BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN NATIVE LANGUAGE AND SECOND LANGUAGE LITERACY INSTRUCTION: A NATURALISTIC STUDY
Linda Watkins-Goffman, Hostos Community College
Victor Cummings, Howard Community College
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the context in which Dominican students attain native language literacy, in order to improve on English as a Second Language instruction. An ethnographic study was conducted in a redacción class at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, using interviews, taped transcripts, and videotapes. The researcher sought to identify specific classroom behaviors used by both the professor and the students as they learned to improve their reading and writing skills in their native language. The results of the study showed that students practice analysis and categorization of text, summary and text-related writing in a teacher-directed class setting. In English as a Second Language classes in the United States, therefore, they would need preparation in expository writing and reader response activities. Pedagogical implications for teacher-training curricula are included.
English as a Second Language students who are recent immigrants to the United States have much more than English grammar and lexicon to learn. They have to learn to take part in an academic discourse community which may be very different from that of their native culture. When writing or speaking, they are required to address an unfamiliar audience. Often, their teachers have little in common with those from their native countries. Furthermore, to achieve successfully in the academic context, they have to learn the target culture's way of knowing and learning. For example, ESL students have to learn_in many cases for the first time_to write an essay arguing a position on a topic from their own point of view.
In order to better understand the problem that ESL students have adjusting to a new way of thinking and learning in English classes, the researcher set out to understand more about learning from the bilingual students' perspective. Although there has been research on the teaching of bilingual students, less is known about pedagogical practices in the teaching of literacy in the native country. Research might benefit those who teach ESL students, enabling them to better address educational difficulties related to the cultural transition. For example, a broad ethnographic inquiry could tease out context variables pertinent to understanding second language writing. With these ideas in mind, this researcher went to the Dominican Republic to study a redacción class in order to create a finely grained description of a native language class and the context in which literacy was acquired.
Every researcher who has examined writing in a school or college context has conceded that the acquisition of second language literacy_especially writing _ is extremely complex. In fact, literacy can be viewed as a tool of its culture and, diachronically, has served the goal of society in some way, such as recordings for trade and ownership (Goody, 1986). In addition, the concepts of teaching writing and reading vary widely from culture to culture. A study that involved students, teachers, and researchers in fourteen countries found that the definition of writing and reading could include a wide variety of tasks, including note-taking, business writing, and summarizing (Purvis, 1992). From culture to culture, perceptions toward literacy tasks in the classroom may vary. For example, Song (1995) found that East Asians' need to be submissive to the teachers, an attitude resulting from respect, made it difficult to do critical thinking as an assignment in reading instruction, in which the reader is asked to interpret independently and to derive a theme from the text. She also found that the overdependence on text greatly limited students' ability to construct their own meaning and point of view. Kang, Kuehn, and Herrell (1994), in their study of Hmong literacy, found that Hmong students relied heavily on teacher directions and were hesitant to participate in front of peers. McKeon (1994) found that Korean-American children learning literacy skills tend to be asked factual questions by their parents, who constantly monitor, evaluate, and correct them (in Genesee, 1994). This contrasts strongly with a common request in U.S. elementary classroom, to "make up your own story."
Inter-cultural transfer of skills has been investigated by researchers with the goal of better understanding bilingualism and the implications for education. However, several studies by Cummins and Swain (1992) suggest that highly literate bilinguals can have an advantage not just in their linguistic skills but in their problem solving skills. A high degree of literacy can effect a positive transfer of both writing and reading skills. Besides skills, prior knowledge and experience, including classroom experience, can also be transferred. Transfer can be either positive or negative, depending on many factors, such as the distance or similarity between aspects of languages contrasted (Odlin, 1989). For example, if the two languages being compared have different writing systems, transfer would not be possible on the orthographic level of the languages involved. In a like manner, if the two language literacy classes are different, the student will have some difficulty transferring what they have learned.
Previous research has examined differences in written discourse across English and Spanish cultures as they affect transfer. An important study by Montano-Harmon (1991) has described discourse features (enumeration, addition, summation, result, explication, illustration, contrast, and transitional words and phrases) in fifty expository essays by four groups of bilingual Mexican-American high school students. Their texts were marked by repetition of the ideas several times, with each repetition more formal than the one before it. This is a stylistic variation interpreted by some researchers as a result of the historic cultural tradition of spoken poetry and epic literature (Ostler, 1981). The Mexican-American writers deliberately digressed from the topic, whereas, the Anglo-American writers relied more on linear rhetoric, using enumeration as a transitional device, such as first, next, then, and after that.
