Volume 29, Number 3 Fall 2005 ABSTRACTS |
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Effects of Dyad Reading Instruction on the Reading Achievement of Hispanic Third-Grade English
Language Learners This article systematically reviews research on elementary reading programs for English language learners and other language-minority students. It focuses on studies that compared experimental and control groups on quantitative reading measures. Among beginning reading models, research supported structured, phonetic programs emphasizing language development in both native-language and English instruction. Tutoring programs were also supported. For upper-elementary reading, research supported a broad range of programs, but particularly effective were programs using cooperative learning, extensive vocabulary instruction, and literature.
Dario J. Almarza Valerie Malabonga, and Dorry M. Kenyon This article describes the development of a Spanish-spelling measure designed to assess the progress made by Spanish-English bilingual children from Grade 2 to Grade 5. Different stages of measure development are described, such as the selection of the focus features, the pilot phase of the assessment, and the finalizing of the operational version. Two underlying attributes characterize the spelling measure described here. First, it is developmental, meaning that it contains a wide variety of features and items that differ according to spelling difficulty, such that the assessment is able to measure the growth of Spanish-spelling ability over the full sequence of the upper elementary grades. Second, it is contrastive, as it was designed to detect some areas of potential crosslinguistic influence from English to Spanish. The combination of these two characteristics makes this spelling measure a unique tool for assessing the development of spelling ability by Spanish-English bilingual children.
Language maintenance has been an issue debated whenever languages come into contact. This paper presents a detailed discussion of the reasons most often cited as to why languages should be maintained, with a specific focus on Australia because of the country’s multilingual makeup. Australia currently has about 150 aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages still in use, and more than 100 languages other than English are spoken by its immigrant population. However, these diverse language resources have been allowed to steadily decline. The arguments for the maintenance of Australia’s languages are categorized loosely based on Thieberger’s (1990) work and each of the arguments is discussed: (a) group intergrity and group membership, (b) identity, (c) cultural heritage, (d) social-humanitarian and economic implication, (e) assimilation, and (f) cognitive development and academic achievement. This paper argues that there are many apparent advantages to maintaining languages.
Tonika Duren Green, MyLuong Tran, and Russell Young The cultural disparity between teachers and students has been a concern among educators for quite some time. While the student body grows more ethnically heterogeneous, non-Hispanic Whites, especially women, continue to dominate the teaching profession. Ethnicity, language, and socioeconomic status (SES) all play a critical role in the education of our students. Starting in 1994, California has required teachers who provide instruction for English- language development to have the Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development or Bilingual Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development certificate. The purpose of this study was to compare beginning teachers from these two certification programs regarding their cultural backgrounds and initial employment placements. More specifically, the study investigated the linguistic, ethnic, and SES makeup of schools where they found initial employment. Secondly, this study investigated whether the two programs differentially attracted candidates by gender, age, linguistic background, SES, and cultural backgrounds. Results indicate that teachers often teach students with characteristics and backgrounds similar to their own. Teachers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds taught more students from diverse backgrounds. Moreover, teachers who came from culturally, linguistically, and economically disadvantaged (low-SES) backgrounds appeared to be more attracted to a certificate program that allowed them to gain the skills and abilities to work with students from similar backgrounds.
Hegemonic Multiculturalism: English Immersion, Ideology, and Subtractive Schooling Aimee V. Garza and Lindy Crawford This article presents a case study of an elementary school situated within a prestigious school district that has undergone rapid demographic change in recent years. The authors explore how the school has accommodated growing numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse students while at the same time struggling to maintain district standards. In order to further our understanding of the process of subtractive schooling, a critique of an English-immersion program deemed “successful” is provided by examining the discourses that define what success means in an inclusive setting. The authors theorize the concept of hegemonic multiculturalism to explain the transitional nature of a school culture defined by dissonance between the ideology of multiculturalism and the school’s pervasive assimilation agenda. Within this transitional space, success is defined quite narrowly in terms of immigrant students’ level of assimilation, fluency in English, and performance on standardized tests. Although the school community claims to value bilingualism and student diversity, instructional practices inadvertently devalue these qualities in the name of equality for all.
