Supporting Oral Communication Development in Bilingual Children

1. Chapter 6 Foregrounding Oral Communication

2. Simultaneous First and Second Oral Development • Bilingual children develop: • Flexibility with metalinguistic concepts • Early understanding of cultural norms • An understanding of signification systems (body language, prosody, gestural cues)

3. Simultaneous First and Second Oral Development • Teachers should: • Draw on student’s background knowledge • Be aware of potential conflicts with student’s previous schooling or home experiences • Model unfamiliar oral language responses • Allow for adequate waittime • Scaffold instruction • Strive for continuity between home & school

4. Developing Oral Communication in Sequential Language Acquisition • Early language development with literacy as a goal involves oral practices based on meaningful uses of printed material: • Question and answering routines • Sharing time with books • Storytelling • Illustrating stories and sharing them • Creating games • Reciting poems/singing • Dramatization

5. Developing Oral Communication in Sequential Language Acquisition • Practices with print prepares students to think and use language for learning • Engagement in relevant and sustained oral practices is necessary in the classroom • Be aware of interference from the first language, but realize that not all student will progress through the normal developmental pattern at the same pace.

6. Language as a Resource • Research demonstrates: • How language is used as social action • How teacher’s oral interactions with her students need to be monitored • Distribution of turns, student recognition,sanctioning of behaviors • How both the physical settings and the speakers’ backgrounds and influences have bearing on oral interactions

7. Language as a Resource • Teachers need to teach beginning second language learners how daily social interactions are affected by: • frame • participation structure • positioning • paralinguistic elements

8. Classroom Language Learning • Teachers should: • Examine with their students the ways people communicate with each other and discuss the underlying values and attitudes. • Help students recognize which language to use in different social situations and offer them alternatives for different audiences.

9. Subtractive Bilingualism • Subtractive Bilingualism includes educational practices where: • Children are often expected to give up their L1 in favor of their L2 • L1 is not viewed as an asset, lack of L2 viewed as a deficit • Transfer benefits of L1 L2 not recognized

10. Second Language Acquisition Research • Input hypothesis • Krashen: comprehensible input = (i+1); Credits the learner’s subconscious processes • Interactional hypothesis • Long: active communicative efforts to understand and be understood • Output hypothesis • Swain: attempts at output allow learners to test hypotheses about L2 and progressively produce more accurate, coherent, conventionalized language

11. Second Language Acquisition Research • Classroom-Based Research on Oral Communication Development • Feedback: consider quantity, complexity, timing, learner understanding of its present or future need

12. Second Language Acquisition Research • Input Theories • Learnability theories- examine what kinds of learning in classroom settings best facilitate acquisition. They identify stages in learner development and types of tasks and interactions • Processability theory – learner can only be taught a structure when he can manage its processing demands

13. Second Language Acquisition Research • Output Theories • There are varied preferences in learning styles that help students process, store and retrieve information. Learning styles are affected by: • affective levels • modes of processing information • typesof cognition

14. Second Language Acquisition Research • Output Theories • Teachers should: • Offer a variety of activities geared towards different learning styles and multiple intelligences • Teach learning strategies (Chamot/O’Malley)

15. Fluency and Proficiency vs. Identity and Agency • Planned Oral Communication • Incorporate monologic communication – reading aloud, speeches, rehearsals; communication for a purpose • Students focus on organization, cohesion, performance • Promote interaction where the cognitive processes used in the classroom setting will be comparable to the natural setting

16. Fluency Building: Error Correction • Only correct features that can be reasonably managed at the learner’s level of proficiency • Tailor error correction to the learner (checklists) • Remember that the development of an internalized grammar system does not follow a linear path

17. Identity and Agency Building • Genre Is Greater Than Its Parts • Encourage learners to observe/collect information about L2 community and formulate questions about the culture/language use through: • consciousness raising • problem posing

18. Identity and Agency Building • Genre Is Greater Than Its Parts • To help students gain the “big picture”, assign projects which: • involve students affectively • promote cognitive activities such as problem solving • relate to subject matter in other classes

19. Identity and Agency Building • Teacher’s Feedback • Teacher talk includes modifications teachers use to be comprehended by their students: • repetition of instructions • speaking at a slower rate • pausing • changing pronunciation • modifying vocabulary, grammar or discourse

20. Identity and Agency Building • Teacher’s Feedback • Respectfully scaffold student’s oral communication with: • modeling • restatement • clarification • questioning

21. Identity and Agency Building • Shifting between fluency & accuracy • Know the students strengths to move from: Silent participation with comprehension Production ofchunks of oral language Complex oral exchanges and presentations

22. Identity and Agency Building • Shifting between fluency & accuracy • To build confidence in fluency, lessons need to foreground activities for negotiating meaning and shift to foregrounding accuracy by focusing on forms of expression.

23. Identity and Agency Building • Shifting between fluency & accuracy • Ice-breakers allows students to use an oral routine or expression with their classmates under low-risk conditions. Use them: • To get to know each other • To review previous material • To preview new material • To introduce new material inductively or deductively

24. Differences Between Second and Foreign Language Learners • Social and Academic Consequences of Sounding Like the “Other” • Challenges of second language learners: • Lack of social acceptance due to an L1 that is stigmatized by the mainstream • Alienation from their culturally distinct heritage group

25. Differences Between Second and Foreign Language Learners • Discontinuities in Schooling • Limited communication between schools results in lack of continuity in learning (“repeat beginners”) • Heritage language learners sometimes: • have little formal study in their L1 • must strive for academic success by adopting cultural practices at odds with their home/community environment • have been in programs where memorization is stressed, rather than application and performance

26. Going Beyond the National Standards • Basic TESOL standards: • presentational • interpersonal • interpretive • Critical Language Awareness – build up the learner’s awareness of the significant role language plays in social/school life. • Build connections between classwork and the wider social/political world.