More recent research has examined rhetorical strategies in student persuasive writing. Ferris (1989) examined 60 persuasive writing samples, half of which were by native English speakers and the other half by non-native speakers. He found that the differences between the two populations might be due to lack of preparation for argument writing. One of the results of the study was the recommendation for more investigation into the educational background of ESL students entering as college freshmen, especially with respect to learning to write persuasive discourse.
Aside from differences in rhetorical styles, social construction of knowledge within discourse communities has become an important area of research (Leki, 1991) since these constructs can transfer to the second language literacy acquisition process. Socialization styles in the classroom vary from culture to culture; students often come from classrooms in which interaction between peers and between students and teachers is nonexistent. Instead, teacher-dominated environments tend to be the rule in some of the cultures studied (Ramirez, Yuen, Ramey, and Pasta, 1991).
In addition to socialization skills, students have to learn to share strategies with native English speakers for reading and interpreting text and write in ways similar to a common discourse community. Learning a new cultural syntax, they must learn how to organize ideas in the manner and style that the new academic community in the target culture requires (Fish, 1980). Other investigations studying literacy task performances noted that successful performance on a given literary task depends on the learner's schematic repertoire and the expertise monitoring the retrieval of old schema. Schema theory, which may include the learner's native language experience with pedagogy and literacy, places a strong emphasis on prior knowledge in the reader's ability to interpret text. The kind of native language reading instruction a student has had is key to success in learning to read in a second language (Carrell and Eisterhold, 1983). In the existing literature, there has been research into native language student's prior literacy experience as it affects learning. In research by Herrington (1989), students were positively assisted in their progress toward making sense for themselves out of the literature they were studying by the teacher's interactive style. However, there is little research that takes socio-cultural factors, including prior experience with literacy and schooling, into account. Although there are some studies on Asian populations, there is a specific scarcity of studies involving populations from the Dominican Republic. In order to help fill the existing gap, this ethnographic study was taken. The focus of the investigation would be the prior knowledge that the students had acquired about literacy that would be transferred to the second language classroom.
In order to study the relationship of writing to the cultural context, the researcher attended a redacción class for entering freshmen at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) for three weeks, comparable to a commonly required composition course at U.S. colleges. From all reports, the UASD, reputed to be the oldest university in the New World (founded in 1538), promised to be representative of many Caribbean and Central American colleges. Through the office of Academic Research at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College of the City University of New York, the Caribbean Exchange Program and the Departamiento de Letras de UASD, access was obtained to visit a class of a highly esteemed teacher, who, for the purpose of this paper, will be called Profesora Marquez.
The following questions evolved to guide our investigation: (1) How does a native language class differ in an Hispanic culture, specifically the Dominican Republic, from an English as a Second language class in the United States? (2) How are these differences shaped by the teacher's manner of conducting class (e.g., the way she projects her role, gives assignments, etc.)? (3) How are these differences likely to effect students' transfer of literacy, or reading and writing skills, to English classrooms?
In order to acquire first hand knowledge of Dominican writing instruction, the researcher attended a class of Lengua Española Basica taught by Profesora Marquez. This esteemed 28-year member of the Faculty of Humanities and author of the textbook designated for the course has two Masters from the Universidad Autonoma, one in literature and one in psychology. The course of redacción is similar to that taught in Mexico and many South American countries which is required of all beginning college students before they can take courses in their major field. The course contained sixty 18- to 23-year-old students, all graduates of secondary schools, from various locations in the Dominican Republic, who had chosen the UASD because of its excellent reputation academically and low tuition costs. Since there is no "freshman composition" course at the UASD, this class was in a similar position in the college curriculum, fulfilling similar purposes in preparing students to perform academic literacy tasks. It also provided an opportunity for the researcher to understand what prior knowledge about language and literacy high school students possess when they begin higher education.
The researcher was introduced by Pra. Marquez as a visiting friend from the United States who wanted to audit the class. Beginning in the second week, she attended three weeks of the six-week course that met for two hours a day, four times a week. In order to follow the curriculum, in her role as participant, she was given the textbook, Lengua Española Basica-Tecnicas de Expresion authored by Pra. Marquez and another colleague. The students seemed to perceive the researcher as a particularly avid student, because they were collegial and shared notes and assignments with her when asked. As planned, the researcher took notes, audio- and videotaped classes, and interviewed some students and the profesora. Each day, all tapes were transcribed in Spanish in order to avoid the translation effect and to insure authenticity. Every effort has been made to keep the original meaning intact, even though the data is translated to English in this text.
