Immigrant Learners Research Articles

Exploring Canadian Integration through Critical Discourse Analysis of English Language Lesson Plans for Immigrant Learners

The Canadian government implemented the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program to help immigrants integrate into Canada. However, research indicates that the LINC program fails to achieve its integrative goals. Using Fairclough’s analytical concepts of genre, discourse and style, this article closely examines a unit of LINC lesson plans to understand how they advance an understanding integration among classroom stakeholders (Canadian teachers and immigrant students). The analysis reveals that the LINC curriculum proliferates inequality between Canadians and newcomers by fostering an assimilative orientation that subjugates immigrants as problematic Others. Immigrants are expected to conform to dominant Canadian ways of being and ways using language. This article calls for a rethinking of integration by identifying possibilities for resistance that could shift immigrants’ positioning and reduce discrimination. This could occur through better recognizing bias and dominance, and through acknowledging and validating newcomers’ ways of speaking and interacting.

Sociolinguistic determinants of heritage language maintenance and second language acquisition in bilingual immigrant speakers

The objective of the study was to scrutinise the determinants of heritage language maintenance and second language acquisition in immigrant speakers and assess their significance and weight. Over one hundred cases of bilingual speakers with Polish as L1 (heritage language; Polish speakers abroad) and as L2 (national language; immigrant learners of Polish in Poland) were investigated in order to better understand the linguistic changes and multilingual practices involved in the process of relocating to another country. The cases underwent quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results revealed that in most cases bilinguals are at a high risk of losing their L1, and L2 becomes their dominant language. With the dominance of L2, identification with the culture of the country of residence also increases in bilinguals. Formal instruction in L1 proves to be the most important factor in heritage language maintenance, and the preservation of a sense of identification with the heritage culture. An important role in L1 and also L2 development is played by parental support and their actions.

Teaching Adult Immigrants with Limited Formal Education: Theory, Research, and Practice. 2020. Edited by Peyton, Joy K. and Young-Scholten Martha. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 208p; ISBN: 978-1-78309-996-2

Teaching Adult Immigrants with Limited Formal Education: Theory, Research, and Practice is a compendium of the six modules that were the result of the third phase of the EU-Speak Project, European Speakers of Other Languages: Teaching Adult Migrants and Training Their Teachers, an ambitious collaborative research project carried out by several European and American universities with the purpose of orienting second language educators whose target pupils are immigrant second language learners with limited education and literacy. Each chapter covers different linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and pedagogical issues in order to offer a complete guide to those interested in teaching a second language to this particular group of learners. As a result, the book presents itself as a link between researchers, teachers, policy-makers, and administrators with the common aim of integrating these learners as active members of their new countries through the acquisition of their new languages.

IDENTIDADES CULTURALES DE ESTUDIANTES INMIGRANTES EN EL VOCABULARIO DE LIBROS DE TEXTO DE INGLÉS A TRAVÉS DE ASOCIACIONES PROTOTÍPICAS

In recent decades, scholars’ attention has been focused on how the target and source cultures can be integrated to EFL materials. Despite significant progress in this respect, the source culture is still considered as the predominant culture in a classroom, even in countries where immigration is reaching unprecedented numbers (Suárez Orozco, 2001; McKay, 2003). This poses some challenges for selecting the vocabulary input for EFL materials and promoting cultural diversity in the classroom. For this reason, since semantic prototypes are anchored in the categorisation of mental lexicon (Taylor, 1989; Aitchison, 2003), they may shed light on what cultural words are being and should be integrated to EFL textbooks to foster the integration and balance of predominant and non-predominant cultures. This study aims to examine whether immigrant learners’ cultures are evidenced in the vocabulary input of two EFL textbooks used in La Rioja, Spain; and to analyse if these cultural identities are represented through prototypical associations by means of two semantic categories: free-time activities and festivities. The results suggest that (i) the target culture is pervasive while immigrant students’ cultures are scarcely included in EFL materials; (ii) there are similarities and differences regarding the cultural aspects drawn through prototypical associations in the two EFL textbooks selected; and (iii) the cultural identity aspects are scarce because most of the vocabulary input of EFL textbooks is focused on the use of words from the target language. The present study has implications for textbooks publishers and multilingual learners as it provides insights into the unbalanced cultural picture that EFL textbooks draw through word associations.

