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Bilingual literacy not only supports academic success it also contributes to bilingual children's development of identity. However, not all contexts allow children to develop their writing fluency in their first language (L1) to the same degree as in their school language, their second language (L2). Few studies have explored bilingual children's writing fluency in two languages and most studies to date have fo-cussed on Latin scripts, in particular English. The present paper fills this gap by exploring writing fluency of bilingual biscriptal children in the typologically different languages Swedish (official language and main medium of instruction) and Persian (home language). Twenty-three bilingual biscriptal children between the ages of 10-15 wrote four texts each by hand using Eye and Pen, descriptive and narrative, in Persian and Swedish respectively. The final texts and temporal information were used to compute product and process writing fluency. In order to explore writing fluency further, the role of language exposure and lexical retrieval was investigated. A survey was used to explore the participants' exposure at home and participants' lexical retrieval was measured by standardized tasks in each language. An additional qualitative study of three writers focused on what may have caused interruptions in fluency in the two languages. Results show that the children produced more characters, words and clauses and wrote faster, produced longer and more complex bursts in their L2 as compared with their L1. Exposure in L1 was connected with writing fluency in both languages while lexical retrieval was mildly related with fluency in L1. Typological characteristics such as diacritics created pauses and hence interrupted writing fluency in both languages.
In this article, I highlight how two teachers seek to scaffold second language learners' use of language and engagement with texts in Grade 1 and 6. The aim is to explore the communication of metaknowledge in classroom discourse, more specifically, the communication of knowledge about language and metacognitive reading strategies. Two teachers participated in the study, and data were gathered through observations, voice recordings, and the collection of teaching materials. Bernstein's sociology of education is operationalized to reveal different aspects of framing during teaching activities in second language teaching and geography. Drawing upon systemic-functional linguistics, I show how metaknowledge was fore-grounded by the teacher in ways that sometimes de-emphasized the subject-related texts and concepts expected to be at the center of the teaching. An important empirical finding is that the foregrounding of metaknowledge such as features of the language and cognitive reading strategies in teaching can result in a pseudo-visible modality of pedagogy that provides insufficient scaffolding for dealing with subject-related texts and participating substantially in classroom discourse. Implications for teaching are discussed.
As the official and predominant public language in Israel, Hebrew is taught in Arab minority schools, most-ly by L1 Arabic-speaking teachers. Active acquisition of Hebrew accelerates in the immersion conditions of high education. I explore the persistence of very common interference errors in various linguistic domains, as established by teachers' written corrective feedback, and the correlation between persistence, error salience and a general learner effect. From a corpus of 56 Hebrew essays written by 9th graders, 11th graders and undergraduate students in southern Israel, the 14 most frequent interference errors were isolated and incorporated in a compiled test essay, which was then given to 13 L1 Arabic-speaking teachers of Hebrew to correct. The salience of each item was established by the percentage of teachers correcting it; each was also graded for its status as a general learners' error. Statistical analysis showed a significant correlation between each of these two measures and persistence over the time period studied. This corroborates a multiple effect approach to persistence. Localized errors of phonology, orthography, and morphology generally declined faster than syntactic errors, which persisted especially in structures that occur in L1 Hebrew, marked for discourse-pragmatic effects.
Drawing on evidence from second language medium of instruction (L2 MoI) context (the Seychelles), the objective of the study was to investigate to what extent the choice of language is a factor that influences pupils' writing and their opportunities to incorporate their own knowledge, person, experiences and world views in their school knowledge production. The evidence is based on findings from a corpus of 308 written texts, produced by 154 primary six pupils in the Seychelles in the subject of Social Studies, where each pupil answered the same task under controlled conditions in their native tongue (Kreol Seselwa) and in English (L2 MoI) in a counterbalanced design. Apart from text length, aspects of two metafunctions from Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) were investigated in the analyses, namely 1) the cognitive ideational dimension and 2) the social and interpersonal dimension. With relevance to the ideational dimension, we also looked at how students resorted to code switching to express their ideas. The results of the study show that pupils produced longer texts when writing in Kreol Seselwa and that they code switched more in the English texts. Further, the Kreol Seselwa texts contained far richer vocabulary to describe the semantic domain of the locally contextualised topic of the exercise. It was also evident that pupils used far more first-person pronouns when writing in their mother tongue, indicating a closer engagement with the text than when they wrote in English. The study has implications for policymakers, teachers and most importantly learners in other multilingual settings, particularly in post-colonial countries like the Seychelles, where the mother tongue is undervalued in the classroom.
A comparison of Hong Kong primary four students' Chinese and English reading attainment in 2016
(2019)
This study examines Hong Kong primary four (P4) students' Chinese and English reading test performance in a bilingual reading proficiency study (BR) conducted in 2016, the fifth round in a series of studies monitoring the bilingual reading competence of primary school students in Hong Kong since 2004. It also compares students' bilingual reading performance in 2016 with that in the 2013 round of testing. A total of 3,592 P4 students from 38 schools in Hong Kong participated in the study. Significant improvements were found both in the students' Chinese and English reading test performance, with marked increases in the overall English reading test scores and in performance on literary and informational texts. Such improvements may be due to the implementation of the English Language Curriculum, support from the Hong Kong Language Committee and new medium of instruction (MOI) arrangements in Hong Kong primary schools. The students' performance was significantly worse on Chinese literary texts overall and on the first three levels of reading comprehension processes in BR 2016. This may be a consequence of the increasing use of digital devices among young students and of low achievers' poor test performance. Future studies need to examine whether there are causal relationships between the variables mentioned above and the bilingual reading test performance of P4 students in Hong Kong.
