Bilingual Learners Research Articles

Beyond deficit assessment in bilingual primary schools

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyze the harm that high-stakes standardized tests in the U.S. render to maintenance-oriented dual-language bilingual primary schools and, in particular, to minoritized bilingual learners. We argue that these schools must resist the negative incentives and prevailing logic that passing standardized tests is crucial for students’ future success and act to mitigate the potential harm to their school missions and pedagogy that this form of assessment presents. The alternative anti-deficit qualitative approaches to assessment we describe here rely on assessments of student learning and knowledge that are strengths-based, culturally aware and mindful, and seek to motivate students to accomplish ambitious, albeit differentiated, goals. These assessments carry a tone of empowerment and cultural affirmation and foster positive academic identity development of emergent bilingual children. We hope here to persuade that these assessments will assist dual-language bilingual primary schools to resist the neoliberal pressure to tie high-stakes decisions to standardized testing, which impair the cultural, educational, and personal development of their most vulnerable students.

Learning to Read in Multilingual Malaysia: A Focus on Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese

Learning to read fluently is an extremely important skill for all children to acquire. The current article focuses on learning to read in the most widely spoken languages of Malaysia, namely, the national language Bahasa Melayu, Tamil and Chinese. These three unrelated languages have quite distinct writing systems. Bahasa Melayu uses alphabetic Rumi or Roman script, Tamil has an alphasyllabary, and Chinese has a logographic or morphosyllabic writing system. Moreover, many of these children are learning to speak and read in more than one language. When we consider the task of these biscriptal learners, a complex picture emerges, as they may have to learn to map different phonological and orthographic systems. Furthermore, many children in Malaysia have the additional challenge of learning English as a second language. First, a brief review of the characteristics of the three main languages and their orthographies is given. Subsequently, research on phonological awareness, an important skill associated with success in reading, is reviewed. Initially, phonological awareness and reading in single language studies is examined prior to reviewing some research on bilingual learners. As these three languages have rich morphological systems, we will also briefly examine some research on morphological awareness and reading. A review of the literature reveals that children who speak a language with a similar orthography to a second language may have some advantage when learning to read that second language in comparison to children whose first and second languages and orthographies are unrelated.

Beyond the Spoken Word: Examining the Nature of Teacher Gesturing in the Context of an Elementary Engineering Curriculum for English-Learner Students.

Our research team performed an exploratory analysis of teacher gesturing via a case study of an elementary teacher. We focused on gesturing, a practice found to support both bilingual English learner students' linguistic development and mathematics achievement, during the teacher's engineering and science lessons. The research team systematically analyzed teacher video data using McNeill's gestural dimensions framework and found variation of gesturing types and rates when comparing engineering and baseline science lessons. Additionally, specific types of teacher-gestures appear to be associated with either behavioral or classroom management practices, procedural instructions, and discussion facilitation. We suggest that teacher-gestures such as these have the potential to facilitate bilingual English learners' language acquisition, while also developing their STEM literacy in general and engineering capacity in particular. Further exploration of teacher-gestures in elementary engineering curricula could lead to an integrated STEM pedagogy that incorporates gesturing as a fundamental teaching strategy, bridging STEM instruction with linguistically responsive instructional practices.

A framework for science classroom assessment task design for emergent bilingual learners

AbstractThe Framework for K–12 Science Education (NRC; 2012) placed renewed emphasis on creating equitable science learning opportunities for all learners by engaging in three‐dimensional learning experiences: disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices. Additionally, the Framework calls for a more inclusive approach to science learning that builds upon learners' linguistic practices and funds of knowledge and integrates open‐ended, multimodal approaches to documenting learning throughout the assessment process. To support assessment developers in designing expansive Framework‐aligned classroom‐assessment approaches for emergent bilingual learners—learners developing two or more languages—tools are needed to guide design of assessments from their inception. This paper presents a literature‐based framework for science assessment design for emergent bilingual learners that includes components critical to support these learners. We then operationalize the framework into five categories and analyze nine publicly available Next Generation Science Standards sample classroom assessments. The sample tasks allow us to illustrate how those engaged in classroom assessment design might create more expansive Framework‐based science classroom assessments appropriate for emergent bilingual learners.

