In response to the growing national attention around dyslexia in both the government and the media, the Literacy Research Association (LRA) has released a report entitled, “An Examination of Dyslexia Research and Instruction.” The report, authored by University of Albany professors Peter Johnston and Donna Scanlon, outlines the current state of dyslexia-related research with a view to helping policymakers and other stakeholders make better informed decisions.
Typically, the word “dyslexic” is used to describe a child who experiences substantial difficulty in achieving literacy. Some researchers have hypothesized that the root cause for such difficulty is neurological in nature and have prescribed intensive phonics instruction as the remedy.
Other experts argue that this rationale does not accurately reflect the full body of dyslexia research and believe that educating policymakers is the appropriate course of action. The LRA published their report as a means to that end.
The report concludes, among other things, that there is no uniform, diagnostically useful definition of dyslexia and that arguments in favor of intensive phonics instruction as a remedy are without merit. It closes with guidance for policymakers and other stakeholders.
“As the premiere literacy research organization, it is LRA’s responsibility to share unbiased research reviews with educational decision-makers, including policy-makers, educators, parents and advocacy groups to help them make informed decisions,” observed LRA President Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon, professor of literacy at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
Extensive research during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown its effect on the way we talk and engage with our language, like the introduction of new words like “quaranteam” or the increased frequency of other vocabulary items like words for “hand sanitizer” and “quarantine.” Now, researchers are looking into the effects of the pandemic on not just adults’ language, but on children who are just beginning to learn their first language.
An international team of more than 50 language acquisition researchers has recently released a comprehensive study on the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on early language acquisition and how lockdown measures affected infants and toddlers’ vocabulary development.
“The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments,” the paper reads. “This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development.”
The study focuses on the linguistic competence and behaviors of more than 1,700 monolingual children aged eight to 36 months. Throughout the first COVID-19 lockdowns in 13 different countries, the researchers collected information about the children’s linguistic development, with a particular focus on the children’s vocabulary.
The researchers found that there was a significant improvement in vocabulary growth during the pandemic, compared to pre-pandemic norms. Because daycare centers and preschools had to close down during the lockdowns, the researchers also expected that certain socioeconomic factors, such as education levels of the parents would lead to major gains in vocabulary acquisition.
However, upon examining the children’s linguistic growth from the beginning of the lockdown period to the end of the lockdown period, the researchers found that parental education had less of an effect than predicted—rather, how the parents interacted with their children was the main factor in vocabulary acquisition. The researchers found that children whose parents read to them often and limited their screen time were more likely to have significant improvements throughout the lockdown than those whose parents did not. “This large-scale multinational study offers a unique window into associations between features of the home environment and children’s longitudinal vocabulary development during the first COVID-19 lockdown,” the paper reads. “Taken together, the results suggest that who you are (your education, your child’s age or sex) does not predict vocabulary development as much as what you did with your child during lockdown.”
The unfortunate global pandemic has sidelined many a museum. However, One museum that has arguably even flourished because of it is the National Museum of Language (NML).
In 2008, the museum opened to the public in College Park, Maryland, amidst much fanfare as it was a unique experiment regarding languages.
Everyone is familiar with museums where you see (and sometimes touch) physical objects like airplanes or bleached bones. But language, one might think, is mainly sounds and words and books. Since libraries exist for that type of thing, what would a language museum do? NML from day one adopted three themes that have governed its presentations, exhibits and programs ever since: (1) Universal Aspects of Language; (2) Language in Society, and (3) Languages of the World. Said simpler, “if it is language related, NML is interested.” When it opened, there really was no other museum of its kind anywhere—and certainly not in the U.S.
NML actually originated from a 1971 public language exhibit sponsored, interestingly, by the National Security Agency (NSA). Dr. Amelia C. Murdoch, who had helped organize the event for NSA, wanted to create a public language museum in her retirement. When NML was officially created in 1997, she finally realized her dream although a brick-and-mortar museum for visitors would have to wait until 2008.
From 2008-2013, the museum offered exhibits that truly demonstrated both potential and variety. Its longest running exhibit, “Writing Language: Passing It On,” compared alphabetic writing systems (e.g., Greek) and pictographic writing systems (e.g., Japanese). Another exhibit, “Emerging American Language in 1812,” commemorated the 200th Anniversary of the War of 1812 by looking at the English language of the time. This exhibit included a colorful exhibit on Noah Webster, the father of American English. Its third exhibit, “Glimpses of French in the Americas,” introduced the exceptionally diverse universe of French dialects and creoles in the Western Hemisphere.
NML had some interesting display items, like a language tree, which allowed visitors to trace their language roots. The world’s only International Flag of Language (created by the Museum to represent languages past, present, and future) hung there. There were also plenty of activities. You could take an 1812 spelling test or review rare foreign language sacred texts. Children, frequent visitors to the museum, could practice writing characters in Chinese, guess the origins of Native American words, translate their names into other languages, or play an online language game.
The strategic decision was made in 2013 to close down the brick-and-mortar facility and go virtual, making it among the first ever totally virtual museums. Its first exhibit under the new format provided an interactive way for visitors to learn about how young linguistic field researchers travelled around the U.S. in the mid-1960s collecting words and audio recordings for the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). For this endeavor, NML partnered with the DARE project coordinators from the University of Wisconsin. A simulation game places you in the role of a field worker and lets you try to overcome the kinds of challenges they faced in collecting data on American English variation.
Since NML was now virtual, much attention was given to creating a quality website. Over time, the site developed three regular features: (1) interviews with leading linguists all over the world; (2) “language of the month” and (3) “teachers’ corner,” i.e., tips for language instructors. One truly unique feature is Philogelos. Typically translated as “the joker” or “the one who loves laughter”, Philogelos is an ancient Greek collection of approximately 265 jokes. Dating to the 4th or 5th century CE, it is arguably the world’s oldest surviving collection of jokes.
The museum responded to the challenge of COVID-19 by expanding partnerships and activities. The best manifestation of this has been the Multilingual Digital Storytelling exhibit, launched in cooperation with the Gaithersburg, MD, Book Festival. This exhibit showcases children’s stories in a growing list of languages (14 so far). NML has continued to hold the Amelia Murdoch Annual Speaker Series but has now made it entirely virtual, attracting speakers and numbers that would not have been possible before. Another new virtual initiative, spurred by COVID-19, includes periodical language trivia nights. These now focus on specific languages, e.g., Chinese. NML is also finetuning its first self-guided virtual tour.
