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Taiwan to Offer Mother-Tongue K–12 Education

Raohe Street Night Market in Taipei – Taiwan.

Taiwan’s government has approved a national language-development bill to protect linguistic diversity, which requires national language courses throughout preschool, elementary, and high school education.

At the moment, mother-tongue education is only mandatory in elementary schools, while it is an elective course for high school students.
The bill also requires elementary and high school students to learn at least one national language as part of their compulsory education. Under the bill, local governments are authorized to designate a national language as a local official language to increase its usage and to allocate funds to hire language instructors and purchase learning materials.
Many believe in order to promote national languages, a language-proficiency certification system should be introduced and integrated into the civil service reward mechanism to motivate workers to learn national languages to improve government services.

The bill recognizes as national languages local languages used in Taiwan and its outlying islands, such as Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hakka, and other aboriginal languages, as well as Taiwanese sign language.

It is the latest legal effort to preserve and develop Taiwanese and aboriginal languages following the passage of the Aboriginal Language Development Act (原住民族語言發展法) in May last year and the designation of Hakka as a national language last month.

The bill requires special efforts to be made to preserve languages that are endangered and that the revival, transmission, and development of those languages should be prioritized.
A national language research mechanism would be established to develop and standardize writing systems to document and promote languages.

Under the bill, the government would establish a national language database and periodically publish a national language development report.

The Ministry of Culture said the bill was drafted to preserve languages whose development has been hindered due to historical reasons, namely the exclusive language policies of the Japanese colonial era and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) one-party rule.

“The passage of the bill would provide an adequate legal foundation for [the establishment of a Hoklo-language television service]. The government should ensure language equality and establish a Hoklo television station, as there are already Taiwan Indigenous TV and Hakka TV stations,” minister of culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said.

The ministry has a budget for the Public Television Service Foundation to make Hoklo-language programs this year, Cheng added.

Language and culture advocates have called for the establishment of a Hoklo-language television station to boost the visibility of the language, which, although a mother tongue of many Taiwanese, might have lost its relevance due to the lasting consequence of the language policies of the former regimes.

“Language is a carrier of culture and is essential to cultural development. From the point of view of language preservation and development, the bill is an important declaration of the government’s efforts to promote national languages,” the ministry said.

Transitioning Adult ESL Students to College

Lijun Shen demonstrates strategies to address the different needs of college-bound adult English learners

Many adult learners who study English as a Second Language (ESL) stay in adult literacy programs for years without moving on to college programs. Transitioning these ESL learners from the non-credit ESL program to the credit-bearing college academic and vocational/technical programs is a challenge that many instructors and administrators of adult literacy programs face. This article introduces some of the effective strategies, both programmatic and instructional, that Highline Community College in Washington State has adopted to successfully transition ESL students into credit-bearing college programs.

Our Students
Highline Community College is in Des Moines, Washington, which has one of the highest immigration rates in the county, state, and nation. According to census data, over 100 languages are spoken among limited English proficiency (LEP) students in local schools and 90.2 percent (56,810) of the LEP population are between 18 and 65 years of age. Over a quarter of the LEP households are below the poverty level: 12.3 percent are on public assistance and 26.7 percent are below the poverty level. Most of them are unemployed and are at the low literacy level. Those who manage to come to school oftentimes drop out of school because of some common barriers such as lack of financial aid support, childcare support, and language and study skills.

Between 2003 and 2006, Highline Community College served about 6,000 adult ESL students. Out of these ESL students who attended ESL classes, only 100 (1.7 percent) students moved on to credit-bearing college courses. Among the 100 students, only four of them earned associate degrees (1 AAS, 1AS, 2AA) and only one earned a one-year certificate.

Barriers
There are many barriers faced by ESL students in accessing and transitioning to college. Among the most commonly stated barriers are: (1) lack of goals, motivations and belief in self-worth; (2) lack of financial support and childcare support; (3) failure to provide transportation; (4) inability of working students to attend due to schedule conflicts and fatigue resulting from long work days; (5) cultural differences and expectations; and (6) lack of knowledge of the U.S. college system including application and registration process. Due to the nature of the ESL program at Highline and in order to serve more students in our community, many of our ESL classes are offered at various off-campus community sties. This has led to an extreme disconnection between the ESL population and the rest of the college. Hence, most student support services are unavailable to the ESL students.

Response
Data on the educational requirements needed for the fastest-growing jobs in our economy provides a convincing argument for enhancing adult basic education services to include transition to postsecondary education. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (2002)1, the majority of jobs require postsecondary education. It is clear that men and women over age 25 can have high income benefits from further education—any education beyond a high school diploma. In order to help our ESL students, an ESL-to-Credit task force made up of administrators, instructors, college support services, and community partners was formed with the vision to create a sustainable, innovative, and effective set of services to help ESL learners succeed in pursuing the educational and training options of their choice. The ESL-to-Credit task force took up the following initiatives:

• Research: Determine who our populations are, where they live, what they need, and the degree to which they are successful in our current programs; use this information to inform program planning and decision making.
• Recruiting materials: Develop culturally appropriate outreach materials and activities that reach ESL audiences and respond to their needs, interests, and questions.
• Student services: Create a flexible menu of support services that can reach out to ESL populations, assisting them with
• Admissions
• Advising
• College cost information and financial aid
• Transcript evaluation and credit transfer
• Financial aid support: Search for financial aid options, develop seamless referral mechanisms that match students with those sources, and develop new funding sources.
• Professional development: Provide ongoing training and updating to ESL faculty about Highline’s educational opportunities so that they can be effective in informing their students and answering student inquiries.
• Curriculum and instruction: Offer transition courses that integrate career development, college preparation, and basic skills.

Transition Program
Course Development

Based on the initiatives conducted by the ESL-to-Credit task force, as a member and the only ESL instructor from the task force, I developed Highline’s first transitional course: Transition to College. The course was designed for the advanced ESL students before entering a vocational or academic program. Students received an orientation to the college as well as academic skills and English language skills needed for successful transition and participation in higher education. Upon successful completion of the class, students would be able to:
• Believe in self-worth to face the challenges of academic demands and administrative systems;
• Understand the norms of the academic community;
• Develop conceptual/critical thinking skills such as synthesis, analysis, and evaluation;
• Apply different reading strategies depending on purpose;
• Develop basic academic writing skills and technology skills;
• Communicate effectively both in oral and in written forms based on purpose and needs;
• Develop effective learning strategies and study skills.

The class covered the following topics and contents:
1. Surviving college: Things you need to know
• Understanding the quarterly and class schedule;
• Identifying campus resources;
• Interviewing faculty and students from the honor program.

2. Planning your education
• Applying for admission;
• Assessing skills (through placement test);
• Meeting with an advisor;
• Registering for classes.

3. Getting help financially for college expenses
• Understanding types of financial aid;
• Applying for financial aid;
• Tips for streamlining financial aid.

4. Getting help from career and employment services
• Job search and career exploration;
• Self-assessment;
• Developing skills in cover letter writing, resume writing and job interview techniques.

5. Setting goals and priorities
• What does it take to make you happy?
• Why should you have goals?
• What are the elements of a useful goal?
• What are your goals?

6. Developing time management strategies
• Keeping a schedule;
• Prioritizing tasks;
• Combining tasks;
• Keeping and maintaining good health.

7. Determining learning styles and identifying learning strategies
• What are learning styles?
• What kind of learner are you?
• Will understanding your learning style help you become a better student?
• What are the learning strategies for different types of learners?

8. Developing important academic study skills
• Highlighting and annotating;
• Outlining, mapping and summarizing;
• Note-taking and test-taking strategies.

9. Developing reading skills
• Guessing vocabulary from context;
• Previewing, scanning and skimming;
• Reading for main ideas and details;
• Recognizing basic patterns of organization;
• Reading critically and applying what has been read.