How language challenges affect the behaviour of immigrant learners in the Foundation Phase at three schools in Gauteng, South Africa

Background: The education of immigrant children is influenced by many factors that emanate from global socio-economic and political issues. In the South African education system, teachers do not have guidelines on how to include immigrant children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The question that arose was ‘what effect does poor language proficiency have on immigrant learners’ psychosocial development?’ Aim: This study focused on how language challenges experienced by immigrant children influence their relationships with themselves and others in the learning environment. The second objective was to find out how teachers are coping with immigrant learners. Setting: Learners were purposively selected from former Model C Foundation Phase classrooms in three selected schools in Gauteng province, South Africa. Former Model C schools are schools that accepted only white children prior to the early 1990s. Methods: This study uses an interpretive research paradigm with thematic analysis of data from focus group interviews and individual interviews. Participants were 48 Foundation Phase learners, 24 female educators and three school principals. Results: The results suggest that language barriers create a vicious cycle of negative emotions and unhealthy interactive patterns between immigrant and local children. Immigrant learners experience cognitive and social inhibition, isolation and bullying by the local learners. Conclusion: There are implications for the integration of psychosocial content in teaching a language. This could empower Foundation Phase teachers with guidelines for teaching English to all second language learners in a way that fosters positive adjustment of immigrant children and prosocial behaviour in the learning environment.

Empowering Adult Immigrant Learners Through Systematic Motivation Work in the Classroom

This is an action research study investigating how one can work systematically in adult learning centres to support adult immigrant learners to increase their intrinsic motivation and develop strategies to take responsibility for their own development and learning. We have applied what we call a five-step motivation method, where the adult students define and write down what is important to them, their success factors and their obstacles, and choose focus areas and strategies to apply to achieve what is important to them. As part of the process, the students also reflect on these elements in class discussions led by the teacher, which means that the students support each other to find solutions to their obstacles and to find strategies to work towards their goals. The student reflections from the sessions are part of the data collected in this study, and these are complemented by students’ self-reports on the usefulness of the approach. The project was carried out in several groups at three adult learning centres, and the findings show that the majority of the participants were satisfied with the approach. They report that they became better at planning and more motivated to work towards their goals. An element that was emphasised by the teachers was the importance of letting the students use their native language when needed. We conclude that the method we present here may be a useful tool to assist adult immigrant learners to experience intrinsic motivation and develop strategies for mastering learning and life.

#Digital parents: Intergenerational learning through a digital literacy workshop

In this article, we present findings of a research study centered around a 10-week digital production workshop developed specifically for families in an urban school board, a population rich with culturally diverse immigrant families and English language learners (ELLs). The aim of this research was to support parents/guardians in an urban community in their development of a practical, hands-on understanding of twenty-first century literacies, using a ‘production pedagogy’ framework that emphasizes learner agency. We sought to critically reflect, alongside parents/guardians, on how new media and new literacies are being utilized in schools today, and to provide models, tools and practices for parents/guardians and their children to enact digital competences together, specifically, through the production of a short digital story.

Leveraging Peer Support for Mature Immigrants Learning to Write in Informal Contexts

For adult newcomers to countries such as Canada, learning language is more than an academic task. Language proficiency is their gateway to long-term economic and social stability, but limited access to resources contributes to systemic inequities which disproportionately place immigrants at socioeconomic disadvantages. Many new immigrants rely heavily on informal peer-networks to pursue avenues of success within an unfamiliar and inadequate system. To explore how we could leverage such a peer-based approach to meet their needs for feedback and support when learning to write in English, we deployed a peer-based writing app with 16 participants. Post-deployment focus groups and analysis of writing artifacts reveal that the design of writing support tools should present transparent feedback from both peers and automated sources, foster community through semi-structured discussions, incorporate guided review, and scaffold affective development. We discuss how incorporating these elements into the design of community learning platforms can address the language literacy needs of diverse immigrant learners and foster more positive experiences for newcomers as they negotiate their evolving identities.

