developing ‘academic language’ from primary to secondary education creating powerful language...
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DEVELOPING ‘ACADEMIC LANGUAGE’ FROM PRIMARY TO SECONDARY EDUCATION
CREATING POWERFUL LANGUAGE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERSKoen Van Gorp, Centre for Language and Education, KU Leuven
Seminar organised by the Language Policy Unit - DG II Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France
www.coe.int/lang
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.coe.i
nt
School year 2010-2011
• More than two in ten primary school children of Mechelen, Boom and Willebroek do not speak Dutch at home.
• In the city of Antwerp, the percentage in primary educationis even higher. Of the 52.928 students there are 20.350 (or 38.45 %) whose home language is not Dutch.
Not everyone is equally successful
• For certain groups of students school success is not evident.The socio-economic situation at home and the ethnic-cultural situation or home language situation appear to have an impact on student performance at school!Research finds a more or less fixed hierarchy in student performance:
Growth curve: reading comprehension grade 3 to 6 primary educationDifferentiating student groups according to home language and SES
35
40
45
50
55
60
3 4 5 6
Grade
Rea
din
g c
om
pre
hen
sio
n L1, +SES
L2 +SES
L1 -SES
Turkish -SES
Arabic -SES
Other L2 -SES
Challenge for L2 learners• Language is simultaneously a means of learning
subject content as well as an academic discourse practice that has to be learned.
• Both become increasingly abstract and decontextualized in the course of education – e.g. CALP, academic register – Cummins, 2000;
Schleppegrell, 2004)• Being able to construct knowledge efficiently and
becoming a proficient user of the academic register are requirements for successful participation in education.
The challenge: talk the talk
Text, subject content
Knowledge construction
I have 46 chromosomes in each
cell
They appear in pairs.A pair is 2. 46 : 2 = 23 So you have 23 pairs of
chromosomes in each cell
All kinds of leaves
Exploring the world: different socializations
Language = social behaviourLan
guag
e as a
resu
lt of
soci
aliz
atio
n pr
oces
ses
Bridging the gap: home - school
• Creating opportunities for all students to master language and content in school
• Building on previous experiences / prior knowledge
• Providing tasks/activities that allow students to construct knowledge together (with the teacher)
• Powerful (language) learning environments• Teachers can make the difference!
Powerful language learning environmentsPositive, safe
and rich learning
environment
Interactional support
Rich and accessible language input(listening /reading)
Speaking and writing
opportunities
Feedback
Authentic / interactive
communication
The power of (de)contextualizing
Concrete experience
Decontextualizing Contextualizing
abstractgeneral understanding
The ultimate context = reality
Rethinking classroom activities
Teacher N
- Short introductory talk with students about visit to the doctor
- Several vocabulary exercises: parts of the body
- A/B exercise: My… hurts? What can I do about it?
Teacher R
- Teacher introduces authentic problem: refurbishing a classroom
- Students discuss problem and propose solution
- Teacher and students visit “recycling shop” to inquire about prices, second-hand furniture, delivery…
The Case DNA: language and content
Primary schools with more than 85% SL learners
Second language development &
knowledge construction
The role of participation in
learning
The role of student-teacher
talk
Tasks
Students
Teachers
The Case DNA: Task-based lesson unit
• Perform tasks like: Solving a crime by comparing DNA-profiles
• Finding the answers to the following questions:– Where can you find
DNA?– Where do your genes
come from?– What do genes do?– What is DNA-testing
used for?
Thief Suspect_1
Suspect_2
Suspect_3
▬▬
▬▬ ▬▬ ▬▬ ▬▬
▬▬
▬▬ ▬▬ ▬▬ ▬▬
▬▬ ▬▬ ▬▬
The Case DNA: reading texts
Difficult ‘academic’, informative
texts
Results Test DNA for Experiment-Control groups
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
32
Pretest Posttest Delayed Posttest
Tes
t DN
A
Occasions
Observed growth in experiment group and control group
Experiment
control
Conclusions: quantitative part• The classroom intervention was effective. • SL learners learned a lot in a relatively short
period (145 – 215 minutes of teaching) from a task based lesson unit.
• The more the students participated in the classroom, the more they learned.
Student turns in 5 classrooms
Student turns
class Min. Max.
1 4 142
2 0 37
3 0 20
4 3 29
5 2 48
The importance of classroom interaction
• “it [classroom talk] is the most important educational tool for guiding the development of understanding and for jointly constructing knowledge.” (Hodgkinson & Mercer, 2008: xi)
Dialogue as a bridge
Language
Knowledge
Dialogue
Thought
Damhuis & de Blauw, 2007
Dialogue creates learning opportunities.Condition: The quality of the dialogue!
Dialogue = interaction in which at leasttwo interlocutors are actively involved
Quality of interaction: dialogic or not?
