The Positive Effects of Bilingualism and Biliteracy (If We Let Them Happen)

“If beginning L2 learners do not continue to develop both their languages, any initial positive effects are likely to be counteracted by the negative consequences of subtractive bilingualism. Thus, positive effects will not be sustained unless high levels of bilingual proficiency are attained” (p. 170)

Chapter 6 of Cummins’ book outlines different argument surrounding bilingual education, laying out both the opposing and supporting arguments. What interested me much more than the underlying theories Cummins presents, however, is his persuasive argument that bilingualism (or trilingualism!) has tremendous positive effects, but only if cultivated and actively sought. Throughout chapter 8 Cummins gives several inspiring examples of this bilingualism played out in schools from the preschool to secondary school level.

Cummins draws on data showing that cognitive and linguistic abilities are enhanced when a student is literate in two or more languages. He states that this result is because the bilingual child has more linguistic input than the monolingual child. The bilingual child has been exposed to more meaning making experiences than the monolingual child. In these cases, however, the students studied were fluent in both languages: they added a second language while continuing to develop their first language (p. 168). This is termed additive bilingualism.

What is scary is the inverse: subtractive bilingualism. When bilingual students lack support in their L1 and stop developing their fluency in that language, they learn their L2 only at a cost to their home language. I believe this is what immersion programs do, for the most part. The fact that the district I am in has primarily immersion programs reflects their beliefs about bilingual education and the benefits of knowing multiple languages fluently. School administrators, teachers, and parents all want the students to learn English as quickly as possible, and I truly believe (perhaps unlike Cummins) that these individuals have the best interest of the child at heart. However, while they learn English they very rarely continue to learn their L1 in an academic way. Many student enter school in transitional kindergarten or kindergarten with no formal education in their L1. Monolingual teachers can only teach English.

For schools, perhaps this means that a model that encourages bilingualism and biliteracy is ideal, such as a dual immersion school. In this model, students begin school learning the majority language in school, along with another language. Students might enroll in school with either language as their L1. Through this type of bilingual education, all students are benefiting from the linguistic benefits of formal education in two languages. Cummins writes that, “there is usually also a need for formal instruction in both languages to realize the benefits of cross-linguistic transfer” (p. 183). Dual immersion schools allow for this explicit teaching; students can reap the benefits of bilingualism. As Cummins would point out, these schools can also help students negotiate between languages and their supposed values in society.

Personally, I have many friends who were educated in multiple languages. They can understand words at a tremendously deep level. Their ability to communicate is much more broad than mine. This leaves me with no doubt that bilingualism is beneficial, personally as well as academically. It should never be looked at as a deficit.  

Cummins spends an entire chapter – chapter 8 – sketching images of schools that promote bilingualism and biliteracy. These schools fascinated me. They went beyond teaching language to teaching values and promotion of positive identities. For instance, the Oyster Bilingual School in Washington, D.C. states its goal as students becoming bilingual and bicultural. The language learning in this school represents something deeper: “diverse ways of interacting,” which are to be respected and upheld (p. 239). Similarly, the Bilingual Bicultural Mini School in East Harlem focuses on bilingual education, but also incorporates technology to enable students to investigate their own communities.

These stories are truly inspiring. Yet they, coupled with the data Cummins reveals in chapter 6, leave me puzzled. This is because I am going to be a teacher. I hope I will be a good teacher, even, with time and experience. But I am not bilingual. I probably will never be bilingual (given my attempt to learn French in high school and college with little lasting success). Further, I was raised in the mainstream culture. Quite frankly, growing up I had little awareness of other cultures and ways of living. Knowing these truths about myself, how can I provide my students with an L1 different from my own a beneficial and effective education? How can I create an environment that encourages their continued learning of their L1 if I do not know that language? I am wrestling with this as I read Cummins’ work. And in my residency placement how can I not be another educator facilitating, although unintentionally, subtractive bilingualism and coercive power relations?

