A Vygotskian Sociocultural Perspective on Immersion Education

good afternoon my name is Dara fortune and on behalf of Carlos staff in the University of Minnesota and the Immersion 2012 conference planning committee I am delighted to welcome you to the 4th International Conference on language immersion education which are with our theme bridging contexts for a multilingual world allow me to introduce our speaker for this evening output hypothesis Canadian French immersion LR ease or language related episodes languaging these are a few words that spring to mind when I think about the impressive body of work that Merrill Swain and her more than four decades of teaching researching and publishing has offered the field of second language acquisition and immersion education specifically dr. Merrill Swain is professor emeritus in the department of curriculum teaching and learning at the Ontario Institute for studies in education at the University of Toronto in Canada she continues to serve the field of second language teaching and learning as teacher lecturer researcher writer colleague and mentor she is regularly invited to give talks and workshops in many parts of the world and we are truly delighted to have her here with us tonight as you can read in her bio statement in the conference program Meryl is the recipient of several prestigious awards acknowledging her outstanding professional contributions in research and education her most recent award came in 2011 she received an honorary Doctorate from the University of Vasa in Finland I would like to briefly speak to two of Merrill's many qualities that I especially admire first Meryl has a genius for clarity her latest multilingual matters publication with Penny Kinnear and Linda Steinman titled socio-cultural theory in second language education provides a wonderful example of this quality using narrative as a point of departure she and her co-authors unpack challenging Vygotsky and concepts such as mediation activity theory and the zone of proximal development the concrete lived experiences of each narrative and the clearness of the writing give meaning to the books more abstract theoretical ideas secondly for me merrill embodies what it means to be a lifelong learner as the field of second language education has evolved so - as Merrill's thinking an examination of language acquisition and learning for more than a decade now Merrill has been making use of socio-cultural theory of mind as a lens for research and understanding learning in second language contexts new and deeper understandings of vygotsky's ideas and the critical role that languaging plays in the cognitive and affective development of human persons have now taken her research beyond the field of second language acquisition and into gerontology Marilyn colleagues have begun to explore the relationship between social interaction and cognitive affective functioning among elderly residents in a long-term care facility they're asking if languaging by older adults who have been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment helps to restore aspects of their cognitive affective functioning this line of questioning sets the stage for new insights about what constitutes quality care for our elderly please help me to welcome our keynote speaker dr. Merrill Swain well of course first of all I'd like to thank Tara very much for that introduction that was really lovely and thank you for mentioning my work with the elderly because it's very important and Merida thank you for that introduction to the whole conference because I never knew those things about Mark Twain and I didn't know those things about the Mississippi so I learned those four minutes that's great and I'd also like to thank the planning committee for having invited me to this conference and asked me to do this plenary and I must say it's just wonderful to see so many people here who are all helping to build bridges to multilingual worlds so when I was first approached to give this plenary it was almost two years ago my reaction at that time was that I didn't have any new immersion research data to talk about but that I did have some new ideas the new ideas were inspired by Vygotsky and socio-cultural theory so back then I gave Tara the title of a Vygotsky and socio-cultural perspective on immersion education the title that you see in your program well that turns out to be sort of a crazy idea because it would take a book to do justice to that title to the original title for those of you who are unfamiliar with the work of the god Suki let me just say a few words oops I think I might do it this way let me just say a few words about Vygotsky so this is Vygotsky I guess one could start by saying how handsome me I've had students taking courses with me to say oh I'll take the course now that I've seen him okay so I just want to say a few words about him he was certainly a prolific writer over the last several decades his volumes and volumes of writing have been translated from russian into english and have had considerable impact in various educational and psychological settings in north america his impact here has been due in part to its divergence from piagetian theory which dominated developmental psychology at the time contrary to the work of Piaget Vygotsky argued that our higher mental processes our thinking our higher mental processes have their origin in social interaction rather than being developmentally determined Vygotsky died of tuberculosis in 1934 and he died at the very young age of 37 but still he had careers as a literary and theater critic as a teacher as a developmental psychologist as a researcher and as a theorist Vygotsky also set a model for us all he spoke Russian English German Hebrew and French and he also studied black Latin Greek and Esperanto so clearly with that volume of work I had to narrow down what it was that I was going to talk about from that huge big title and from everything that the gods he had to say I had to narrow down to something doable tonight I finally decided to narrow this talk to a discussion of what is being called the l1 l2 debate in immersion education that is a debate about when the students first language should be used and when the target language should be used during target language instructional time and I do want to say that of course I'm aware that there may be when I say the first language it's really possible that there could be more than one first language and also that in referring to second languages that what we call a second language could in fact be a third or a fourth language I'm very aware of that but I think that for the sake of simplicity I'm going to use l1 and l2 and I do think that even though those things are that we could be saying l1 s in L 2 s I think that my argument what I want to say tonight doesn't change it just makes it more complex that's all so the l1 l2 debate my reason for focusing on this particular issue of when and which language should be used when my reasons are twofold first of all I believe that vygotsky's ideas can provide us with several theory based guiding principles related to language use in immersion classrooms secondly from what I've heard from immersion teachers recently what I've read in the research immersion literature and also observed myself in immersion classes suggests that language use patterns in many current immersion programs are quite different from those found in Canadian immersion classes in the first few decades of their existence in those early years of immersion education there was a rather strict rule that only the target language was to be used during instructional time and this has been referred to as the monolingual policy of immersion education this l2 only policy appears to being diluted over the years and very often for pragmatic reasons so consider for example this quote from an early french immersion teacher this is an early french