• “Dialogic teaching is that in which both teachers and students make substantial and significant contributions and through which children’s thinking on a given idea or theme is helped to move forward.” (Mercer & Littleton, 2007: 41)
4 successful students M W F S
Teacher F F I I
Gender boy girl girl boy
Language use at home Moroccan + Dutch
Crioulo + Dutch
Turkish Turkish + Dutch
Language proficiency + + + -
Teacher expectations + ++ +- -
Number of turns/hour 29.4 12.3 5.6 4.2
Learning gains directly linked to interactions with teacher
++ +(+) +- (+)-
The case of M and S• 4 students, 4 different stories: looking at
the extremes – looking at the quality of the student teacher interactions
• The case of M– What do genes do?
• The case of S– Chromosomes, genes
Sir, what are genes?
• From the beginning ‘genes’ catch the interest of M: "Sir, what are genes?" (3 clarification requests)
• He gets clarification during group work:– Extensive explanation by the teacher about
relationship cell, chromosomes, DNA and genes• M as overhearer
– Co-construction T-M about functions of genes• Interestingly: M’s answers can largely be traced to
the co-construction that went on between T and M.
About genes - Transcript• T_390: What does a gene do?
M_48: It gets nutrients from your euh bread. T_391: gets food, [T focus to the whole group] Do you already received that lesson of nutrients. That it enters in the blood stream. [T focuses on M] What more does it do / M_49: And it says how you look / /like./ / If you have brown or blue eyes. T_392: / / uhum. / / Voila. [T nods] M_50: xxx or your grandparents are. T_393: Uhum. Would it do also something else than just nutrients, so it says how you look and your hair and your eyes and all that, and you say that it gets the nutrients from food. Would that be the only thing? What would it do more? M searches in the text. + So what you look like, you just said. M_51: Cut toenails T_394: How that nails grow. What else? M_52: in a complex way T_395: How can you say that briefly? How can you say that briefly, what you have marked? [T indicates highlighted text] + / / it ensures how that / / your body, your body works. Yes, that nails grow, that my hair grows, that it gets nutrients, that is how your body works. These are the two answers you've found.
About genes – Evidence of learning• Test DNA: 3 statements about genes correct• Interview questions by researcher and M’s answers: • Q1: What do genes do?
– “they take care of how you look like. Whether you have blue eyes or brown eyes.” “Genes, they, well, for example, they get nutrients from the bread that you eat.”
• When asked for other aspects?– “Well, how your nails grow again, how your nose looks
like.”• Q2: what is the most important thing that you learned?
– “That that genes, that genes determine what you look like and how your body works. And that, that actually, what chromosomes is and what cells are.”
Conclusion M
• M’s learning gains should not come as a surprise:• M sets his own learning goals, relates school content
to his own social world. M’s sense of agency and active participation, his engament in dialogue with the tasks, the teacher and other students.
• Long personal conversations between T and M are important training areas for M’s output: putting learning into words. – They provide opportunities for learner uptake in order to
finetune or align the knowledge as well as the academic register to express or explain that knowledge
Looking at S
• One of only two long conversations, directly related to the Test DNA, ‘most qualitative’ but still minimal interaction T-S– Knowledge testing – minimal response scenario!
chromosomes and cells - transcript
• T_321[…] Where do we find DNA? O_70: in our body, everything. T_322: in the body. And / / actually ... / / in ... E_8: / / and our stuff / / S_3: / / and our chromosomes / / T_323: [pointing to S] Chromosomes S_4: Cell. T_324: in the cells. Ok. Cells, chromosomes ... euhm DNA, genes.
The case of S • Progress on picture recognition task can be linked
with the transcript (and one previous answer by S).
• Most important you learned? “Chromosomes, if you pull it open, than you see stuff, alphabet. And if you read it, you can find it. Who is the whatsit, the thief.”– Own knowledge building: picture-based; no
mention of it in the classroom interaction– Everyday language use
Conclusion S
• Limited interactions with the teacher resulting in few production opportunities leading to limited and more ‘incoherent’ output– Underscores the importance of spoken
interactions as training areas for output and knowledge construction
Conclusions• Complex and dynamic interplay between tasks,
teachers and students• For each student a different configuration of
learning opportunities (co-construction) matters.– the importance of agency!– effect of motivating tasks!
Conclusions
• A positive effect of student-teacher talk on knowledge production!– Learners are active meaning makers on their own
(Wells, 1986; 2009).• However, overall quality of teacher-student
interaction is rather poor: – more knowledge testing than knowledge
construction; transmission model of learning• It depends on the student’s agency to actively
engage in knowledge building with the teacher.
Conclusions
• "Learners are interesting, at least as interesting as teachers, because they are the people who do whatever learning gets done, whether it is because of or in spite of the teacher." (Allwright, 1980: 165)
Questions for discussion in the groups
Educational success requires proficiency in academic language, which depends on all teachers of all subjects.
1. What features of your context support the implementation of this principle?
2. What features of your context are likely to undermine the implementation of this principle?
3. If you could start an innovation programme for the implementation of this principle in your context, what measure would you introduce as a first step?