10. Building basic writing skills
• Paragraph writing;
• Summarizing;
• Knowledge of grammar.

11. Using a computer as an aid to becoming a better student
• Obtaining an e-mail account;
• Learning the basics of working on computers;
• Learning how to do research on the Internet and checking the quality of online resources;
• Learning how to use online learning system.

Implementation
Recruitment for the Transition to College class was done through the distribution of the class flyer, in-class promotion, student’s current instructor recommendations and interviewing with the transition instructor.
Students were encouraged to talk to their current ESL instructors about their interest in the transition class. I also talked to the students’ instructors about their potential students. Then, with the recommendation of the ESL instructors, students who were interested in signing up for the transition class scheduled an interview to determine whether they were qualified for the class. Students were required to bring in an in-class writing sample for the interview. After the interview, qualified students were instructed to sign up for the transition class.

Outcomes
In spring 2006, the first Transition to College class was offered to advanced ESL students. Twenty students were enrolled in the class and all of them had the goal of attending credit-bearing college academic and vocational/technical programs. Students attended classes for two and a half hours every day, Monday through Thursday. They went through the transition course curriculum and the outcome was outstanding.
To keep track of student work, each student was required to build a Student Learning Portfolio. The portfolio was used as an alternative form of assessment which was an evaluation of a collected, organized, annotated body of work, produced throughout the quarter by the learner. It provided evidence of growth in many dimensions of the student’s learning.
At the end of spring quarter 2006, students were also required to take the COMPASS test—a computer-adaptive college entrance exam. The result of the COMPASS test showed that all 20 students (100 percent) were qualified to be admitted into credit-bearing college courses. Among the 20 students, 13 (65 percent) students enrolled in the credit-bearing college programs immediately after the transition class.

Best Practices
The end-of-quarter student evaluation indicated that students really loved the approach of the transition class. The curriculum, the instruction, and the extra support (both academically and emotionally) helped students get started with their pursuit of the educational and training options of their choice.

As the result of the successful transition class in spring 2006, many ESL students expressed their interest in transitioning to college credit programs. A recent focus-group survey indicated that 95 percent of Highline’s High Intermediate-Advanced ESL students want to enroll in degree or certificate programs.
Since the first transition class in spring 2006, Highline community College has been developing strategies to address different needs of the ESL student population. So far, the ESL Department has developed three categories of elective courses: transition, pathways, and target skills. These courses are designed for current high-intermediate and advanced level ESL students. The Transition to College class helps prepare advanced ESL students to transition into academic programs. Pathways courses are designed to prepare students for a specific career pathway. We currently offer healthcare, business, and early childhood education pathways courses. Targeted Skills courses focus on specific skills identified by student need. According to the data given by the Instructional Research Office at Highline Community College, 30 percent (versus 1.7 percent) of the ESL students have transitioned to the credit-bearing college programs since spring 2006.
While establishing and maintaining successful transitions for ESL students to enter college academic programs requires tremendous effort and hard work from the instructors, administrators, and college support services, the rewards are incredible. It is gratifying to know that our ESL students are better prepared to handle the social and academic challenges upon entering college.

Notes
1 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2002). Tomorrow’s Jobs. Bulletin 2540-1.

Dr. Lijun Shen (Lshen@highline.edu), professor of TESOL and Read­­ing at Highline Community College and adjunct faculty member of the TESOL program at Seattle University, has over 20 years of experience teaching adult ESL and EFL students and training teachers.

Comparing Child Languages

Clifton Pye suggests a comprehensive approach to crosslinguistic research

At the dawn of the modern linguistic era, Noam Chomsky stated that the central problem for linguistic theory “is essentially the problem of constructing a theory of language acquisition” (1965, 27). Today, we know more than ever about how children acquire different languages. Two-year-old children acquiring the Mayan language K’iche’ produce transitive and intransitive inflections on verbs (Pye, 1983); two-year-old children acquiring Spanish produce verb suffixes for person and tense (Gathercole, Sebastián, and Soto, 1999); two-year-old children acquiring the Bantu language Sesotho produce passive verbs (Demuth, 1990); and two-year-old children acquiring the Inuit language Inuktitut produce polysynthetic verb complexes (Allen, 2017).

Altogether, this would appear to be a golden age of language-acquisition research, and yet we lack a framework for assembling this rich dataset into a comprehensive picture of how children acquire language. For the most part, we publish the results of language-acquisition research on one language at a time. We train our students to investigate how children acquire a single language. Our analytic techniques work best when we can isolate one or two factors such as vocabulary size or sentence length in a single language.

Comparing the course of language development in different languages forces investigators to ignore most of the differences that distinguish the languages. While English contrasts the /p/ in pit and the /b/ in bit, the Mayan language K’iche’ contrasts the /p/ in pa ‘on’ and the voiced, implosive sound /ɓ/ in ɓa ‘gopher’. (Implosive sounds are produced by breathing in air rather than by breathing out.) The differences between English and K’iche’ involve not just sounds but every aspect of the grammar, up to and including when to say “I’m sorry.” English has a double object construction (“give me the box”) that K’iche’ lacks. K’iche’ has two “antipassive” constructions that English lacks. Subjects and direct objects are obligatory in English and optional in K’iche’. A single verb complex in K’iche’, e.g., Katenwila’, requires a whole sentence for its translation in English: “I’m going to see you.”

Comparing language acquisition in different languages brings us face to face with the problem of defining a unit of comparison that is not influenced by the differences between all of the other linguistic features in languages. Languages have different numbers and types of consonants, pronouns, verb inflections, passive voices, and locative expressions. We cannot compare how children acquire pronouns in different languages if the pronouns have different sounds, mark different semantic contrasts, and have different grammatical restrictions.

In my book, The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research (University of Chicago Press, 2017), I make the case for borrowing the comparative method from historical linguistics. Historical linguists have been refining the comparative method for over a century and a half to understand how entire families of languages change over time (Rankin, 2003). Historical linguistic research has produced a comprehensive analysis of the world’s languages that is unequaled in other branches of linguistics. This empirical base provides the foundation for the success of the comparative method.

While the comparative method is best known for its use in reconstructing linguistic features for prehistoric stages in families of languages, key aspects of the comparative method can help researchers compare language acquisition in languages belonging to the same family. A central element of the comparative method is its restriction to languages that share a common historical ancestor. This restriction means that it is best to compare the acquisition of English with the acquisition of other Germanic languages and to compare the acquisition of K’iche’ with the acquisition of other Mayan languages. This restriction may be viewed as a major limitation of the comparative method, but it has profound implications. One implication is that comparing acquisition results for English and K’iche’ produces spurious conclusions with no empirical basis. Another way to state this implication is that theories that account for the acquisition of English do not predict the acquisition of K’iche’.

The obverse side to the common ancestor restriction of the comparative method is that it compels investigators to initiate comprehensive acquisition studies for all of the languages within a language family. This requirement leads to the idea of comparing how children acquire every aspect of English with the way that children acquire similar features in the other Germanic languages, such as Dutch, Frisian, German, and Swedish. Despite decades of acquisition research on the individual Germanic languages, we do not have detailed studies that compare acquisition across the Germanic languages.

The comparative method begins by looking for corresponding linguistic features in related languages. Languages with a common ancestor retain many traits that betray their ancestry, such as similar sounds, words, and phrases. The fundamental advantage of analyzing corresponding linguistic features is that they have corresponding contexts of use. The focus on contexts of use gives the comparative method its ability to control for a variety of extraneous factors that obscure the study of particular linguistic features. For example, we do not understand whether the sounds that children can produce limit their production of pronouns.

The acquisition of negation illustrates how the comparative method controls extraneous factors in language-acquisition research. English has two forms of syntactic negation. The form not is used in contexts of predicate negation, e.g., “It cannot wait.” The form no is used in discourse contexts as a response to questions and commands, e.g., Adult: “Do you want to go out?” Child: “No.” No is also used for term negation to negate noun phrases, e.g., “We have no bananas today.”

