Locating Learning: Second Language gains and language use in family, peer and classroom contexts

Abstract

Abstract This paper concerns the relationship of second-language gains to language use in the classroom, at home and with peers. Two basic language measures from the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT), one of comprehension skills (which require relatively high levels of intentional effort to learn), the other of auditory vocabulary skills (which require less), were administered in a Fall-Spring-Fall sequence to 117 second- and fifth-grade children from Spanish-dominant homes. As hypothesized, the rate of comprehension gain dropped sharply during the Summer months. Contrary to the hypothesis, however, the rate of gain in auditory vocabulary was about the same, with or without schooling. In multiple regression analyses of the relationship of these second- language gains to language use in various settings, classroom language related only to gains in comprehension, and the influence of language use in the family was considerably stronger during the school year than the Summer. Conversely, peer language use helped predict gain during the Summer, but not during the school year. These findings are interpreted to suggest that: (1) schooling tends to interrupt peer influences, while it stimulates familial influences on second-language learning; and (2) the loci of second- language learning are more specific and delimited for skills that demand greater intention and effort.