Emergent Bilinguals Research Articles

Using Phoneme Discrimination to Help Emergent Bilinguals With Reading Disabilities Acquire New Sounds

Phoneme discrimination is the ability to detect subtle similarities and differences between phonemes. Phoneme discrimination is a strong predictor of reading development and poor phoneme discrimination may predict reading disabilities (Lyytinen et al., 2004). The ability to discriminate phonemes may be an even more critical skill for Emergent Bilinguals (EBs, also known as English Learners) and EBs with reading disabilities because they need to enhance their perception of phoneme boundaries to enhance their word reading ability. As EB populations in schools increase, addressing phoneme discrimination gaps becomes increasingly important. Classroom instruction should include repeated exposure to differentiating phonemes with known high frequency words and minimal pairs to develop a strong foundation for discerning phonetic features.

Reflect, Reframe, and Re-Imagine Theory and Practice in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences: Introduction to the Forum.

Reflect, Reframe, and Re-Imagine Theory and Practice in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences: Introduction to the Forum.

Contextualizing the Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching Framework for teachers of Emergent Bilinguals

We are amid a rapid demographic shift, with Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) being the fastest growing K-12 student population. This has created an ambitious goal for teacher education programs as they must prepare mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) to assess the needs of EBs. As a response, this study conducted a qualitative analysis of 16 PSTs to propose a contextualized version of the Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (MKT) framework as an emerging knowledge base of teaching that can be used to further guide the planning and enactment of teacher education programs in the mathematics education of EBs, specifically.

Translanguaging through the lens of social justice: unpacking educators’ understanding and practices

ABSTRACT This article focuses on translanguaging, which has been posited as a language practice, pedagogical tool, and lens that values individuals’ linguistic resources and deems them valuable. Scholars have postulated that translanguaging is rooted in social justice, as it aims to address social inequities among emergent bilinguals. Yet, do educators address social justice objectives when using translanguaging strategies, or do they merely conceptualize translanguaging as a pedagogical tool in teaching and learning as a means to assimilate and help students succeed within an unjust system rather than changing the system? Using a historical review of the literature and data gathered through an online survey, this study sought to examine: what understanding do educators hold about the connection between translanguaging and social justice? And in what ways, if any, do these understandings align with their teaching practices? The findings from our study show that only a few educators proposed a connection between translanguaging and social justice. Moreover, even those educators who suggested a connection between the two shared little evidence of the enactment of this relationship in their practice. This article discusses these observations in the context of the education of emergent bilingual students and the development of critical awareness among their educators.

“Hice Zoom Con Mi Abuelita”: What We Can Learn from First and Second Graders' Pandemic Narratives

AbstractThis article details a classroom‐based study designed to provide agency and voice to first and second grade emergent bilinguals as they processed the COVID‐19 pandemic. Two California teachers created a narrative writing unit not only to teach specific writing skills, but also to challenge pervasive deficit assumptions that young children “could not handle” the details or scope of this global health crisis. Students' narratives illustrated a profound awareness of the cultural, social, psychological, and academic impacts of COVID‐19. This work demonstrates that children can indeed, understand and articulate complex lived experiences, while also confirming the value of writing and drawing as powerful invitations for children to communicate and process. This project highlights the resilience of children who have been living through the COVID‐19 pandemic and what adults in their lives can learn from their reflections.

Impact of Stress on Later Academic Engagement Among Emergent Bilingual Students: Grit and Academic Support as Protective Factors