immersion teacher with 13 years experience she says it's hard to keep French going all the time especially at grade 3 with EQA Oh which I'll explain in a second with EQ AO testing French is taking a beating by grade 4 we need to cover content and this goes faster if I do it in English EQ AO is the educational quality assessment of Ontario and it's a set of tests of standardized tests that are given at grade 3 grade 6 and grade 9 and they are in English so this teacher is basically saying in order for me to prepare these kids I I need to cover so much content and in my French immersion class that goes faster if I do it in English so then you could contrast that view Mary's view with this next quote by Becky Becky has had 15 years of experience both as a primary level teacher in an early French immersion program and as a teacher educator so Becky says French instructional time in immersion classrooms should be largely almost entirely in French it's feasible for teachers to use French from the very beginning that's what makes it immersion the reason to use English should never be because it's too hard in the target language the reason should never be because the students don't understand a topic any topic can be taught in the target language so there you have two really very divergent views Becky by the way adheres as strictly as possible to the principle that only the target language should be used in immersion classes by the teacher she makes it a practice to address visitors that come to her classroom only in French and even in casual encounters in the schoolyard or in the street she addresses students parents and community members in French so these contrasting views and Becky about l1 and l2 language use whole whether the call true whether the context is one-way or two-way immersion programs whether they be early immersion or middle immersion or late immersion we see the same range of views in terms of how much and when and why the l1 and l2 are used so it seemed to me like a useful task to see if a God Sookie's thinking might provide any insights into the complex question of which language should be used by whom and under what conditions and I thought that perhaps we could draw some guiding principles from his work and in doing so I have in mind the context of one-way and two-way immersion programs I think that for indigenous programs and for heritage language programs that they're different enough that perhaps these guiding principles which I hope to give you by the end of this talk might need to be adjusted so I'm really addressing the issues for one way in two-way immersion programs so here's what I'm going to do I'm going to present several of the God's keys key concepts the first one that I'm going to focus on in this talk is about mediation and the related concept of languaging and we're going to spend most of the time on that and then talk also and that will lead to the first guiding principle the second thing the second concept of 'god skis is the way in which he thinks about cognition and emotion and that will lead to the second guiding principle and then the zone of proximal development or as you here call it for short the zpd and we in Canada call the Zed PD so if you hear me say Zed PD you know what it is so then I'm going to I'm going to discuss each concept and then I'll briefly summarize a few studies from immersion contexts that highlight or can be interpreted or reinterpreted in light of 'god skis insights and then as i say end with a guiding principle for the use of the l1 and target language during target language instructional time that I think follows from the theory and research so by the end of this talk I hope to have provided three guiding principles for the use of the l1 and target language during target language instructional time okay so I'm going to begin with the idea of mediation and the related idea of languaging and in fact as I've already said I think I'm going to spend most of the time talking about mediation and languaging but that's because I think that this idea is it is a difficult one and it's really important and key in understanding the first guiding principle the others I think are more instinctively easy to grasp ok Vygotsky understood language to be a psychological tool that is a tool that mediates our thinking so in an analogy with material tools like shovels and pens and and toothbrushes which help us carry out our mediate physical tasks such as digging a hole writing and brushing our teeth so in an analogy to that but God's key argued that we make use of symbolic tools to help us carry out mental tasks such as planning organizing focusing our attention and so on Vygotsky argued that language is the most crucial of all symbolic tools language for Vygotsky is a source of it's a source ok so language is a source that's absolutely essential is the source of our higher mental processes and language comes to mediate them so Vygotsky demonstrated through his research with children how language is the source of our higher mental functioning and how language comes to function is a psychological tool that mediates our thinking I'm going to illustrate this with an example of the sort of research that he did that led him to to make these claims so Vygotsky studied infants and young children and he noted that initially a child's behavior is mediated by concrete objects in its surrounding so for example a father says to his child go find your teddy bear Kathy so while Kathy is searching for a teddy bear Kathy sees a bright red balloon and begins to play with it Kathy's actions here are controlled by objects in her environment in this case by the bright red balloon but once Kathy starts to learn a language let's say it's English her behavior comes to be mediated by the English of those around her so now when her father tells her to go and get her teddy bear Kathy does so finally while still a young child as Kathy continues to hear and observe those around her interacting in English and as she begins to use English in interaction with others these interactions mediated by English will help Kathy to focus her attention as well as help her to organize what she is doing and to plan future behavior so now English becomes a tool for Kathy a cognitive tool for she herself can use English to accomplish these mental functions now Kathy is able to say to herself I want my teddy bear I'll go to my bedroom because that's where I last saw it and she does so undistracted by all her other toys so what has happened is that the functions of Kathy has heard observed and taken part of in English are internalized that is they've moved from the social plane for the from the outside world from the world of objects in the world of people outside to the psychological plane in other words to the inside with this shift of language functions from the social to the individual plane a qualitative leap takes place instead of language being used simply to communicate something to another person now language also mediates one's own higher mental functions when language is used for these purposes that's what I refer to is languaging so before I continue I want to read to you an everyday example of languaging and this is by finding this example will at least I hope it really gives you an idea of what I mean by by languaging and what it can do for you it it comes from a dear Ann Landers column now I'm not sure van Landers is still still around but other you know what I mean you know the columns where you write in for advice so what I want you to do as we go through this letter that's being written to dear Ann Landers is listen to how language serves to focus the woman's attention on the problem at hand which is whether she should marry her boyfriend Jerry and observe how by languaging she organizes her thoughts and well you'll see what happens so here we go dear Anne I'm a 26 year old woman and feel like a fool asking you this