Bidialectal etc

EML504 Language & language development

Module 2 Teaching and learning in TESOL communities

Overview | Schools and communities | A multiliteracies pedagogy | within the school | within the classroom

Module 1

Schools and communities- Bidialectal, bilingual and multilingual contexts

The phenomenon that we call a language - or simply 'language', it makes no difference - is a semiotic resource that has evolved in the course of the evolution of human cultures; I have usually referred to it as a 'meaning potential'. This meaning potential develops in the individual - no doubt reflecting its evolution in the species - simultaneously as a system and as a process, using these terms now in their Hjelmslevian sense: that is to say, the process of exchanging meanings engenders (brings into being) the system, and the system of meaning potential engenders (brings into play) the process. Language creates text, and simultaneously text creates language (Halliday in Halliday & Martin (Eds) 1981:14).

This section is mostly focused upon the readings in your booklet. The readings have been selected to develop your depth of knowledge about issues to do with multiculturalism, ethnicity, dialect variations, and social class issues in schools and communities. After all of the readings in the previous sections of the subject you should be very aware that schools do not exist in isolation. They are absolutely imbricated in cultural processes, just as interactions in the home are bound in the processes of social formations.

A language and multiliteracy pedagogy

This subject has been designed to support the development of your literacy teaching resources so that you might develop a pedagogic model of multiliteracies based on a sound knowledge of language and literacy theories. A language and literacy pedagogy for bidialectal, bilingual, and multilingual schools must be a situated pedagogy. That is, it must be embedded within the students' life worlds and interests. This does not mean the students are left within the parameters of those worlds. It is a teacher's responsibility to give students access to the social knowledge and power which will, in turn, give them access to justice and equity. That is, in developing a pedagogy a teacher needs to be aware that students bring to the classroom various understandings and uses of language and literacies. Not all of them will be in accord with the regulatory and instructional discourses of the educational system. Developing a pedagogy which will draw upon whatever resources the students brings from their cultures and communities is very important in giving students access to the broadest meaning making resources available.

It is important, too, at this time, a time of rapid technological and economic changes, a pedagogy must also be one based on an understanding that literacy is not a capacity within students' heads, but a resource for making meanings across a wide variety of literacies and social contexts.

Such a pedagogy should, therefore, teach the relationships between social contexts and textual purposes, including the structures and features of those generic texts which make meanings within specific cultural and social situations. This does not mean a deterministic formula, students should also have examined, through demonstration and modelling, the variability within generic text types. The aim is always to lead students through a process of scaffolding supports, which move from modelling, to joint construction toward independent performance.

However, it is important not to treat the stages of the teaching learning cycle mechanically. A sound pedagogy will maintain a perspective which focuses on choice, because it is through choosing from the meaning potential of our culture's semiotic systems, visual, written, spoken, aural, the Available Designs of our culture, that we have power over the meanings that we can make. That is why it is so important to demonstrate how different choices make different meanings.

The extract by Jones and Pickford et al (2000), is a very good example of a situated language teaching pedagogy. It offers a best-practice language-teaching cycle, based on demonstration, modelling, joint construction and independent construction within a multilingual education system aimed at home language maintenance and transition to English. By crossing a range of text types it demonstrates how meanings change as composers make different choices. You may then need to consider how you can show the way different meanings can be made in the same text type, through different choices. For example, you might take a folk tale and tell it making different choices from verb (process options).

Choose a short folk tale
Identify the kinds of verbs
1. (action, event, thinking, feeling, perceiving, relational, saying);
2. One or two participants
Rewrite the tale using verbs which are basically of one kind or the other.
If possible, contribute a contrasting pair to the Forum

Readings

This is quite a large collection of readings, but most of them are very accessible. They have all been chosen to scaffold your knowledge of the various issues involved in language and literacy teaching responsibilities within a diversity of cultural and social contexts. The hyperlink at the end of the collection takes a positive perspective on what is sometimes called "language interference". Skiba offers significant views of "interlanguage" usage, which are often represented as language interference, rather than as a meaning making resource which a person might draw upon for functional purposes. The chapter by Brice Heath is probably the most challenging, but her work was seminal in identifying the different language and literacy and literacy practices which set children within or without the regulatory and instructional discourses of the school. The chapter on pronunciation is included from your text book (Nunan 1995); it links to the reading by Fromkin et al (1985?) in Module 1 of the subject. It has been selected as a revision and to recontextualise that information within the contexts of bidialectal, bilingual and multilingual schools and communities.

Baker (1996)
Jones, Pickford et al (2000) Reading
Moore (1993)
Nunan (1995) Chapter 6
Hernandez (1997) Reading
Malin (1994) Reading
Kemelfield (1996) Reading
Brice Heath (1982) Reading
I. Singh (1999) Reading

C. Baker (1996). Languages in society. Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. pp. 35-50.
This article sets a frame for you to consider issues to do with bilingualism.

Note the meanings of diglossia
What are the factors which support language maintenance?
What are the factors which tend towards language loss?
What kind of research might you do to profile the community languages in your school?
How might these languages by supported?