Children acquiring English have to learn the proper contexts for using these different forms of negation. Amazingly, children often produce no in contexts of predicate negation, e.g., Kathryn’s “no zip” (Bloom, 1970, 150). This overextension is so widespread in the acquisition of English that we might be tempted to predict that all children will extend forms for discourse negation to contexts of predicate negation. There are sporadic examples of this overextension in German, but not in Danish and Swedish (Plunkett and Strömqvist, 1992). The difference in the development of negation between Swedish and English suggests that the link between predicate negation and auxiliary verbs in English accounts for the difference between negative acquisition in English and other Germanic languages.

We cannot extend this account of Germanic negation to the acquisition of negation in Mayan languages because the contexts of use in Germanic languages do not correspond to the negation contexts in Mayan languages. English does not have a word that expresses existence that is analogous to the existential predicates in Mayan languages. The English verb to be is marked for tense, unlike the existential predicates in Mayan languages. The Mayan language Mam uses the form miti’ to express the negation of nonhuman entities in existential contexts, e.g., Miti’ jal, “There isn’t one.” Mam extends miti’ to mark the negation of predicates in the present tense but not to predicates in the future tense or to discourse contexts, which use the form mii’n (England, 1983). Children acquiring Mam occasionally substitute the existential form miti’ for mii’n in discourse contexts.

Negation illustrates the way in which contexts of use provide the key to comparing the acquisition of related languages. The forms and uses of negation in English resemble the forms and uses of negation in other Germanic languages due to their shared history, just as the forms and uses of negation in Mam resemble the forms and uses of negation in other Mayan languages (Pye, 2016). Comparing how children acquire negation in genetically related languages avoids a fruitless search for a universal developmental path for negation.

Research on the acquisition of English has become the standard for all language-acquisition research and creates a lens that distorts research on other languages. The comparative method encourages the investigation of children learning other languages by rejecting the need to tie their results to English. The accelerating loss of endangered languages requires the use of a research framework like the comparative method that promotes the investigation of under-studied languages.

The act of documenting how children acquire an endangered language can lead parents to reassess the value of their cultural heritage and form the basis for language-revitalization efforts. Documenting the acquisition of under-studied languages is the only way to meet Chomsky’s goal of constructing a theory of language acquisition.

References

Allen, S. E. M. “Polysynthesis in the Acquisition of Inuit Languages.” In M. Fortescue, M. Mithun, and N. Evans (eds.), Handbook of Polysynthesis, 449–472. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Bloom, L. Language Development: Form and Function in Emerging Grammars. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970.

Chomsky, N. Aspects of a Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965.

Demuth, K. “Subject, Topic and Sesotho Passive.” Journal of Child Language 17 (1990): 67–84.

Gathercole, V. C. M., E. Sebastián, and P. Soto. “The Early Acquisition of Spanish Verbal Morphology: Across-the-Board or Piecemeal Knowledge?” International Journal of Bilingualism 2 and 3 (1999): 133–182.

Plunkett, K., and S. Strömqvist. “The Acquisition of Scandinavian Languages.” In D. I. Slobin (ed.), The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 3, 457–56. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1992.

Pye, C. “Mayan Telegraphese: Intonational Determinants of Inflectional Development in Quiché Mayan.” Language 59 (1983): 583–604.

—. “Mayan Negation Cycles.” In E. van Gelderen (ed.), Cyclical Change Continued, 219–47. John Benjamins: Amsterdam. 2016.

—. The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2017.

Rankin, R. L. “The Comparative Method.” In B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, 183–212. Oxford: Blackwell (2003).

Clifton Pye is an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Kansas who specializes in documenting the acquisition of indigenous languages of the Americas, with a primary focus on the acquisition of the

Mayan languages spoken in Mexico and Guatemala. His book, The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research (University of Chicago Press, 2017), is available now.

Making Hindi Official at the UN

Over half a billion people speak Hindi

The Indian government is prepared to spend up to four billion rupees ($63 million) to make Hindi one of the official languages of the UN, according to the country’s external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha (India’s lower house of parliament) last month, Swaraj said that the only hindrance to making Hindi an official UN language was procedural, not financial. Hindi is India’s most widely spoken language, with an estimated total of over half a billion speakers (400 million mother-tongue speakers plus 130 million Indians who have learned it), or 53% of the country’s population, but India has 29 languages with over a million speakers (including 125 million English speakers) when second and third languages are taken into account.
Less than 15% of speakers of southern languages know Hindi. With such a variety of languages, the promotion of Hindi as a national language is controversial and often meets with protest.
Shashi Tharoor, member of parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, in India’s south, criticized the government’s efforts: “If tomorrow someone from Tamil Nadu or from West Bengal becomes the prime minister, why should we force him to speak in Hindi at the UN?” Adding that India is the only country where Hindi has official status, he said, “Seeking to promote Hindi raises an important question. Arabic does not have more speakers than Hindi, but Arabic is spoken by 22 countries, whereas Hindi is only used as an official language by one country—us. I understand the pride of Hindi-speaking people, but people of this country who do not speak in Hindi also take pride in being Indian.”
His criticisms were dismissed by Swaraj, who told the Times of India, “Saying Hindi is spoken only in India shows your ignorance.”
According to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, there are over 30 million members of the Indian diaspora living overseas, of which it is estimated about 50% speak Hindi. It is also an official language in Fiji, and versions of Hindi are also used in Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname.
India first campaigned for recognition of Hindi at the UN in 2007, and in 2015, Parmanand Jha, the vice president of India’s neighboring country Nepal, confirmed his country’s support for the move.
According to UN regulations, two-thirds of the 193 member countries must vote in favor to approve a new official language. Swaraj said that the main obstacle among members, especially smaller nations, was the additional expense of adding a new official language.

Cutting to the Common Core: Fostering Academic Interaction

Kate Kinsella offers an action plan to encourage second language learners to participate in constructive classroom discussion

A primary goal of English language development and world-language coursework is to ensure that students develop the verbal and written language skills to communicate effectively in social and academic settings. To develop communicative competence, students at all grade levels and proficiency levels need daily supported opportunities using their second languages for diverse purposes. Simply providing provocative questions and exhortations to “share with a neighbor” will not yield impressive linguistic results. In this frequent classroom scenario, students are likely to respond inefficiently and inaudibly, using brief phrases punctuated by everyday vocabulary, without being able to recall their lesson partners’ contributions.

To make second-language strides, all students benefit from lessons that increase the quantity and quality of their verbal and written responses. Integrating routine classroom interactions that significantly improve students’ language and literacy skills is both a science and an art. In heterogeneous classes including a wide range of attitudes and abilities, it makes sense to structure routine partner interactions as a platform for more confident and competent lesson contribution. Drawing on years of experience teaching English learners and world-language students, I have compiled some instructional imperatives for orchestrating promising academic interactions with lesson partners that bolster engagement in subsequent unified-class discussions.

1. Gather Data on Student Work-Style Preferences
Experience as a second-language educator and classroom research illustrate how anxiety-provoking it can be for neophyte English speakers and world-language students to be directed to “get with someone” to complete a lesson task. In fact, my earliest forays into structuring collaborative tasks in high school French and English language development courses were met with such resistance that I eventually designed a survey to allow my language scholars to voice their lesson work-style preferences (Kinsella, 1996; 1997; 2011).

This qualitative classroom-research tool enables students to clarify whether they appreciate more routine opportunities to work on lesson tasks independently, with a partner, or with a group, and under what circumstances. It isn’t intended to serve as a justification for omitting lesson collaboration or independent tasks, but rather, as a practical vehicle to launch a candid discussion regarding the diversity in preferences voiced by classmates and the value in being self-aware, flexible, and mindful of others’ strengths and needs to successfully navigate school and the workplace. One consistent finding in secondary- and higher-education classrooms has been that most students are not inherently opposed to working with others but prefer to do so with a focused and collegial partner far more frequently than a group. Another reliable collective preference is for the teacher to assign partners rather than leave it to students’ initiative or fate.