question no she she doesn't know what she doesn't know the answer yet I'm a 26 year old woman feel like a fool asking you this question but should I marry this guy or not Jerry is 30 but sometimes he acts like 14 Jerry is a Salesman and makes good money but has lost his wallet three times since I've known him and I've had to help him meet the payments on his car the thing that bothers me most I think is that I have the feeling he doesn't trust me after every date he telephones he says it's just to say an extra good night but I'm sure he's checking to see if I had a late date with someone else one night I was in the shower and didn't hear the phone he came over and sat on the porch all night I found him asleep on the swing when I went to get the paper the next morning at 6:30 a.m. I had a hard time convincing him that I'd been in the house the whole time now on the plus side Jerry's very good-looking and appeals to me physically well that does it I've been sitting here with his pen in my hand for 15 minutes trying to think of something else good to say about him and nothing comes to mind don't bother to answer this you've helped me you've helped you've helped more than you will ever know this is a fabulous example of languaging okay that's what languaging is the young woman's use of language to mediate her thinking to help her solve her problem through languaging she came up with a solution she didn't know she had she created new meaning through languaging she came to know something she didn't know by languaging in other words her language served as a cognitive tool now let me give you another example and this time it's from two grades seven early immersion students who are not writing to an to french immersion students Nina and Dhara let me make it quite clear why it is that I'm giving you these examples it's because it's important to understand that language is not just a way of saying what's already in your head so it's not that you have you know you had this idea in your head that's already formed and you communicate to somebody else I mean that happens that's true but that's not what languaging is what languaging is it's a tool that helps us think we're not just talking our language is mediating between our unknown thoughts and their reality bringing them into focus and turning them into something that can be reorganized and rethought okay so now the Nina and Dhara example nina and dora were working on a collaborative task that these are grade 7 immersion kids and they were asked to write a story they were given a set of pictures and they were asked to write a story based on these pictures and one of the pictures showed in there were a set of pictures and that the girl had been woken up by an alarm clock at six o'clock in the morning and then she had immediately fallen back to sleep and they wrote a sentence about that pardon and they wrote so Nina and Dhara wrote it's now 601 and she falls asleep without a sound so in French le met na CA uh a else on door summary so the key point here is that that you'll see is about the summary a meaning without the sound okay so and this was actually in a study that we did so so the student that they wrote their story and then a teacher reformulated what it is that they had written and in this particular sentence the teacher reformulated this summary to Don listen aunts and then later much later we asked the students Nina and Dora if we showed them what it was that the teacher had done and what they thought about it so it was what we call a stimulated recall and Nina says well I think summary it's more she fell asleep and she didn't make any noise but silence is like everything around her is silent and Dora her partner says so she changed our meaning okay so when the two students saw how the teacher would be formulated their story Nina that was how she tried to explain why she didn't like the teachers correction and in order to do that she explained to Dora and the researchers the differences in meaning between the two versions and of course she had to use language to mediate this explanation and in this case Nina used her first language English as a tool to mediate her understanding of the difference between the two meanings which is what you see her doing here by using English Nina and Dora were able to focus their attention and organize their thoughts and internalize or learn aspects of their meaning of some aspects of the meaning of Sunbury and Donna sealants the evidence for the fact that they internalize this knowledge is that much much later we asked the students on their own to write the story in French and they continued with they were they they they I haven't got a slide for this I forgot they they when they present it when they wrote in on their own in French they wrote and maintained what it was that they thought represented their story but took on some of what it was that the teacher had the teacher had done in the reformulations so the point here is when what Vygotsky says said and he said when learning a second language one does not return to the immediate world of objects and does not repeat past linguistic developments but instead uses the native language as a mediator between the world of objects and the new language so this theoretical insight is absolutely key to understanding the first guiding principle which I'll present shortly so as we all know two of the goals of immersion education are to learn a target language and to learn content through the target language and languaging is relevant to both the Nina and Dhara example illustrates how languaging in the l1 mediated their understanding and learning of context specific meanings of the target language at a micro level what occurred was the internalization of the different nuanced meanings of Donna silence and some brie and the Ann Landers example illustrates at the level of every knowledge how languaging focuses our attention and mediates problem-solving and knowledge building the equivalent of content learning so now we need to ask what happens when immersion students are asked to do difficult complex thinking in a second language as in immersion classrooms and to address this question I'll turn now to research from immersion contexts there are a number of studies lots of studies actually out there which look at students use of their first and target languages during target language instruction time some of these studies like the first four listed here by Tara fortune Kim petoskey Maggie Bruner and Andy Ted ik and Susan Bellinger and Roy Lister those studies are naturalistic and ethnographic observational studies conducted in immersion classrooms and then studies like our own which where we pulled students out of the class and observed their language use patterns while carrying out a language related task and Nina and Dora fit into that latter category so what these studies have done is to look at the frequency of use of the l1 and l2 in immersion classrooms the functions of l1 and l2 and also the context of l1 and l2 use and as you might well expect the findings are pretty complex but I'll try to summarize them so with respect to frequency of length of the first language so I'm just focused on the first language with respect to the frequency of first language use and this is during target language instructional time you see a watt across the studies you see a wide variation in some classes the use of the l1 is very limited in other classes the use of the l1 is as high as very frequent with respect to functions of the l1 like what are the functions for which the first language is used things that have been noted over and over again is focusing attention figuring out what it is that the teacher expects of them developing an understanding of a topic or task searching for target language vocabulary explaining and forming and seeking information about a topic or activity and with respect to contexts of use again I'm summarizing