5.3. Language support in multilingual schools

Week 5 Part 3 will help you

• to become familiar with various concepts of language support which are relevant in bilingual education;
• to become aware of specific strategies teacher may use in bilingual classrooms to support their learners.

To reach these goals you are expected to:

• watch the introductory video lecture explaining the concept of scaffolding and main aims and features of language immersion and CLIL;
• read the two texts below about the challenges learners have to face in bilingual education and about specific support strategies teachers may use in bilingual classrooms;
• watch a short video about a child learning a new language in an immersion setting and reflect on the difficulties this child is facing
• analyse the interaction between a teacher and his pupils in a bilingual classroom based on a transcript of a lesson.

Video

 Reading

Part 1: Problems faced by learners

Learners in bilingual education are expected to “function” as quickly as possible in the target language. They are required, for instance, to understand instructions, read complex texts and interact with the teacher and other learners. In addition to the challenges learners are faced with when learning a new language, they are also supposed to engage in subject learning, for example in History, Geography or Mathematics. The texts and instructions in those subjects will become increasingly complex and abstract and learners need to become familiar with the necessary special terminology and formal registers in individual subjects.

This may create a great challenge especially for beginners for whom the input might be overwhelming, at least initially. It can be a frustrating experience if the communicative resources which are available at first are not sufficient to express one’s thoughts and ideas. It is unlikely that learners will just learn through content instruction. If the language level is too rudimentary, learning may not take place. This is a scenario often found in submersion classrooms when immigrant children who do not receive special attention with respect to the majority language are left to their own devices (cf. activity No. 1).

This problem is aggravated by the fact that sooner or later assessment procedures will play a major role. Students’ performance is assessed primarily based on content and not on their language skills. However, language and content are interrelated, of course. Thus, if a student shows a rather poor performance, is it because of his or her limited understanding of the subject matter? Is it possibly the result of the student’s failure to understand the instructions of the task or is it perhaps due to problems of expressing one’s thoughts and ideas in a clear manner? In fact, quite often it may even be a combination of all three factors. Therefore, it is essential to find ways for appropriate and fair assessment in bilingual classrooms.

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 Activity

Watch the following extract from a short film entitled  “Immersion” which shows a ten-year-old student who struggles to communicate in his new school because he has limited access to his native language Spanish.

Reflect on the various challenges he faces and make a short list of those problems. Then think about similar situations you might have been in at some point.

The importance of English Language Learning Strategies – Immersion (Moises in Math Class)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59MNds9EoKc

 

 Reading

Part 2: Language support

As a result of the challenges faced by learners in bilingual classes, it is of vital importance that they are supported during their learning process. Above all, this is extremely significant for beginners during the first weeks and months. Language support can be provided in many different ways.

As far as the comprehension of texts is concerned, for example, pre-reading activities might be provided to facilitate the process of understanding. In CLIL textbooks quite often new words which occur in the text are explained or translated to make understanding easier.

However, to promote the active use of language, other forms of language support are necessary, including speech modifications, elicitation techniques, scaffolding techniques and corrective feedback:

a)      Speech modifications

Teachers have to simplify their input in such a way that it becomes comprehensible to the learners. This may include – at least initially or for a limited period of time – the use of simple  vocabulary or less complicated grammatical structures, clearly enunciated speech or numerous repetitions.

b)      Elicitation techniques

One of the most common problems in classrooms is the fact that teachers quite often ask so called “display questions” as illustrated in the following dialogue:

Teacher: What sport is that?

Learner: Tennis.

Teacher: Yes, tennis, good.

The teacher asks questions to which he or she already knows the answer while the learners are just allowed to ‘display’ this knowledge. The teacher then provides positive or negative feedback. This interactional pattern often leads to a great amount of teacher talking time and a low amount of student talking time. At the same time this pattern also leads to monotony in the classroom since the students simply have to guess what the teachers wants them to know. It is often better to ask open questions (e.g. questions starting with ‘why’?) to give the learners more opportunities to talk and to involve them cognitively in a more effective way. Such genuine questions where the answers are not predetermined, are also called ‘referential’ questions.

c)      Scaffolding techniques

The term ‘scaffolding’ which was coined by Bruner (1983) refers to various ways in which verbal scaffolds are used to assist learners in order to express things they may otherwise not be able to express without some help. Some common scaffolding techniques used by teachers include the following techniques:

• Bridging and prompting, i.e. to ‘feed in’ a word or a phrase the learner might be searching for. In this case the teacher has to try to anticipate what the learner wants to say. Quite often this can be a special term.
• Clarification questions, i.e. to ask questions to make sure one has understood correctly what the learner wishes to express.
• Confirmation statements, i.e. to signal to learners that the message has been understood.
• Tolerance of code-switching by the learners: Learners sometimes resort to their native language when they want to convey a specific message, but lack the necessary linguistic means to express the idea in the target language. Teachers in bilingual classrooms often tolerate this compensation strategy since the focus is on the content in bilingual classes. Subsequently, however, the teacher may reformulate the utterance in the target language.

d)      Corrective feedback

Showing a great amount of error tolerance is essential in bilingual classroom settings. Students need to be encouraged to speak without anxiety and without being interrupted by the teacher all the time. Quite often learners in a bilingual education context will naturally adopt the correct forms later on anyhow. However, this process may be promoted or accelerated by implicit error corrections or so called ‘recasts’ where the teacher takes an utterance of a learner and reformulates it correctly. This can be done in a very natural way, since the flow of interaction does not have to be interrupted necessarily as the following examples illustrates:

L: He ran fastly.