The role of the researcher was that of participant observer, sharing classwork and homework, collecting all writing done in class, interviewing the students and professor before and after class. In other words, the researcher became both an insider and outsider in order to both understand the students' experience and evaluate it objectively as an observer (Spradley, 1979).
Then, guided by the preceding research questions, all the data was carefully reviewed and analyzed for salient themes which would help create a finely-grained description (Geertz, 1973) of the class in order to better understand the entering freshman's perspectives on learning language, specifically reading and writing skills.
According to the profesora, the goal of this class was for the students to learn the rudiments of basic communication to help them in their careers. The researcher observed that this meant working through the course of study in the profesora's book, which was comprised of short articles and written exercises which focused on the following: (1) Distinguishing between the main and supporting ideas in paragraphs, including writing summaries. (2) Categorizing texts into types and levels of discourse. (3) Learning the use of accents, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, vocabulary and syllabification.
The textbook contains many genres of written discourse, including scientific writing, narration, poetry, fiction, and expository essays. All texts used were either from authors from the Dominican Republic or another Latin American country. These were discussed in class, and corresponding exercises were completed or reviewed. For homework, students were to complete exercises consisting of questions eliciting short answers (e.g., the identification of main ideas in the texts). These would be brought to class for evaluation, discussion, and review. Course evaluation consisted of these exercises, completion of two partial exams, and one final. All written exercises were related to material contained in the textbook.
One of the most salient characteristics of the work of the class seemed to be an emphasis on analyzing and categorizing language tied to social and literary context, or sociolinguistics. Linguistic convention regarding social position was evident in a class discussion led by the profesora in the following excerpt from a tape of a class on June 18. The class had just read paragraphs of different types of text and written answers to questions related to context of these tests.
Professor: What does the type of language one uses tell about a person? Student: The social level he or she is from; if the person is educated or cultivated.
Professor:What else? Several students: The region that one is from.
Professor: What kind of language contributed to effective communication? Student: Depends on the intention of the communication.
Professor: When you want to express yourself, you use the best kind of language for that context.
(Student reads the following from the text) "It depends on the position of the person who is talking and the kinds of language."
Student: The use of language is a kind of relationship. Professor: The kind of communication will be different when the person is saying "Put on your shoes" at home than when a person speaks here in class. The person who is the receiver will determine the kind of message sent. The kind of language will catch the attention of the listener and predispose him or her to listen.
In the preceding interchange, the profesora was using examples from the textbook to demonstrate the levels of language for the purpose of communication. The stated goal was "to encourage students to think precisely and objectively about written discourse of many types, from the physical sciences, the social sciences and literature." As the researcher observed the class, it seemed to her that the profesora wanted the students to understand the variety of language and the relationship of type of language to context.
Students practiced analyzing the texts by reading them aloud in class and answering written questions from the text. In addition, literary analysis was done by using terminology (see list of terms that follows transcript) of what they had read for homework. Here is a transcript illustrating such a lesson from the class on June 15 in which students had read an excerpt describing dawn in the city.
Professor: What is it about? Student #1: The awakening of a city.
Professor: What level of language is used? Student#2: Literary
Professor: What type? Student #3 Expressive
Professor: The author is Peruvian. What does he use to describe the city? Student #3: "Celestial and magic hour." These are elements that the author uses to help us imagine what the city is like at that hour.
Professor: The author feels that the city has something, magic something enchanted. This is the point of view of the author. What are the literary figures that the author uses? Student #4. Metaphor.
The answers to the preceding questions are derived from the following classification of literary and communicative terms; these particular terms are found under the headings LEVELS OF LANGUAGE and LITERARY FIGURES. These terms are included in the course's curriculum; students learn their meanings in text exercises containing examples of the following:
| LITERARY FIGURES: | Metaphor, Sinestra, Paradox, Irony, Hyperbole |
| LANGUAGE: | Cultivated, Picturesque, Popular |
| INTENTION OF LANGUAGE: | Demonstrative, Scientific, Poetic |
| STYLE: | Concise, Simple, Objective, Direct or Indirect, Original, Spiritual, Material, Clear |
| TYPES OF VOICE: | Sentiment, Tone, Adornment, Gender, Epoch, Kind of Author, Nationality* |
| LEVELS OF LANGUAGE: | Literary, Technical, Discursive, Expressive, Active, Colloquial, Rural, Social Dialect |
| FORMS OF EXPRESSION: | Narrative, Argumentative, Descriptive, Expository |
| * Aspects that influence the voice of the writer | |
In order to understand the uses of writing from the point of view of a student, the researcher interviewed a student, Pedro, who told me he picked Profesora Marquez because she had the reputation for being the best professor in the department for teaching of redacción.