over a number of studies there was more ell use when students were speaking with peers than when with teachers the content was when the content was non language focused that is an income subject areas like science then when the content was language related such as writing the content material was when the content material was abstract and complex they were more likely to use English than when it was concrete and less complex when the purple purpose was social versus academic and the use of the l1 was very high when used to express feelings and importantly as l2 is the second language proficiency increases across grade levels and within within grade levels l1 languaging decreases and l2 languaging increases so this research suggests is because he would predict that the students made use of their l1 as a tool to mediate their understanding of tasks and their understanding and production of content and sorry and and I would add their understanding and production of content and of emotion so these just studies are descriptive in nature they tell us what is happening in immersion programs when the l1 and l2 are most likely to be used and for what purposes for example in tera Fortunes research she found that her grade five vocal immersion students use the target language most often and this is a quote during language product-oriented activities such as math problem-solving and presentations that required either written or oral language to be produced and presented in the target language of course it's helpful to know of course it's helpful to know when and why the l1 and l2 are used because it suggests how the instructional activities can be designed how we can go ahead and design further instructional activities that will foster and support the use of the l2 however what we do not know from these studies is of any use of the l1 by the students is essential if it actually expedites the learning process or simply the easier route to take what we need is research which traces how the l1 and the l2 are used during instructional time to the final product so so that we can trace from when it is that it actually happens when the l1 and the l2 are used and and trace that right through and see what happens in the final product what what the students learn as a result of it so we need evidence that demonstrates that the use of the l1 serves to mediate content and second language learning I only know of one small-scale study that is suggestive and you have others I would love to hear about them and it's because it's very difficult research to do actually so in this case the study was carried out as a classroom assignment many years ago by Lori bian Myles Turnbull and Jayne speck Lori was a teacher this was in a grade 7 late immersion class and Lori was a teacher and she was very concerned that the level of her students French was not sufficiently advanced for the rather difficult and complex content she was expected to teach using French so until she and her colleagues under 2 undertook this action research Lori had meticulously followed the classroom monolingual rule that we only speak French in this class Lori students had been the tasks that they were asked to do they so they had been gathering information each individually about native peoples of Canada about where their environment what they ate where they lived and what was the connection between all of those things and so the task now they gather this information and what they were supposed to do in small groups was to engage in collaborative dialogue and collaborative dialogue is a type of languaging to engage in collaborative dialogue to combine the information that each had in order to understand the relationships between the climate in the food and so on and so forth and then they knew that the next day they would make an oral presentation in French that's absolutely crucial part of the the pedagogy that they would do the presentation in French based on any notes or whatever it is that they had done and it was made clear to the students that as always they should use French in their groups but in spite of this of course all groups made considerable use of their l1 English and I say of course because because of course I was going to say more but I whoa wait but so both the collaborative dialogue of the students as they worked on this task and their oral presentations the next day were tape-recorded so what they did what they did Laurie and her and her colleagues examined the uses of English in the students collaborative dialogue so specifically where they used English and they found that English was most often used in relation to vocabulary searches and also to structure the activity and to respond to or deal with the cognitive challenges it presented the researchers then the next step that they took was to identify examples in the oral presentation which the students gave the next day where it could be argued that the students languaging in English during the preparation for the oral presentation in French had been transferred to the oral presentations so they found a number of instances in which the results of the vocabulary searches that they had done during the preparation time were carried out and carried forward into the presentation providing evidence of learning they also found examples where English had been used to deal with the cognitive challenges presented by the tasks that were transferred to the oral presentation and I'm going to give you an example which actually doesn't come from the publication but comes from the term paper which I happen to find quite accidentally I'm looking at mild term boys here's here I mean you probably don't even have a copy miles and can't verify that I've got the right transcript right anyhow these so these in this particular group Z and Z and J and there was another student but involved in this little bit of collaborative dialogue only Z and J are talking and Z says you've got lots of coniferous trees remember that what they're doing is we're trying to figure out what things are for and how they all interconnect you've got lots of coniferous trees it's good for and Jay says I don't know what it's good for and Z says to build houses such as long house and stuff like that J so what about to build totem poles yeah to build totem poles and then in their notes they wrote and I'm not going to try you can see the French the French has lots of errors in it but they write down so that's what their conversation was they're collaborative dialogue and they it's collaborative in that they're each contributing and building knowledge together so that they're coming up with something more in the end than they did they had individually at the beginning then they write down the indigenous people live in big houses made of cedar and cut trees to build totem poles ok so you see what was done in and you see what was done infringe and then they gave a presentation the next day so in this example it's clear from the notes that the students did have the l2 proficiency to express the main ideas in French but and here's he that English mediated the development and the coherence of those ideas in effect their use of English helped them to focus on the task at hand and organize their thoughts its scaffold their presentation in French so the next with the the oral presentations those were given two independent raters that listened to the recordings of each of the presentations and Zed and Jays group were given the highest ranking of all groups in terms of quality of French and cognitive sophistication being Turnbull and spec concluded that l1 use can both support and enhance lter development and function as an effective tool for dealing with cognitively demanding content the B at all study does not tell us that the use of the l1 expedites the l2 learning process but it does suggest that when the going gets tough in the l2 the l1 is an important cognitive tool which