T: Yes, he ran very fast indeed.

By using such scaffolding techniques teachers can succeed in ‘stretching’ the learners’ communicative skills that may be otherwise beyond the child’s current capability or “Zone of Proximal Development” (Vygotsky). Scaffolded dialogues are an essential part of a teacher’s  “Classroom Interactional Competence” (Walsh 2011: 165) which aims to co-construct meanings and to jointly establish understanding between teachers and learners.

Sources:

Bruner, Jerome (1983). Child’s Talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gibbons, Paula (2002). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching Second Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Walsh, Steve (2011). Exploring Classroom Discourse: Language in Action. New York: Routledge.

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Activity

Analyze the following transcript of an immersion lesson (English/German).

Context: The school is an immersion school in Germany where English and German are taught from grade 1 onwards. The teacher in this case is a native speaker of English, most of the children speak German at home. The transcript is part of a lesson in grade 2. The extract shows the Monday morning ritual at the beginning of the first lesson where the teacher simply asks learners to tell him about their weekend.

Try to analyse the transcript and analyse the teacher’s interaction with the learners based on the following grid. Try to find one or two examples for each category.

Elicitation techniques:	Example(s)
a)       Open/referential questions
b)      Yes/No-questions

Scaffolding and speech modification
a)       Bridging
b)      Confirmation statements
c)       Clarification questions
d)      Tolerating code-switching

Feedback
a)       Recasts/implicit correction
b)      Positive feedback

 

Transcript of classroom discourse

(7-8 year-olds: “Weekend Stories”)

#00:12:15-6# T: Thank you very much for sharing Paula…ah Tom, would you like to share something? [#00:12:23-1# S: Yes]

#00:12:23-4# T: Alright, go ahead, Tom. We’re all listening.

#00:12:25-6# S: [loudly, slowly] On Saturday I..I…..I..I I was em looking the football game. ** And.. then on the next day [giggling] I was … em my mum has birthday.

#00:13:00-7# T: Oh yesterday your mum had a birthday.

#00:13:02-3# S: Yes [T: oh ok nice] And there was coming a friend. And then we play…Then we were em ….

#00:13:19-1# T: What did you play? .. play – a game?

#00:13:22-2# S: ***

#00:13:23-9# T: You can say it in German!

#00:13:27-4# S: We were…/grɪln/

#00:13:29-6# T: barbecue? cooking?

#00:13:31-4# other student: barbecue is that

#00:13:33-2# T: Yeah, making food.. yeah

#00:13:36-5# S: And then we were eating…then the people walk home and ***

#00:13:46-0# T: Excellent. Sounds like you had a wonderful weekend, too. Thank you for sharing… Sophie! Would you like to share something? [Sophie: yeah] #00:13:51-7# T: Oh-ok…Nice and loud so everybody can hear you!

#00:13:54-9# Sophie: On… em… Thursday.. I had a fun weekend. I was em going in the Senkenbergmuseum with my Dad [T: Really?] Yes, and then we em we were driving to my best friend and eh that evening there was eh…Topmodelfinale.

#00:14:25-8# T: Ahh, the final show [Sophie: Yes.] ahh

#00:14:28-8# Sean: And she wanted to

#00:14:30-1# [overlap] T: oh hey watch that Sean!

#00:14:31-6# S: She wanted to watch it.

#00:14:33-7# Students: ooohhhh [noise]

#00:14:36-9# T: Did you watch it?

#00:14:38-2# Sophie: No, but em she wanted to watch it but I may not watch it. And then she ** And then she said: best friends are importanter then I said: Endlich kommst du mal zu Vernunft! [giggling]

#00:14:54-6# T: What is that in English?

#00:14:55-7# Sophie: Em [Pause] Finally you come to eh..[other student: care] care

#00:15:05-2# T: About best friends? [Sophia: Yes.] Ah!

#00:15:07-3# Sophie: She also wanted to watch it and she cried: Oh no… and then and then [Pause]

#00:15:16-7# T: One more thing and then we’re gonna move on, ok! So tell us one more thing about your weekend.

#00:15:21-4# Sophie: And then at the on the next day [T: m-mh] was very funny /fə?nɪ/ because.. She.. slept by me and I was slept [giggling] at my mother and then I say…and then..last thing

#00:15:37-1# T: Last thing!

#00:15:38-4# Sophie: Yes [overlap T: Ok go]

#00:15:40-4# Sophie: The whole.. family!.. only my grandmother..yes. The whole family! Only grandma and granddad [T: m-mh] from my mo-, from my father the.. [T: m-mh] ehh the mother and father [T: yes] And only they were not coming because em they were not coming [T: ok] And that was so funny because.. everyone/body was singing the [laughing] German..em..Nationalhymne

#00:16:08-6# T: yeah

#00:16:08-9# [overlap] Sophie: and then * was soo loud

#00:16:11-1# [overlap] T: because of the football game [overlap Sophia: yes]

#00:16:12-5# Sophie: and then when Gomez shot the goal /gouul/, everybody **: [loudly] Yeah!! [overlap T: of course]

#00:16:19-6# [chatter]

#00:16:21-1# [overlap] T: Well thank you very much for sharing! Eh.. Before we continue I want to say thank you to everybody who’s done a great job listening so far.. ok.. and I can’t wait to hear the rest of the stories, we have about nine more left. So Emily, would you like to share?

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