Beyond Monolingual Reading Assessments for Emerging Bilingual Learners: Expanding the Understanding of Biliteracy Assessment Through Writing

ABSTRACTEmerging bilingual learners’ biliteracy abilities are often underestimated when monolingual reading assessments, such as the DIBELS, are used to identify students as having difficulties in learning or to guide literacy instruction. The authors propose a holistic form of biliterate assessment that uses writing as a means to understand what emerging bilingual learners actually know about literacy. In this qualitative study, the authors raise serious concerns about using DIBELS and question its adequacy for measuring literacy skills for students in the early and intermediate stages of English‐language development, as well as its limitations in providing relevant information about students’ biliteracy. Through qualitative analysis of three sets of writing samples collected from 29 second‐grade students, the authors illustrate the biliteracy skills and abilities that these students possessed holistically across Spanish and English. The students selected for this study were identified by DIBELS scores as reading below or well‐below benchmark. However, through the qualitative analysis of their writing, the authors were able to document the students’ literacy understandings across languages in their second‐grade year through the organization of their written texts, change in sentence constructions, and alphabetic skills knowledge. This work is significant to the field of bilingual and biliteracy instruction in that biliterate writing assessment provides a means to understanding developing reading skills that is broader in scope and is appropriate for assessing the totality of emerging bilingual learners’ biliteracy development.

Investigating Pragmatic Competence, Metapragmatic Awareness and Speech Act Strategies among Turkmen-Persian Bilingual and Persian Monolingual EFL Learners: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the effect of bilinguality on pragmatic production and metapragmatic awareness in third language learning. Thus, 59 Turkmen-Persian bilinguals (using Turkmen as their L1 and Persian as their L2) learning English as a third language and 55 Persian monolinguals learning English as their second language were selected and given a WDCT and a metapragmatic awareness questionnaire. The results showed that bilingual EFL learners outperformed monolingual EFL learners in pragmatic production and metapragmatic awareness. The findings also confirm the pragmatic differences among the three languages and the bilinguals’ advantage over monolinguals concerning the appropriate use of speech act strategies.

Insights Into Monolingual Malaysian and Bilingual Indonesian Undergraduates Majoring in English

This research investigated the connection between language learning strategy (LLS) preferences utilized by monolingual Malaysian Malay students and bilingual Indonesian students who are specializing in English language and in the second year of their studies. The study was conducted among 50 Yogyakarta State University (Indonesia) students and 50 University Putra Malaysia (Malaysia) students. Strategy Inventory for Language learning (SILL), Version 7.0(ESL/EFL) by R. Oxford 1989 was utilized to measure the types of learning strategies used by the undergraduates of both the universities. The data was analyzed by using the t-test. The researcher wanted to investigate what language learning strategies do monolingual and bilingual students use and if there were differences in the use of language learning technique between the two set of students. The findings of this study indicated that monolingual and bilingual undergraduates majoring in English employed a wide selection of language learning methodology to learn English. The t-test indicated that there were obvious distinctions between monolingual and bilingual learners. Anyhow the monolinguals in this study were more prone to use cognitive, meta-cognitive and social language learning techniques. This reporting of greater strategies used by monolinguals that was not consistent with past studies, give some reinforce for the new argument that monolinguals demonstrate advanced skills when learning a new language. This is an important insight as it has pedagogical implications in terms of curriculum and assessment design for undergraduate programs related to language learning.

Contrastive Analysis of Bilingual and Monolingual EFL Learners' Syntactic Errors in Translation

This study aimed at the analysis of syntactic errors in translation done by both bilingual and monolingual EFL learners. Research on the subject of the study implied that there might be differences between monolinguals and bilingual learners of foreign languages.