School caringscapes: Understanding how time and space shape refugee and immigrant adolescents’ caring practices and wellbeing in Danish schools

Schools are increasingly cited as spaces of support for learners facing adversity. It is therefore not surprising that recent migration flows have contributed to a mushrooming of school-focused policies and interventions looking to promote the mental health and wellbeing of refugee and immigrant learners. In response to a research focus on how teachers, schools and school-based interventions care for the wellbeing of vulnerable leaners, this article explores ethnographically how school-going refugee and immigrant adolescents develop their own practices of care for self and others. It draws on fieldwork carried out between December 2018 and June 2019 and includes participant observations in two Danish preparatory classes for newcomers and in-depth interviews with 13 learners and five teachers. Drawing on the concepts of caringscapes and carescapes, our analysis not only reveals how newcomers form significant caring practices, and co-produce spaces that foster collective wellbeing, but highlights the temporally and spatially bounded nature of their care. We found their caring practices to be oriented in relation to biographical time, highlighting how newcomers enrol past experiences, present needs and future aspirations in their caring. We also noted that newcomers’ caring practices are contingent on the character of their school environments, including teacher practices, and wider policy contexts around refugee and immigrant children's education and residence. We conclude that efforts to understand and promote refugee and immigrant learners’ wellbeing in school contexts must take heed of the temporally and spatially bounded nature of their agentic capabilities to care for themselves and their peers.

Engagement From the Periphery: Reconceptualizing Adult English Language Learners’ Resistance in Developmental Literacy

English language learners’ nonparticipation and reticence in adult literacy classes are often presented problematically from a deficit lens of student resistance and disengagement. This article draws from an ethnographic case study of Generation 1 learners, who are defined as adult-arrival immigrant learners, transitioning from an adult English as a Second Language class to a developmental literacy class. By examining learners’ resistance through a framework of agency enactment, the study bridges the fields of adult literacy and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, both of which support adult-arrival immigrants entering the U.S. education system. The resulting analysis illustrates how Generation 1 learners’ acts of resistance can be complex presentations of their literacy identities and their engagement in classroom literacy practices.

Foreign-born TESOL Instructors Assisting Adult Immigrant Learners to Develop Civic Literacy Skills: A Pen Pal Project

This article discusses the contributions of foreign-born TESOL instructors helping adult language learners develop literacy skills through a pen pal project, which lasted 10 weeks and consisted of writing letters back and forth weekly. The project provided adult immigrant learners with an opportunity to practice meaningful writing to support their English literacy development. The research questions include how do foreign-born TESOL instructors support adult immigrant learners develop literacy through a pen pal project? and what components of the pen pal project promote the development of civic literacy skills? Data for this article come from 159 letters product of the writing exchange between instructors and learners, and individual conversational interviews with the instructors. Study findings are presented through four themes: teachers as cultural informants, emotional connection, life and learning advice, and adult ESL learners’ linguistic competence. Study findings add to the body of literature focusing on the powerful contributions of foreign-born TESOL instructors to the education and language-culture acquisition of adult immigrant English learners.

Language and Identity: Multilingual Immigrant Learners in South Africa

Increased multilingualism and mobility have witnessed an increased focus on multilingual immigrant learners. This study aims to help educators understand experiences of immigrant students in South Africa that relate to language and identity by comparing such experiences across three different school settings: an urban school with a high (Black) immigrant and indigenous population, a former Indian school, and a former White school. Drawing on semi-structured interviews from a larger case study, this study makes visible the immigrant learner experience in multilingual settings in which xenophobic conditions arise. The findings reveal similarities as well as differences in individual identity construction and negotiation and its vital connection to language. Furthermore, they illustrate ways in which these learners must navigate xenophobic trends, exclusive language pedagogies, and language loss. The implications of this study point to a call for policy, practice, and research to take into account multilingual immigrant learners as well as a need to attend to the social construction of identities.

