Background
• Mei French – EAL teacher and coordinator at OLSH College
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College – OLSH College
• Catholic charitable school • Very multicultural, multilingual, low SES school • Adelaide’s inner north
• Approximately 1 in 5 students in an EAL class
• At least 40% of students have English as an Additional Language
Purpose, Content, Structure
• Context and development of this unit of work
• Focus on research done by students and some of their findings
• How students and teachers can benefit from this kind of work
• Opportunity to access resources or share your ideas through wiki
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A visual representation of the makeup of our school
More than 50 cultures, and the proportions are always changing
Light blue – different European backgrounds
Green – students from different African backgrounds
Primary languages spoken at home by our students
Not all of our multilingual students are EAL students
Students in EAL classes represent some but not all of these languages –
Dari, Vietnamese, Dinka, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Hindi
Also includes about 25 International students, from different Asian countries
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How the project developed
• Multiliteracies – joined a 2 year Catholic Ed project (2009‐10) • Diverse teachers looking at different aspects of multiliteracies – IT and Visual
• Saw an opportunity to focus on the strengths of students in an EAL class, that is ‐ Multilingualism
• Also an opportunity to return to linguistics research – introduce it to students
The major outcome of the 2 year project was a 1‐term unit for Year 10 EAL
Unit continually evolving since 2009
Current Unit Structure
Focus for students is –
• How do we use language in our lives?
• How can we make the most of our (multilingual) skills?
How I was named: Getting to know the class, Strong personal connection with language, Cultural naming practices
My literacy identities: Social identities, multiple ways of using text and languages
Language use in my life: recording and analysing day to day language use –
languages, registers; comparing use of different languages
Language research: the focus of this presentation
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As researchers, they conduct each stage of a research project
Communication –
• To their peers – through process of research and presentation to class
• To teachers – presentation in person or through teacher workshop
• To a wider audience – eg MEC Language Rights conference, Indonesian sister school parallel class, ACTA conference, Wiki
Not just another school project
Experts – on languages, research focus topics, multilingualism
Advisors – to teachers and other students about their focus of research or about languages for learning
Advocates – for languages and the speakers of them, for languages as learning tools
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Over the 4 years teaching this unit, students have chosen a very broad range of topics related to
• The different languages they use
• How they manage their languages
• How they learn languages
• How they use their languages in different contexts, with different people or with new technology
A few examples of student research that can most directly inform their teachers about how languages might influence learning
• School Literacies (Nasrin – classroom language, Gulnaz – code switching)
• IT Literacies (Taherah ‐ texting)
• Multilingualism (Elga – Australian born ESL students’ use of home languages)
• Language Learning (Natsuko – learning English)
Students’ own work, though not full presentations – selected slides only; some graphics/text enlarged or reconfigured for visual clarity
Names have been changed
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Using a survey, Nasrin investigated the way students manage their languages at school, and how this fits in to the school culture.
School Literacies – How using multiple languages ‘fits in’ to a school context
• Wanted to communicate to teachers so they could understand student use of languages in class
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Students with less time in Australia use more of their home language and less English at school
Common sense idea, but with data to clearly back it up
Most students use English between half and three‐quarters of the time
very few students use English less than half of the time at school
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Teachers may often suspect that students speak their home language in class to hide what they are talking about.
While this is true less than 15% of the time, most of the time students are using their home language to help each other understand what is going on in the classroom – in terms of content and tasks.
Students do get in trouble for speaking different languages in class, though thankfully only a small number of students, or only a few occasions.
Insight into the worlds of students when they are using different languages at school – only through a student informant
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By recording students’ conversations, Gulnaz investigated the reasons why students code switch when speaking with each other.
School Literacies – using languages to talk about school work
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Farzanah: Hey Shazia!
Shazia: Hey Farzanah, what do we have for home work?
Farzanah: I think we have EAL. We, we … we have to fill out the survey. Yeah?
Shazia: Oh yeah! I forgot we had to do that!
Farzanah: Yes
Linda: Hey Ella what do we have to do?
Ella: EAL, I mean English as an Additional Language
Linda: Ok thankyou Ella: Linda do you need help with any of the questions?
Linda: No, thank you.