I do not have answers to these questions. Not really. I don’t think I will have definitive answers. But I do think I can be aware. And maybe that’s a good first step. Knowing that my students would benefit from formal education in their L1 – Spanish, for all but one of my ELLs – and chances to use that language in school, I can attempt to bring in volunteers or materials that use pieces of their first languages. I can encourage them to pursue learning those languages more fully when the opportunities present themselves, such as taking high school language classes for native speakers. I can honor their cultures and linguistic backgrounds and try to learn about them. I should look for opportunities to weave those languages and their unique cultural knowledge into the classroom. Perhaps I could have a Spanish section in the library in my future classroom to encourage those who do read in Spanish to develop those reading abilities further. At the conclusion to chapter 8, Cummins writes that it takes courage for educators to step outside the bounds of what exists now and to proclaim that children have the right to develop their first languages (p. 253). Perhaps being a voice and an advocate is a role that I can take.

I want to explore this further this year in my classroom and through my ethnography. I think insight will come from other educators, perhaps those who are bilingual themselves. However, I think a potentially undervalued resource is the parents of my students. Many of the parents I will be speaking with for my ethnography are bilingual. Most do not have the same cultural background as I do. What do they want their children to experience in the classroom? Like the parents in East Harlem, do they wish there were bilingual education opportunities available to their children? Do they experience the value of their own cultures? I am looking forward to the experiences ahead of me that will allow me to begin exploring the answers to these, and many more, questions.

Strategies for Academic Language Acquisition: Relationships are the Key

“Knowledge of, and effective classroom implementation of techniques such as use of graphic organizers, cooperative learning, total physical response, developing learning strategies, peer tutoring, dialogue journals, authentic assessment, and so on are important but they do not necessarily translate into effective instruction. Much more crucial is the recognition that human relationships are fundamental to students’ academic engagement…For students to invest their sense of self, their identity, in acquiring their new language and participating actively in their new culture, they must experience positive and affirming interactions with members of that culture” (p. 132).

In chapter 5, Cummins lays out a framework for effectively teaching academic language to English Language Learners. The framework focuses on meaning, language, and use, with specific strategies in each component. However, Cummins’ larger argument is the necessity of this framework taking place in the scheme of positive and identity-shaping teacher-student interactions. In short, even the best strategies, the most researched techniques, and the most thoughtfully planned lessons are ineffective without interactions that affirm students’ cultural and linguistic background and knowledge.

Although the majority of the chapter is spent developing the focuses within the framework, Cummins never fails to point out that identity negotiations are always occurring. These negotiations can take place within coercive relations of power or collaborative relations of power. What Cummins does well in this chapter is spell out how strategies used within a classroom can foster the affirmation and positive creation of students’ identities. I found these strategies helpful; I can imagine them taking place in an average classroom (albeit one in which the teacher is striving for the well-being of the ELL students) and I have seen many of them in my own classroom.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Cummins’ framework is his third focus, a focus on use. This includes speaking and writing, two of what I believe are some of the most ignored aspects of academic language learning, especially for ELLs. One point the author makes is that for the use of language to be meaningful, students need to be provided with an authentic audience. I remember our instructor, Maria, sharing a similar concept last summer in our literacy class. She displayed a “big book” her class had collaboratively made. They wrote the story – each page was about Clifford – and illustrated it. They were motivated because they had an authentic audience: other classes. They were not students working on an assignment. They, in that moment, were authors and illustrators. I asked Maria in my reading notes how realistic it is that students consistently be provided with an authentic audience for their works of writing. She replied wisely: it is possible if the teacher is willing to make it possible. She suggested writing a newsletter to be sent home, working on a book to be published in the classroom library (which Cummins also discusses on p. 146), or sharing writing with other classes. These are all doable by teachers, with even minimal planning. I hope to instill in my current and future students a sense of purpose in their writing, encouraged in part by the knowledge that they are authors.

Interested in the subject of writing for a real audience, I did a quick Google search and came across an article explaining the importance of real audiences for student writers, but at the high school level. For the National Writing Project, high school English teacher and author Anne Rodier (2000) writes, “[Our students] have to believe that what they have to say is important enough to bother writing. They have to experience writing for real audiences before they will know that writing can bring them power.” (Here is the full article.) This ties in with what Cummins argues throughout his writing. Writing can bring power not only in the ways Rodier writes of (telling a story and providing a platform to elicit change). It can also form identity – especially for the bilingual student.