As part of its Moveable Museum strategy, NML lends out display items (e.g., its International Flag of Language) to other museums. Although temporarily suspended for COVID reasons, NML has even expanded its language camps by developing an add-on world language component to local recreation programs. Finally, NML is aggressively pursuing language liaisons to establish links with educators. Established language professionals, representing nine states so far, have volunteered their precious time to this important endeavor.
The ultimate goal remains to return to a brick-and-mortar facility. As it pursues that dream—and “inspires an appreciation for the magic and beauty of language”—NML welcomes the ideas and participation of everybody to whom language is important, including you. To learn more, visit www.languagemuseum.org.
Gregory J. Nedved has been involved with the National Museum of Language since it first opened to the public in 2008 and has been its president since 2019. For many years, he was a Chinese-Mandarin linguist for both the U.S. military and government. Currently, he is a Department of Defense historian focusing on Asian and language history.
Children from 3 to 5 years of age have lost important learning opportunities due to the pandemic, according to a nationwide survey by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education.
Preschool enrollment rates were down nearly a quarter across the nation, with in-person education down even more. Lost opportunities extended beyond the classroom as there was also a sharp decline in parent at-home support for learning through book reading and other learning activities. Parents also reported unusually high rates of mental health problems for their young children relating to social and emotional development.
“The pandemic has dealt a one-two punch to the nation’s young children, decreasing opportunities to learn in preschool programs while sapping parents’ capacity to support learning at home,” said W. Steven Barnett, NIEER’s senior co-director and founder and an author of the survey report.
Most children who attended preschool did so in-person, but young children in poverty did not, the survey shows. Young children in poverty had less than a third the access to in-person education obtained by their higher income peers. Yet, young children learn best from hands-on activities and face-to-face interactions, and most parents found the demands of supporting remote preschool overwhelming.
The survey revealed seven impacts from the pandemic on preschoolers’ learning and their parents:
Participation in center-based preschool programs remained substantially below pre-pandemic levels and much of what did occur was not in-person.
Support for young children with disabilities appears to have suffered.
Many more young children had high levels of social and emotional difficulties than expected.
Preschool programs continue to struggle with assuring all young children eligible for either free or reduced price meals get them.
Parents had considerable difficulty with their children’s preschool programs—particularly if their children were attending remotely.
Among the hardships parents reported from the pandemic, the most common was getting less work done due to child care and education issues.
Fewer parents reported reading to their children and teaching their children pre-academic skills.
Seven Impacts of the Pandemic on Young Children and their Parents: Initial Findings from NIEER’s December 2020 Preschool Learning Activities Survey is available here.
Survey results were collected from a nationally representative sample of one thousand and one parents of children age three to five. The online survey was conducted in December 2020. Funding for survey development and administration was provided by the PNC Foundation and the Foundation for Child Development.
This is NIEER’s second survey on the pandemic’s impact on preschool education in America. The first survey was conducted between May 2020 and June 2020 and is available at nieer.org.
The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, conducts independent research to inform early childhood education policy.
Cambridge University Press (CUP) has announced six regional winners in the 2021 Dedicated Teacher Awards, an international competition honoring outstanding educators.
This year, there were a record-breaking 13,000 nominations from 112 countries–more than double the amount of nominations last year.
This year’s winners are:
Peggy Pesik – Sekolah Buin Batu International School (Indonesia) Nonhlanhla Masina – African School for Excellence, (South Africa) Raminder Kaur Mac – Choithram School (India) Anna Murray – British Council France (France) Annamma Lucy – Our Own English High School Sharjah-Boys’ Branch (UAE) Melissa Crosby – Frankfurt High School (USA)
Criteria used to select winners include:
Demonstrated innovative practices
Provided fantastic pastoral care
Prepared students for their futures beyond school
Winners of the 2021 Dedicated Teachers Award received an array of prizes including class sets of books and digital resources.
Nominations are now open for the overall Dedicated Teacher Award. Submissions are due by May 7, 2021. To cast your vote, visit dedicatedteacher.cambridge.org/vote/.
The federal economic stimulus package passed last month achieves something progressives have dreamed of for decades: monthly assistance for families in poverty with no application process, work requirements, nor restrictions on how the money is spent. This should result in an enormous improvement in educational outcomes for our most disadvantaged children as long as it reaches those most in need and is made permanent.
The link between child poverty and educational success is undeniable. In the U.S., about 30% of children raised in poverty do not finish high school. The correlation between poverty and low literacy levels is even more disturbing—82% of students eligible for free or reduced lunches are not reading at or above proficient levels by fourth grade. Multilingual learners make up a disproportionately high percentage of these students. Poverty can negatively affect a child’s cognitive development and their academic performance. Children living in poverty start off with a disadvantage, having a 50% weaker vocabulary than their wealthier peers.
The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University has calculated that the child credit assistance will lift about half of the 11 million children living in poverty out of it. More than one in five Hispanic and Black children in the U.S. currently live in poverty, and projections show that over 3 million of them will be lifted out of poverty with the assistance.
In California, where there are the highest percentages of multilingual learners, over 60% of households with children will be eligible. And the federal child tax credit is available for all citizen children regardless of their parents’ immigration status—including the one-in-eight school-age children in California estimated to have at least one undocumented parent. Previously, families with no income did not qualify, and the lowest-income families qualified for less.
Even with the new provisions, some of the recipients most in need, like the undocumented and the homeless, are likely to slip through the safety net, so educators and community leaders may have to help them access assistance where they can.
Systemic inequitable policies practiced over centuries have created disproportionate rates of poverty, particularly among Black and Hispanic children. While education has always been touted as the route out of poverty, experience has shown that it’s darned difficult for children to learn when they lack food and shelter security.
The stimulus package faced unanimous opposition among Republicans, who may be heading for a majority in Congress when the child assistance benefits come to an end, so we only have a short window in which to garner bipartisan support for this historic program that can finally end the American shame of childhood poverty levels almost double those of other comparable nations and enable our public education system to fulfill its mission.
“Literacy has two beginnings: one, in the world, the other, in each person who learns to read and write.”—Margaret Meek This quote has continued to rewind and repeat in my mind as a more than 50-year research “war” re-emerges to declare to the educational world that science has definitely and universally revealed how all children learn to read. Yes, all children… But what the science of reading hasn’t revealed is that the studies only represented “typical classroom teachers” and “typical American or English-speaking students” (National Reading Panel U.S. and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). Leaving out the details of where this research world begins, and ends, is a matter of equity and access to accurate knowledge, resources, and educational approaches that have been confirmed in their truth around the world.
