Week 5 discussion post - CLDE 5030
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University of Colorado, Denver *
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5030
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Linguistics
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Feb 20, 2024
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docx
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Uploaded by marisol321
Week 5 Discussion
This week we got to do some reading about high-school aged students. Lillian A. Stevens’s article ands Maneka Brooks’ article were really helpful. I wish I had read “How and When Did You Learn Your Language?” weeks ago, so I would have had time to prepare a similar survey for my emerging bilingual or multi-lingual students in preparation for my case-study essay, but also to help students begin the school year and start a dialogue about language before students started novels or began work for the semester. I knew a little about translanguaging before starting this semester, and find the ideas very interesting; while I allow and encourage translanguaging in my English Language arts class room, at the high school level I know I need a
considerable more understanding of scaffolds and supportive ideas / techniques for fostering successful, productive, translanguaging in the classroom. I also wish we had read this earlier, in the year. The position that literacy in all its real-world manifestations provides the ability to access social equity and relations of power. The two positions of bi-literacy are for sequential acquisition or for simultaneous biliteracy. Since by the time they reach high school, students ought to be literate in at least one language, I try to rely on a students’ literacy skills in their home / hear language to help foster their literacy in English. In my experience, however, many students did not learn to read in their home/heart language; especially those students who have been in CLDE supported classes for a number of years and have been identified as English learners for several years. That often means that students think, speak, and prefer to communicate in Spanish, but have only ever received direct instruction in reading and writing in English, so many of my students are less literate in both English and their home/heart language, and this significant delay paired with less direct instruction but also less comfort with speaking in English leads to some students who struggle academically, meaning a simultaneous biliteracy is likely my best chance for supporting a student academic growth, as literacy may be strictly taught in an English Language Arts classroom, but it is a required skill and ability across all content areas by high school, and is essential for a person’s ability to function in society in the real world. For this reason Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester (2000) as cited by García & Kleifgen (2019) argue that:
biliteracy is better obtained when learners can draw on all points along the continua; for example, students would be best served by using their vernacular contextualized lan- guage at one end to support the attainment of literate decontextualized language at the other end. […] Biliteracy in Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester’s model was seen as responding to the different relations of power within the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts in which the two languages were performed” (p 555). Given the idea the literacy allows one to access the commodities of privilege and social access and power, literacy instruction is essential. How to communicate with emerging bilingual students is difficult and there is room for research in how to best identify students’ abilities through surveys and discussions, as modeled by Brooks (2017). Finally, according to García, Barlett, and Kliefgen as cited by García & Kleifgen (2019) “Pluriliteracies moved away from the
dichotomy of the traditional L1/L2 separate pairing, emphasizing instead that languages and literacies are interrelated and flexible and positing that all literacy practices have equal value. Yet, even though the pluriliteracies approach was focused on multilingualism and literacy, it was
not centered on the minoritized multilingual learner” (555). I did my final thesis on visual rhetoric because I believe it is one way to focus academic English Language Arts focus on academic growth and foster linguistic comprehension, and inquisitive thought, but it is also a means of expression that transcends a single language allowing students who are “multilinguals act with a unitary semiotic repertoire” (García & Kleifgen, 2019, p 555). Where a diaglossiac instructional approach undervalues one language and therefore reinforces minority status to those
who speak anything other than the majority-culture language, this disenfranchises the home / heart language of emerging bilinguals and multilinguals. Translanguageing encourages students who only speak English to value the linguistic abilities and capital that an emerging bilinguals and multilinguals have, thus destigmatizing them and empowering, valuing, and encouraging pluriliteraciies. This hit me right in the heart; this is what I need to be doing more of in my classroom. While Brooks (2017) offered very concrete and usable ideas that I can immediately use in my classroom, García & Kleifgen (2019) offer more research and theory than practical application. If it is true that “separate language arrangements suppressed the highly heteroglossic language practices of bilinguals and exacerbated their minoritization (García, 2009 as cited by García & Kleifgen, 2019, p 556), then it is essential and socially responsible that educators help all of our students with some translanguaging techniques. Li Wei (2011) as cited by García & Kleifgen (2019) explained that translanguaging creates a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment, their attitude, belief and ideology, their cognitive and physical capacity into one coordinated and meaningful performance, and making it into a lived experience. (559)
This reminds me of the miltilingual student exemplars that Brooks (2017) used to show how students used special spellings or non-standards syntax to communicate via social media.
If standard, single-language focused educational practices are a form of hegemony, it benefits all students to support translanguaging for all students. If, as McDermott (2015) as cited by García & Kleifgen (2019) asserts, “translanguaging holds the potential to trans- form the structural inequalities perpetuated by schools who sort students as nonlearners (or not) based on race, class,
and language differences” (p. 556), and it is our duty as teachers to offer all students an equal education, we are bound to encourage some form of translanguging in our classrooms. Therefore; my question to my peers is how to you foster and encouraging translanguaging in your classroom? What successful tips or tricks can you offer about what has been successful for you?
References
Brooks, M.D. (2017). How and when did you learn your language?
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60 (4), 383-393
. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26630748
García, O, & Kleifgen, J. A. (2019). Translanguaging and literacies. Reading Research Quarterly, 55 (4), 553-571. doi:10.1002/rrq.286
TO READ: Collins, J. (1989). Hegemonic practice: Literacy and standard language ion public language. The Journal of Education, 171
(2), 9–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42742149
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