An additional efficient and engaging method to gather data about students’ classroom collaboration experiences and preferences is to assign a brief, focused writing prompt, followed by a unified class discussion. The following academic discussion and writing prompts have served as curricular mainstays in my beginning-of-the-year endeavors to solicit formative input from my second-language students, particularly English learners. Students gain insights and validation as they voice perspectives regarding the attributes of a productive lesson partner and the ways in which a teacher can facilitate more democratic lesson discussions. Providing a sentence frame and precise word bank decreases interaction anxiety for less confident students while increasing accurate oral fluency and listening comprehension.

2. Arrange Classroom Seating
For students to interact efficiently and effectively, they need to be seated in close proximity to a productive classmate while also being able to easily establish eye contact with their teacher and reference any visual lesson displays. Apprehensive contributors may consciously avoid interaction by sitting on the periphery of the classroom, while others may artfully dodge participation by retreating within a social cohort and relying on more loquacious or risk-taking peers.

Prepare your classroom for routine partner and group interactions by first making optimal use of your space and furniture.

• For partner interactions, arrange desks in paired rows approximately one foot apart, leaving an aisle for you to easily maneuver, monitor interactions, redirect idle or off-task students, coach language use, and offer supportive feedback.

• If you are using small tables, assign students to work with an elbow partner (adjacent) or face-to-face partner (across).

• For group interactions, use tables or arrange desks in groups of four, with students facing each other. Make sure the tables or clus-
tered desks are positioned perpendicular to the front of the room so no students have their backs to their teacher or lesson references.

3. Assign Appropriate Lesson Partners
Years of teaching English learners and world language students across the K–12 and college spectrum have helped me grasp the complexities of structuring productive student interactions in a language they have yet to master.

• Assign letters (A/B) for partners in order to easily reference who should speak or complete a particular task first. For example, use rows of desks to assign partners. All students in row one are partner A, row two are partner B, row three are partner A, row four are partner B, and so on. You can also use students’ proximity to areas or items in the classroom. Partner As are seated closer to the clock. Partner Bs are closer to the door.

• Assign numbers (one to four) for group members. Tell students the order to number off and who starts. Number off one to four going clockwise. The group member seated closer to the clock is number one.

• Ask students to confirm their numbers or letters. So where are my partner As? Raise your hands? Partner Bs?

• Keep students working with assigned partners or group members for an adequate amount of time to develop a comfortable and promising working relationship but not so long as to become tedious or exclusive (e.g., two weeks, one month, one entire unit vs. an entire semester).

• Consider student needs when assigning partners, particularly early in the year when they are less familiar with their classmates and teacher expectations for dynamic interaction throughout a lesson. Factors to take into consideration include: second-language proficiency, reading proficiency, maturity level, ability to focus, gender, personality, confidence, and attendance.

• Pair or group compatible classmates within a reasonable range of language and literacy proficiency. Avoid partnering students with extreme skill inequities (e.g., highest performing with least confident and prepared) or students with similar challenges (e.g., extremely inhibited; struggling readers; easily distracted). Don’t rely on your most advanced students to largely serve in a tutorial capacity during lesson interactions. They need to stretch their cognitive and linguistic muscles as much as less proficient or engaged classmates. If a student is exceptionally underprepared and unable to function as an equal partner on lesson tasks, assign that individual to work as an additional partner B with a pair capable of demonstrating both social and academic skills. When partner Bs share ideas, direct both Bs to take a turn. The less confident scholar is better poised to benefit from the linguistic and behavioral models than in a one-on-one collaboration.

4. Justify Daily Integration of Interactive Tasks
Teachers serving English learners have a dual responsibility to advance their students’ content knowledge and English language proficiency. Similarly, world-language teachers are charged with advancing their scholars’ confidence and competence in a language many have few opportunities to hear and use outside the classroom.
Second-language educators might reasonably assume that their acolytes perceive the inherent value in daily lesson interactions. However, few students have difficulty recalling less than rewarding experiences collaborating with classmates across grade levels and subject areas. One predictable source of frustration is being thrust into an interactive and graded lesson task without clear justification, process, evaluation criteria, and monitoring.

• Provide a compelling rationale for including partner and group tasks and interactions in your lessons. My course objective is to ensure that you develop a deeper understanding of your second language and that you can comfortably use a greater range of words and sentences to speak, listen, read, and write. You won’t become a powerful communicator sitting quietly filling in blanks on worksheets or passively watching videos. From my perspective, your partner and group interactions are the most important parts of our lessons. This is where you will apply newly taught language in creative contexts, learn with and from your peers, and gain greater insight into your capabilities and areas in need of improvement.

• Make connections to career and college readiness. Knowing how to interact with a classmate, coworker, teacher, manager, club director, or community member is essential to academic, professional, and social success. Just as in the workplace, college coursework, and community organizations, this collaboration and sharing of ideas will help you refine your understandings and improve your communication. All of you noted in your class surveys that you had great aspirations after graduation. You are interested in careers as diverse as architecture, nursing, and programming. Any and every job description in these professions specifies an individual eager to work and capable of working with individuals from diverse backgrounds.

• Establish your active coaching and monitoring role during structured interaction. Don’t utilize collaboration time as an opportunity to accomplish grading, clerical tasks, or lesson preparation. As you work together, I will be actively monitoring to see if you are having difficulty with any aspect of this assignment. I will be listening to your contributions and reading what you have written. I may ask you to elaborate on a response, clarify what you mean, or restate audibly if you have spoken too softly. I may also ask you to launch our unified-class discussion with a particular response or invite you to contribute a specific idea when I open the discussion to volunteers.

• Provide students with clear guidance on how to request instructional assistance. Reticent or underprepared second-language students will be more inclined to solicit help from a teacher if they have a clear protocol and language tools. Visibly display an array of statements and questions to ask for assistance such as those included in Table 1. As you work together, feel free to call me over to assist you if you have specific questions or needs. Simply raise your pen and make eye contact to attract my attention, and I will come to your table right away. Please don’t simply surrender your assignment to me. Be prepared to explain what you are struggling with and how I might be of assistance. Ask a specific question, like those I have posted to appropriately ask for assistance.

5. Develop Familiar Phrases to Launch an Academic Discussion
By the time students have reached upper-elementary coursework, foundational years of conditioning have taught all too many that when the teacher throws a question or prompt to the classroom stratosphere, they are rarely obliged to contribute or listen attentively. Many have figured out that if they wait but a few seconds, either a “professional participant” or the teacher will eventually respond, letting them off the proverbial hook. Even imploring requests from the teacher such as “Does anyone else want to share?” can do little to engender enthusiastic or competent contributions from apprehensive lesson spectators. In second-language classrooms, every student needs daily and equitable opportunities to engage with the teacher and fellow classmates to make linguistic strides.

Because so many students approach second-language interaction with trepidation and strategies for evading engagement, it warrants retooling our phrasing for launching a discussion. As a teacher and instructional coach, I have observed that the discussion facilitator’s body language and verbal cues can signal either accountable academic interaction or informal voluntary responses. To illustrate, if the teacher sits cross-legged on a stool or desk and directs students to “Do a quick think-pair-share” in response to a question delivered verbally, few will immediately segue into a scholarly and democratic exchange of ideas. In contrast, standing and pointing out a visibly displayed question, after specifying that you will be facilitating a discussion preceded by partner brainstorming, is far more likely to set the tone that this is a lesson responsibility, not a response option. In my experience, certain widely used questions and requests act as discussion enders and are best avoided if the goal is democratic reflection, thoughtful contribution, and attentive listening. Table 2 includes a number of expressions I have found to elicit informal, unaccountable interaction as opposed to setting the tone for a more formal and inclusive lesson discussion. Using consistent and familiar phrasing to launch an essential discussion improves lesson pacing and student engagement.

