Professional Reading
Literacy and Oracy for 1st and 2nd Language Learners of English:
Similarities and Differences
25 May 2002
Professor Stephen May,
School of Education,
University of Waikato
NOTES:
In what follows, I want to highlight two potential similarities and two potential
differences between first and second language literacy acquisition, and the
pedagogical approaches that follow on from these.
SIMILARITIES (or an argument for the integration of ESL/EAL/ELL into
a wider literacy education strategy)
- Communicative Competence
We know that nearly all children enter school as fluent speakers of their
first language, with a clear/good understanding and command of its phonological
and grammatical aspects, and many of the sociolinguistic rules in terms of
the appropriate use of the language in particular social contexts.
On this basis, they can be said to have largely achieved 'communicative competence'
in the language (i.e. they can make and comprehend utterances appropriate
to their contexts - Hymes; Bruner).
Implication: That first language competencies of all students should
be actively fostered, wherever possible, in schools.
For second language learners, their first language should be used as a resource,
not seen as an obstacle, in order to facilitate first to second language transfer
(cf. Cummins' threshold and interdependence hypotheses).
High level second language proficiency depends on well developed first language
proficiency and recognition of this lends itself to an integrated approach.
- Integrated Language Learning / Language Across the Curriculum
The emphasis on active and experiential language learning, and of language
learning in authentic and meaningful contexts - pioneered in the 1960s in
the LAC movement (Bruner, Britten, Moffet) - has been subsequently modelled
and extended by whole language learning approaches for (predominantly) first
language learners, and by the communicative teaching and learning model (Krashen)
in the SL field.
Since these approaches are broadly comparable, and since they accord with
the acquisition of communicative competence (above), there is no reason why
the two cannot be brought more closely together.
In fact, David Corson, in his pioneering work on LPAC, has already done just
this - extending the first language concerns of issues of LAC to encompass
bilingual /second language speakers
Implication: This would address usefully the systemic separation of
1st and 2nd language learning within schools - most notable in the all too
easy ghettoisation of ESL teachers and learners, and the related view that
both fall short of the 'ideal' (first language) teacher and learner.
Integration of ESL students into mainstream classrooms also provides more
opportunity to interact in natural language settings with first language speakers.
Both these aspects and their policy consequences have been strongly evident
in recent times in the UK context.
Following on from the Plowden Report (1967), the Bullock Report (1975) and
the Swann Report (1985) there has been a strong emphasis on
- valuing (if not teaching) bilingualism / multilingualism in British schools
(although this doesn't necessarily challenge the ongoing dominance of English
as medium of instruction)
- the integration (rather than segregation) of bilingual/EAL students, and
their associated teaching and learning, in mainstream classrooms.
- the use of bilingual teaching assistants in classrooms, involved in individual
support of learners, translating, and whole class work (although usually instead
of, rather than in tandem with the teacher (Bourne).
Still, many of these teaching assistants remain 'untrained' and the presence
of a bilingual support person was also no guarantee of bilingual language use.
Meanwhile, EAL still lacks recognised subject status, and there is no systematic
initial teacher education in EAL as a main subject .
Having said that, there have been some recent developments which might improve
this state of affairs, including:
- Increase in support for teaching community languages (outside state schools)
- Establishment of 70 specialist language schools (including those teaching
'community' languages such as Panjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali and
Turkish)
- Prominent calls for greater funding for EAL
The 1998 National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in the UK was also specifically aimed
at ALL pupils (both 1st and 2nd language speakers of English), raising standards
for all primary pupils over 5 years (very similar to here), with an emphasis
on word, sentence, and text levels (although very little on other literacy modalities).
I will return to this in more detail in a moment.
DIFFERENCES (or cautions in moving to adopt an integrated approach to
1st and 2nd language literacy acquisition)
- Child-centred and explicit learning approaches
The above developments have occurred largely with, or in relation to an emphasis
on child-centred approaches to language and learning. But there is a potential
problem here for second language learners.
Basil Bernstein, for example, has been very critical of the tendency of progressive
approaches - via weak classification (boundaries) and framing (pace) - to
make implicit, or sublimate, the 'language rules', so it is harder for EAL/bilingual
students to 'pick up on' what is required. If they didn't, or didn't do so
as quickly as first language speakers, particularly those whose home language
practices corresponded with those of the school, EAL/bilingual students were
then judged by a monolingual English language standard as 'less mature' or
'less ready' language learners - a clear language deficit position.