Researcher: What kind of writing did you do in high school? Pedro: The professor sometimes asks to write the characteristics of a story; then we have to write our own story, following the model given us. She would say, "In your own imagination tell a story, and type it and hand it in."
Researcher: How often did you have to do this? Pedro: Seldom, but we do it. It (the writing) is more about literature.
Researcher: Would you say that there is a lot of emphasis on literature here, in general? Jose: Yes, here there is more about works of literature than anything else in language classes. Here, the professor puts a lot of emphasis on the analysis of literary works. Many works are assigned the students to analyze, particularly in the more advanced studies in the area of literature.
Jose's account of the emphasis on text-based writing, that is, writing always tied to reading and responding to text formulaically, was corroborated by four professors, all of whom were from the Department of Humanities and the Department of Foreign Language. From this and other studies previously mentioned, it seems that language studies in this culture is text-centered, rather than reader-centered.
Profesora Marquez was an effective teacher; students told the researcher that they found her stimulating and enjoyed her class. In fact, she had the reputation of being one of the most talented professors at the UASD with regard to ability to attract and inspire students. In style, the classes that the researcher observed were traditional with the action stemming from the teacher, who led the class through the exercises in the text. In all the tapes of the 24 total hours of class time observed, 83% of the speaking was done by the teacher, who lectured on the content contained in her text, and 17% of the speaking was done by the students as they responded to the teacher or answered questions aloud in class. Most of the talk was intended to help students to analyze, to categorize, and to think critically and analytically about what was read.
Students responded enthusiastically to the teacher and the text, and for the most part, came to class prepared. The following categories of classroom talk were adapted from Dyson (1984) and Watkins-Goffman (1986) and from reviewing the data gathered in this study.
| Profesora's Talk | |
|
Function
|
Percentage of time
|
|
Explaning
|
50%
|
|
Directing/Eliciting
|
33%
|
|
Classifying
|
12%
|
|
Pesuading
|
3%
|
|
Modelling
|
2%
|
Here is a transcript of a taped class, which shows examples of three of the above categories of the Profesora's talk.
EXPLAINING:
Professor: It is said that Gabriel Garcia Marquez exaggerates reality to make things seem larger than life.
DIRECTING/ELICITING:
Professor: What is the characteristic of the level of popular language? What do we call it? Student: Active language.
Professor: What else? Student: Literary level.
Professor: Literary language, and there is an expression of colloquial language of country folk. (Nods to a student.) Student: There is a dialogue.
MODELING:
Professor: There are two styles of writing dialogue: Indirect and Direct. Here is indirect: "The child says to the teacher that her father had died." Direct: "The child said, `Teacher, my father has died.'" Direct quotation has to use quotation marks as punctuation.
Another difference in pedagogy observed was that the Profesora rarely called upon the students by name. Neither was attendance taken. Students always stood up when called upon. The teacher stood at the head of the class and directed the behavior in it. This was evident in each of the videotapes of the class. Careful examination of the videotapes revealed student behaviors which were formulaically interactive. Just as revealed by the preceding data, students responded to teacher questions about the text, recited responses, read aloud, or completed exercises either at their desks or on the board.
Based on the data from this study, the answer to the first research question `How does a native language class differ in an Hispanic culture from one in the United States?' is that literacy education at the UASD involves the ability to categorize, interpret, and analyze texts. If this class is at all typical, critical reading is interpreted as analysis of texts in terms of rhetorical and linguistic categories, or answering questions related to text in short answers. Summarizing and recognizing main and supporting ideas are all skills that are taught in a native language class. At Hostos Community College, a typical urban U.S. community college setting, students may spend some time engaged in the preceding exercises, but much more time is devoted to writing self-directed expository essays in which the writer has to convince the reader of his or her own point of view. Reading is more often focused on the reader's own understanding and perceptions, which in turn, effect the response to written text, whether oral or written, whereas reading at the UASD was more text-centered in interpretation, with priority given to understanding the author's point of view, rather than an inductive, exploratory approach to understanding text.