In oral language use children also need authentic audiences and they need the space to simply produce language. In my classroom, the students are preparing research projects for our upcoming “Diversity Day.” This project affords countless opportunities to produce language, and language of different kinds. When speaking to group members, students typically use colloquial language. When writing their research, their language is more formal and precise. The key component to this project, however, is that students will stand next to their project boards on the final day to share with parents, staff, and other students what they have learned. Providing this kind of audience motivates students to work hard on their presentations, but also gives them opportunities to be important. They are the ones sharing knowledge with others. They are becoming the experts.

However, there is always room for growth. Cummins writes that teachers and principals believe that too much time devoted to writing and language production will cause students to “suffer on the standardized tests used to police instruction” (p. 147). I have seen this to be true. Beyond the large project the students are working on, both the ELLs and the English-only students rarely write. Occasionally they work on guided writing assignments, but I have seen this mostly in conjunction with preparation for a trimester assessment. Authentic, identity-shaping writing, and even speaking, rarely occurs. This is not because the teacher does not want her students to develop these language skills. It is because she wants to provide her students with strategies to be successful when the test does come around. However, I wonder if in the long term of a student’s life it is more important that they know which bubble to fill in or if they have a positive and meaningful identity and feel confident in their language and communication abilities. I suspect it is the latter.

Cummins suggests daily writing or dialogue journals, in which the teacher responds to the student’s writing. I would love to incorporate some of these ideas into my own classroom, and I think it could be done with little interruption to the daily schedule. With some of my ethnography focus students, at least one of whom will be an ELL, I want to focus on literacy, both reading and writing. Journal writing might be a good tool to implement. However, as Cummins refers to throughout the chapter, I want to keep in mind the importance of striving to foster positive identity negotiations and be a learner of my students’ cultures. Through my ethnographic research I would like to learn how to better incorporate their linguistic and cultural backgrounds into their learning process. As Cummins writes, “in order to teach effectively [teachers] must learn from their students about students’ culture, background, and experience” (p. 133).

Reference

Rodier, A. (2000). A cure for writer’s block: Writing for real audiences. The Quarterly, volume 22 (number 2). Retrieved from http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/817

The Great Debate and Language Learners

“In a similar way to academic second language acquisition generally, the fuel that drives the development of reading competence is the extent to which students are enabled to invest their identities fully in the process of becoming powerfully literate” (p. 91).

In chapter 4 of Negotiating Identities, Cummins places English learners into the heart of the whole language “versus” phonics debate. While his primary argument is for extensive reading in the second language for English learner students, he also seeks to show that the debate as a whole is really quite fruitless and the lines drawn are too rigid. It is not necessarily an either-or debate; both whole language and explicit phonemic awareness approaches have their place in the learning of an ELL student.

Cummins' three points about the debate in regards to ELLs are thought provoking and could profoundly shape the ways English learners are taught literacy skills in their second language. First, he argues that ELLs should receive a phonics and phonemic awareness instruction, but in combination with meaningful exposure to print. Second, Cummins notes that isolated phonics instruction, such as the skill-and-drill method, is ineffective. Most interesting to me was Cummins’ third point: phonics instruction in the second language can begin early on in the child’s academic career, even if he or she does not have an extensive knowledge of the language. However, this does not necessarily influence the student’s comprehension of the material.

From this third point springs two conclusions. First, English learners can be taught phonics skills early on. Letter-sound correspondence and phonemic awareness skills are beneficial, and even Cummins argues that students who are not immersed in a literary environment prior to starting school need these skills to be explicitly taught. Second, though, is that phonics skills alone do not increase comprehension. I have seen this to be true. I used to work at a tutoring/after-school center in a city with a high population of Mandarin-speaking Chinese immigrants. Although most of the students I worked with were English speaking, for many English was their second language. One student in particular, a preschool-aged girl, was a recent immigrant from China. Her family spoke little to no English. Wanting her to be prepared to begin public school in the fall, they brought her to the program for tutoring. Somehow I wound up in the role of tutor, despite my lack of experience. I was given the books of the Hooked on Phonics program and nothing else.

To my surprise, after she learned the names of the letters and their main corresponding sound, she began to read the decodable rhyming books the series uses. Within two months she could read sentences such as, “The fox sat on the box,” after practicing the “-at” and “-ox” word families. It was exciting to see; she knew when she was decoding correctly and felt successful! At the same time, however, since the language was completely new to her, she had very little understanding of the meaning of the words. I attempted to provide that understand through the pictures but the ability to translate into Mandarin would have been so helpful – and eased some of my frustration! This student’s experience illustrates Cummins’ point. Phonics skills are useful, especially, I imagine, when learning a language wholly unlike one’s first language, such as in learning English with a Mandarin background. However, the purposes of reading – for meaning, to build knowledge, and for enjoyment – were absent from our hours turning the pages of decodable books.

