Emergent Bilinguals Research Articles

Restrictive Language Education Policies and Emergent Bilingual Youth: A Perfect Storm With Imperfect Outcomes

This article focuses on 2 recent policy changes that have resulted in increased English-only instruction in US schools, with detrimental effects for emergent bilinguals (also known as English language learners): (a) statewide antibilingual education mandates in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts; and (b) the federal passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The causal link between antibilingual education state policies and English-only instruction is transparent, yet NCLB likewise restricts the use of languages other than English in instruction. To support this argument, I share research recently conducted in New York City that demonstrates how the accountability requirements of NCLB have resulted in the dismantling of numerous bilingual education programs. Although restrictive language education policies have been adopted in US schools in the name of improving academic outcomes for emergent bilinguals, this article shares data highlighting how these policies have failed to deliver on their promises, and concludes with implications for future policies.

Generalizability theory and the fair and valid assessment of linguistic minorities

We discuss generalizability (G) theory and the fair and valid assessment of linguistic minorities, especially emergent bilinguals. G theory allows examination of the relationship between score variation and language variation (e.g., variation of proficiency across languages, language modes, and social contexts). Studies examining score variation across items administered in emergent bilinguals' first and second languages show that the interaction of student and the facets (sources of measurement error) item and language is an important source of score variation. Each item poses a unique set of linguistic challenges in each language, and each emergent bilingual individual has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses in each language. Based on these findings, G theory can inform the process of test construction in large-scale testing programmes and the development of testing models that ensure more valid and fair interpretations of test scores for linguistic minorities.

Emergent Bilinguals: Framing Students as Statistical Data?

Immigrant youth who are designated as English language learners in American schools—whom we refer to as “emergent bilinguals”—are increasingly framed by numerical calculations. Utilizing the notion of assemblage from actor-network theory (ANT), we trace how emergent bilinguals are discursively constructed by officials, administrators, politicians, and the media through the manipulation and publication of school test scores, district data, and state reports. Drawing upon two overlapping, complementary qualitative studies conducted in New York City, we reveal the ways in which this places burdens on emergent bilinguals and their schools and narrows important discussions of bilingual education pedagogies to ones centered on numerical data.

The Emergent Bilingual and the Eloquence of Being: Resilience in the Face of Adversity and Dysfunction in Public Education

The Emergent Bilingual and the Eloquence of Being: Resilience in the Face of Adversity and Dysfunction in Public Education

Review of the Book <i>Children, Language, and Literacy:Diverse Learners in Diverse Times</i>

This article is to review the book Children, Language, and Literacy: Diverse Learners in Diverse Times, published in 2009, by Celia Genishi and Anne Haas Dyson. This book aims to explore the central premise that “diversity is the norm” through examining classroom activities that unfold young children’s interaction and learning as well as teachers’ instructional design and strategies. It provides insights into diverse child-centered curricula where children’s flexibility and adaptability in literacy development are stressed. Key focuses throughout this book rest on various dialects of English, sociolinguistic flexibility, pedagogies, assessments, flexible and play-based curricula. As expected, this book would contribute to studies of early childhood literacy, language diversity, and bilingual education. Specifically, it would benefit intended audiences: teachers and educators of young children, particularly teachers working with English language learners, emergent bilinguals, and special needs learners.

No Child Left Bilingual

Although educational policies for emergent bilinguals in New York City schools have historically supported the provision of bilingual education, the past decade has borne witness to a dramatic loss of bilingual education programs in city schools. This study examines the factors that determine language education policies adopted by school principals, through qualitative research in 10 city schools that have eliminated their bilingual education programs in recent years and replaced them with English-only programs. Our findings draw a causal link between the pressures of test-based accountability imposed by No Child Left Behind and the adoption of English-only policies in city schools. Testing and accountability are used as the justification for dismantling bilingual education programs and create a disincentive to serve emergent bilingual students, as schools are far more likely to be labeled low performing and risk sanctions such as closure simply for admitting and educating these students.