It is an omission that withholds undeniable science about how dual language students learn to read in two languages and how best to teach them. More tangibly, the exclusion of key information in the science-of reading-narrative has condemned many dual language educators to an impossible ultimatum—either conform to this approach or be labeled as defiant to research-based practices. And therein lies the problem. Emergent bilinguals and dual language students learn how to read differently than monolingual, English-speaking students, and there’s decades of research to prove it. So, what has research revealed about the science of reading for dual language programs that’s been excluded from the reading wars?
The Reading Wars
Let’s start with a quick version of what the reading wars, or the sciences of reading, are. While there are many different scientific models for how children learn to read, there are only two views that have claimed center stage in the debate. There is the simple view of reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986; Hoover and Gough, 1990), which says that reading comprehension is the result of decoding and linguistic comprehension, or D x C = R. Then there is whole language or the three cuing view of reading (Goodman, 1967), which says that reading in English is as natural a human process as learning to speak—a process that should emphasize making meaning and expressing meaning in reading and writing. These two views were positioned as each other’s rivals, and the monolingual world was forced to choose—explicit phonics or whole language. Meanwhile, in the world of second-language acquisition and dual language (particularly in the vast majority of programs that leverage Spanish and English as partner languages), this war seemed founded on a common understanding of reading, language, learning, and teaching that was fundamentally flawed (Pennycook, 2001). Dual language programs draw from an immense body of research and system of beliefs that assume the benefit and utility of each language (DeMatthews et al., 2017) and that cannot be separated from literacy in that language, texts that reflect the cultures that speak that language, distinct pedagogies, and instructional practices that stem from an understanding of the way in which that language works.
In short, the war appeared to use language in a way that manipulated and undermined the validity of a third view of reading that has also been systematically built. It is a view of learning to read in two languages that requires meaning making and reading words, efficiency of practice, and focus on purpose, all while systematically leveraging the most useful aspects of each language. In the world of dual language, an equally substantial body of research has found that neither decoding ability nor the ability to use the three cues can exist without the other if children are to receive instruction that provides any benefit in reading in two languages while becoming proficient in both. While the evidence abounds, looking at the phonics debate alone provides more than enough.
The Science of Decoding in Dual Language
Let’s take, as an example, the part of the formula for the simple view of reading that is decoding, which includes phonics and phonemic awareness.
The way we define decoding is the same in Spanish and English. Phonics is the ability to recognize and accurately match graphemes, or letters, to the phonemes, or the sounds, they make. Phonemic awareness, on the other hand, is the ability to focus on and manipulate the phonemes of a word. If students know what to do with each part of a word, they can read the whole word. As all students build confidence and competence in decoding, they begin something called orthographic mapping, which is basically the brain’s muscle memory for identifying similar parts in new words. Once children understand a phonemic pattern (like the -ght in light), they use it like a map or a fingerprint to read other words with the same pattern. That pattern then gets used to read more words automatically (Kilpatrick, 2015).
But here is where the monolingual and dual language worlds diverge. English is highly irregular, which means there are many more parts to identify and manipulate. Spanish is not. In the most widely cited meta-analysis to date, the importance of the English language’s orthographic structure is brought into question: “if children were taught only the 44 letter–sound correspondences, they would be able to read any word they encountered, and there would be no reading problems (Aukerman, 1981; Popp, 1975)” (National Reading Panel U.S. and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000).
Why is this point critical? Well, it helps educators understand that each word part children have to decode is governed by orthography, or the structure of a language itself. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. However, as noted in the report, there are 44 possible phonemes (25 consonant correspondences and 19 possible vowel correspondences). This is because English is considered a language that is highly irregular, deep (or inconsistent), and full of pronunciation deviations. Just because students hear a sound doesn’t mean that they can always predict the letter or letter combination that produced that sound, which is why explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness is needed.
This instruction then must include strategies that are designed to help students learn how to manipulate, delete, blend, etc. However, this is not the case for all languages. In the case of Spanish, which is taught in the greatest number of dual language programs in the country, there is a much different orthography. There are 27 letters but only 22–24 phonemes. This is because Spanish is considered a very consistent, shallow, and ideally phonemic language, where the spelling of a word is the most transparent indicator of how to pronounce the word. What you see is what you almost always get, and if you can see it, you can say it, and then you can read it. The fact that Spanish is one of the most transparent languages in the world is the anti-reason for an equivalent length and intensity of explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness. And here is where orthographic mapping re-emerges and gets really interesting. For dual language and emergent bilingual children, there isn’t an actual linguistic or cognitive wall between their two languages. The two literacy and language systems dynamically flow through a corriente of linguistic resources and codes (Garcia et al., 2017). Research has shown that bilingual/biliterate students are able to use the same orthographic mapping process but with their full linguistic resources and codes within and across languages (Van Hell and Dijkstra, 2002; Dijksra et al., 1998). Program models might separate the languages of instruction, but linguistic resources and codes will continue to seek connections.
What’s most interesting for Spanish–English dual language children is how few linguistic resources from the corriente are needed for decoding in Spanish, and so all those resources are redirected to play a larger role for processing words in English (Harm and Seidenberg, 2004). And this is where dual language education is uniquely situated to disrupt the reading wars. What’s collectively known about learning to read while learning a language across the hundreds of languages that define and unite people is that semantic and syntactic information, better known as MSV, and decoding of words are interrelated and codependent processes. Dual language students deserve access to all research that will accelerate how they break the code, understand the code, and deposit the code into the corriente for continued use in both languages. That means that biliteracy will require linguistic comprehension and explicit phonics instruction in English for skills that are untransferable and more ambiguous (Gottlob et al., 1999).
Science-Based Recommendations
Any pedagogical recommendation should include investigating, discovering, confirming, and sharing out any and all methods, strategies, or “approaches that have been found, through research, to give kids a learning advantage in reading” (Shanahan, T., 2018). This requires shared responsibility between dual language and literacy departments to scrutinize research’s limitations (Kubotra, 2004), collective inquiry into and understanding of the science behind program models, and implementation of language-specific reading processes that may be different but no less valid. Through this collective inquiry, programs can focus resources and energies to create:
A coherent definition of biliteracy (not literacy) that balances analytical and synthetic methods and aligns to the three goals;
Shared responsibility and knowledge of research-confirmed methods, strategies, and approaches that are accurately matched to each program language;
Authentic and systematic processes for assessing, monitoring, and supporting a language-specific sequence of skills;
Collaboration and focus on actionable steps informed by valid assessments;
Texts, tools, and talk that are authentic, identity affirming, motivating to students, and allow the application of reading skills when it matters most—in the act of reading.