6. Establish Procedures for Productive Partnering
When students are assigned a brief partner discussion task, many engage in inaudible “speed mumbling,” completing the interaction as hastily as possible without demonstrating authentic listening. Before the teacher has even had time to break away from the board to monitor student output, most have wrapped up efficiently and are visibly idle, anxiously awaiting the next lesson phase.

To reach higher proficiency levels, second-language students need abundant practice speaking, listening, and receiving timely and productive feedback from the teacher and peers. To maximize language production and improve listening during partner interactions, students benefit from clear, consistent protocols for lesson exchanges. In mixed-ability classes including striving readers and less proficient language users, one reasonable accommodation is to require sharing a response more than once to build both reading and oral fluency. If students have written a response, reading it twice, then saying it with expression primes them for more confident discussion delivery in the event that they are asked to report. Typically, after a hasty partner idea exchange with no feedback loop, a student is no better poised to contribute confidently in a unified-class format.

The sample procedures for partnering in Table 3 have dramatically increased language production in second-language classrooms while affording the teacher adequate time to monitor responses, provide feedback, and preselect a few habitually reticent contributors for the subsequent unified-class reporting.

7. Diversify Strategies to Elicit Participation
Every language teacher dreads ulcer-inducing classroom scenarios, trying in vain to elicit a range of responses from overzealous and habitually passive alike, reducing the lesson to a glacial pace. There are a number of practical strategies language educators can utilize to reduce student anxiety about contributing in a second language while broadening the customary response pool.

A structured partner exchange with a linguistic scaffold such as a response frame serves as a productive means of rehearsal for unified-class discussion. An opportunity to articulate a response and receive immediate partner feedback goes a long way toward bolstering confidence for contributing in a larger, more intimidating forum. As partners exchange ideas, the teacher can assess the range of responses and enlist the few habitually reticent reporters. Table 4 outlines an eclectic array of strategies second-language educators have utilized from primary grades to adult-education contexts to facilitate more animated and varied class discussions.

Conclusion
Pairing or grouping underprepared English speakers and world-language scholars for productive lesson interactions clearly involves far more than a modified seating arrangement and informal invitations to talk. Increasing miles on the tongue of every aspiring second-language student cannot be left to chance. Our increasingly high-stakes educational standards and assessments in tandem with a competitive global workplace place greater demands on students to be agile, competent communicators, ideally in more than one language. Devoting greater time and attention to structuring supported and accountable interactions in every lesson will increase the odds that the majority of our students, not simply an elite minority, leave our classrooms with the language tools to realize their aspirations.

References
Kinsella, K. (2011, 2014). English 3D: Course I & II. Scholastic.
Kinsella, K. (1997) “Developing ESL Classroom Collaboration to Accommodate Diverse Work Styles.” In Reid, J. (Ed.) Understanding learning styles in the ESL/EFL classroom. Prentice Hall.
Kinsella, K. (1996). “Designing Groupwork that Supports and Enables Diverse Classroom Work Styles.” TESOL Journal, 6 (1), 24-30.

Kate Kinsella, EdD (katek@sfsu.edu), is an adjunct faculty member in San Francisco State University’s Center for Teacher Efficacy. She provides consultancy to state departments of education throughout the U.S., school districts, and publishers on evidence-based instructional principles and practices to accelerate academic English acquisition for language-minority youths. Her numerous publications and programs focus on career and college readiness for academic-English learners and under-resourced students, with an emphasis on high-utility vocabulary development, informational text reading, and constructed written response.

Bilingualism May Counteract Autism

According to a new study published in Child Development, bilingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are better at switching from one task to another than their monolingual peers.

“This is a novel and surprising finding,” says Prof. Aparna Nadig, the senior author of the paper, from the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Canada’s McGill University. “Over the past 15 years there has been a significant debate in the field about whether there is a ‘bilingual advantage’ in terms of executive functions. Some researchers have argued convincingly that living as a bilingual person and having to switch languages unconsciously to respond to the linguistic context in which the communication is taking place increases cognitive flexibility. But no one has yet published research that clearly demonstrates that this advantage may also extend to children on the autism spectrum. And so it’s very exciting to find that it does.”

The researchers arrived at this conclusion after comparing how easily 40 children between the ages of six and nine, with or without ASD, who were either monolingual or bilingual, were able to shift tasks in a computer-generated test. There were ten children in each category.

Blue rabbits or red boats

The children were initially asked to sort a single object appearing on a computer screen by color (i.e. sort blue rabbits and red boats as being either red or blue) and were then asked to switch and sort the same objects instead by their shape (i.e. sort blue rabbits and red boats by shape regardless of their color).

The researchers found that bilingual children with ASD performed significantly better when it came to the more complex part of the task-shifting test relative to children with ASD who were monolingual. It is a finding which has potentially far-reaching implications for the families of children with ASD.

“It is critical to have more sound evidence for families to use when making important educational and child-rearing decisions, since they are often advised that exposing a child with ASD to more than one language will just worsen their language difficulties,” says Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero, the paper’s first author, and a recent McGill PhD graduate. “But there are an increasing number of families with children with ASD for whom using two or more languages is a common and valued practice and, as we know, in bilingual societies such as ours in Montreal, speaking only one language can be a significant obstacle in adulthood for employment, educational, and community opportunities.”

Despite the small sample size, the researchers believe that the ‘bilingual advantage’ that they saw in children with ASD has highly significant implications and should be studied further. They plan to follow the children with ASD that they tested in this study over the next three-five years to see how they develop. The researchers want to see whether the bilingual advantage they observed in the lab may also be observed in daily life as the children age.

The research was funded by: the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et Culture and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

“Can Bilingualism Mitigate Set-Shifting Difficulties in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders?” by Ana Maria Gonzalez-Barrero and Aparna S. Nadig in Child Development: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12979/full

 

13 Million Brits Plan to Learn Spanish in 2018

According to a poll recently released by the British Council, one out of every five UK adults (about 13 million people) said they plan to learn another language as a New Year’s resolution, while one in three (over 20 million Brits) intends to try and learn at least some phrases in another language in the year ahead.

For those respondents eager to take the linguistic leap in 2018, Spanish – which recent research by the British Council (https://www.britishcouncil.org/organisation/policy-insight-research/languages-future-2017) has highlighted as the most vital language to the UK post-Brexit – was the most popular choice among potential learners. It was followed by French, Italian, German, and Japanese.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the two thousand people surveyed said they’ve always wanted to speak another language fluently, and 56% stated that they regret never having made the effort to do so.

Despite more than half (58%) of respondents thinking it’s more important than ever for people in the UK to learn another language, only a third said they can currently hold a basic conversation in one. Almost half (45%) admitted to being embarrassed by the level of their language skills.

Commenting on the results, Vicky Gough, schools adviser at the British Council, said: “It’s fantastic that many of us hope to brush up on our language skills in 2018. In particular, the languages we are most keen to learn are some of the languages the UK needs most.

“But the country is still facing a languages deficit. If we are to remain globally competitive post-Brexit, we need more people who can speak languages. Learning other languages not only gives you an understanding of other cultures but is good for business, for life and for wellbeing too. The New Year is the perfect time to get started.”

The British Council’s call comes as the uptake of languages in schools faces a challenging time. Official figures from Britain’s Joint Council for Qualifications highlight a 7.3% drop in the number of pupils in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland taking public school language exams in the past year. Scottish Qualification Authority figures indicate that the situation is similar in Scotland with significant drops in French and German uptake in the past year.

The UK’s current lack of language skills is said to be holding back the country’s international trade performance at a cost of almost £50 billion a year.

The new poll, carried out by Populus was commissioned by the British Council, the UK’s international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities. The survey is part of its work to build relationships for the UK around the world through language, culture, and education.

The British Council offers a series of language learning videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaALxC_iM0-YOHikUMmmV-rbSgMc9Ei1W) with practical hints and tips, while schools can get ideas about how to make more time for language learning on the British Council’s Schools Online (https://schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/) site.