helps learners organize their thoughts focus their attention and scaffold their understanding and production of the l2 for this reason students and I'm emphasizing students should be permitted to use their l1 for the purpose of working through complex ideas in fact it might be argued that it's futile to ask students not to use their l1 when working through cognitively and emotionally complex ideas as they'll do it covertly in any case if they're not allowed to do it overtly permitting the students to visit and there's another reason actually for having them do it overtly is because you as a teacher can listen to what they're saying and what they're saying actually represents what the processes are that they're going through to get there so you the teacher will learn something about what it is and how it is that the students are are getting where they are and it's a great opportunity for teachers to build immediate target language curricular activities that integrate language and language and and content teaching anyhow permitting the students to use their l1 to language at times when the complexity of the task makes it necessary to do so still allows for the target language to play a key role in the activity it's of utmost importance that the students are required to produce an end oral or written product in the target language doing so means that the end goal of a target language product will prioritize language learning processes such as cross linguistic comparison inform and meaning and target language vocabulary searches okay I'm now going to show you the first guiding principle I hope that most of you have a handout because it's on your handout and you'll probably find it easier to read on that okay so here's the first guiding principle it follows from everything that I just said students should be permitted to use their l1 during collaborative dialogue or private speech in order to mediate their understanding and generation of complex ideas all of that is what languaging is they should be permitted and to do that as they prepare to produce an end product oral or written in the target language however a student proficiency in the l2 increases students should increasingly be encouraged to language using the l2 as a mediating tool further when new and complex material is introduced within and across grade levels students should again be allowed to make use initially of their l1 to language that is to mediate their thinking ok so that's the first guiding principle the second we're going to move on to which is related to the cognitive emotion relationship so I want to continue the exploration of how the godsey's theoretical perspective is helpful in developing guidelines for the use of l1 and l2 and immersion classrooms as we've seen the most important reason is vygotsky's understanding of language of his understanding of language as a mediating tool as a cognitive tool not just a tool for communicating as a psychological tool but not only did Vygotsky say that about language he saw cognition and affect not as two separate distinct processes but rather is totally inter woven and as inseparable I have a quote here from depart oh and Potter which is very apropos Vygotsky emotions develop in concert with the whole of a person's cognitive and social life continually constructed through social interaction and progressively internalized but you know if you look at the research the research in the field of second language acquisition over the last few decades its prioritized cognition in fact even a lot of the work that's being done with the zpd which I will talk about in a few minutes even most of that has been focused on cognition rather than bringing together cognition and emotion there's been some research in the field of second language acquisition at least on affective constructs such as language anxiety and willingness to communicate but even though I think that we all know we know intuitively how important the link is between cognition and affect there's really surprisingly little research in the field that treats both cognition and emotions within the same study and even fewer which make the link between these constructs explicit so if you remember Nina and Dara they were the immersion students who remain committed to the meaning they had co-constructed in their story about a girl who was sleeping silently we asked them later again we met with them quite a few times we asked them to reflect on the teachers Corrections and Nina said some of the corrections they seem like they changed the story sort of and so it wasn't really ours here I think we observed both cognition and effect at work Nina Nina's efforts to explain the differences in meaning we're not just mediated by her use of English but were motivated by her desire to maintain the story that she and Dara had established that's to say in Nina's use of English to mediate her explanation so in what we we've seen and in her explanation here it would be very difficult to separate out the roles of affect and cognition they're so tightly intertwined and it's for godsey's vygotsky's lens that helps us to see this fusion of cognition and of cognitive and emotional goals so I'd like to turn to one study briefly it's carried out by Susan Ballinger and Roy Lister and I'll I'm going to interpret the researchers findings in light of this forgots key and insight of this bringing together of cognition and emotion and my focus is on the perspective of several immersion teachers that they talked about and and the immersion teachers thinking about the relationship between emotion and cognition so one of the main research questions that Ballinger and Lister asked was how is it the two way Spanish English immersion teachers encourage their students to communicate in Spanish during Spanish instructional time the research was observed in the rooms over four week period and they also interviewed the teachers so in this two-way immersion program the instruction time was divided half evenly between English and Spanish but they did say at the grade one level the teachers decided to reorganize the way the program was delivered from a one teacher one language model to a system where one teacher stayed with the class all year long while changing the language of instruction on a weekly basis the motivation for this decision was to and this is a quote the motivation of the decision was to address the emotional and academic needs of the students by remaining with only one class of students for the entire year so I think this objective reflects the importance of considering both effect and intellect in program planning while still being able to establish clear practices with respect to when the use of the non-english language was expected so that was at the grade one level at the grade three level half the instructional time was spent with an English teacher and half with a Spanish teacher and they alternating weeks were spent in each language the grade three teachers were consistent in their use of Spanish during the Spanish instructional periods and English during the English parts of the program the researchers quote miss Ramirez who was one of the grade three teachers as follows it's very important they speak Spanish to one another but it's a process it's a difficult process because from the point of view that the children are so saturated by English that makes it difficult for them to speak Spanish teachers must help the student to construct this other language without pressure so they feel relaxed so in this quote we observe the teacher sensitivity to the emotions of her students in her concern that they feel relaxed which she believed would support the difficult cognitive process of learning a second language her concern is consistent with vygotsky's understanding that learning involves and this is a quote from Vygotsky that learning involves a unity of affective and intellectual processes so Ms Ramirez