In short, it goes back to what Margaret Meek says. Developing biliteracy really does have two beginnings, one designed for the typical classroom and another designed to be so much more—designed to give dual language learners access to the promise of dual language education itself. So, there can be no reading war for dual language educators. The only way to attain biliteracy and bilingualism is to leave the typical formula for reading as decoding and linguistic comprehension, or D x C = R, for the formula for developing biliteracy as oracy + decoding + linguistic comprehension + transfer, or O x C x D x T = R2.
Alexandra Guilamo is a dual language expert, author, keynote speaker, and chief equity and achievement officer at TaJu Educational Solutions, a company dedicated to professional development, coaching, and technical support for dual language and bilingual programs. Visit www.tajulearning.com or follow Alexandra @TajuLearning on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
From the canon to hiring practices to the classroom, we would be speaking about an entirely different field of English language teaching (ELT) if Whiteness were no longer centered, and although we are years of hard work away from this possibility, any calls for radical change are well served by pointing toward a possible future, and as such it is valuable to entertain the idea. As a rare Black voice in the field, I (Gerald) have spent much of this year speaking on the goal of decentering Whiteness in ELT, basing my presentations on an article I had published last spring (Gerald, 2020). Though it was conceptualized months earlier, its release just after the beginning of the ongoing racial justice uprising was such that it sparked a necessary and long overdue conversation in our field. As we are now approaching the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, it is fitting that I offer a continuation to an article that gained prominence in the language education space because of a long-overdue reckoning with racial injustice in the field spurred by last spring and summer’s uprising.
The article discusses how, much like in broader educational structures, Whiteness is centered in the teaching of the English language, and the ELT field serves as an arm of racist and capitalist oppression while claiming it as a force for positive change, with detrimental implications for students and educators of color. It suggests that language teaching—of all settler colonial languages, but of English in particular—needs to come to terms with the impact of its centering of Whiteness while taking substantive steps away from the status quo. This includes bringing an examination of racism and Whiteness into language teacher training programs, rejecting the White-centric canon, and, especially, encouraging all White language teachers to examine their own Whiteness and how it affects their teaching.
As discussions have developed across the field throughout the summer and fall, many have asked what ELT might actually look like if the article’s argument were to succeed, i.e., what would ELT look like after Whiteness had been decentered? I did not, however, want to merely share my own opinion of how this future might look, and I consulted with two trusted colleagues—Scott Stillar and Dr. Vijay A. Ramjattan—with whom I had spoken on the topic at length. My own focus is specifically on Whiteness in language teaching, whereas Stillar researches the intersections of language ideologies and Whiteness within post-secondary language-learning spaces, and Ramjattan pursues research concerning the aesthetic dimensions of race and Whiteness in (language-teaching) labor. The following is our collaboration in envisioning a post-Whiteness ELT, which we hope to live to see. We have broken our re-conceptualization into three articles on three related topics, which are as follows: Classrooms Training and labor The industry
This article represents the first of a three-part series, with subsequent work to be published later this year.
A brief terminology note: Whiteness and White supremacy are used somewhat interchangeably in this essay, because the concept of Whiteness “is a colonially constituted construct, and thus implicitly indexes White supremacy” (Hesse, 2016, p. 2).
Re-Envisioning Classrooms
As a point of entry, we can begin by re-envisioning the classroom and our ways of teaching the language. In doing so, it is crucial that we first dismiss linguistic prescriptivism (i.e., the idea that grammar and language should be corrected and regulated) in lieu of a more robust perspective that privileges the cataloguing and acceptance of language sans power-dominant judgements of the linguistic forms from which language acts derive (i.e., descriptivism). By this point, many of us in the language field would agree that prescriptivism is harmful and tied very distinctly to Whiteness and capitalism in education, a remnant of what some have called linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992). Suggestions are often made that we should focus merely on descriptivism, as it is less harmful, but this fight is now decades old. We think that we need to go a step further and actually propose what can be described as counterprescriptivism.
In a post-Whiteness version of ELT, racialized students should be empowered and encouraged to challenge their White teachers if and when they are told the way they are using the language is incorrect. Meaning-making is ultimately a negotiation of power, and if a student can convey the meaning they seek, they should be able to assert their intent in the face of possible correction. This would be a deeply post-structural way to approach language teaching, but part of dismantling Whiteness is dissolving artificial and coercive hierarchies, and sharing corrective power between both teachers and students is one valuable way to ensure Whiteness remains decentered. In the following sections, we provide select snapshots of what counterprescriptivism might look like.
Unstandardizing English
The language we use to refer to ourselves and our industry also has an impact on our racialized constituents. We do not, in fact, teach “Standard” English, but standardized English, an imagined form of English that has been constructed as the normative means of communication in order to further the ends of imposing White supremacy as the standard norm (Bonfiglio, 2002). A simple change would be to stop framing standardized English as the only desirable form of the language, and one way to cause this shift is to be direct about what we’re teaching. If we began to call ourselves “standardized English teachers,” we would then have the choice to consciously teach not just the language but also the features of its standardization and the decisions behind why certain types of languaging are valued more highly than others. We could also choose not to teach standardized English and instead teach the varieties surrounding a school’s location, comparing the equally valuable differences. For example, a school near where Gerald lives in New York could teach the New York versions of African-American English and Dominican English.
This would not inherently destroy standardized English but would relegate it to a decentered role within the larger ecosystem of the field while elevating other forms of the language. With these changes made, our vision of the post-Whiteness ELT classroom moves closer to a possible realization of empowerment, rather than the current submission to power-normative ways of being. In such a space, imposition of monolingual principles that enforce strict adherence to White-normative language forms are confronted and rejected in favor of students being encouraged to use the entirety of their translingual and cultural resources to aid in the learning process. In doing so, ideologies that tether Whiteness to a standardized form of the English language are recognized as nothing more than attempts to standardize Whiteness itself, and students are well served by being aware of these forms but not by being forced to measure themselves against their own oppressors.
Rethinking Intelligibility
If teachers do in fact decide to teach different varieties of English, this would then allow for relaxed expectations regarding how students should use the language. Taking the example of pronunciation, it is important to appreciate the bodily labor that students must perform to adhere to the sonic dimensions of Whiteness. While racialized students may have to train their lips, tongues, teeth, etc., to articulate unfamiliar phonemes found in standardized Englishes of the global north, they may also need to train their ears to distinguish these Englishes from “improper-sounding” ones found in their own communities and elsewhere (Sekimoto and Brown, 2016). However, if students learn the varieties of English of where they live, they will come to know that “deficient-sounding” features of pronunciation are actually common and thus do not need to be changed in order to ensure successful oral communication. Moreover, to avoid the temptation to emulate hegemonic types of speech accents, students need to focus on critical listening. By focusing on developing their listening, students would appreciate that certain racialized accents are not inherently unintelligible, but rather are made unintelligible by ears conditioned by ideologies of White supremacy.