A research on the Development of the task for immigrant adolescent Korean learners

A research on the Development of the task for immigrant adolescent Korean learners

Segregation or Sanctuary? Examining the Educational Possibilities of Counterpublics for Immigrant English Learners

ABSTRACTExploring critiques of immigrant segregation, this paper considers how schools exclusively serving immigrant EL students are supportive “counterpublics.” Drawing on data from two ethnographic case studies, the analysis reveals how the schools are intentional communities where teaching was designed to address the unique academic, linguistic and emotional needs of immigrant ELs. Second, they provided safe spaces for the sharing of language and transnational experiences that are often silenced in traditional schools. Third, they offered teachers significant supports and ongoing learning opportunities that enabled them to extend the support and sanctuary that newcomer immigrant EL’s require.

Looking at My (Real) World through Mathematics: Memories and Imaginaries of Math and Science Learning

Critical math and science educators have argued for pedagogies that focus on equity, social justice, and the identities of learners. To inform debates about the purposes and values of math and science pedagogy, we need to better understand how different kinds of curriculum and instruction are taken up by learners over time. This study examines the ways one Latinx immigrant learner, Calvin (a pseudonym), constructed the values and purposes of his earlier math and science learning experiences, as an adult hoping to pursue a career in science. Narrative analysis is used to explore the ways Calvin made sense of his learning of math and science in high school, in community colleges, and on his own. Drawing on the construct of appropriation, we examine the conceptual tools Calvin took up from different math and science pedagogies (reform, critical, and traditional) in narrating his desire to explore and understand scientific phenomena. Narrative frames position Calvin with greater or lesser agency as he navigates different learning environments, imagines possible futures, and constructs the purposes of science and mathematics. The narratives of Calvin’s learning illustrate the conceptual tools he appropriates from reform and social justice pedagogies: real-to-my-life mathematics, learning as connecting and imagining, harder-but-easier math for a purpose, and the ways reading and writing the world can be applied to imagining planets and the universe. The analysis suggests the usefulness of restorying as a way to explore how our pedagogies interact with learners’ subjectivities, desires, values, and purposes for learning.

Showing Up for Immigrant Learners (and Each Other)

Showing Up for Immigrant Learners (and Each Other)

How Policy Changes Affect Local Immigrant Learners

How Policy Changes Affect Local Immigrant Learners

중도입국 한국어 학습자 관련 연구에 대한 비판적 고찰과 향후 과제

중도입국 한국어 학습자 관련 연구에 대한 비판적 고찰과 향후 과제

La lectura en los manuales para la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera a inmigrantes

La labor de todo profesor de ELE y de los manuales usados para enseñar la lengua meta, debe permitir acelerar el proceso de adquisición. La investigación ha constatado que la lectura es una de las maneras más efectivas para afianzar este proceso ya que expone al alumno al modelo de lengua que se pretende adquirir de manera natural y significativa. Este artículo analiza el tratamiento de la lectura en manuales de español para inmigrantes, y lo hace desde dos perspectivas, la teórica y la práctica. La primera, presenta los fundamentos teóricos, los beneficios de la lectura y los factores que intervienen en la comprensión de un texto, poniendo hincapié en qué se debe hacer y cómo se debe tratar la lectura para que sea relevante y promueva la adquisición de la lengua. La segunda, es un estudio comparativo donde se analiza qué se hace y cómo se practica esta destreza en tres manuales de lengua española utilizados en las aulas de inmigrantes que saben leer y escribir en su primera lengua, pero que tienen un bajo o nulo conocimiento de nuestra lengua. Dos de estos libros son de texto, mientras que el tercero es material on line al alcance de todos. Hacemos un recorrido por el tratamiento de la lectura y, de forma inevitable, por la escritura en estos manuales, llegando a las conclusiones derivadas del estudio comparativo entre ellos en la evolución de dicho tratamiento en los aspectos que nos parecen fundamentales.

Profile of teachers of Spanish as Second Language for Adult (non Literate) Immigrants

This paper examines the profile of teachers of adult immigrant learners with low level of formal instruction. The data was collected in two on-line surveys filled out by teachers from Spain and from other countries; the analysis was conducted on the Spanish answers, followed by comparison with those of teachers from the other countries. The results reveal that among the Spanish teachers there are more volunteers, and that they have less experience than the rest of the respondents. In general, all respondents have received few hours of training and proportion of those surveyed are unaware of their students’ educational level. At the end the author argues that there is a need for training for teachers who work with this cohort of adult learners.