 

 

Babies’ Babbling Builds Better Brains

It’s long been known that babies modify their sounds to become more speech-like in response to feedback from their caregivers, and that they learn things have names by caregivers naming objects. But a news study, published in Developmental Science examines how specific types of babbling elicit particular parental behavior.

To answer this, the research team—Rachel Albert, assistant professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College; Jennifer Schwade, senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University; and Michael Goldstein, associate professor of psychology at Cornell University—recorded and recombined the vocalizations of 40 nine-month-olds and their mothers, using a “playback paradigm,” widely used in animal studies, to assess how specific forms of sounds and actions by infants influenced parental behavior.

The research sessions were conducted in a playroom with toys. Infants were outfitted with denim overalls in which a wireless microphone was concealed. Sessions took place in Goldstein’s B.A.B.Y. Lab, which is outfitted with video cameras to record responses during live play.

“We expected that mothers would respond more often when babbling was more mature, and they did,” said Goldstein. “The increased rate of response meant more language-learning opportunities for the baby. The mothers’ speech was also more likely to contain simplified, learnable information about linguistic structure and the objects around the baby. Thus, by varying the form and context of their vocalizations, infants influence maternal behavior and create social interactions that facilitate learning.”

The researchers also found that mothers responded more often and more informatively to vocalizations directed at objects than those that were undirected.

“We suspected this would be the case,” Albert said, “because the object the baby is looking at creates an opportunity for the mother to label it, so she’s more likely to respond with specific information than when a baby is babbling at nothing.”

In this way, write the researchers, “the infant’s own vocalizations serve to structure social interactions in ways that facilitate learning. … These results contribute to a growing understanding of the role of social feedback in infant vocal learning, which stands in contrast to the historical view of prelinguistic vocalizations in which babbling was assumed to be motor practice, with no function in the development of communication and language.”

The study sheds light on correlations between early babbling and later language and studies finding that babies with more advanced syllables in their babbling have more advanced speech and vocabulary when they’re older.

“We think there may be a kind of feedback loop, where for example parents’ labeling objects and rewarding more advanced vocalizations by responding more frequently promotes word learning,” said Schwade.

These results may help in understanding delayed vocal development in at-risk populations and those with hearing delays, Down syndrome and autism spectrum disorder. Fewer vocal interactions between children and caregivers, write the researchers, could “cascade into long-term differences in response expectancies, impacting language development over time as opportunities for learning from contingent parental responses are reduced.

Cornell University. (2018, January 18). Babies’ babbling betters brains, language. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 19, 2018 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180118142545.htm

 

Social Climbing

Yue Meng and Nile Stanley see the educational value in social networking sites

If you type “Facebook educational usage” into Google, it will show millions of relevant sites in just .278 seconds. With the popularity of Facebook and other social networking sites, such as Twitter and Renren (China), there is an assumption that such sites are useful in classrooms and outside of classrooms. It is not surprising that educators are attempting to integrate social networking sites into both teaching and learning.

Nonetheless, teachers still hesitate to use social networking sites in classrooms, perhaps because of perceived risks of distracting students off topic, or exposing students to inappropriate content. In this article, we discuss both the strengths and issues of using social networking sites in education and offer an example of social network sites can enrich curriculum.

Social networking sites are online websites that provide user-friendly platforms for individuals to connect with others and express themselves. Users of social networking sites are able to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks. Facebook, Sophia, and Renren are examples of these free learning communities.

Bartlett-Bragg (2006) defined social networks as a “range of applications that augments group interactions and shared spaces for collaboration, social connections, and aggregates information exchanges in a web-based environment.” Boyd and Ellison (2007) defined social networks as web-based services allowing individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

Virtual relationships such as these provide individuals with a wide range of information from multiple sources. The popularity of social networks sites has changed students’ online learning into self-initiated learning through which students can learn by interacting with others.

Online usage of social networking sites have become deeply embedded in the lifestyles of many young people. Blattner and Fiori (2009) observed that students’ social life is high tech, while often school life is low tech. Low tech classrooms are teacher-centered while high tech classrooms may be more student-centered and promote constructivist practices in which students have to collaborate.

The author’s study (Meng, 2012) of a student-initiated English as a Second Language learning community based on Renren (the Chinese version of Facebook) suggests social identity, perceived encouragement, and perceived ease of use as the factors that affect the interaction of social networking-based learning community in a positive way.

Specifically, students with recognized social networking identities attempt to use such sites to a greater degree, and may be more able to adapt to an online academic community. Online friends become online classmates.

Students’ efforts in social networking usage are highly dependent on how much encouragement they receive from social networking sites. Ease of use is defined as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort” (Davis, 1989).

An important factor influencing adoption of social networking sites is the combination of specific users’ technical skills and their competence in the peculiar features of social networking sites. Davis’s study also suggests social networking sites are related to learning and academic success by creating systems of information, contacts, and support.

Studies show social networking sites support collaborative learning, engage individuals in critical thinking, and enhance communication and writing skills through activating members’ work in personalized environments (Ajjan & Hartshorne, 2008; Lockyer & Patterson, 2008). Benefits for language classrooms include providing constructive educational outcomes, immediate opportunities to interact with peers, instructors, and native speakers of a variety of foreign languages, and developing social pragmatic competence in communication (Blattner & Fiori, 2009).

Social networking certainly promotes collaboration as it provides opportunities for students to join new networks that can open up spaces for collaborative learning. For example, students can work together to complete a project on Facebook. Through email and instant messaging, students are able to interact with other group members, discuss the project, assign working parts and combine individual learning outcomes.

They can easily exchange ideas, share information and work together. The diversity of social networking populations provide students more opportunity to communicate with peoples from all over the world.

Importantly, multimedia learning resources and materials found online can accommodate different learning preferences and needs. With the ability to post videos, photos, and other resources, students can share content easily with others, and give feedback about resources and materials. For example, teachers could upload teaching materials (video, presentation, e-books, photos, or other materials) before class for students to preview. Students are also able to share ideas on materials which may help to promote communication.

The challenges we face while using social networking sites for educational purpose are clear. Most students are used to logging on to social networking sites to communicate on a daily basis. As soon as they log in, they are inundated with information, potentially disrupting their study schedule or even making them forget the initial learning purpose.

Under these circumstances, social networking sites are no longer a learning tool, but a distraction from the right track. Students need to be able to use computers and other technologies with flexibility, creativity, and purpose.

How we address this problem depends on how we teach our digital-age students to properly use technology. Today, students are born in a digitally-infused society. It remains important for them to use technology with a sense of personal and community responsibility.

If schools exclude the technology and teachers do not help students use technology in healthy and smart ways, where can our students acquire virtual community citizenship? Teachers should integrate social networking sites into teaching and learning contexts as a proactive way to start helping students to gain digital citizenship and information literacy. Students need to be able to recognize the learning opportunities and use technologies as part of the process to accomplish learning goals. Social networking sites provide an opportunity for both students and educators to learn to solve problems together in a technological world.

Another challenge teachers face is the need to constantly learn new technology. There is widespread agreement among educators that all students need to be proficient computer users. However, in many schools, teachers and students still use computers only as the equivalent of flash cards and electronic worksheets.

For teachers, the new challenge is not just to be a master of Microsoft Office software or basic word processing. One of the reasons why teachers reject social networking sites is the fear that the unfamiliar technology will cause an uncontrolled situation in the classroom. If the productive side of technology use is neglected in the general curriculum, how can educators help students to acquire the necessary skills to survive in our society? Even when students acquire isolated skills and tools, they may lack an understanding of how to use those various skills together to complete tasks and eventually solve real life problems.

Moving from teaching isolated technological skills to an integrated approach to social networking takes a great deal of planning and effort. This is the biggest hurdle preventing us from using new technology, because social networking sites are largely user-friendly and easy to operate. Educators can easily be proficient with some effort. Roach and Beck (2012) comment that social networks offer educators a powerful tool for developing the new literacies.