Depending on one’s vantage point, classrooms could be classified as either the most or least impactful part of the type of systemic change our field needs—most in the sense that, no matter what happens in the broader industry, if our pedagogy remains the same, most students will hardly notice a difference; least in the sense that a pedagogy that decenters Whiteness is necessarily disempowered in a field that continues to perpetuate the same hierarchies, which is precisely what any language teacher pushing against current restraints might be feeling today. We do hope that more members of our field choose to join those who are working against the structures that have long remained in place, but in order to support anyone who makes that important choice, we need to substantively shift the power within the broader industry itself. Accordingly, in the next part of our series, set to debut later this summer, we will tackle training and labor and the ways in which an ELT field fully divested from Whiteness would better serve its workers. Stay tuned…
References
Bonfiglio, T. P. (2002). Race and the Rise of Standard American. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Gerald, J. P. B. (2020). “Worth the Risk: Towards decentring whiteness in English language teaching.” BC TEAL Journal, 5(1), 44–54. https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v5i1.345 Hesse, B. (2016). “Counter-Racial Formation Theory.” In Conceptual Aphasia in Black: Displacing Racial Formation, P. Khalil Saucier and Tryon P. Woods (eds.), vii–x. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford. Sekimoto, S., and Brown, C. (2016). “A Phenomenology of the Racialized Tongue: Embodiment, language, and the bodies that speak.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 5(2), 101–122. doi: 10.1525/dcqr.2016.5.2.101
J. P. B. Gerald is an education doctoral student at CUNY–Hunter College whose scholarship focuses on language teaching, racism, and Whiteness. You can find his public scholarship at jpbgerald.com and his excessive Twitter opinions @JPBGerald.
Scott Stillar is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation research investigates the ideological intersections of standardized American English and whiteness within English language education spaces.
Vijay A. Ramjattan received his PhD in Adult Education & Community Development from the University of Toronto. His research interests pertain to the intersections of language, race, and work(place learning). He often talks about these interests on Twitter: @Vijay_Ramjattan
The University of British Columbia (UBC) Okanagan is on track to become the first university in Canada to offer an undergraduate degree in Indigenous language fluency. The Bachelor of Nsyilxcn Language Fluency (BNLF) is the product of years of collaboration between UBC, the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, and the En’owkin Centre.
Nsyilxcn is a Salish language spoken by members of the Syilx Okanagan Nation in British Columbia’s southern interior.
“The idea that there’s only knowledge in English or French is absolutely not true,” says Dr. Jeannette Armstrong, associate professor of Indigenous studies at UBC Okanagan and academic lead on the BNLF. “Language is identity. Indigenous knowledge systems and an Indigenous paradigm—how we view the world and how we interact—are deeply rooted in language.”
The new degree program is part of the university’s larger response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action. Issued in 2015, the TRC’s Calls to Action were an attempt to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.” UBC Okanagan signed a declaration of its commitment to Indigenous students, culture, and scholarship in 2019.
“[The Nsyilxcn language fluency degree] exemplifies how a respectful and impactful partnership between First Nations, Indigenous institutes, and post-secondary institutions can advance language revitalization and help develop the next generation of fluent language teachers,” says Tyrone McNeil, president of the First Nations Education Steering Committee.
The BNLF program will welcome its first incoming class in September 2021.
The social isolation and countless hours of silent, independent assignments young linguistically diverse scholars have endured during the past year of online learning have left scores in dire need of lessons that affirm their identities while advancing their academic communication skills. In hopes of engaging acolytes in dual language or English language development coursework, empathetic educators often search for writing prompts that offer creative outlets for positive identity development and creative expression. Narrative assignments can certainly provide multilingual learners with unique opportunities to explore their cultural and linguistic heritages and apply language for a range of purposes. Narrative assignments focusing on multilingual experiences and cultural diversity also hold great potential within a classroom for establishing commonalities, respectfully acknowledging differences, and building community. However, well-intentioned educators frequently underestimate the complexities of crafting an effective personal narrative for learners composing in either their primary language or English as an additional language.
Unexpected Complexities of a Personal Narrative Assignment
Early in my career teaching adolescent English learners, I naively perceived a personal narrative assignment as an engaging and accessible formal writing task to launch the school term. I was under the misguided assumption that an opportunity to delve into a significant, culturally relevant experience in and of itself would activate voices and unleash writing talents. While the narrative prompt surely appeared less intimidating to my language development charges than a text-dependent informative essay, the lackluster prose they produced illustrated my profound instructional naivete.
Standards-aligned personal narrative assignments in upper-elementary and secondary coursework entail far more than the simple stories anticipated in primary grades. In fact, in many ways, a compelling personal narrative requires considerably more linguistic dexterity and organizational prowess than an opinion or informative text assignment—that is, when students are allowed in initial practice assignments to draw upon relevant background information and experiences rather than course reading material. To illustrate, a fail-safe introductory opinion paragraph prompt I have utilized with novice and long-term English learners alike is the following: Are animals capable of demonstrating any common human emotions? Construct an opinion paragraph, including a topic sentence that states your claim, appropriate transitions, a convincing reason, and a relevant example. Draw from your personal experience or background information. From an English language proficiency standpoint, taking a stance on whether a family pet or wild animal can experience a familiar human emotion such as joy or jealousy is less challenging than crafting a compelling narrative, real or imagined. Prior to assigning this prompt, I have built related schema with an accessible article from the Scholastic News magazine (Jan. 5, 2015, fifth grade) highlighting studies that document evidence of domesticated and wild animals displaying what researchers perceived as empathy, excitement, and jealousy.
After completing the text, I have engaged students in small-group and unified-class discussion of incidences they have witnessed or heard about and supported their verbal contributions with response frames and nouns naming emotions they could later leverage while independently drafting. For this initial opinion paragraph assignment, I have also provided students with a topic sentence frame to ease them into writing an effective claim, drawing key words from the prompt: Animals are quite capable of (demonstrating, experiencing)_ the common emotion _. Equipped with a manageable tool kit of appropriate transitions (e.g., for example, in addition, furthermore, for these reasons), a bank of precise topic words (e.g., fear, pride), and a paragraph exemplar to analyze as a class and emulate, even reticent second-language writers are able to construct a competent response.
