English-medium Classrooms Research Articles

The Impact of Code Switching on Learners’ Participation during Classroom Practice

<p><em>The objective of this qualitative case study is to investigate whether the use of mother tongue in English medium classrooms can enhance classroom participation. </em><em>Questionnaire, interviews and observation were the two research instruments that were used to collect data in this study. </em><em>The study investigated 12 ESL teachers at 12 schools in the </em><em>Zambezi Educational</em><em> </em><em>Region. The </em><em>study revealed that the use of mother tongue in English medium classrooms did not constrain learners’ understanding of the learning content; it rather seemed to facilitate classroom participation. The findings</em><em> revealed that Grade 10 ESL teachers agreed that Code Switching benefited learners’ participation in English medium classrooms.</em></p><p><em><br /></em></p>

Can Code Switching Enhance Learners’ Academic Achievement?

There has been a high failure rate of Grade 10 learnersin the year end examinations in the Caprivi Education Region of Namibia over a number of years. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the use of mother tongue in English medium classrooms enhanced learners’ academic achievement.The study investigated 12 teachers at 12 schools in the Caprivi Education Region. The study found that teachers perceived Code Switching as enhancing academic achievement because it enhanced learners’ learning of the English language, improved the way learners answered questions, and that it enhanced teaching and learning of English as a second language. It is believed that learners would be actively involved in their learning, understand the subject matter better and the difficult English concepts would be better interpreted by learners in the language that they fully understand.

An ethnographic study of language socialization and choice in a first and second grade English medium classroom in Finland

In this ethnographic study of language socialization I investigate how a monolingual language norm is instituted, maintained, monitored, resisted, and subverted by participants in a first and second grade English medium class in Finland. In this setting language choice and use are an integral part of membership in this class. This study foregrounds the social implications of managing a monolingual norm by examining student agency, resistance, the achievement of voice, the uptake of a teacher-like discourse, and the practice of repair. The end result is a detailed exploration of peer-talk among students engaged in a variety of activities, highlighting the diverse trajectories of individuals, and giving evidence of the creative and agentive use of language among young learners.

Designing English-Medium Classroom Management Course for Non-Natives

This qualitative phenomenological research study explores the practices of instructors teaching through the medium of English as a foreign language, in classroom management course. Data collection instruments are semi-structured interviews and the course syllabi. Phenomenological data analysis techniques (bracketing, determining themes) were employed. Results indicate that instructors do not use a specific model for the classroom management course. The challenges faced with design of an English-medium instruction such as difficulty in finding cultural course materials, lack of confidence among local students, adaptation of international students and the solutions (dividing the course into two parts: theory and practice; sharing own experiences; using tentative course syllabus) of instructors for these challenges were explored, and suggestions for the designers of English-medium courses were discussed

English and Intercultural Interaction in the Internationalisation of a Japanese University

Researchers in internationalisation of higher education have been reminding us that the presence of international students alone does not mean that the institution or the students are reaping the benefits of internationalisation. Since the number of international students is readily measurable, many have focused on increasing the number and overlooked other less quantifiable aspects, such as intercultural interaction, which is beneficial to students and prepares them for their future work environment. This study on intercultural interaction in a Japanese university is based on data from three surveys involving 250 respondents in total. The author discusses the English-medium classroom, language issues and institutional support. She found that although English-taught courses may attract more international students, few Japanese students are present, and as a result depriving international students of valuable opportunities for intercultural interaction and restricting their social networks. The discussion also includes the dominant position of the Japanese language within and outside the university and Japanese students’ anxieties about speaking English. The paper concludes that until English gains wider currency as a language of communication, international students need strong Japanese skills to lead a fulfilling life in Japan.

Policy versus practice: the role of the home language in learning mathematics and science in English-medium classrooms

The focus of this paper is on the effects of the use of the home language (i.e. isiZulu) on teachers' and learners' understanding and use of core concepts in mathematics and science at the senior phase, in contexts where the language of instruction is English. It reports on a national, collaborative, multilingual research project which attempts to address the challenge posed by the National Language Policy of South Africa, namely, that learners have a right to learn through their home language where feasible. The project involved four South African universities and four languages: isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans and English. The first phase of the research was the identification and translation of core concepts in the science and mathematics curriculum, which culminated in the development of a multilingual resource book. The second phase involved the evaluation of the book with in-service teachers by means of questionnaires, workshops and focus-group interviews for purposes of triangulation. These data were the basis on which teachers for the tracer study were selected. This part of the study involved classroom observation of mathematics and science lessons at intervals over a two-month period. Findings from the KwaZulu-Natal regional data revealed various complexities regarding the use of the home language for communicating scientific and mathematical knowledge. These included unfamiliar terms leading to the question of standardisation and an initial preference for the use of terminology in English with explanations in the home language.