Despite evidence that academic engagement is necessary for academic success, limited research exists on the effects of stress on academic engagement for emergent bilingual students. The contribution of this short-term longitudinal study is the identification of individual and environmental socioemotional protective factors which may mitigate the impact of stress on later academic engagement among upper elementary emergent bilingual students at a Title I school (N = 142; 75% Latinx; 54% female). The present study tested teacher (TR) - and student-reported (SR) grit in addition to student-reported academic support (SR-peer and teacher support) as moderators of the impact of SR-perceived stress on later SR- and TR-academic engagement. Results indicated SR-peer support and SR-grit were significant moderators of the negative impact of stress on later TR-emotional engagement and SR-emotional engagement, respectively, when controlling for earlier engagement. The discussion addresses how schools can support emergent bilinguals’ stress and implement systems-level practices that may mitigate the effects of stress on academic engagement. Impact Statement Stress can disrupt student engagement and learning in school. For low-income, emergent bilingual elementary-aged students in the present study, stress had a negative relation with later emotional engagement in school. The negative relation of stress with engagement was mitigated by the protective factor of peer academic support, especially at high levels of stress. Student grit only mitigated the negative effect of stress on engagement at low levels of stress. It may be worth considering the promotion of peer academic support to counteract the negative effects of stress on low-income, emergent bilingual students.

Collaborative Translanguaging and Transmodal Literacies: Learning the Language of Science in a Dual-Language Classroom

Research has shown the benefits of peer interaction to scaffold learning of disciplinary literacies. We extend knowledge in this area to examine peer interaction and the affordances it creates when emergent bilinguals engage with multimodal texts in disciplines to make meaning. Using discourse analysis of the interactions of a small group of third graders carrying out a project in science class, we explored how four emergent bilinguals collaborated to design, produce, and distribute traditional and alternative texts. We found that translanguaging and transmodal collaborative structures support learning processes and comprehension to make sense of and contextualize disciplinary knowledge. A dynamic and recursive translanguaging pattern emerges in which the introduction and contextualization of knowledge happens in Spanish, the interaction occurs mainly in English, and the creation is in both English and Spanish. We discuss the affordances of these collaborative structures for supporting students in science and promoting Spanish and student bilingualism.

Transforming a cemetery into a garden of languages: A justice-oriented, family-centered framework for cultivating early bilingualism and emergent biliteracy

One in three children enrolled in US early childhood programs is a dual language learner. While dual language learners have been the target of sweeping educational reforms under the guise of justice, these reforms—which pathologize dual language learners as problems to be remediated rather than assets to be developed—have largely ignored the priorities and experiences of young multilingual learners and their families. This historical omission of centering dual language learners in research, policy, and practice is unjust and has contributed to marginalization, homogenization, and linguistic erasure. Asian Americans, the second-largest group of dual language learners and the fastest-growing racial group in the USA, have remained an underexplored group of emergent bilinguals across early childhood research, practice, and policy. Thus, this article draws on the multilingual expertise of Asian American families of young dual language learners to portray how parents construct and navigate multiple knowledges, beliefs, and pedagogies of cultivating their children's dual language and literacy development. The key findings present a justice-centered framework that conceptualizes three cultivating practices across diverse spaces, borders, and time. Counterstories of planting, pollinating, and pruning position Asian immigrant parents as agentic gardeners of bilingualism and biliteracy, and interrogate the deficit paradigms that are too often placed on dual language learners to fit the narrow, monocultural, and monolingual definitions of school readiness. Centering Asian American families in generating theory and future research directions, this article envisions the future potentiality of early childhood education in pursuit of equity and transformative justice.

A Critical Analysis of State-Level Policies Impacting Racialized Emergent Bilinguals Suspected or Labeled as Dis/abled.

The purpose of this review article is to conduct a critical analysis of state-level policies focusing on the provision of speech-language therapy and special education to children and youth who are racialized emergent bilinguals (REBs) suspected or labeled as dis/abled. We analyzed the state-level policies focusing on speech-language therapy and/or special education of California, Kansas, Florida, and New York. We coded content in terms of labels used to describe REBs; the focus of states' policies, whether the policy mentioned the provision of bilingual services, and the orientation toward bilingualism. Thematic analyses and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the policies, and interrater reliability was calculated. The results of this review revealed that most state-level policies contain English-centric, deficit-based labels to describe REBs and that most focus primarily on the classification and eligibility for dis/ability. Only one state addresses the provision of bilingual education for REBs labeled as dis/abled. The bulk of policies are underpinned by an ideology of "bilingualism as a difference," meaning that the main idea of the policies is that emerging English skills does not result in a dis/ability. Policies do not exist in a vacuum and are influenced by sociopolitical ideologies. The findings of this review highlight the urgency of applying an intersectional, justice-focused approach to the policies and practices impacting REBs suspected and/or labeled as disabled in the fields of speech-language therapy and special education.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication Services for Emergent Bilinguals: Perspectives, Practices, and Confidence of Speech-Language Pathologists.