Guiding English learners in drafting a related personal narrative has proved more linguistically challenging. To describe a memorable experience witnessing an animal displaying an emotion, a skillful writer consciously deploys a sophisticated range of word choices, cohesive devices, and sentence structures. A coherently organized narrative includes temporal words and phrases to signal event order like from then on and eventually that are more challenging for novice English learners than familiar transitions used in oral language and simple narratives like first, next, after, and then. Additionally, a compelling narrative is likely to incorporate carefully selected, vivid, and memorable dialogue to show characters’ reactions to situations. Even more linguistically daunting for English learners, teachers are apt to assess final work with a laser-like focus on strong word choices and artful phrasing that make the experience come to life. By far the most elusive aspect of composing an effective personal narrative for a novice English writer is the conclusion, which unlike that of a simple story should achieve two distinct goals:
1) logically concluding the sequence of events; and
2) reflecting as the narrator on what was actually learned, gained, or resolved.
Ineffective Instructional Responses to Disappointing Personal Narratives
Years of supporting English learners in grades 4–12 to successfully transition from the routine journal and simple story assignments of primary and newcomer coursework to grade-level, standards-aligned assignments like personal narratives have deepened my understanding of the conscientious planning and intentional instruction these students deserve. Simple teacher recommendations like “Try to capture your reader’s attention with vivid description in your final draft” ring hollow to a striving reader with profound English vocabulary voids.
A detailed single-score holistic rubric designed by and for teachers as a common assessment tool is also highly unlikely to illuminate this striving second-language reader and set him on a productive pathway to revision. Former ninth- and tenth-grade students, all long-term English learners, in a college readiness class for first-generation students memorably described for me the confusion and utter bewilderment they experienced receiving different holistic rubrics from core content-area teachers, all equally uninterpretable and seemingly written in yet another foreign language. Moreover, relying solely upon a classmate who also happens to be a long-term English learner to provide productive, actionable feedback for revision and editing seems at once naive, unfair, and indefensible.
Evidence-Based Directives in Developing English Learner Writing Proficiency
Current research on teaching academic content and writing to English learners in intermediate and secondary grades points to the need for explicit guidance and targeted language supports to help students move from information presented in a graphic organizer to writing sentences, and from writing sentences to composing paragraphs. Additionally, planned and interactive examination of exemplar texts must undergird units of study in informative, argumentative, and narrative writing. Schleppegrell (2017) advocates for such “genre-based” writing instruction for English learners at all levels of English proficiency to ensure they comprehend the organizational features and language forms characteristic of distinct academic writing types.
Another key finding is that formal writing assignments should be anchored in content, particularly informative and argument prompts, and that prewriting lessons should integrate intentional, interactive oral and written language instruction in priority vocabulary, sentence structures, and grammatical forms students can later leverage in formal assignments (What Works Clearinghouse, April 2014, NCEE 2014-4012).
Of equal importance, English learners benefit from an asset-based approach to curriculum and instruction, integrating well-designed materials that capitalize on students’ diversity (NASEM, 2018) while affording them carefully executed opportunities to reflect on their linguistic journeys as they build advanced language, literacy, and critical thinking skills (Bucholtz et al., 2014).
Preparing to Implement a Personal Narrative Unit with English Learners
A successful personal narrative unit incorporating English language development hinges on conscientious preparation. Prior to assigning a prompt, careful consideration should be devoted to the resources at your discretion to guide text analysis and highlight the genre’s novel features. Experience has shown me that the prompts and exemplars provided by ELA curriculum publishers are frequently unwieldy, irrelevant, or devoid of intent to promote positive identity development. Even if I manage to locate an accessible exemplar, I have not found it beneficial to devote class time to extensive analysis of a personal narrative text that is completely unrelated to the specific prompt I intend to assign.
English learners invariably fail to see the connection, and the unrelated narrative model lacks precise topic words, suitable transitions, and phrasing for the reflective conclusion they might repurpose. Similarly, the English Department rubric aligned to state writing standards requires more than modest tinkering to become a productive teaching tool within an English language development context. Moreover, ELA prompts that dovetail with an assigned literary selection are rarely preceded by language-building lessons for English learners addressing the vocabulary, syntactic structures, and grammatical forms demanded by the assignment. Prior to assigning an introductory personal narrative prompt, I recommend collaborating with colleagues on these six aspects of curriculum development. To illustrate each step, I offer and expand upon resources I have designed, field tested with teacher partners, and found highly impactful.
Write an appropriate, relevant, and high-interest prompt
Prepare a clear definition of the academic writing type
Identify, adapt, or design a student-friendly analytic scoring guide
Identify, adapt, or write an appropriate exemplar text
Determine language priorities for exemplar analysis and instruction
Design a prewriting discussion guide with relevant language supports
Step 1: Write an Effective Personal Narrative Prompt
When assigning a prompt to an English learner, it makes sense to follow a complexity progression, in terms of both the organizational demands and the level of personal introspection warranted by the topic. In my ELD classroom experience with English learners in middle and high school, students from diverse backgrounds have displayed varying degrees of comfort discussing issues and experiences related to their family dynamics, their journeys to the U.S., or their processes of understanding and acclimating to new cultural mores.
Mindful that a personal narrative prompt requires more reflection and disclosure than an informative or argument writing prompt, I have found it beneficial to introduce English learners to this genre with one or two relatively benign topics addressing universal experiences like receiving a special gift or teaching someone how to do something. Although I intend to segue to topics that encourage critical examination of their multilingual histories, more neutral initial prompts place the focus on understanding the structural and linguistic features of the writing type. Once students have had a dry run with less subjective prompts, they seem better poised to transition to prompts requiring greater introspection, identity analysis, and linguistic complexity.
I also recommend assigning prompts that are more detailed and explicit than a single provocative question or declarative statement. One reason is that English learners have often been assigned an array of one-sentence prompts for informal quick-writes in previous schooling, such as “Write about your favorite holiday memory” or “What superhero would you like to be?” We want to clearly signal that the assignment warrants more than a journal-entry response while helping them understand the formal prompt expectations. In addition, prompts on English language proficiency and state assessments tend to be rather lengthy, so English learners benefit from learning how to navigate a multisentence prompt.
For a formal assignment, I advise designing a three- to four-sentence prompt that accomplishes the following: 1) builds background; 2) prompts reflection; and 3) provides clear directions for writing. The sample prompts below illustrate this principle.
