Week 6 discussion post - CLDE 5030
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University of Colorado, Denver *
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5030
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Linguistics
Date
Feb 20, 2024
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docx
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Uploaded by marisol321
Week 6 discissions This week we are back to mostly reading about early childhood language acquisition and how situational circumstances influence language acquisition and literacy skills and how students learn and acquire new language-based skills. Elsa Cardenas-Hagan’s work listed the oral language milestones children should reach by age group up to age 12. This is not dissimilar from what we read the first week. Most teachers can intuitively understand without having read or conducting much research that “oral language proficiency in the native language affects performance in the second language. A child who has a
stronger foundation of oral language is likely to be able to respond well to second language instruction” (Cardenas-Hagan, 2020, p. 19); therefore, socioeconomics, homelife, and lack of academic instruction / support impedes multi-lingual students twice as much, by delaying their first-language acquisition as well as their secondary-language acquisition. Ideally, by high school students would be in the second level of language acquisition according to Cummins’ Theory of Second Language Acquisition, during which students are developing “cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). CALP extends on basic language skills to academic skills that require the ability for higher level vocabulary, thinking, and reasoning skills” (Cardenas-Hagan, 2020, P. 21). Unfortunately, I see many students who are still in the first stage
of Cummins’ Theory of Second Language Acquisition, in which “second language learners can build on the native language to develop their basic interpersonal communication skills, known as
BICS, in the second language” (Cardenas-Hagan, 2020, P. 21). Again, ideally, high school students’ literacy skills should be at least at stage 4, the multiple viewpoints stage, but if language development is delayed or impeded for a student’s first language, surely they will also be delayed in their second language. I was thankful to see that Cardenas-Hagan listed specific language development strategies I can use in the classroom, but was disappointed that what was listed are strategies most teachers are already using or were very vague; I was only disappointed because I was looking forward to something new. Although previous readings had covered the differences between emergent bilinguals, simultaneous bilinguals, and sequential bilinguals, Baker & Wright (2011) was helpful have an easy, direct comparison. I have a nephew whose parents intended to raise him as a simultaneous tri-lingual OPOL (the mother spoke to the baby exclusively in Portuguese, the father spoke to the
baby exclusively in Korean, and their friends, family, nanny, and the rest of the world spoke to the baby in English). They eventually gave up this practice, and now code-switching and using multiple languages in a conversation is normal, since the rigorous application of a tri-lingual OPOL approach proved to be very difficult for them. Now that nephew is being raised in a mixed language environment; I would describe his Korean as receptive, his Spanish is productive
(having displaced the Portugese his mother originally spoke to him when they moved closer to the baby’s maternal grandmother), but his English is dominant, and the Portuguese has nearly completely disappeared. Baker & Wright (2011) was a nice review, but having grown up with teachers in bilingual schools, this was all familiar. The clarification on codeswitching, language interference, and translanguaging was helpful; and I was surprised to read that language interference is considered a pejorative term. Growing up in a home with two spoken languages (Spanish and English), I felt like intra-sentential codeswitching was normal. I really appreciated the section on Children as Language Interpreters and Brokers. Valdés (2003) as cited by Baker
& Wright (2011) “argues that young immigrant’s ability to use their bilingual skills to mediate for their families both linguistically and culturally in this manner is evidence of ‘giftedness’ that is rarely recognized by schools” (p. 104). This is a distinction I hope all educators are endeavoring to make and share with students.
My question for my peers (especially those who are bilingual) is this: how often to you find yourself codeswitching or translanguaging? Can you metacognitively describe how you decide which language to use in which context or do you have explicit rules you prefer to follow?
References
Baker, C., & Wright, W. E. (2011). The Early Development of Bilingualism. In Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism
(6th ed., pp. 87–107). essay, Multilingual Matters. Cardenas-Hagan, E. (2020). Language and literacy development. In Literacy foundations for english learners: A comprehensive guide to evidence-based instruction
(pp. 15–29). Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
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