Cummins sees immersing children in literary, print-rich environments with authentic texts as crucial to students gaining not only decoding skills (perhaps, for some, without explicit teaching) and phonemic awareness, but also reading comprehension. One reason is that students need to read. That, he points out, is how much of the low-frequency vocabulary and grammatical structures that compose academic language are learned. Students need multiple and varied exposures to that type of language.

The classroom where I am a resident is filled with academic language. The thinking maps that line the walls use words like “analogy” and “discipline” and “sequencing.” The students are hearing them and seeing them. In addition, the students have approximately 30 minutes of silent reading time every morning. Although some of this time inevitably gets eaten away by make-up quizzes, homework checking, and tardiness, it is still crucial to their success. Cummins cites a study in which students read silently or with a teacher in their L2 daily for 30 minutes. After two years, these students performed significantly better than students who had no such exposure (p. 111). These 30 minutes are not wasted time. Not only that, but silent reading allows them the freedom to choose books that are engaging to them, from both the classroom and school libraries.

As a teacher, I need to help my ELL students be immersed in language. I want them to enjoy reading; to do so, they need freedom to read what is interesting to each of them. I wonder how their identities would be shaped as biliterate students if they were given texts in Spanish as well as in English. Recently, my class read a story called Anthony Reynoso, Born to Rope. It was a short story about a Mexican-American boy who ropes with his father. The Spanish words in the story, though few, were exciting to the readers. Even if they do not consider themselves fluent readers in their L1 (Spanish), once they decoded the word or heard it read aloud, they excitedly said, “I know that word!” The knowledge of the language itself is a vehicle for shaping students’ identity not only as bilingual but also, hopefully, as biliterate students.

This relates back to the quote I cited at the beginning of this post. To become “powerfully literate,” one must see power in literacy. One must feel that it can shape one’s identity – for the better. If reading is reduced to a set of skills, it can be lackluster and boring. Students learning the language may feel discouraged, and this might even be damaging to their identities. At the very least, skill-and-drill techniques do not foster an identity of “powerful” bilingualism. Using phonics as one of the tools to help language learners – really, all students – discover reading as the door to a world of knowledge and rich meaning is crucial. Reading should be for meaning, for ELLs as well as for native English speakers, but a rich curriculum emerges through reading: vocabulary growth, grammatical understanding, content knowledge. To learn a language, one must read. 

Language Proficiency and Support

“The second misconception is in many respects the converse of the first. In this case, children’s adequate control over the surface features of English (i.e. their ability to converse fluently in English) is taken as an indication that all aspects of their ‘English proficiency’ have been mastered to the same extent as native speakers of the language. In other words, conversational skills are interpreted as a valid index of overall proficiency in the language.” (p. 61)

In chapter 3 of Negotiating Identities, Cummins shows that an English learner’s ability to use conversational English is not indicative of his or her ability to use academic English or his or her mastery of language conventions. Yet often, their conversational skills are extrapolated to indicate just that. The implications of this are vast: students can be moved out of bilingual education too soon, they can stop receiving language scaffolding and support, they can be seen as having a lower intelligence because they are not performing at grade level on standardized tests.

I have seen this to be true in my own experience in the classroom as well. One of my third grade students, an English learner, received an overall score of Early Advanced on last year’s CELDT test. While a score of either Early Advanced or Advanced is enough to “FEP out” (be reclassified as Fluent English Proficient), a student cannot do so if he or she receives a score of Intermediate on more than one of the four areas tested – speaking, reading, writing, and listening. My student scored in the Advanced range in speaking, but only Intermediate in the other three areas. From her conversational skills, one likely would not be able to tell that she is an English learner. She sounds like an average third grade student. However, her use of pronouns and prepositions in writing is less developed than most of her English-only peers. Although she likes reading and has good decoding skills, her comprehension is lacking. This student will be one of my focus students for my ethnographic study. I am hoping to provide her with meaningful instruction that supports her language learning but also celebrates her current language abilities, namely being bilingual. Many students are like her – seemingly completely proficient, but yet still needing support. I believe it is our job as educators to provide that support while maintaining a high value for what that student offers to the class as a bilingual individual.