This study examines the use of Seychelles Creole (hereafter, Kreol Seselwa), and English as languages for testing knowledge in the Social Studies classroom of the Seychelles. The objective of the study was to ascertain whether the languages used in the test affected the pupils' academic performance. The paper is theoretically influenced by the Social Practice approach to writing (Street, 1984), challenging a monolingual (autonomous) approach in favour of a more multilingual (ideological) model which takes into account all the learners' language repertoires. A within groups experimental design was implemented, and 151 primary six pupils (11-12 years) from three different schools wrote a short test, in a counterbalanced design, in two languages. The topic of the test was fishing, mostly local contextual knowledge, taught in English. The tests were marked for content in both languages. The results showed that the scores on both languages highly correlated, indicating that both tests captured the same knowledge constructs. However, pupils achieved significantly higher marks in the tests written in Kreol Seselwa than in English. The study has implications for policymakers, teachers and most importantly learners in other multilingual settings, particularly in post-colonial countries like the Seychelles, where the mother tongue is undervalued in the classroom.
Discourse―yes, Grammar―no: Influence of Arabic mother tongue on Arab students' writing in Hebrew
(2018)
Learning Hebrew among L1 Arabic speakers in East Jerusalem, Israel, has gained momentum, since being fluent in the language of the majority contributes to socioeconomic mobility and inclusion.
One of the main challenges L2 learners face is writing, specifically expository and argumentative composition. Writing products of native speakers of Arabic (L1) in Hebrew (L2) reveal cross-linguistic influences, including language transfer from L1. This L1 interference is strengthened by the strong resemblance of these two Semitic languages, and is manifested in morphology, syntax, vocabulary, semantics, and rhetorical structures.
In this study we examine changes in the expository-argumentative writing in Hebrew (L2) of Arabic speaking students who participated in an intensive Hebrew learning program. We used qualitative textual analysis based on 52 writing products [26 pre-, 26 post-tests]. Our research questions were: 1. What are the main characteristics of Arabic speaking students' writing in Hebrew? 2. What types of changes are evident in their writing samples after completing two years of Hebrew study?
In order to characterize their writing, study participants completed pre- and post-tests. Our findings suggest: (a) a strong interference of Arabic, on writing in Hebrew in different language fields: (b) a noticeable improvement in discourse, but much less in grammar, and in lexicon – mixed results.
This study reports the comparative narrative ability of bilingual English- and Chinese-speaking primary school students in Singapore from a developmental perspective, an area attracting little research in the past. A total of 36 primary one, three and five students from mainstream schools narrated in Mandarin and in English whilst being shown accompanying pictures. The students' narrative ability was then measured in terms of their grasp of narrative structure, temporality and the evaluative expressions. Analyses showed that the students' English stories were more advanced than were their Chinese stories. Although similar developmental patterns were found in the children's English and Chinese, there were many more connectives and evaluative expressions in their English than in their Chinese stories. The evidence suggests that the English and Chinese competence of the bilingual learners in Singapore schools do not develop in close parallel. The implications for bilingual teaching in Singapore schools are discussed, especially the finding that the children's English ability was better than their Chinese language ability.
This study documents the findings of action research projects generated by two teachers with different cultural backgrounds and grade levels; one is a bilingual Spanish-English high school teacher and the other is an English monolingual first grade-reading teacher. Teachers' cognitive and professional development is examined by taking into account the results of the action research project on the literacy needs of their students. Qualitative data from teacher interviews and reflections have been collected and analyzed. These teachers as researchers of their own practice plan and integrate cultural interpretation produced by the children to better understand how learners construct knowledge through primary language and in the acquisition of English. In the kindergarten/first grade classroom, the teacher cannot use the native language of the children and must use non-fictional text to teach beginning reading. The teacher uses a culturally graphic text with English prose to see if children respond positively to the ethnic representation in the symbolic art. This teacher is documenting children's reactions to the text and her own learning process as a result of the use of these texts with Spanish speaking children. In the high school context, the teacher is teaching in the native language of the students. Student writing samples have been generated based on a literary prompt at the beginning of a literature unit and at the end. These are analyzed based on literary elements that also include an oral language presentation in the native language.
This article discusses the outcomes of an investigation of social representations of Portuguese primary school pupils in Germany towards "their languages" (mainly Portuguese and German) within a theoretical framework based on the concept of "Heritage Language" and its role in the development of plurilingual competences The results of the collected data (956 drawings from pupils in 7 German Federal States) point at the existence of: i) bounds between Heritage Language and the development of Plurilingual Competence; ii) stereotyped representations towards languages and cultures; and iii) the building up of a "linguistic culture", since the pupils have already developed attitudes, knowledge and aptitude to deal with linguistic and cultural diversity. The study emphasizes the need to develop a more consistent multilingual awareness in order to optimize attitudes, knowledge and aptitudes evinced, namely in Heritage Language classroom.