They point out how the National Council of Teachers of English, NCTE (2008) suggests that 21st century readers and writers must develop proficiency with technology; solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally; manage multiple streams of information; design and share information for global communities; and attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments (p. 253).

Social Networking Integrated into a Classroom Setting

Ms. Li is a high school history teacher. At the beginning of one semester, she created a Facebook history page for her class. She found Facebook highly useful in the following: (1) planning the class; (2) increasing student involvement; (3) implementing differentiated instruction; (4) communicating with parents; and (5) improving language development.

As a new teacher who did not have previous lessons and little experience to build upon, Li used networking to make her lesson planning more effective and efficient. First, it provided access to resources for both Li and her students. Before each class, she would publish resources on the class history page that she created for her students. The resources included electronic textbooks, historical documentary videos, historical pictures, and some links to relevant history websites.

Compared with traditional textbooks, the multimedia resources were found to be more interesting. Since students used Facebook on a daily basis, there were many chances for them to access the class history page. Second, networking assisted her in monitoring and recording student feedback and helped her make lesson plan changes. For example, before class, Li posted the objectives and background knowledge for students to make sure they were ready for new higher-level lessons.

If students found out they lacked the pre-knowledge for class, they could reply instantly. Then, she sent or posted extra resources for students or changed the class plan to a more appropriate level. Third, it saved time because it was easy to use the storage and retrieval capabilities to modify and reuse previous class plans. What was more exciting was that she did not need to save those previous documents and lesson plans herself. Facebook saved them automatically as long as she did not delete them on purpose. Therefore, there was no need to worry if her computer crashed.

Social networks increase student involvement. Effective teachers know the best way to teach is to involve as many students as possible. Facebook can help achieve this goal since some students feel more comfortable in sharing opinions online than in traditional classes. For each class, Li would prepare several questions for students to discuss. She would post early on the history page, so that students knew what they would discuss in class.

In order to encourage students’ responses, she graded the responses for credits. This not only encouraged the active involvement of each student, but also provided her with feedback about the whole class’s learning progress. In addition to information about individual student’s answers, Facebook also provided opportunities for group discussion. Li found that students were more motivated and attentive, and the feedback from all students provided invaluable information about their progress.

Facebook can help with differentiating instruction by providing alternate instructional resources. Li posted different kinds of resources for her students to choose from so they could choose their favorite learning resources. For struggling students, Li provided more primary level resources to help them to better understand the class content. It was also valuable in providing practice and reinforcement for students who needed extra help.

For example, by viewing students’ responses online, Li could identify students who were still struggling with content. She could then help those individual students with different assignments and other adjustments. Also, learning was social and more capable students assisted less capable students, particularly in language development. Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” could be advanced through the use of technology (De Costa, Clifton, & Roen, 2010). Students as online mentors can even earn community service hours.

Social networks offer tools to communicate with parents beyond e-mail, as parents are able to view class content and even class discussion as long as they are “friends” of the page. It not only encourages parental involvement in the process, but also makes home-school links more effective. Students and parents are now able to monitor missing assignments and current grades, which increases the opportunities for success.

In conclusion, social networks are a valuable 21st century literacy tool to use for educational purposes. Not only because they help promote authentic communication, practical social language development, and constructivist learning, but because they shift power to our students. Because of social networking sites, students’ voices have been heard, and their opinions have been valued.

Skeptics may dismiss Facebook and social networks as frivolous, and some educators may fear lecturing less and students learning more by themselves. We believe, as our learned society’s advocate, that educators should prepare our students for responsible digital citizenship and consider carefully the opportunities and challenges of emerging technologies, and the new literacies. Research into the impact of social networks for learning and how to integrate Facebook thoughtfully into the language curriculum are needed.

References

Ajjan, H., & Hartshorne, R. (2008). “Investigating faculty decisions to adopt Web 2.0 technologies: Theory and empirical tests.” The Internet and Higher Education, 11(2), 71-80.

Bartlett-Bragg, A. (2006). “Reflections on pedagogy: reframing practice to foster informal learning with social software.”
Retrieved on April 14, 2012 from http://www.dream.sdu.dk/uploads/files/Anne%20Bartlett-Bragg.pdf.

Blattner, G., & Fiori, M. (2009). “Facebook in the language classroom: Promises and Possibilities.” International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 6 (1). Retrieved on April 14, 2012 from http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_09/article02.htm.

Boyd, M. D., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). “Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.

Davis, F. D. (1989). “Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology.” MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319-339.

DeCosta, M, Clifton, J., & Roen, D. (2010). “Collaboration and social interaction in English Classroom.” English Journal, 99 (5) 14-21.

Lockyer, L., & Patterson, J. (2008). “Integrating social networking technologies in education: A case study of a formal learning environment.” In Proceedings of 8th IEEE International conference on advanced learning technologies (pp. 529-533). Spain: Santander.

Meng Y. (2012). “An Empirical Study of the Factors Affecting SNS-based Network Learning Community Interaction.” Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Shaaxi Normal University, Xi’an, China.

Roach, A. K., & Beck, J. J. (2012). “Before coffee, Facebook: New literacy learning for 21st Century teachers.” Language Arts, 89 (4), 244-255.

Yue Meng is a graduate student majoring in Educational Technology at the University of North Florida for in an exchange program with Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, and China. She can be reached at mengyuemm@163.com.

Dr. Nile Stanley is a visiting scholar, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China through exchange with the University of North Florida. He can be reached at nstanley@unf.edu.

Moving to Shift Pedagogic Mountains

Reyes Quezada and Cristina Alfaro stress the importance of developing culturally and linguistically proficient biliteracy teachers for the new generation of ELLs

In order to effectively roll out the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to teach the new generation of English Language Learners (ELLs), now more than ever, it is critical for current and future teachers to have a deep understanding of language learning research-based theory and practice.

In order to remain relevant, teachers need to be well prepared to address the linguistic and cultural diversity in their classrooms. Therefore, preparing culturally and linguistically proficient teachers is urgent.

As previous ELLs ourselves and now as biliteracy professors in teacher education we know, first hand, of the many challenges that are encountered by ELLs when learning a new language and the academic content at the same time.

Educators should recognize that ELLs are doing “double the work” of their English-fluent peers because they must learn English while learning academic content (Short & Fitzsimmons, 2007). For this reason, the foci of this article center on the pedagogical and ideological shift necessary to create access for ELLs to the CCCS.

New Generation of English Language Learners

Teachers need to be prepared to address the linguistic and cultural diversity in their classrooms — we cannot afford to repeat the inadequate instruction that has created Long Term English Learners. Although the majority of ELLs are born in the U.S., there is a growing number of ELLs labeled as “Long Term English Language Learners,” or students who have had the official Limited English Proficient designation for seven years or more (Olsen, 2010).

“Given the current demographic shifts in the U.S. population, it is likely that all teachers at some point in their careers will encounter students who do not yet have sufficient proficiency in English to fully access academic content in traditional classrooms. Many teachers do not have preparation to provide high-quality instruction to this population of students” (Ballantyne, K.G., Sanderman, A.R., Levy, J., 2008).

Recent studies indicate that low academic achievement among ELLs is a structural problem that must be addressed along the entire educational pipeline (Olsen, 2010).

A deliberate and strategic effort on the part of educators, specifically teachers and administrators, is necessary for improving ELLs access to the CCSS in all content areas through literacy and biliteracy development.

The new generation of ELLs enter our schools with different educational needs as well as with assets and “funds of knowledge” brought forth by the students and their families (Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N., 2005). ELLs are a heterogeneous group of students with varying degrees of primary language, English language, and academic language proficiencies.

Limited degrees of English language development (ELD) and academic language development (ALD) restrict English learners’ access to grade-level academic content areas. ELLs are a diverse group — variables that account for their diversity include: Place of Birth; Developmental Differences; Language Exposure (primary and second language); Parental Education; Community Attitudes; Socio-Economic Status; Time in the United States; and Experience in Formal Schooling (Bailey, Heritage & Butler, in press).