What seems to happen, at least at the school I am teaching at, is that there is so much material that needs to be taught that ELD gets pushed aside. The English learners seem about on level with their English-only peers, especially by third grade. Perhaps, however, this is a false assumption based on their conversational and colloquial English proficiency.

The new ELD standards we have been studying recently seem to address this issue. They seem to integrate content standards with the ELD expectations and include new frameworks for the support English learners need at varying stages of language development. These standards point out that language learners need support based on their mastery of the content, prior knowledge, and language skills. For example, a student at the Bridging level (the most developed level according to these standards) might need “light linguistic support” when working with cognitively demanding and complex academic language (2012, p. 9). When the content involves familiar topics or common, conversational English, support might not be needed at all. But support should not be removed entirely. The document states that, following the Bridging stage, English learners transition to a stage of “Lifelong Language Learning” (2012, p. 9). Even in that stage, occasional support might be necessary. It should not be done away with completely based on the assumption that language learners either are not as able as their monolingual peers or have mastered every element of the English language. Both of these assumptions are often hasty and unfounded.

Another way that these new standards address Cummins’ argument in this chapter is in the way they address context-embedded and out-of-context language use. In addition, when combined with the Common Core State Standards, the ELD standards specify language development within both cognitively undemanding and demanding situations. For example, a student at the Emerging level should be able to have a simple face-to-face conversation with a peer. This is a context-embedded and low cognitive challenge task, what Cummins defines as a Quadrant A task. But the standards also address Quadrant B, a context-embedded but cognitively challenging task: at the Expanding stage, students should be able to read about familiar and unfamiliar topics in a contextualized setting. The standards hold students to a high degree of rigor, content knowledge, and language skills; they are also written in such a way that explains the support language learners need.

Anther point that Cummins made that resonated with me was the idea that there is more to English fluency than conversational English (BICS) and academic language (CALP). In addition, he identifies “discrete language skills” which include specific grammatical and phonological skills (p. 65). These are language structures that need to be taught directly or acquired through practice, such as through reading. Students whose first language is English, I believe, acquire many of these skills somewhat automatically. However, English learners need to be explicitly taught these language structures. The danger is teaching them only in isolation, such as through drills and worksheets. According to Cummins, out-of-context and cognitively undemanding activities (Quadrant C tasks) such as these fail to provide students with instruction that fosters their identity and creativity and that challenges them intellectually. I would also guess that these types of language reinforcements are somewhat ineffective.

Why are all of these language issues relevant? Not only do I have nine English language learners in my third grade class, but also the discussion about classifying English learners into proficiency levels and supporting their unique linguistic needs points to a deeper issue, as Cummins shows: students’ identities. In education of bilingual students, or students from socioeconomically disadvantages households, or students of color, the assumption is all too often made that these students have less _____. Less knowledge. Less parental support. Less ability, even. But in regards to language, Cummins cites Gee (2001), who writes,

“almost all children regardless of home income level have impressive language abilities and enter school with ‘large vocabularies, complex grammar, and deep understandings of experiences and stories’…Children who experience difficulties in school lack, not these general language abilities, but rather ‘specific abilities tied to school practice and school-based knowledge.’” (Cummins, p. 70).

Undervaluing or devaluing their language abilities undermines their identities and their potential identities. Accountability and placement tests can reflect this as well. On the speaking portion of the third grade language proficiency test, students are shown a picture of a compass and asked to identify it. Does their inability to come up with the word “compass” mean that they are not skilled at speaking English? Or does it show what they have and haven’t been exposed to? This is not a post about high-stakes testing, but the example points to the bias inherent in many measures used to determine levels of proficiency of English learners. It is not that classifying English learners is unnecessary. But there must be a way both to value the students’ first language and the identity that is already being formed, and to support their English learning appropriately (not assuming they are proficient overall or assuming they are intellectually incapable) while opening up positive identity options. With the English learners in my ethnographic study, I can also explore ways of assessing their content knowledge apart from their  language abilities. These are big tasks, but important ones for the many English learners I will teach in the years to come.