Sample Introductory Prompts Focused on Universal Experiences
Recent studies have shown that animals and humans share some common emotions, such as joy, pride, sadness, and jealousy. Think about a time when you observed a household pet or wild animal demonstrating a human emotion. Write a personal narrative describing what happened and how it helped shape your views about animal feelings.
A personal possession like a framed picture, a wristwatch, or a book may have monetary value, sentimental value, or both. What is one of your most precious childhood possessions? Write a personal narrative describing how you obtained this item, how you felt and reacted when you received it, and the reason you cherish it.
Describe a childhood event when you did something to make your family particularly proud of your behavior or accomplishment. Perhaps you improved your grades, assisted someone in need, won an award, or learned how to play a musical instrument. Write a personal narrative describing what you did to make your family appreciate and recognize your actions.
Sample Prompts Addressing Multilingual Learner Assets and Experiences
Being multilingual can be beneficial at home, at school, at work, and in our social lives. Switching from one language to another while communicating with others is both a skill and an advantage. Write a personal narrative describing a recent experience in which you utilized two languages to accomplish a goal, handle a difficult situation, assist a person in need, or connect meaningfully with someone.
In different cultures and communities, families pay tribute to loved ones who have passed away with special rituals. Families may also honor relatives or community members who are still living, perhaps on the occasion of a milestone birthday or anniversary. Write a personal narrative describing how you honored and celebrated someone special in your life such as your parents, grandparents, or a teacher.
Our formal given names and our informal nicknames often have special significance. Perhaps you were given your name to honor the legacy of a relative or highlight your unique talent, appearance, or character. Write a personal narrative describing the origin of your given name or a nickname you earned from a family member, classmate, or friend.
Our given names and nicknames may have personal, familial, or cultural significance. These formal and informal names can also be the source of positive and negative memories. Write a personal narrative describing a time you had a positive or negative experience due to your name, including how you reacted, felt, and possibly learned an important lesson.
Step 2: Prepare a Clear Definition of the Writing Type
Many English learners, novice and long-term alike, are apt to approach a personal narrative prompt with comprehension gaps regarding the essential elements of the writing type.
It is therefore imperative to present an accurate yet accessible definition, one suitable for their age, level of English proficiency, and literacy skills. I offer the following definitions as examples from my ELD practice, the first pitched at an entry point for a younger or emergent speaker with basic English literacy skills, the second more detailed and nuanced for an adolescent English speaker and reader at intermediate to advanced proficiency.
Definition for Novice English Learners
What Is a Personal Narrative? A personal narrative tells a story about a person’s true experience. The beginning introduces the characters and the topic. The middle gives details about the events in the order they happened. The end summarizes the important details.
Sample Narrative Definition for Intermediate–Advanced English Learners
A personal narrative tells a story from the writer’s life and explains how his or her life changed as a result.
Introductory sentences identify the context, characters, and purpose of the narrative.
Detail sentences tell the most important events of the story.
Transition words or phrases help move the reader through the events.
Descriptive language, such as action verbs, precise adjectives, and adverbs, make the story more vivid and interesting.
Concluding sentences explain how the event ended and the importance of the story, what the writer learned, gained, or resolved.
Step 3: Prepare a Student-Friendly Analytic Scoring Guide
An appropriate scoring guide is an essential tool in teaching and assessing English learner writing. Drawing from extensive experience as an ELD instructor, curriculum author, and researcher, a standard single-score holistic rubric designed for teacher use is not the most suitable instrument to place in the hands of either current or former English learners at any grade level. A conventional personal-narrative holistic rubric includes a tome of sophisticated descriptors intended for an adult, professional reader, on a proficiency sale of 1–4, for the genre’s distinct assessment categories: focus/setting; organization/plot; narrative techniques; language use. A neophyte English speaker and reader will undoubtedly find limited to no value in descriptors of the genre’s organizational features like the following: “uses temporal words, phrases, and clauses to manage the sequence of events in a logical progression”; “provides a thoughtful sense of closure from the narrated experience.”
I am an ardent proponent of analytic scoring guides. I purposefully utilize the term scoring guide with English learners rather than rubric, pointing out that I use a rubric with colleagues to compare student work and make decisions about instructional needs and course placement. For my own ELD teaching purposes, however, I provide English learners with a manageable and clearly worded assessment tool to support my instruction for a specific writing type and their student learning. An analytic scoring guide, like those provided below, is a customized teaching and assessment tool that identifies the essential elements of the writing type and allows the reader to assign a separate score to each element.
In contrast, a holistic instrument, designed for summative assessment purposes, assigns a single overall score to a piece of student writing for placement, reclassification, and comparison purposes. If a second-language writer continually receives a disappointing holistic score of one or two from a teacher, it isn’t clear from the dizzying array of rubric descriptors where to focus revision efforts in future work.
An analytic scoring guide is a nimble tool for teacher and peer formative feedback, ideally separating content and organization from grammar and mechanics so English learners can readily comprehend their specific strengths and areas in need of more careful attention. An additional attribute of an analytic scoring guide is that a few items may be weighted more heavily in the final summative assessment, such as use of effective transitions or correct past-tense verb forms, if instructional time has been devoted to these genre features.
Students can be notified that these elements will count for twice as many points, that is eight instead of four, as their personal narrative is scored and graded. Moreover, because an analytic scoring guide spells out the genre features so carefully, it greatly facilitates analysis, discussion, and guided text marking of a writing exemplar.
Step 4: Prepare a Writing Exemplar with Marking Tasks and Frames
Based on consistent feedback from former students, whether in secondary or college ELD coursework, the most valuable writing instruction they received was analysis and marking of an exemplar that met the assignment expectations. The challenge is identifying an exemplar that is not only on topic but also suitable for learners within a specific English proficiency range. Because a relevant exemplar is such a pivotal teaching and learning tool, I advise composing a suitable model or adapting a piece of former student writing. If I devote time to writing an exemplar text for a more advanced ELD cohort, I can easily modify it for learners approaching the task at earlier stages of English proficiency. Optimally, colleagues can collaborate on identification and development of appropriate exemplars for prompts that will become curricular mainstays. Once students have submitted final work, these compositions can be archived with permission and adapted to serve as models or drafts for practice revising and editing.
Along with an assignment exemplar, students benefit immensely from a set of marking tasks and response frames to guide reading, discussion, and text marking. When the exemplar is merely projected on a screen, students lack a tangible resource to interact with and return to for precise language choices and review of correct grammatical forms. A familiar set of marking tasks and response frames can be repurposed as students read and offer feedback on each other’s drafts.