Submerged in the mainstream? A case study of an immigrant learner in a New Zealand primary classroom

Immigrant children from diverse language backgrounds face not only linguistic challenges when enrolled in mainstream English-medium classrooms, but also difficulties adjusting to an unfamiliar learning community. The culture of primary school classrooms in New Zealand typically reflects conventions across three dimensions: interactional, instructional task performance and cognitive-academic development. All three dimensions are underpinned by the culturally specific discourse conventions involved in language socialisation. New learners may be helped by classmates or their teacher to understand and successfully use these conventions, but left on their own they may sink rather than swim. This is a case study of one Taiwanese 11-year old boy, ‘John’, who entered a New Zealand primary classroom midway through the school year. John's basic conversational ability was sound, but he did not possess the interactive classroom skills needed to operate in the new culture of learning. Selected from a wider study of the classroom, transcript data from audio-recorded excerpts of John's interactions over several months with his teacher and classmates are interpreted from perspectives derived from sociocultural and language socialisation theories. The article concludes with a brief consideration of the extent to which John constructed, or was constrained from constructing meaningful learning experiences, and suggestions for further research and reflection.

A space to write: the construction of the writing subject in early schooling

This article applies Foucault's (1977. Discipline and punish) theory of spatial distribution in relation to the teaching of writing in English medium classrooms in early schooling. It aims to highlight the value of working with spatial theory, by attempting to show the relationship between spatial configurations and writing practices that work to produce particular subjectivities. The research sites were two desegregated schools in Johannesburg - a pre-school and a primary school. A Grade 00, Grade 0, two Grade 1 classes and a Grade 3 class constituted the case studies in a multiple case study design. The primary method of data collection was participant observation. Observations were recorded through field notes and video recordings.These were supplemented by teacher interviews and artefact collection.The spatial layout and movement flows of the Grade 00 classroom reveal a writing subject who can make meaning through experimentation and exploration of resources. From Grade 0 this changes, as the emphasis shifts to correctness and a technical mastery of handwriting. Children are confined to their desks and subjected to high levels of corporeal training. By Grade 3, the writing subject emerges as docile and skilled, but with little opportunity to use writing for creative purposes.

‘Hospital’: A Five-year-old Samoan Boy’s Access to Learning Curriculum Content in his New Zealand Classroom

Previous research suggests that young ESOL learners in mainstream English-medium classrooms are afforded limited opportunities to engage with curriculum content. This paper reports on a study of a five-year-old boy from Samoa who was just beginning to learn English in a mainstream New Zealand classroom. Interactions between the boy and his teacher and English-speaking peers are analysed for evidence that he was learning ‘hospital’, a central concept in a social studies curriculum unit. The analysis shows that, while this was a language and resource rich classroom, affordances of ‘hospital’ were not consistently accessible to the boy. He did begin to attend to the word ‘hospital’, but there is little evidence that he engaged with the concept. However, noticing the word is a step towards learning its meaning, and it was in interactions with his teacher that he attended to the word, not in interactions with his peers.

New Frontiers in Educational Policy and Program Development: The Challenge of the Underschooled Immigrant Secondary School Student

The increasing diversity of American students presents both resources and challenges, especially to secondary schools seeking to meet students' linguistic, cultural, and educational needs. An increasing number of these students are immigrants with limited prior schooling. They face the double challenge of acquiring English language and literacy while also compensating for years of lost schooling. Neither traditional English as a Second Language programs nor reading programs for English-speaking students are adequate to help these students develop the social, academic, and cognitive skills to function in English-medium classrooms. This article provides a brief profile of these "underschooled" students, describes current educational and policy contexts, discusses potential alternative educational programs and policies for these students, and identifies needed policy development.

