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.