely
>many literacy  materials actually available in the home language, and
>broadcast media are often in the language(s) of instruction, but families
>rarely have a TV and everyone speaks all of the time outside school in the
>home language, including adolescent children, and adults would never use the
>language(s) of instruction in their day-to-day communication.  So I'm
>wondering if there is any data on the parallel situation in a more literate
>society.
>
>
>Katie Alcock
>
>
>Katie Alcock, DPhil
>Lecturer
>Department of Psychology
>University of Lancaster
>Fylde College
>Lancaster LA1 4YF
>Tel 01524 593833
>Fax 01524 593744
>Web http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/KatieAlcock.html
>
>

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