Latino Emergent Bilingual Youth in High Schools

This article explores the results of a study of Latino youth in New York City public high schools. We propose that the common element among the schools is what we call here transcaring, an overarching culture of care that allows for the creation of third spaces within school, transcending traditional dichotomies around language, culture, place, and measurement found in many U.S. schools. We identify the different threads that make up transcaring strategies—translanguaging, transculturación, transcollaboration and transactions through dynamic assessments—focusing on each of its components by drawing examples from our data.

Translanguaging: developing its conceptualisation and contextualisation

Following from Lewis, Jones, and Baker (this issue), this article analyses the relationship between the new concept of “translanguaging” particularly in the classroom context and more historic terms such as code-switching and translation, indicating differences in (socio)linguistic and ideological understandings as well as in classroom processes. The article considers the pedagogic nature of translanguaging in terms of language proficiency of children, developmental use in emergent bilinguals, variations in input and output, relationship to the subject/discipline curriculum, deepening learning through language development, cognitive development, and content understanding, and the role of children, including Deaf children, and in the use of translanguaging in educational activity. The conceptualisation of translanguaging is also shown to be ideological.

Creative Literacies and Learning With Latino Emergent Bilinguals

Research documents the benefits of implementing pedagogical practices that foster creativity in order to prepare students for a changing future and to meet the needs of emergent bilingual learners. Designing pedagogical invitations that make room for creativity is especially urgent given educational policies in the United States which privilege decontextualized, standardized learning aimed at "testable" skills, often in opposition to more expansive multilingual and multimodal learning opportunities. The current study explores how multimodal literacy experiences grounded in bilingual learners’ sociocultural realities stimulated creativity and allowed students to demonstrate and practice their creative abilities.

Additive schooling in subtractive times: bilingual education and Dominican immigrant youth in the Heights

Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times documents the unusually successful efforts of one New York City high school to educate Dominican immigrant youth, at a time when Latino immigrants constitute a growing and vulnerable population in the nation's secondary schools. Based on four and a half years of qualitative research, the book examines the schooling of teens in the Dominican Republic, the social and linguistic challenges the immigrant teens face in Washington Heights, and how Gregorio Luperon High School works with the community to respond to those challenges. The staff at Luperon see their students as emergent bilinguals and adhere to a culturally and linguistically additive approach. After offering a history of the school's formation, the authors detail the ways in which federal No Child Left Behind policies, New York State accountability measures, and New York City's educational reforms under Mayor Michael Bloomberg complicated the school's efforts. The book then describes the dynamic bilingual pedagogical approach adopted within the school to help students develop academic Spanish and English. Focusing on the lives of twenty immigrant youth, Bartlett and Garcia also show that, although the school achieves high completion rates, the graduating students nevertheless face difficult postsecondary educational and work environments that too often consign them to the ranks of the working poor.

Code-Switching Patterns in the Writing-Related Talk of Young Emergent Bilinguals

This qualitative study examined code-switching patterns in the writing-related talk of 6 emergent Spanish-English bilingual first-grade children. Audio recordings, field notes, and writing artifacts documenting participant activities and language use in Spanish and English writing workshops were gathered over the course of 6 months and analyzed for code-switching prevalence, form, content, and purpose in relation to the writing process. The percentage distribution of oral code switching across the two linguistic contexts suggests a sociolinguistic imbalance between the two languages, wherein English played a prevalent role in the creation of Spanish texts, but Spanish did not appear to have the same utility in the development of English texts. Four general categories of code-switching functions emerged, indicating emergent bilingual writers’ (a) evaluation and self-regulation skills, (b) sociolinguistic and sociocultural competence, (c) metalinguistic insights, and (d) use of code switching to indicate a shift in topic, person, or syntactic form. These findings intimate children’s capacity to exploit their developing bilingual linguistic repertoire for a variety of academic and social purposes and illuminate the potential of code switching as a cognitive and linguistic resource in the process of writing.