The purpose of this project was to examine the perspectives, practices, and confidence of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) regarding service provision for emergent bilinguals who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) through a nationwide survey. Licensed SLPs (N = 179) completed an online survey, which included Likert-type and multiple-choice questions. Findings from the survey revealed a discrepancy between SLPs' perceptions and practices regarding service provision for emergent bilinguals who use AAC. Furthermore, most SLPs surveyed reported varying levels of confidence in serving this population and indicated that they frequently lacked training and resources to serve bilingual clients who use AAC. This research highlighted the need for increased resources, research, and education to support service provision for emergent bilinguals who use AAC.

Graphic Novels as Curricular Counter-Narratives for English Language Learners and Emergent Bilinguals

In this article, we advocate for integrating select graphic novels into curricula for English language learners and emergent bilinguals to push against the dominant and harmful narratives that tend to be found in traditional history texts and curricula. We use Vietnamerica by Tran and Escape from Syria by Kullab et al. as examples of counter-narratives that challenge these dominant and oppressive forces. Finally, we offer three teaching practices that support the goals of our social justice theoretical framework to (1) help students develop a critical awareness of how different materials—traditional and alternative—represent different ideologies, (2) engage students in analyzing how ideologies are discursively constructed in texts, and (3) call students to develop their own narratives, thus disrupting the grand narratives of traditional texts. Although our text examples and historical contexts are set in the United States, we argue that educators in other contexts, with other students, can generalize our practices to their own situations.

Effects of parents’ early home language use on English reading growth of emergent bilinguals.

Effects of parents’ early home language use on English reading growth of emergent bilinguals.

Executive Function and Narrative Language Abilities in Emergent Bilingual Preschoolers: An Exploratory Study.

In light of the importance of preschool oral narrative skills as precursors to literacy, this exploratory study examined expressive language skills among emergent bilingual Latine preschoolers using a naturalistic personal narrative task. To understand the factors that support language use in the personal narrative context for this population, we examined the contribution of children's executive function (EF) skills to their narrative language abilities. Children completed two subtests from the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment to measure EF and produced two personal narratives in response to conversational prompts. A series of linear regressions were used to evaluate the relation between children's EF skills and their narrative production ability, narrative organization, and expressive language skills derived from automated analyses of narrative samples. EF was found to predict children's ability to produce a personal narrative but not the language skills children demonstrated in these narratives. The current findings suggest that EF is implicated in emergent bilingual Latine children's narrative abilities. At the preschool age, the contribution of EF to narrative language production is apparent in the global task of producing a narrative, rather than in the organizational or linguistic features of the narrative. As such, supporting both EF and narrative skills might be an important means of facilitating preliteracy among bilingual children.

Onsite coaching: supporting prospective teachers to enact and appropriate instructional strategies in their field placements

ABSTRACT Coaching supports have been used in the past few decades with practicing teachers in professional development programs seeking to improve teachers’ and novice teachers’ practice. Prospective teachers experience the complexity of teaching when they start their field experiences. In some cases, prospective teachers struggle to enact what they learned in university coursework in real classroom settings. In an effort to bridge this gap, this paper provides an innovative approach to onsite coaching in the form of modelling, along with dialogic feedback to support prospective teachers’ development of their teaching practice in their field experiences. Onsite coaching supports as described in this study, have implications on teacher learning to promote prospective teachers’ enactment and appropriation of instructional strategies from university course work in field experiences. Findings suggest that field supervisors use this onsite coaching model to support prospective teachers in developing their teaching practices in the context of practice by taking a clinical stance. This paper unpacks the appropriation cycle and provides coaching moves (e.g., types of feedback in lesson plans, planning sessions, debriefing sessions, and onsite coaching moves) by sharing representative stories of prospective teachers facilitating literacy and mathematics in general education classrooms, and by differentiating instruction for emergent bilinguals.