These are the new generation of English Learners in our American schools who need to gain access to the CCSS in order to be college- and career-ready. Imagine this scenario: “you are a teacher, counselor, or administrator; you are mindful of the students in your school whose proficiency in English is not what you want for them.

Take a moment and focus on one or two such students. The students you selected may be immigrants, they may be second-generation or third-generation residents, or they may speak a form of English considered nonstandard in some circles” (Quezada, Lindsey and Lindsey, 2012 p. 5).

What do you do with these students? How do you meet their educational, language, and cultural needs? How do you address the major shifts and the increased rigor in the CCSS for this growing population of students?

Common Core State Standards

The CCSS are deeper, wider, higher, clearer, and fewer than the previous standards. They represent an astronomical reform for K-12 education in the U.S. We are concerned with the most critical part of the CCSS; the aspect that has not yet been addressed — the implementation for ELLs.

We see this as a momentous opportunity to shift the paradigm of a largely underserved student population — Long Term English Learners constitute the most rapidly growing segment of students in schools across the nation.

Heated debates and concerns revolve around how to best implement and assess the CCSS as well as provide the needed professional development to effectively address the linguistic and cultural needs of ELLs. The educational needs of ELLs can no longer be considered a boutique proposition concentrated within a handful of states (Santos, M., Darling-Hammond, L., & Cheuk, T., 2012 p. 3).

The challenges for American teachers working with ELLs have become greater, now that the CCSS have been adopted by 46 states. The Standards provide guidelines as to what knowledge and skills are needed to succeed in English Language Arts and mathematics that will be needed as students graduate from high school and move on to college or a career. The guidelines provided fall short of providing a comprehensive support mechanism in order for ELLs to succeed. There are six major shifts in English Language Arts:

  1. Increased Reading of Information Text
  2. Text Complexity
  3. Academic Vocabulary
  4. Text Based Answers
  5. Increased Writing from Sources
  6. Literacy Instruction in all Content Areas Although these shifts are critical to the success of all students in general and ELLs in particular, we offer what we consider to be an equally important shift for educators at all levels
  7. The ideological shift.

Shift 7: The Ideological Shift


New Generation Teachers

Teachers with degrees, a multitude of professional development, and competencies have minimal academic impact when working with ELLs when beliefs about their students’ learning potential and low expectations are prevalent. The new generation of teachers must work hard to develop ideological clarity with respect to their personal and professional beliefs and core values, particularly when it comes to working with ELLs and poor children (Alfaro, 2008).

Teachers need to embrace ELLs from a constructivist perspective that view ELLs funds of knowledge — the assets and resources they bring from their individual contexts as strengths upon which to build. This ideological shift in the context of rolling out the CCSS for ELLs must be inclusive of the following five areas:

Developing Culturally and Linguistically Proficient Teachers

Shift from being a traditional teacher to a “culturally proficient biliteracy teacher” whose belief system will hold students’ cultural backgrounds of language, race, gender, and socioeconomic status as assets on which we are to construct their educational experiences” (Quezada, Lindsey and Lindsey, 2012 p. 6). It is well documented that students should be able to use their first language and incorporate their cultural aspects in class to help aid comprehension (Verplaetse & Migliacci, 2008; Crawford & Krashen, 2007), particularly in English Language Arts.

Teachers as Researchers

Shift their role from the technician who follows a one-size-fits-all curriculum to a researcher of students’ cultural and linguistic background as well as the content standards. Teachers shift from consumers of prepackaged material to producers of culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum that prepares college- and career-ready students. In this manner, teacher and student engage at a deeper, wider, greater, and higher level.

Teachers as Facilitators

Shift their role from depositors of knowledge to facilitators of knowledge as it relates to ELLs’ work in learning the language and content simultaneously. Teachers facilitate the necessary language demands, progressions, scaffolds, and supports necessary to provide access to the curriculum.

Teachers as Students/Students as Teachers

Shift to creating interactive relationships between student and teacher. Teacher creates a classroom environment in which the learning is reciprocal. A teacher/learner continually improves practice by learning from students’ success and challenges — this is a daily mindset. Conversely, students understand that as they learn they also teach their peers and their teacher. In this manner, teaching and learning becomes an authentic dialogical process.

Teachers as Collaborators

Shift from working in grade level silos to vertical and horizontal collaboration. The major change here is that teachers cannot afford to ignore what goes on in grades above and below their assignment. Similarly, content area teachers must go beyond their comfort knowledge zone to strategically integrate literacy, math, science, and social studies.

In summary, a whole child-centered approach is needed when serving ELLs as the CCSS do not meet the spirit of the policy in this aspect. This whole child-centered approach will endure policies, practices, and relationships to ensure each child, in each school, in each community, is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged (Carter, 2010).

Although the CCSS are deeper, wider, clearer, and fewer it does not mean that they address the needs of a new generation of English Language Learners. National education reform movements do not necessarily improve schools — the teachers who teach at them do.

By creating culturally and linguistically proficient teachers who shift their role as teacher researchers, who act as teachers and students and use students as teachers and learn to be teacher collaborators, we can then ensure that each English Language Learner, challenged for long-term success in college, career, and civic life (Carter, 2011).

References

Alfaro, C. (2008). “Teacher Education Exam­ining Beliefs, Orientations, Ideologies & Prac­tices.” In Bartolome, L. (Ed), Ideologies in Education: Unmasking the Trap of Teacher Nuetrality. Vol. 319, Peter Lang Publishing Group.

Bailey, A. L., Heritage, M., & Butler, F. A. (in press). “Assessing young language learners: Developmental considerations and curricular contexts.” In A. Kunnan (Ed.), Companion to Language Assessment. New York: Wiley-Blackwell Press.

Ballantyne, K. G., Sanderman, A.R., Levy, J. (2008). “Educating English language learners: Building teacher capacity.” Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition. From http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/practice/mainstream_teachers.htm.

Carter, R., G. (July, 2010). “Maximizing the impact of the common core: Is it good for kids.” Retrieved July 20, 2012 from http://www.ascd.org/news_media/Is_It_Good_for_the_Kids_Editorials/Is_It_Good_for_the_Kids_-_May_2011.aspx.

Carter, R., G. (May , 2011). “Common core at a crossroads.” Retrieved July 20, 2012 from http://www.ascd.org/news_media/Is_It_Good_for_the_Kids_Editorials/Is_It_Good_for_the_Kids_-_May_2011.aspx.

Crawford, J. & Krashen, S. (2007). English learners in American classrooms: 101
questions, 101 answers. New York: Scholastic.

Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (2005). “Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms.” In N. González (Ed.) Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Olsen, L. (2010). Reparable Harm: Fulfilling the unkept promise of educational opportunity for California’s Long Term English Learners. Long Beach, CA: Californians Together.

Quezada, L., R., Lindsey, R. & Lindsey, D. (2012). Culturally Proficient Practices: Educators Supporting English Learning Students. Corwin Press. Thousand Oaks, CA.

Santos, M., Darling-Hammond, L., & Cheuk, T. (2012). Teacher Development to Support
English Language Learners in the Context of Common Core State Standards. Stanford University Understanding Language. Available at http://ell.stanford.edu/papers.

Short, D.J., & Fitzsimmons, S. (2007). Double the Work: Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescent English Language Learners: A Report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Verplaetse, L.S. & Migliacci, N. (2008). “Making mainstream content comprehensible
through sheltered instruction.” in L.S. Verplaetse & N. Migliacci (Eds.) Inclusive pedagogy for English language learners. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Reyes L. Quezada (rquezada@sandiego.edu) is a professor in the Department of Learning and Teaching at the University of San Diego’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences in California.

Cristina Alfaro (calfaro@mail.sdsu.edu) is director of College and Community Engagement for Multilingual Initiatives and associate professor in the College of Education at San Diego State University.

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