Jones, P., with Pickford, S., Bracken, S., Maro, M., Nakin, L., Norman, P. (2000). Vernacular to English: bridging strategies training program. Port Moresby: Primary & Secondary Teacher Education Project (PASTEP), Papua New Guinea-Australia Development Cooperation Program, pp. 6-10; Sessions 1.2; 5.2; 5.3; 5.4; 6.1;6.2.
The extracts from the workbook for teachers in Papua New Guinea deals directly with a bilingual setting in which a pedagogy for language maintenance and transition to English are clearly illustrated.

Read the policies which support this approach to language teaching
Note the principles underpinning the teaching learning cycle
Design some lessons for your assignment based on situated practice and using the teaching-learning cycle illustrated in this reading.

A. Moore (1993). Genre, ethnocentricity & bilingualism in the English classroom. In Gender & ethnicity in schools. P. Woods & M. Hammersley (eds). London & New York: Routledge in assoc, with the Open University press, pp. 166-190.
This reading illustrates how a teacher might scaffold bridges across cultures to support students' meaning making choices. One teacher helps a student draw on the resources of both cultures, Bengali and English for meaning making purposes. Unfortunately, another teacher closes his student's options. There are many aspects of the subtle nature of scaffolding illustrated in this chapter.

D. Nunan (1995). Mastering the sounds of language, in Language teaching methodologies: A textbook for teachers, Chapter 6, pp. 100-115.
This chapter covers most of the important issues in teaching pronunciation. This chapter represents a different kind of scaffolding. Most people do want to get their pronunciation right, but flexible attitudes are valuable, too. Remember, too, that all lessons are pronunciation lessons; at times though you will focus on that aspect of language learning.

Makes notes on contrastive phonology
How important is contrastive phonology in your situation?
Choose ten tasks to teach specific aspects of pronunciation
Investigate one of Nunan's research topics
Contribute your findings on the forum, or to your assignment group.

H. Hernandez (1997). Cultural processes. Teaching in multilingual classrooms: A teacher's guide to context, process, and content. Merrill Prentice Hall: New Jersey, pp. 53-67.
Hernandez writes of the multilingual, multicultural classroom. Given all the materials we have been reading on the embedding of the subject in processes of cultural meaning systems, it is not any wonder that we often experience a sense of dislocation and when we cross cultures and enter hybrid spaces. Hernandez discusses the experiences and confronts the issues of "Culture Shock". She also uses the term, "enculturation", often used in Second Language Acquisition Theory. The related term is "acculturation".

Consider Hernandez's recommendation of "cultural therapy".
Can you see any problems with it?

G. Kemelfield (1996). Community voices, teenager perspectives: English in the lives of communities. In Desert schools, Volume 2. The research report. Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. AGPS: Canberra, pp. 21-32.
This is a collection of writings by Aboriginal students. There is a definite sense of the young people's voices. It seems to me that their expressions of shyness, and dislike of being questioned would make Hernandez's "cultural therapy" very out of place and inappropriate. This is another instance where a practice must be considered in its cultural context.

M. Malin (1994). Why is life so hard for Aboriginal students in urban classrooms? The Aboriginal child a school: A national journal for teacher so Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Vol 22 No 2 July/August.
This is a heart wrenching illustration of how we, as teachers, can fail to see the resources students bring from other cultural and social contexts.

If you had the opportunity what advice would you give to the kindergarten teacher who is described in this article?
What do you learn from this research? (I was actually bothered by the idea that a researcher had watched the child's mistreatment and fading will to learn and had done nothing. Research in someone else's classroom is always problematic, it is a very delicate ethical situation. There was also the idea that the researcher should be the objective observer, but these days the role of participant-researcher who is far more involved in kinds of action research is far more appropriate - and ethical.

S. Brice Heath (1982). What no bedtime story means: narrative skills at home and school. In B. B.
Schieffelin & E. Ochs (1986). Language socialization across cultures. London: Cambridge University Press, pp.97-124.
In this chapter Brice Heath reports on the dislocation between two communities and their school. The third community shares the pedagogic language and practices of the school. One of the important things to note is how the three communities "take from texts". This research is related to the research reported by Geoff Williams (2000) (See the topic Adult-child interactions).

Summarise the different literacy practices of the three communities.
What might the school have done to support the children from Trackton and Roadville into the literacy practices of the school?

I. Singh (1999). Language and ethnicity. In Language, society and power: An introduction, L. Thomas & S. Wareing (eds). Routledge: London, pp. 83-97.
This is a very readable article which makes important points about ethnicity and power.

How does Singh define ethnicity?

Identify the way prejudice is "signed".

How are children caught between their loyalty to their communities and school practices?

Link
Richard Skiba (1997). Code Switching as a Countenance of Language Interference http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Skiba-CodeSwitching.html from: The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III, No. 10, October 1997 http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/ [Accessed 13 April 2001].
Comment
This article offers very important perspectives on interlanguage usage.

Don't forget to design lessons based on the teaching-learning cycle illustrated in the Jones, Pickford et al reading ****