had it right now it doesn't have to be positive by the way but it was in her case I mean positive ethic so a major finding of the Ballinger and Lister study was that the teachers expectations played a pivotal role in determining their students choices that is the teachers use of Spanish and their expectations of students Spanish use were highly related to the use of Spanish by their students making one's expectations clear to learners is as much effective as it is cognitive as its success is dependent on the nature of the student-teacher relationship furthermore providing an environment in which language use expectations are clear and established creates a level of comfort and security students can participate with confidence then about their language choice now I'm going to skip a couple of slides here but and take you right to the second guiding principle the first half of which comes from what I just said the second half in fact comes from some other work which I'll explain so the teacher here's the second guiding principle teachers need to set clear expectations about l1 l2 use in order to create a secure classroom environment in which students are able to engage in interaction with confidence for younger children this goal can be accomplished through a teacher's consistent use of the l1 and target language now let me read the second part and then I'll just explain it - for older children so here we're talking about children who are nine ten eleven and on up so for older children this goal the goal of establishing clear expectations can further be accomplished through teacher-student Nago creation of a set of classroom practices relating to the use of the l1 in the target language successful realization of this goal with older students will involve making beliefs explicit about the cognitive emotive interface and language use and language learning leading to a constructive climate of cooperation in the classroom now this bit about older children is not I don't I can't find that in the immersion literature this attempt to negotiate the language youth practices but there's a book that's been written by Glenn Levine and the references in your handout that talks about code switching in classrooms and it it it's all the research is done in foreign language context it's not done in immersion context but I think it really makes a lot of sense in what he he gives all kinds of ideas about how it is that when can teachers and students together can make their own belief systems explicit and make it explicit and then you can start to negotiate when and how and what language you use at what time and I think it really is in other aspects is another whole aspect of vygotsky's theory is how it is that our own practice is what it is that we do in today this very day what it is that we believe what our beliefs are that that that is so dependent on what our own personal experiences in our own personal history is being so that everybody has had different experiences so everybody comes to a classroom teachers immersion teachers and students all come to classroom with different ideas and and different meanings for language so for some people there's no question that language is um is very highly related to identity and so if that's the case then there may be good reasons why learners aren't using a particular language because it somehow other negates their identity and that sort of thing needs to be brought out and talked about explicitly in immersion programs but certainly can't be done until students are old enough to be able to carry on that kind of discussion okay I'm very short on time so what I'm going to do is take you directly to the third guiding principle which relates to the zone of proximal development and well I'm not going to you quite immediately there because I want to give you the definition at least of the Zed PD for those who don't know what it is it's an interaction during which through mediation and there's mediation again through mediation an individual achieves more than she could have achieved if she'd been working alone just like we saw with J and Z and Wells gordon Wells said that learning in the zpd involves all aspects of the learner acting feeling and thinking so again in in neo Vygotsky and theory you need to think of the zpd not as a space but rather as an activity and as an activity in which all aspects of of one's life is is brought together and also one in which one is always building from the known to the unknown so I was going to give you an example which is on your handout but the reason I was going to give you that example was because this teacher is succeeds in he's teaching a lesson on the greenhouse effect and he has planned a holes he knows what kinds of complex structures he wants to introduce and so he introduces those structures and he does it with almost no use of English in fact the only reason he uses English is to contrast it against a particular structure that he is trying to teach and when you see the lesson as a whole which of course I wouldn't be able to show you but the lesson is just like one huge great big zpd in that he is always constantly building and constantly planning his use of of english and all the rest of the time he continues to to stay in the target language so the third guiding principle and note that this okay so this is for teachers and this is much less so from Vygotsky but rather is a policy statement for teachers the target language always has priority because a policy goal of immersion education is to achieve a high level of proficiency in the target language use of the l1 should be purposeful not random use of the l1 to illustrate cross-linguistic comparisons or to provide the meaning of abstract vocabulary items can help to mediate l2 development during Zed PD activity in the target language that last part is particularly important it's during zpd there's a lot of teaching that goes on that isn't zbd ish there's a lot of of yes I'll just leave it at that there's a lot of teaching that goes on that isn't said bTW part of this is assuming that much of what teaching is is a form of Zed PD activity and that that occurs in the target language okay so I'm just going to summarize so vygotsky's concepts which I've gone very taken a lot of time to get through the first one about mediation and the related concept of languaging but I think it's so important and the intertwining of cognition and emotion and the said PD these concepts yielded three theory based guiding principles related to the use of the l1 and target language in one way and two-way immersion programs the first guiding principle focuses on students use not teachers whose students use of the l1 and target language the second focused on the relationships between teachers and students and how these relationships linked to language use patterns and the third focused on the teachers use of the l1 and target language so I hope these guiding principles serve to reassure teachers and teacher educators that students l1 languaging may be essential and beneficial to l2 development as well as potentially an efficient route to l2 development and that the ways in which teachers use language to mediate classroom interaction truly matters and finally I hope this talk makes clear how much we much we need more research in the immersion classroom and we particularly at least from the point of view of this talk we particularly need research that traces student and teacher languaging to student language learning outcomes and I think this is an absolutely wonderful opportunity for action research by teachers thank you maril thank you so much for that very thought-provoking and wonderful talk we have some time for some comments and questions from the audience and I'll be running around to provide you with the microphone so are there some people that might want to ask something say some thank you what is your advice for students who have not