Teacher Advocacy in Bilingual Programs

As a consequence of changes in federal and state policies in education, educators who believe in the value and importance of bilingualism find themselves in a contested environment where their notions of best practices for emergent bilinguals contradict those espoused in such policies. In this context, acts of advocacy that support bilingual practices become an important part of teachers' work. The purpose of this article is to identify what advocacy for bilingual learners would and could entail, using studies that have focused on the work of bilingual educators in bilingual programs. Drawing on conceptual work and a review of 30 empirical studies, the article describes how bilingual teacher advocacy is conceptualized in and beyond the classroom setting. It concludes with insights regarding the multifaceted, complex phenomenon of teacher advocacy and its relevance to future research and teacher preparation for emergent bilingual learners.

Review of Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for English language learners.

Review of Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for English language learners.

Educating emergent bilinguals: policies, programs, and practices for English language learners

This comprehensive and insightful book shows how present educational policies and practices to educate language minority students in the United States ignore an essential characteristictheir emergent bilingualism. Expanding on a popular report supported

How does size matter? The impact of the rise of small schools on Latinos and emergent bilinguals in New York City

Since the dawn of mayoral control in 2002, New York City high schools have undergone a major overhaul. Part of this reform effort has been the replacement of underperforming large high schools with new small high schools. This study more closely examines the effects of a transition to small high schools on students who are Latino and students who are emergent bilinguals (EBs). The data includes the demographic data from the New York State Department of Education Comprehensive Education Plan and the New York City Department of Education Progress Report for each school. This study finds that although a majority of Latinos and EBs continue to attend large schools of more than 1200 students, they are unevenly distributed across different school sizes. In addition, large high schools are far more likely to offer Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs. Findings also indicate that small schools of no more than 500 students have higher academic outcomes based on credit accumulation and higher four and six-year graduation rates for EBs than medium and large schools. These differences are most significant at schools with high EB and Latino student populations. The article concludes with a call for qualitative studies identifying successful practices for EBs across school sizes framed around more fluid notions of language support that move beyond the dichotomy of bilingual education vs. English as a second language (ESL).

Sociocultural Misalignments Faced by Preschool Chinese Emergent Bilinguals: A Case Study

There is a paucity of research about the schooling experiences of preschool Chinese emergent bilinguals. This is especially evident when compared to other minoritized groups and warrants attention because of the rapid increase in Chinese immigrants in the US recently. This study investigates the sociocultural misalignments a group of preschool Chinese emergent bilinguals from low socioeconomic backgrounds encounter in school and the implications of these misalignments. The study spanned 7 months and included participant observation, interviews, and collection of textual/visual evidence as methods of inquiry. Findings point toward assimilationist tendencies in school as students experienced challenges becoming independent, making decisions, adjusting to individualistic outlooks, and adapting to different dining habits. Despite the subjugation of home culture under school culture, parents and students remained silent about their needs. The findings suggest that this silence needs to be reinterpreted in light of cultural and class differences. The author also proposes the deconstruction of the model minority myth surrounding Chinese students and the reimagination of new ways to collaborate with families and students so that both home and school cultures can be equally honored.

The effects of phonological awareness of Zulu‐speaking children learning to spell in English: A study of cross‐language transfer