WAR in the Media: Metaphors, Ideology, and the Formation of Language Policy In 2000, the Arizona Proposition 203 campaign gained overwhelming public approval by claiming that Arizona’s bilingual education programs impeded English-language learning of language-minority students. Established within a context of educational and social antipathy, it is necessary to look at the impetus for language policies like Proposition 203 and how they are promoted to the public. This project is based on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) work with metaphor theory to uncover the rhetorical strategies applied in the media by the English for the Children campaign to position Proposition 203 in a favorable light. Grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis, Santa Ana’s (2002) metaphor analysis model is applied here to unveil the most prominent metaphors used to degrade bilingual education in public discourse. While many metaphors were applied in this debate, this work concentrates on the multivalent metaphor PROPOSITION 203 AS WAR to expose the underlying ideology of Proposition 203 and its supporters. The metaphor of WAR was purposely implemented to construct a context of violence and heroism. This study exposes the rhetorical strategies used by opponents of bilingual education and highlights the nature of metaphor as a tool of persuasion.
Hispanic High Schoolers and Mathematics: Follow-Up of Students Who Had Participated in Two-Way Bilingual Elementary Programs Kathryn Lindholm-Leary Research shows a serious underrepresentation of Hispanic students entering the math, science, and engineering fields, possibly fueled by a large gap in math achievement between Hispanic and Euro-American students. The current study addressed this concern by examining the general school-related attitudes, coursework, and achievement, with a focus on math for 139 high school students—Hispanics who were previous English language learners, native English-speaking Hispanics, and Euro-American English speakers—who had been enrolled in a two-way bilingual program throughout elementary school. The results showed that all three groups of students had positive attitudes toward math and school in general and were scoring at grade level in math. They were taking higher level college preparation math courses and getting mostly average grades (B’s and C’s) in those courses. These results suggest that the two-way bilingual program may provide the academic preparation and schooling attitudes, including in mathematics, that enable all three groups of students to be more successful than the average Hispanic and low-socioeconomic status students described in the literature.
Learning English Bilingually: Age of Onset of Exposure and Rate of Acquisition Among English Language Learners in a Bilingual Education Program Jeff MacSwan This article asks whether children enrolled in a bilingual education program learn English in a reasonable amount of time, and whether older children learn English faster than younger children. Children (N = 89) were found to achieve parity with native English speakers in a range of 1 to 6.5 years and in an average of 3.31 years on measures of English language. Indirect comparisons with other data suggest that children in bilingual education programs learn English as fast as or faster than children in all-English programs, and an ANOVA analysis indicates that older school-age children in the sample learn English faster than younger children, F(4, 84) = 9.037, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .268. The evidence supports the underlying rationale of bilingual education programs; in addition, the authors argue that English-only programs may inhibit successful learning of academic subject matter.
Reading Trajectories of Immigrant Latino Students in Transitional Bilingual Programs Leslie Reese Using data from a random sample of Latino students in California, tracked throughout their elementary and middle school years, this paper examines ways in which outcomes vary for students of similar language and socioeconomic background who are initially instructed in their native language in transitional bilingual programs. As the students made the transition to instruction in English, which took place for most students in the sample between Grades 2 and 4, all students experienced an abrupt decline in performance on standardized reading test scores in English. However, performance trajectories after transition took markedly different paths, with higher achievers returning to pre-transition rates of performance as lower achievers continued an achievement decline that began for many while still being instructed in Spanish. The paper also examines school factors potentially associated with variations in performance (school-wide reform and strong kindergarten program) for subsets of the sample.
La Enseñanza del Discurso Académico a Estudiantes Bilingües en los Estados Unidos: Reflexión y Estado de la Cuestión Aixa Said-Mohand
Research in Practice
Byeong-keun You This preliminary study provides an interpretive reading of focus group interviews of four Korean American children in the Phoenix metropolitan area. It examines how these Korean American children are negotiating their ethnic identity as Korean Americans while learning Korean as a heritage language. It shows that maintaining heritage language is important to Korean American children in terms of helping them have a positive ethnic identity. This study provides a viewpoint on learning heritage language and ethnic identity from the perspectives of young Korean Americans.
Book Review Do You Speak American? Reviewed by Michael J. Orosco University of Colorado at Boulder
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