a strong foundation in l1 and are learning a second language and are struggling with the learning of that second language because of a lack of a strong foundation in l1 you know if I could have guessed what the first question would be it would be that one kid you want to explain a way just a minute don't take the microphone away do you want to explain what you mean by not having a strong l1 foundation well the case I'm particularly thinking of he had he's he has two languages at home French and English and he's been exposed to a third language Spanish in our program and he was tested and he has all his verbal area scores very low so he has actual difficulties in learning through his verbal input and output of information and he's been exposed to three languages basically okay well we really need Fred Genesee to answer this question because he's the one that's been doing all the studies in that area and the work in that area but Fred tell me if I'm wrong my my response to that is that that probably that's an issue that would cross whatever language he's it's not because he has three languages that he has this problem but it's probably something that crosses all languages it's an issue that that would happen it no matter what the language is so from the perspective of immersion education immersion should be providing the same kind of support that a child would if they were in France or in English with the child's first languages there's Fred said okay he liked that and and of course also in an immersion program the student does have some time in in in their mother tongue and the first language although not if it's not English which which can be an issue but yeah I think I mean I think you have to look at the at the at the the problem is being something that is a problem not it's certainly not related to that highly unlikely to be related to the fact that they're learning three languages yeah where I can yell Merrill you sorry you mentioned l1 languaging and l2 languaging and I'm wondering if languaging can take place in a way that's not language specific my understanding of of languaging is that it doesn't have to be encoded through one specific language but that so I wouldn't talk I'm just sorry I'm just asking you this question if you see languaging as being always language specific you're doing it either in l1 or you're doing it in l2 and there's nothing kind of in between or there's no mental ease that is helping a learner to sort of conceptually understand something through languaging that isn't just in one language or the other gender sees that okay well yeah I mean I mean the point about languaging is that it is it is um I don't know if I want to I don't know I mean I I think you're I think you're doing you're talking about something that isn't language based and I mean the whole point of languaging is to get something that isn't language based into language it's it's it's mediating the that that that idea that you have you know you know you have something to say but you're not quite sure like just like you started that question perhaps mm-hmm and and you know like if we talk about this for the next half hour by the end of it you'll have your question well formulated and I'll probably have an answer better formulated to but but it's so so languaging is getting that idea into a form where you can actually then work with it and think more about it so that it's um in a language yes does it have to be pure l1 or pure l2 I don't know I've never thought about that I mean that's I don't I mean the studies that we've done with languaging it was certainly the stuff with with in with collaborative dialogue I mean the students are using both English and French but they're not like code switching and code mixing in the in the sense that it's sort of like a mix of languages they're using English for very specific purposes which frames their use of French or vice versa so I don't know if that does that answer your question yeah okay perhaps I'll jump in here I I think Roy's question might relate to the earlier one especially when you especially if you've got children who are learning two or three languages simultaneously and the you know from a neurocognitive point of view the the picture that's emerging is that these children's language competencies are really distributed across the languages if they're co-learning mm-hmm and therefore they expect the the expression of their competence probably has to be assessed or allowed to be expressed in a bilingual kind of fashion yep and you know there's compelling evidence to show that children's bilingual children now we don't know the extent to which this is true for second language learners as opposed to bilingual learners yes you learnt your languages simultaneously but that both languages are active at all times and that when children are even so much so that when children exposed to a single language say a word that the an equivalent or the cognate word or related words in the other language is actually partially activated so there's not a selective activation of language even when children are in a monolingual mo and I think he goes back to the earlier comment and I agree with your response in that especially actually in children like this who might have a language impairment and are bilingual that the best way for them to language is bilingual and the best way for them to access and to articulate their thoughts would be to use their combined linguistic resources and this is why these children often look like they're performing below par if they're tested or examined monolingual because in fact they have a bilingual representation of knowledge and they have a bilingual form of expression of that knowledge so I think it makes the Roy's question in that there's no reason why you wouldn't let the children language bilingually euros yes language I'd say it's not it's it I'd like to I mean I'd like to see what that test is but I mean Fred as you should that's Fred jealousy by you by the way as Fred should as Fred knows well my PhD thesis was on children learning languages bilingually and one of the things that I said was it's incredible I mean everybody seems to that time and this is you know like 40 plus years ago I mean it seemed that if you even if you look at what the kid the kids that I were I was studying if you looked at just what they could do in French and just what they could do in English they look like they were behind but if you looked at both of them combined which is what I argued from my thesis then they have a much bigger repertoire in fact then do unilingual children of the same age level same developmental level so it's some yeah how I think I think I suppose my reaction to the testing or having them do that a test bilingually is in effect letting them choose what they want to do and how they want to do it in which language and that's that that would be to me the way to get at what you're talking about rather than us trying to develop a bilingual test that we then impose on the child so you could do some some kind of dynamic assessment for example where you're always building from where the child is at in which Leverett language they wish to do it in okay there was another question back here yeah Dee at the back say okay you yeah seriously the impact how language operates in that case I think can be can be a very different process yeah can I I mean I I didn't I don't feel at all confident to speak about Asperger's and asked autism and so on but I shouldn't leave you with the idea that Vygotsky said that the only mediating tool is language it's one and it's the one that he thought was the most important that it's it's the most effective in it it has various forms both oral and written right but you know music is also a mediating tool art is also mediating so so I'm the gods he did work with young children who had problems and he I think the best way to summarize what he said or