Similarly, the emphasis in progressive approaches on the teacher as facilitator
sublimates the teacher's own implicit language/discourse understandings, (cf.
Bourdieu).
This has led some, like Jill Bourne, in the UK context, to argue that the
very prescriptive (strongly classified) nature of the NLS, and its literacy
hours (where everything is pretty much planned out to the minute, or strongly
framed), may actually have some advantages in making more explicit the literacy
demands of the curriculum. More broadly, the emphasis in the NLS on making
more transparent the role of language in teaching and learning in all curriculum
areas is also potentially useful here in raising metalinguistics awareness
(one's understanding of how language works).
Implication: more explicit approaches to literacy learning are not
necessarily bad/unhelpful per se. In the ESL area this also suggests that
the current communicative pedagogy orthodoxy, as with child-centred approaches
more generally, might need to be reconsidered/resituated slightly.
- Conversational and academic language proficiency
The greatest difference/challenge though to the integration of first and
second language literacy education lies in the clear distinction - as highlighted
most clearly by Jim Cummins - between conversational and academic language
proficiency - or if this has an unduly hierarchical ring to it, between conversational
and academic registers.
We know that second language learners can pick up conversational competence
within 2 years. Following from this, many educational programmes assume that
they have therefore also mastered the academic language required of the classroom
(which is abstract, disembedded, decontextualised, heavily print-oriented).
Not so. In fact, the key problem for bilingual/EAL students is this misplaced
assumption, since it most often results in the advocacy of English language
subsumption programmes, at the expense of first language/bilingual programmes.
(cf. California Proposition 227).
So, while students DO come to school with phonological and grammatical command
of their first language, they still have relatively underdeveloped lexical
and academic literacy related language skills. In fact, one of the principal
tasks of schooling is to develop this very specific academic literacy or register.
This in turn requires explicit teaching of genres, functions, and academic
language conventions - in other words, one of the principal functions of schooling
is to raise the metalinguistic awareness of students sufficiently to be able
to successfully employ academic/classroom language This also requires, by
necessity, engagement with much more low frequency vocabulary (often Graeco-Latin
in origin; cf. science - see Corson) and complex grammatical structures (eg.
passive constructions), developing what McWilliam 1998 (in Cummins) calls
semantic agility.
Example:
| Frequent A-S nouns |
Frequent G-L nouns |
| time |
chapter |
| people |
component |
| years |
context |
| work |
criterion |
| something |
data |
| world |
design |
| children |
focus |
| life |
hypothesis |
Frequency
A-S top category of usage (in Collins 6 point frequency scale)
G-L mean average of 3.25 (cf. Nation)
Implication: The specificity of academic language registers provides
a strong basis for the advocacy of bilingual education at least until middle
childhood - in order for students to specifically master these academic language
proficiencies in their first language (although these do not need to be 'fully
developed' before the introduction of a second language - cf. Hornberger).
Where bilingual education is not an available option, specific consideration
needs to be taken of the greater length of time (at least 5 years) that EAL
students have been found to take to master the complexities and nuances of
this academic register.
This also, crucially, requires an understanding of the plural nature of language
and literacy - that the acquisition of particular literacies, or language
proficiencies can only be understood and assessed in relation to their contexts
of use.
In this respect, even the conversational/academic language distinction is
over-simplified - we might be better, as Cummins does, to talk about different
degrees of cognitive demand (demanding/undemanding) and context (embedded/reduced)
On this basis, for example, Cummins argues that context embedded / cognitively
demanding teaching and learning activities - such as cooperative, task-based
learning; small group work; journal writing - are the best means for initiating
EAL students into more context reduced/cognitively demanding activities, where
much academic language proficiency resides.
NB: academic language proficiency is not synonymous with literacy; there
can be oral cognitively demanding/context reduced forms as well.
In other words, an integrated approach to literacy education does not
mean an undifferentiated approach.
We can and should, I believe, move to a more integrated approach to language
and literacy education - which encompasses first and second language teaching
and learning, as well as bilingual education and adult literacy. However,
in so doing, we must also recognise and maintain an explicit understanding
of the plural, and context-specific nature of the wide variety of language
proficiencies and literacies with which we are dealing.
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