Emergent bilingual Zulu-English speaking children in South Africa have spoken but no written proficiency in Zulu (L1), yet are required to learn to spell English (L2) via English-only literacy instruction. Little research exists on emergent bilingual's phonological awareness (PA) and spelling development, with no L1 formal literacy instruction. Thus, whether PA in a L1 impacts on literacy acquisition in the L2 remains unclear. Performance on monolingual PA, monolingual and emergent bilingual spelling was compared. In addition, PA and spelling in emergent bilingual Zulu-English speakers was explored to ascertain cross-language transfer relationships. Thirty emergent bilingual Zulu-English and thirty monolingual English children in grade 2 participated. Emergent bilinguals were assessed on Zulu PA, Zulu and English spelling skills. Monolinguals were assessed on English PA and English spelling skills. Emergent bilinguals had more Zulu PA levels related to spelling English tasks than to spelling Zulu tasks, and both Zulu PA and Zulu spelling were positively related to English spelling tasks. Significant differences were found between L1 Zulu and English phoneme and rime PA levels, and L1 English and L2 English spelling tasks. Findings support the language-universal hypothesis that L1 PA is related to spelling across languages in emergent bilinguals. In emergent bilinguals, both Zulu spoken proficiency and English-only literacy instruction influences the underlying repertoire of PA skills used to spell within the L1 and the L2. Rime and phoneme PA and spelling skills in Zulu/English rely on language-specific orthographic knowledge.

Emergent Bilinguals and TESOL: What's in a Name?

TESOL QuarterlyVolume 43, Issue 2 p. 322-326 Emergent Bilinguals and TESOL: What's in a Name? OFELIA GARCÍA, OFELIA GARCÍA City University of New York New York, New York, United States Ofelia García is a professor in the doctoral program in urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been a professor of international and transcultural studies at Columbia University's Teachers College, Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, and professor of bilingual education at The City College of New York. She is a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa, and has been a Fulbright Scholar, and a Spencer Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Education.Search for more papers by this author OFELIA GARCÍA, OFELIA GARCÍA City University of New York New York, New York, United States Ofelia García is a professor in the doctoral program in urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been a professor of international and transcultural studies at Columbia University's Teachers College, Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, and professor of bilingual education at The City College of New York. She is a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa, and has been a Fulbright Scholar, and a Spencer Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Education.Search for more papers by this author First published: 30 December 2011 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-7249.2009.tb00172.xCitations: 155 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume43, Issue2June 2009Pages 322-326 RelatedInformation

Language support for emergent bilinguals in English mainstream schools: an observational study

Four broad objectives are outlined which would ensure inclusivity and adequate support for emergent bilinguals in mainstream classes. Ideally, children should feel that their first language makes a contribution to the classroom, they should have frequent opportunities to interact with the teacher, and equally important, with their peers, and they should feel that the general objective of the classes is to make them bilingual and bicultural. In search of what might be considered good practice, the present article presents ‘snapshots’ of five teaching scenarios in mainstream schools with support for English as an additional language (EAL) in the UK, using observer field notes, pupils' diaries and interviews to describe the experiences of the pupils. While the study finds some approaches in the mainstream classroom to be problematic, and is sometimes critical of them even when they have EAL support, the examples of small group teaching that are presented suggest that strategies that provide focused support for new arrivals in a separate EAL class have their merit, and do not run counter to the principle of inclusion, although the ideal of inclusivity is a long way from being achieved.

Equality and Inequality of Opportunity in Education: Chinese Emergent Bilingual Children in the English Mainstream Classroom

In Britain, since the 1980s, the term ‘equality of opportunity’ has been a major theme at the heart of the government's agenda. Centralisation via the National Curriculum documents has strengthened the idea of ‘education for all’. In terms of many linguistic minority children, mainstreaming and the English as an Additional Language (EAL) provision subsumed within a conceptualisation of mainstream English has been claimed to be the best way to ensure equal opportunity for children with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds since the 1990s. This study, therefore, is set within the political context outlined above, investigating how beneficial it is for emergent bilingual children to be plunged into English mainstream classrooms during their first days in school, or in other words, what equal opportunity really means for them. Participants in the study include three 8–11-year-old children of two newly arrived families; the parents and the school teachers are also involved. A variety of ethnographic methods are used to highlight what it means to be a newcomer in the English mainstream classroom, and through which the problematic nature of inclusion in the mainstream class is illustrated. It is argued that bilingualism is potentially an advantage to these children, but only if they are given substantial language support.