what he what he did was to show that if a different mediating tool was used the child could get much further than what they were how far they were getting with a mediating tool that was being used did you understand what I'm saying so so vygotsky's vygotsky's way of going about this is the problem is is not in the child the problem is in us and that we haven't been creative enough in finding the appropriate mediating tool okay so that that's my response to that question and into your first question I mean it is interesting what you say that that the l1 for math if they've been taking all their math say in Spanish is Spanish even though their home language is English but I'm willing to bet that if you if you and I study some of those people that you're talking about we would find that they have done a lot of their thinking about math in English that they have worked it through cognitively these difficult math concepts in their L in their home language and eventually have gotten to the point where they can express it in their l2 and now I don't I mean I I don't have any evidence for that but but I think that when you talk to children and I mean I I know a particular case of a child who actually switched in high school into learning math in English and her response was was a snap it was a snap so I don't know if that's true or not he said it's just a matter of learning vocabulary words the thinking processes were similar so that that's a case of one we have another question back here um I used to call it processing out loud whenever I would walk with my husband I'd say I don't know what I'm thinking I'm processing out loud now I'm going to tell him I'm languaging okay I like that it's more succinctly and just working in an early total one-way program and allowing students kind of to process those vague concepts I'm thinking of a seventh grader for example and the minute the expectation is you can do that in l1 it seems to me that they're the the room to grow linguistically then has been taken away in the l2 because to explain something in the l2 pushes you cognitive it pushes you both cognitively and linguistically and I I keep thinking to of the Common Core and how it seeming in a strange way now the National Common Core looking at like the six through 12 standards and seeing what students the tasks they're required to do cognitively and I keep seeing the proficiency levels and I keep thinking if academically we want these students to be able to in their second language do grade level appropriate work why aren't they then able to handle that in their second language because if all of the groundwork was laid in an early total start program then cognitively and linguistically they should be prepared to handle those tasks so I guess I just I still don't quite I don't know I can't believe I'm like seeing this to Merrill Swain but I'm sorry I just I really want to understand so good it's great can I can I just okay I have a couple of reactions um first of all remember that some of the teachers that are teaching an immersion are not like you so for example the very first person that I cited Mary was using a lot of English so that's part of your answer is that because they're not getting this rich I mean I don't want to use the word input but that because almost embarrassing ah that because they're because they're not getting a huge amount of of the teacher talk they're not developing those skills that they need to so that's another reason for the the guiding principle number three is that the teachers need to stay in the target language as much as possible and and only when it's it's something that could give could help them scaffold language wise or cognitive wise is there any reason at all to to move into the target language but as Becky said she's never had to and she bled certainly at the early grade levels in late immersion you know that's another it's a but but I've got the same kind of quotes from late immersion student teachers in terms of their willingness to do French only versus starting off with a lot of English and moving into French so so that's I think part of the answer the the other thing I haven't answered all of it though with you why can't they language why aren't they okay that if we for if we force them to do it in the l2 that that would push them cognitively and linguistically I think is your point okay here's my response to that we can't force them because people will do covertly if you don't do it if you don't let them do it overtly and covertly actually wouldn't be as successful but I know of no circumstance any circumstance at all where the going gets really tough in a second language that people don't turn back if they have a strong first language that they don't turn back to that first language and I was I spent a couple of weeks in China and I was absolutely astonished at the level of English in this particular English department that I went to where people had never lived outside of Beijing and their English was astonishingly good and they they really didn't like this idea of languaging in the l1 at all and they certainly weren't going to let their students do it and that was that so then I started I said to the okay so I know each and every one of you here have written an article you have written and published in English how did you get there did you use any Mandarin to do that ah well um yes I mean it's almost inevitable why don't you let your students do it well our students would never become as good as us if we didn't force them to use English but if you talk to those students every one of those students will tell you that at some point in every class that they are in fact processing to use your word languaging to use mine in their native language in their first language so you can't force it's not something that we can stop we can do a lot to encourage maximal use of the l2 we can structure activities in ways that include it and that's what I was trying to say one of the ways of structuring it is making sure nothing is ever done in class where the students don't have to do have an output and a product in the l2 therefore then that's forcing them but it's forcing them in a way that they they they are making comparisons and contrasts and dealing with both languages yeah can she yeah they're video tape and there were points in my relationship with the people from whom I was learning just being in Spain and I so desperately wanted to express myself that I just struggled and struggled and struggled because I couldn't resort to my l1 ID they wouldn't have understood me and so I guess that's more what I was referring to that it seems that I know that when given the choice I take the easy road often um and it's it's I don't mean force I guess it's preparing them like you said well enough so that they can negotiate and push themselves linguist push themselves internally because they're trying to convey something and they might not have it all but they're going to language and language too until they get there I don't know I just but that's all of us but the very fact that you said that you've struggled and struggled and struggled right I'm sure that part of that struggle included some help from English in my head absolutely yep but I still had a fort yes I agree completely c'mere swing I'm so sorry we're out of time these are wonderful questions before we give Meryl of final applause I have two quick announcements the planning committee is asked to come up here for a photo and there is a wonderful reception awaiting the group outside the doors here but thank you very much Meryl this was fantastic way to start

Channel: CARLA UMN

Views: 12,036

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: CARLA UMN, immersion education, Language immersion, Merrill Swain, vygotsky, sociocultural, conference, plenary

Id: AsgiJndk688

Length: 85min 17sec (5117 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 18 2014