As for the second research question, `How are these differences shaped by the teachers manner of conducting class?' it is clear that the profesora felt she should direct the class toward the goal of understanding, analyzing, and categorizing the texts contained in the curriculum. Her style was that of a director and a leader in the learning process. According to the students in the class, she was successful due to her own personal charisma and skills at communicating both her knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject area. The majority of her time in class was spent directing, eliciting, and modeling correct responses to text for the students. However, a student who came to the United States and enrolled in literacy education would find it difficult to complete assignments not given in the UASD class, such as writing an expository essay in the manner of the typical freshman persuasive rhetorical model due to lack of practice with this kind of activity. Therefore, more brainstorming, discussion, and interaction would be important to help students form their own point of view and argue convincingly on a topic.
The answer to the question, `How do these differences affect the transfer of native language skills to the learning of English literacy here in the United States?'is that if students emigrated from the UASD, or any high schools where similar pedagogy is used, they would need numerous models both of English discourse in order to acquaint them with literacy and literary discourse here in ESL classes, or even English literature classes. They will have had limited experience with such questions that are open ended like "What is your opinion of ... ?" or "How do you feel about ... ?" These require a point a view that is non-formulaic and depends on the writer's use of creative thinking strategies, and students would need practice with group activities such as are often found in literacy classes in the United States. Teachers should model appropriate classroom group behavior, such as offering constructive feedback, as well as criticism.
Another technique that should be explained and modeled for students is collaborative effort, since there is a growing body of research that this kind of learning helps put students in charge of their learning processes and increases output (Swain, 1993). However, students will need help accepting advice from peers, since their only authority has been the teacher in native language classes. Teachers could assign those students who are faster learners to be mentors to model appropriate kinds of classroom behavior in an interactive class focused on making intuitive connections with texts. Checklists could be devised to help groups begin their group activities, such as a list of questions focusing on negotiation of their own meaning from text. For example, "What does this story remind you of?" "Has anything like this experience ever happened to you?" Teachers should be prepared to give much advice and guidance on how to answer open-ended writing assignments such as, "How would you have written a different ending to this story?" The students from the UASD class observed would have a difficult time with this, as would students from other cultures where the central focus is either the text or the teacher as the central authority and source of information.
At the same time, much can be transferred from the native language class to the second language class, especially with respect to reading and writing activities. ESL teachers should be made aware of the practice students have had in critical reading activities. The analysis of structure of text, summarizing, and focus on literary devices, will help students understand the common rhetorical devices in all discourses and reinterpret them in light of the unique features of English. For example, summarizing in Spanish could be transferred into learning to summarize in English as students have already learned the difference between central and supporting suppositions. Also, the sociolinguistic practice supplied by redacción class, as to the types of language usage and their contexts, are linguistic universals which could be applied to learning any language. For example, the excerpt from the class on page 397 showed the difference between formal and informal speech and direct and indirect. These aspects of language apply to English as well as Spanish and can be developed more easily in English as students already would have had practice.
Since literacy knowledge is transferred, then any text produced in English by an L2 learner should be evaluated cautiously. ESL teachers should examine their teaching practice for ethnocentric approaches toward the teaching of expository writing. Epistemology is culture-driven, and we should understand that the differences in educational practices will reflect societal contexts. Because rhetoric has a "cultural syntax," second language students need sufficient models and explanation so that they can more easily acculturate into a discourse community. Teachers of ESL need to help students find their voices in this culture and help them assert and develop their L2 point of view when they write expository essays. Teacher-training programs should include an exploration of these culture-specific differences and how they could be addressed pedagogically.
Finally, ESL teachers should be aware of the appreciation of literature, and that the Dominican culture has a rich literary history that many Hispanic students have acquired. The curriculum in the observed class contained selections from a variety of discourses and rhetorical models from a number of local authors such as Juan Bosch, Pedro Mir, Roberto Cassa, and the Colombian Nobel-prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Since text is already an emphasis for many Latino immigrants who have attended institutions like the one in this study, we should include more literature of all kinds in all ESL courses, capitalizing on the students' familiarity with text-related language learning. Also, critical thinking skills which have been emphasized in the native culture's redacción classes should be reinforced in ESL classes.
Finally, further research, both quantitative and qualitative, with this population and others, would develop insights gained from this study and identify new issues to be explored. More interchange should take place with countries from which international students come, in order to promote understanding and change expectations to ones which are more realistic and promising for the students' success.
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This research project has been funded by the CUNY Caribbean Exchange and The Research Foundation of the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York. The researcher would like to thank the Departamiento de las Humanidades, especially Profesora Rocio Bellini de Franco, the teacher whose class is described in the study (whose name shall remain anonymous), and the students of the UASD, especially José and Sonja.