Vietnamese: 10
English: 15 Dari: 10 words
English: 21 words
Like the Dari, the Vietnamese words here tend to be interpersonal rather than content
The Dari words here tend to be personal language, while more ‘technical’ classroom language is in English
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Gulnaz showed that most of what students speak is English, but they use home language words purposefully to help other students understand
Tahirah read her sister’s text messages – with permission – to look at the way words change for that purpose
Not just the results that can be important – but the research process itself
• Recording code‐switching at school says – “what you are doing is interesting, it’s important, it’s worth researching and it’s worth telling people about.”
• Teachers and students can see this
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IT Literacy – how young multilinguals manage and shape languages with technology
Family Friend:
Hello Zahra, are you well? Please come to the mosque tonight, ok? Because I need to talk to you. Hope to see you there. Love you, bye.
School Friend:
Hey Suraya, how are you? Have you done your SOSE essay? I haven’t even started it, I’m so lazy. LOL (smile). Anyway, see you in school.
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We can see the difference in the use of Farsi and English depending on the audience
Also the use of shortened or changed words for texting
Elements of code switching & technology use
What is perhaps most interesting is that we can see the way these young people are changing their home language for use with technology, and with Roman script. This is an insight we could only gain through students conducting research to show us their private worlds.
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Elga surveyed her Australian‐born friends who speak another language at home
Speaking home language and English
21 students speaking Vietnamese, Tagalog, Chinese, Khmer
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Her results are interesting in that students don’t feel overly confident with their home language proficiency, but they recognise their ‘above average’ proficiency
Very significant part of their lives
We can compare the use of home language by students with their parents and their siblings
Parents – home language the vast majority of the time
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Siblings – more English than home language
Elga has recognised students’ awareness about their own language use –
their multilingual skills are explicitly recognised and can be a source of insecurity
This student’s research probably correlates with data from ‘scholarly’ research A demonstration of the effects of ‘subtractive’ monolingual education? What would happen in the next generation?
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Natsuko, a beginning learner of English, surveyed her classmates to find out what is easy or hard about learning English
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Language Learning ‐ What is it like learning English?
Many benefits for students – conference theme
• Ethics – the right for students to use and maintain their languages
• Equity – improved access to education, raising the status of diverse language and those who speak them
• Ecology – recognising the importance of and supporting a linguistically diverse community. Benefit for the linguistically diverse students as well as the teachers and students who can experience and learn from the richness.
A simple message for teachers
• What skills need to be taught and scaffolded more carefully?
• What strengths and tools do students have at their disposal to help do this?
Also shows that students of different communicative abilities can do student research
Some additional benefits
• Empowerment – students having the power and occasion to say what matters to them, and what should matter to the school
• Education – in and about languages, different Englishes and the particular skills of being multilingual
• Ego – Identity – languages and multilingualism are given higher status, so students can (re)examine and decide ways in which these form part of their identity
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Don’t take my word for it
More pragmatic benefits for teachers
• Knowing students, how they learn, how they communicate, making personal connections
• Understanding the strengths and skills in language that students bring with them
• Mainstream teacher after workshop about student research –
“It’s good to know that they know what they’re doing”
• Teachers can start to try different ways of supporting students through their languages to learn content and English
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Students demonstrate a clear understanding of the roles of teachers and students, and ways they want to learn
This is not just a pet project
Can fit into the F‐10 national curriculum for English ‐ Language Strand: Language Variation and Change
• Different aspects fit into different stages of the curriculum
• Possible for students of any age to contribute to work like this, in the appropriate way
• Not just EAL or multilingual students either – scope for looking at Englishes, registers, technology etc
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www.languageliteracyidentity.pbworks.com
Wiki
If you are interested in more detail
Using the unit or parts of it in your teaching
Following updates as I conduct my own research –
• different aspects of student language use
• teacher attitudes and practices
• how student skills can be more explicitly used to support their learning
• Currently working with one of our sister schools in Indonesia to adapt the unit to suit their students and context, may be able to share some of that work too
Using the wiki:
• Read like a website
• Download PDFs for use or adaptation
• Make comments, suggestions, ask questions
• Contribute examples from your context or students
Please visit the page and sign up using the “request access” button so I can add you as a user
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