Introductory Prompt and Exemplar
Think about a time you helped someone feel like they belonged. Perhaps it was a student from another city or country entering your class mid-year, a neighbor settling in to a new home, or an athlete who didn’t know any of the other teammates or much about the sport. Write a personal narrative describing what happened, what you learned, or how it changed your relationship.
Helping Someone Belong
When I was in fifth grade, a new student named Gaby joined our class right after the Thanksgiving holiday. Her family had recently moved to the U.S. from Guatemala. Before class, my teacher, Mr. Sloan, asked me if I could be Gaby’s peer ambassador for the week. At that time, I was happy to help a new student who also spoke Spanish, but I didn’t realize that she would become my lifelong friend. At the beginning of class, she looked as frightened as a kitten who had been chased up a tree by an unleashed big dog.
Mr. Sloan sat her down next to me and handed her a folder, text, and pencil case. She kept staring at the supplies and seemed frozen stiff, so I tried to imagine ways I could help her feel more comfortable.
First, I told her to tap my shoulder whenever she felt confused or afraid. Next, I assured her that I would be happy to whisper to her in Spanish whatever she needed to do. At early recess time, I took her gently by the hand and introduced her to a few nice classmates who also spoke Spanish.
Then, they invited us to join them in playing four square, but that was a new game for Gaby so I tried to carefully explain the rules. She turned out to be an impressive athlete who quickly caught on. She even beat the rest of us during lunchtime recess! When the bell rang and we returned to the classroom, she looked so much more relaxed and confident. After school, I told Mr. Sloan that I would be happy to be Gaby’s helper for as long as she needed support.
Now Gaby and I are in seventh grade, and we have become very close friends. We share interests in coding and music besides planning to go to college. Because we both moved to the U.S. from Central America, we are committed to helping new immigrant students feel welcome in our school, just as I did for Gaby in fifth grade.
Text Marking and Discussion Tasks Mark the narrative text elements. Then discuss them with your partner.
Circle the characters’ names. (One, another) character is ___.
Underline the setting. The narrative takes place (at, in) ___.
Double underline the topic of the story. The narrative is about ___.
Draw a box around transition words or phrases. (One, another) transition is ___.
Number (1–4) events of the narrative. The (first, second, next, following, final) __ event in the narrative is ___.
Star four precise words that made the writing more vivid. An example of a precise (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) is ___.
Put parentheses around the ending of the story. The ending is that ___.
Put brackets around the importance of the story. The importance is that ___.
Step 5: Determine Language Priorities for Exemplar Analysis and Instruction
An effective personal narrative requires agility with a range of vocabulary and cohesive devices. An introductory narrative language tool kit should include appropriate transitional devices to logically sequence the event, precise word choices to evoke characters’ thoughts and feelings related to the topic, and strong past-tense verbs to describe completed actions. The reflection component of the conclusion warrants a productive array of verbs to discuss what was learned, gained, or resolved.
I have listed a small number of language objectives relevant to personal narrative text instruction. English learners benefit from guidance in identifying language targets within an exemplar such as transitional words and phrases, correct pronoun reference, and strong verb choices.
My ELD classroom experience has convinced me of the additional need for a brief grammatical tune-up lesson on a priority grammatical target following exemplar analysis such as use of irregular past-tense verb forms to note completed actions within the narrative.
The teaching resource outlining transition words and phrases used to present the four distinct stages in a narrative provides appropriate choices to include in exemplar texts for a range of English language proficiencies. I don’t recommend distributing the resource but instead selecting suitable candidates for the students’ proficiency level to embed in exemplar texts and preparing a more manageable student reference.
Sample Personal Narrative Language Objectives: Intermediate English
Write an introductory sentence including a precise adjective that prepares the reader for a story describing a surprising experience: surprising, unusual, unexpected.
Use basic transition words that show the order of events: first, after, then, next, later, finally.
Use advanced transition words and phrases that show the order of events: initially, at that time, after that moment, from then on, as time passed, eventually.
Describe a character’s positive emotions using precise adjectives: surprised, excited, overjoyed, thrilled, delighted, proud.
Describe a character’s completed actions using strong simple past-tense verbs ending in -ed: arrived, departed, dashed, avoided.
Use strong present-tense verbs to describe what you have gained from an experience: understand, realize, recognize, appreciate.
Step 6: Design a Prewriting Discussion Guide with Relevant Language Supports
Graphic tools are widely employed by teachers of English learners to help students generate and organize ideas; however, a concerted effort to expand ideation and equip students with more accurate vocabulary choices and grammatical forms for the specific writing prompt is not as commonplace. English learners reap multiple benefits from engaging in purposeful class discussions with embedded language development prior to drafting personal narratives. They can be stimulated and acknowledged by peers while also building a potent language tool kit to approach the formal writing task with more linguistic mindfulness and precision than their routine journal responses.
The following prewriting discussion is adapted from an ELD unit for multilingual learners focused on identity exploration in my recent publication Language Launch (Kinsella, 2020). The personal narrative assignment includes a targeted array of focused, interactive prewriting lessons for idea generating, vocabulary building, and grammatical awareness.
Concluding Thoughts
A well-crafted personal narrative unit holds great potential for providing multilingual learners with lessons that are thought-provoking and inclusive while advancing their spoken and written language for academic purposes. These writing assignment attributes seem all the more important for diverse learners attending virtual classes with individuals they have never met in person. As we transition to hybrid instruction, I am hoping fellow educators across the nation will devote some precious real-time instructional minutes to a personal narrative unit with more than one opportunity for multilingual learners to build their communicative competence while reflecting on their unique cultural and linguistic histories.
Kate Kinsella, EdD ([email protected]), writes curriculum, conducts K–12 research, and provides professional development addressing evidence-based practices to advance English language and literacy skills for multilingual learners. She is the author of a number of research-informed curricular anchors for English learners, including English 3D, Language Launch, and the Academic Vocabulary Toolkit.
References Bucholtz, M., Lopez, A., Mojarro, A., Skapoulli, E., VanderStouwe, C., and Warner-Garcia, S. (2014). “Sociolinguistic Justice in the Schools: Student Researchers as Linguistic Experts.” Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4), 144–157. Kinsella, K. (2020). English 3D: Language Launch. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. NASEM. (2018). English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools, and Lives. Washington, DC. National Academies Press. NCEE. (April 2014–4012). Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School. Educator’s Practice Guide/What Works Clearinghouse. Washington, DC. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. Schleppegrell, M. J. (2017). “Systemic Functional Grammar in the K–12 Classroom.” In Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning (Vol. 3), edited by Eli Hinkel. New York, NY: Routledge.
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