Second language acquisition

Wed Dec 21 16:06:55 UTC 2005

That's very interesting, has anyone looked at transitions to higher
education as well?  This would apply to the Basque Country situation, but
not really to the Kenyan situation, as children don't get literacy materials
in their home language.  Children's spoken fluency is never compromised in
their home language, in fact their spoken English and/or Kiswahili is often
a lot poorer, and although most adults CAN read in their home language, they
really prefer not to as they do not feel comfortable doing so.

It strikes me also that where we are talking about "minority" or "majority"
languages, the minority or majority language almost always has the same
status on the world language stage as it does in the communities in
question: English is a majority language worldwide, as well as locally, and
has a tendency to overcome Hawaiian, Mohawk, Cree, Welsh, and Spanish in the
US.  Spanish is also a majority language worldwide and has a tendency to
dominate over Basque and Catalan.  However, the situations I've come across
are where the majority language locally (the one I know most about is
Kigiriama, spoken by about 300,000 first language speakers) is not a player
on the world language stage.

I wonder if there is any research on situations where the local majority
language is in a minority globally? Perhaps in parts of South America where
the local majority language is not yet Spanish/Portuguese?

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

> From: Fred Genesee <genesee at ego.psych.mcgill.ca>
> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 10:24:21 -0500
> To: Katie Alcock <k.j.alcock at lancaster.ac.uk>,
> <info-childes at mail.talkbank.org>
> Subject: Re: Second language acquisition
> 
> 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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