The Case for Applied Linguistics in Teacher Education

The notion that black English is a language and that black kids are actually bilingual is ludicrous and patronizing. Ebonics is ungrammatical English. What students who speak Ebonics need to learn is that they are speaking substandard English and that substandard English brands them as uneducated. (Hernandez, 1996, p. A-21) This quotation, from a recent column by Roger Hernandez about the decision of the Oakland, California, Board of Education to recognize Black English (or Ebonics [see Blackshire-Belay, 1996]) as the dominant language many students in that district speak, makes clear both the emotional and psychological importance of language in the educational process as well as the extent to which normally well-educated and articulate individuals can be victims of their own ignorance of the nature of language and linguistics (see, for example, Bennet, 1996; S. Holmes, 1996; Maxwell, 1997; Olszewski, 1996; Schorr, 1997; Staples, 1997). The debate about Black English is only one component of a far larger problem in contemporary American education: the lack of knowledge of applied linguistics common among educators and educational professionals. Trueba (1991) recently noted that there are approximately 35 million persons in the United States who speak a language other than English at home, of whom about 20 million are not fluent in English. Almost 11 million of them are school age children (p. 45). These numbers alone are significant, but they take on considerable urgency when one considers the demographic trends they represent. Both the percentage and the absolute number of language-minority children in the public schools in the United States will increase dramatically in the decades ahead as American society itself becomes increasingly diverse culturally and linguistically (see Ager, Muskens, & Wright, 1993; Baker, 1993; Corson, 1993). These children bring with them educational needs distinct from those of their English-speaking classmates in important ways. They must learn to function in an American society very different from that existing when earlier non-English-speaking groups were assimilated into the dominant society. It is neither socially nor educationally sound simply to assume that left to their own devices, such students will acquire English (see Scarcella, 1990). At the same time, school-based programs that target such students especially bilingual education programs and English as a Second Language programs--are increasingly unpopular with many segments of society and are under fire all over the country (see Baron, 1990; Crawford, 1992a, 1992b; Moraes, 1996; Porter, 1990; Smitherman, 1992; Tatalovich, 1995). It is, in any case, unlikely that such programs will be available for all language-minority students. Rather, significant numbers of non-English and limited-English-speaking students are almost certainly going to be placed in English-medium classroom environments, taught by teachers with neither special language skills nor professional training to prepare them to teach such students. The needs of children who do not speak English, or who do not speak English fluently, are only one part of the linguistic challenge facing teachers, as the debate in Oakland makes clear. Millions of children speak distinctive non-mainstream varieties of English or exhibit various sorts of language and speech pathologies; many language-related classroom issues arise on a daily basis related to language use. Few debates about language in the educational sphere generate the heat and passion that discussions of nonmainstream language varieties, especially of Black English, generate. The 1979 judicial decision in Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children vs. Ann Arbor School District (473 F. Supp. 1371, E. D. Mich. 1979) led to a widespread national debate about the status of Black English similar to that taking place about the Oakland decision (for earlier discussions of King, see Chambers, 1983; Smitherman, 1981; Whiteman, 1980). …

An Ethnography of Communication in Immersion Classrooms in Hungary

This study investigates the interface of recent macro- and microlevel changes in Hungary by examining transformations in educational discourse in the context of history lessons at secondary schools with English immersion (dual-language, or DL) programs. The macrolevel changes are linked to sociopolitical transformations in the late 1980s and the rejection of Soviet-oriented policies and the discourse of authoritarianism. Parallel microlevel changes have also surfaced in the innovative English-medium sections of some experimental DL schools. These changes have come about with the breakdown of a traditional, very demanding genre of oral assessment known as the feleles (recitation) and its replacement by short student lectures and other, more open-ended discussion activities. This ethnographic study explores the discursive constitution of English-medium classrooms and the socialization of students attending one progressive Eastern European secondary school into the use of a foreign language to discuss historical material. The research provides a contextualized analysis of classroom discourse practices by examining some of the sociocultural, linguistic, and academic knowledge structures that are integral to and instilled within one curricular area and school system in the wake of political and educational reform.

ESL versus Mainstream Classes: Contrasting L2 Learning Environments

Language minority students are often placed in mainstream, English-medium classrooms long before they develop the degree of language proficiency necessary to compete on an equal footing with native speakers of the school language. With the ever-increasing presence of such students in U.S. schools, ESL and content-area educators are working to better integrate their respective curricula and instructional roles. In order to accomplish this integration, significant instructional differences in these two contexts must be identified, and systematic comparisons must detail how L2 learners fare in each of these instructional environments. What do students lose and gain in their transition from ESL to the mainstream? This question was addressed in a 3 ½ year ethnography of the L2 learning experiences of newcomer students attending a high school in northern California. The study, which followed 4 Chinese ethnic immigrant students as they made the transition from ESL to mainstream classes, contrasted patterns of spoken and written language use in classrooms, identified significant differences in the content and goals of the ESL versus mainstream curricula, and documented language instruction and feedback in both contexts. Both contexts were also evaluated in terms of the socializing features of schooling, such as counseling and peer networks. As in many other U.S. public schools, the isolated and marginalized position of the ESL program in an institution that otherwise made no adjustment for nonnative speakers produced a makeshift system in which there was no appropriate instructional environment for learners of the school language.