Our Américas: “The things I Cannot say”: Empowering Emergent Bilingual Learners

Emergent bilinguals who experience inquiry-based learning activities gain transformative benefits that can lead to rhetorical literacies and greater confidence

“What did you learn?” Emergent Bilingual Students Write Their Understandings about Sinking and Floating

Leveraging translanguaging and novel engineering, this article examines how first-grade emergent bilingual students engaged in expansive literacy practices throughout the engineering design process.

Syntactic Awareness and Reading Comprehension in Emergent Bilingual Children

The present study investigated the role of syntactic awareness in reading comprehension among English–French bilinguals learning French as an additional language in Canadian French immersion programs. We examined the direct effect of French syntactic awareness on French reading comprehension as well as the indirect effects mediated through French word reading and French vocabulary. We further examined the extent to which English syntactic awareness contributed to French reading comprehension through cross-language transfer, again considering both the direct effect and the indirect effects through French word reading and French vocabulary. Mediation analyses indicated that, within French, the relationship between French syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension was fully mediated by both French word reading and French vocabulary. In contrast, English syntactic awareness contributed directly to French reading comprehension. Finally, French word reading partially mediated the relationship between English syntactic awareness and French reading comprehension. Our study suggests that children who learn French as an additional language rely on word reading and vocabulary, in addition to French syntactic awareness, to comprehend French texts. Given that English is French immersion children’s stronger language, they use English syntactic awareness to support French reading comprehension both directly and indirectly through French word reading.

The sustainability of content enriched shared book reading vocabulary practices and preschool emergent bilinguals

ABSTRACT This study was part of a larger three-year investigation of the effectiveness of a small-group, content-focused (science, social studies) preschool shared book reading vocabulary intervention implemented with Spanish-speaking emergent bilinguals enrolled in a one-way dual-language bilingual program. A subset of bilingual preschool teachers (N = 23), representing treatment teachers from each of the three intervention years, was observed to understand the sustainability of the curricular approach and materials one, two, and three years post-intervention when instructional guidance was no longer provided by the research team. Findings from post-intervention observations and teacher self-reports suggest that teachers continued to implement the intervention approach and materials on some level but the explicit rich vocabulary instruction during the book reading experience was observed less the further teachers were out of the intervention. Implications for research are discussed.

Teacher Education Students’ Perceptions About Bilingualism and Emergent Bilingual Students

ABSTRACT Teachers’ perceptions guide their instructional decisions and interactions with their students. Given the increasing number of Emergent Bilingual (EB) students and the more acceptance of multilingual language ideologies in the social and political contexts, there is an urgency to examine teachers’ beliefs about EB students and to train teachers to teach students from the pluralist perspective. This paper examines the language ideologies of teacher education students and how their language ideologies are related to their backgrounds, their attitudes about the engagement of the EB students and their families, and their perceived responsibility to teach EB students. The survey responses of 235 teacher education students were analyzed using descriptive statistics, regression, and correlation. The participants held more multilingual and heteroglossic beliefs about bilingualism. Their language ideologies were significantly related to their attitudes toward EBs and their families and their perceived teacher responsibility. Race was the only variable that demonstrated a statistically significant relationship with monoglossic or heteroglossic beliefs. We discuss how teacher educators address heteroglossic language ideologies in their programs to help teacher education students create inclusive and asset-oriented learning environments.

Math, Culture, Language, and Identity for Emergent Bilinguals

Ear to the Ground features voices from serveral corners of the mathematics education world.