Functions of Translanguaging Performed by Korean-American Emergent Bilinguals

In this article, I employed a qualitative discourse analysis method from a heteroglossic perspective to investigate first-grade Korean American bilingual students’ translanguaging practices in a Korean heritage language (HL) school. Although the instruction was delivered exclusively in Korean in the HL classroom, the students were allowed to use English and translanguage if they needed. The transcripts of audio-recordings of students' spoken language were the main resources for this qualitative study. I first examined the incidence of the students' translanguaging. In performing the analysis of translanguaging function, I adopted Jakobson's [1] six functions of language (directive, expressive, referential, phatic, metalinguistic, and poetic). The findings showed that the function of students' translanguaging was documented in the five following categories: referential, directive, expressive, metalinguistic, and poetic. The close analysis revealed that 14 different subsidiary functions were further discovered under the five functional categories. The functional analysis of the students’ translanguaging performance indicates that their translanguaging was not accidental or deficient, but they were sophisticated, systematic, and purposeful. The findings imply that engaging in translanguaging when communicating even in a monoglossic classroom setting (such as an HL classroom) is considered as a natural phenomenon among bilingual students as they were activating and developing their bilingualism through everyday translanguaging practices. The article provides implications for teachers of bilingual learners.

Study on the Bilingual Teaching of International Economics—Based on the Model of Outcome-Based Education

The Outcome-based Education (OBE) emphasizes outcome orientation, student-centered education and continuous improvement. It is considered the direction of excellence in education, and its core value lies in the introduction of a new quality culture for talents cultivation. Based on the teaching practice of International Economics, this paper studies the specific application of the OBE teaching philosophy according to the demand ofsocial and economic development for internationalized and application-oriented talents. Based on the analysis of the current problems in bilingual teaching, some countermeasures are put forward from the course objectives and outcomes, design of teaching process, design of evaluation system and construction of bilingual learning resources. It aims to establish an operational and replicable model for student-centered teaching and outcome-based learning, as well as cultivating application-oriented talents in the field of international business and economics.

Design and implementation of bilingual digital reader based on artificial intelligence and big data technology

Along with the development of computer and information technology and the arrival of the digital reading wave, more and more users have switched the way they meet their reading needs to digital reading systems, At the same time, a variety of digital reading systems have also been created. However, most digital reading systems focus on how to present a better reading style, but little research has been done on how to use artificial intelligence and big data technology to provide intelligent information services and user behavior analysis. In such a large environment, a digital reading system that can provide reading behavior collection and intelligent analysis, while providing intelligent reading analysis function, will have broad research prospects. The digital reading system studied in this paper can provide reading behavior analysis and intelligent recommendation service for professional users based on artificial intelligence and big data technology. At the same time, the system uses artificial intelligence technology to realize the functions of bilingual learning reading, new word induction records, etc., which can provide users with knowledge efficiency. In addition, the system utilizes big data technology to provide users with information services such as communication content exchange. The main innovations of this digital reading system are computer automatic clauses based on Chinese and English syntax features, data layering processing mechanism that takes into account the speed and quality of book analysis, and book encryption and decryption schemes across computer systems. The system is based on a C/S and B/S fusion architecture and includes a reading system based on PC and Android.It can present customized ePub electronic resources, and collect users’ reading behavior through mobile screen or mouse and other devices, then use artificial intelligence and big data technology to analyze user data, and finally generate user reading reports. At present, the whole system has been applied in many universities, and the reading level of students and the work efficiency of teachers have been greatly improved, which proves that this digital reading system has high practical value.

A Study on Literacy of KSL Child Learners

This paper examined the literacy that is the basis of learning Korean language ability as a part of the basic discussion on learning Korean, the core of KSL education. In other words, it explored the literature developmental aspects of Korean native speaker children and KSL child learners through literature review and discuss the key issues in the literacy education of KSL child learners. A KSL child learner is a bilingual learner who has already developed a certain level of ability to use a native language. For mother tongue speakers, early childhood is basically the period of spoken language and the beginning of basic literacy development. During this period, the Korean reading ability starts from the level of recognizing a word as a whole unit, and develops to the level of connecting the phonemes of the word with the sound of the syllable unit The following points are suggested in the literacy education of KSL child learners. First, the curriculum should be differentiated according to the age at which KSL learners start to study Korean. Many studies showed that learners in the higher grades show higher achievement than learners in the lower grades of elementary school. Second, the level of achievement should be different considering the level of development of KSL learners. The current curriculum aims to improve the level of Korean proficiency to TOPIK level 4 within one year regardless of grade. Third, it is necessary to differentiate educational contents according to the Korean acquisition patterns of KSL learners. As shown in the results of the study, for example, KSL learners in 3rd and 4th grades show the lack of vocabulary such as lack of production vocabulary and lack of understanding of homonyms, which is an important factor to lower the text comprehension.

From the Editors

From the Editors

BI-TEXTS IN THE CONTEXT OF NATIONAL-RUSSIAN BILINGUAL EDUCATION

This study analyses the problems associated with bilingual teaching mathematics in national-Russian schools of the Russian Federation. In particular, problems associated with the Russian and Yakut language interference and the mixing of language codes that negatively affect the acquisition of subject knowledge are indicated. Based on the analysis of the speech corpus of bilingual students, the paper revealed the need for the purposeful development of mathematical speech in a primary school. The role of the principle of relying on the native language of schoolchildren in the conditions of bilingual teaching mathematics is determined and the inadmissibility of mixing language codes is justified. The main characteristics of the basic communicative qualities of mathematical speech and the criteria for assessing their level of formation are given. A system of mathematical problems has been developed and presented in the form of parallel textual bodies in two languages (bi-texts) with an indication of the basic communicative qualities of mathematical speech, the development of which they are aimed at. This paper is useful for familiarizing with the potential of bi-texts in a bilingual learning environment. The work shows the process of developing special mathematical problems presented in the form of bi-texts; the presented experience can be applied in the training of other subjects in the conditions of national-Russian bilingualism

Special educational needs in bilingual primary schools in the Republic of Ireland

While the Irish language (Gaeilge) is the traditional language of Ireland, it is spoken on a daily basis by a decreasing minority of people. There is an increasing trend for parents to send children, whose first language is English, to Irish-medium schools, where the language of instruction is Irish. Little research has been undertaken regarding special educational needs (SEN) provision in Irish-medium schools. This paper reports on a study that involved a national survey of two types of Irish-medium schools in Ireland. It examined SEN provision and teaching practices in these schools. It investigated the prevalence of various types of SEN amongst Irish bilingual learners, and the benefits of, and the challenges arising from, bilingual education for these learners. It explored the experiences of teachers in meeting the needs of bilingual learners with SEN and the training needs of these teachers. The study reports on standards of good practice in relation to SEN provision that are in keeping with national guidelines. It also identified advantages and challenges for particular learners with SEN in Irish-medium schools that are likely to be equally applicable to bilingual learners within Ireland and in other jurisdictions.

Teachers’ Attitudes and Beliefs About Code-Mixing by Bilingual Students

Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs toward student behavior can have a profound effect on how students in their classroom are viewed. This study investigated teachers’ perceptions of code-mixing, or the use of two or more languages in speech, by bilingual and emergent bilingual learners in their classrooms. One hundred and twenty-eight PK-12 teachers in the U.S. rated statements about students’ code-mixing. Results indicated that while teachers had positive views about code-mixing in general, they had more negative ratings for statements related to the effect of code-mixing on student performance and why students code-mix. Findings also revealed that having bilingual and/or English as a second language credentials are the only factor among other demographic and background variables that significantly predicts positive views on code-mixing. This study contributes to the literature on teacher beliefs and attitudes about their bilingual students who engage in this language practice.

Teaching Grammar to Bilingual Learners

This article deals with an inductive way of English language teaching. This acquisition process can help bilingual students to learn, find rules and apply them to new contexts. The objective of the paper is to propose a model of teaching that promotes student-centered approach where a teacher guides learners in discovery and provides more opportunities to practice, particularly in grammar. Basis of such approach is a training environment, in which the student is not an object to whom knowledge is transferred in a ready-made form but the subject of training process therefore knowledge, abilities, skills for the student are the result of his researches, decisions and creativity. The model of teaching and student-centered activities has been explored through the action research. Based on the experiment, it can be emphasized that a progressive way of teaching grammar moves the focus away from the teacher as the information provider and enables students to focus on use. Finally, the inductive approach as more effective for achieving learning goals and outcomes, is presented in the article from the perspectives of the bilingual learners.

Language learning strategy reported choice by bilingual children in CLIL: The effect of age, proficiency and gender in L3 learners of English

Research on language learning strategies (LLS) has widely investigated the relationship between adult second language (L2) learners' choice and use of LLS and different learner factors such as proficiency, age and gender. In the present study, these three variables are investigated in relation to the choice of LLS focusing on primary school bilingual learners in a CLIL context. Using a revised version of Oxford’s (1990) survey, we collected data on the choice of LLS from Basque/Spanish bilingual learners of third language (L3) English in grades 5 and 6 primary education (age range 10–12; N = 131). Results show no differences in the amount and types of LLS chosen when proficiency and gender are considered separately. However, age seems to have a minimal effect in that grade 5 learners report using ‘Remembering’ more frequently than grade 6 ones. Additionally, proficiency seems to interact with gender in favour of males in that males in the lower beginner and beginner groups choose a wider range of LLS than females. However, this difference between males and females disappears in the upper beginner group. These findings are discussed in light of results from previous research of LLS choice by child L2 learners.

Key Elements of Robust Vocabulary Instruction for Emergent Bilingual Adolescents.

Purpose In this clinical focus article, the authors argue for robust vocabulary instruction with emergent bilingual learners both in inclusive classroom settings and in clinical settings for emergent bilinguals with language and literacy disorders. Robust vocabulary instruction focuses on high-utility academic words that carry abstract meanings and appear in texts across content areas (e.g., diminish, ambiguous). For emergent bilinguals, vocabulary instruction should be infused with morphological analysis emphasizing Latin roots to support students to problem-solve meanings of new, unfamiliar words and make connections between semantic clusters of related words in English. An innovative and critical component of this instructional approach is to support emergent bilinguals to leverage their linguistic resources by making connections to their home languages. Five design principles for teaching emergent bilinguals to engage in morphological analysis with Latin roots are presented. These design principles are illustrated with examples of evidence-based practices from intervention materials for instruction. Examples are drawn from varied instructional contexts. We present a synthesis of findings from implementation trials of our instructional program. Finally, application of the approach to clinical settings for speech-language pathologists are addressed. Conclusions Clinical practice with emergent bilingual learners at intermediate and advanced stages of proficiency should incorporate robust vocabulary instruction for emergent bilinguals from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Clinicians should focus on high-utility academic words, and they should teach morphological problem-solving skills for generative word learning. Clinicians should leverage emergent bilingual learners' home language resources for developing morphological problem-solving skill. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.9745169.

How Museum Teachers Scaffold Emergent Bilingual Learners’ Meaning-making During Field Trips

ABSTRACTThis study investigates museum teachers’ perceptions of instructional practices for emergent bilingual students (also known as “English language learners”) within a field-trip setting. Through a survey, focus group, and interviews we explore how prepared museum teachers felt to teach emergent bilingual learners and what type of museum practices and resources teachers described as best scaffolds for these students. Findings indicate that museum teachers did not feel confident in their abilities to serve the needs of emergent bilingual learners, but that artifacts and the dialogues surrounding them were perceived as important scaffolds. However, teachers also indicated the constraints of a field-trip setting made scaffolding difficult to enact. The study points to the need for museum teachers to be supported in consistently enacting best practices for emergent bilingual learners.