Language use in a Spanish-English dual immersion classroom: A sociolinguistic perspective.
Material type:
TextDescription: 319 pISBN: 0493580719Subject(s): Education, Bilingual and Multicultural | Language, Modern | Education, Elementary | 0282 | 0291 | 0524Dissertation note: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002. Summary: Dual immersion classrooms, also known as “two-way” bilingual immersion, combine language minority students with English-speaking students learning the non-English language in order that both groups learn each other's language. Research indicates that students achieve above-average academic and linguistic proficiency in dual immersion, but to date there have been no quantifications of students' Spanish use in these classrooms. Given that using a language is crucial for SLA as well as for heritage language maintenance, we need to explore how much Spanish is used and for what purposes by both groups of students.Summary: This case study recorded the output of four fifth-grade students, two Spanish L1 and two Spanish L2, over five months of Spanish-language classes. The 2,203 turns of speech were coded according to nine variables. Overall, students used Spanish 56% and English 44% of the time, but four major trends were apparent: (1) The girls used Spanish more often than the boys, regardless of L1. (2) The students averaged 82% Spanish when talking with the teacher, but dropped to 32% when talking to peers. (3) Spanish was mostly used for on-task topics; off-task social turns were made only 16% of the time in Spanish. (4) Students' peer English covered a wider range of functions (including playing, teasing, and other off-task activity) than did their peer Spanish.Summary: These findings lend support to proposals that a kind of diglossia exists in immersion classrooms (despite the presence of native Spanish-speaking students) with Spanish fulfilling mostly academic functions and rarely being used for socializing. Additional ethnographic data suggested that students who invested in identities as Spanish-speakers more frequently spoke Spanish in the classroom, regardless of L1, and that opportunities to practice Spanish were not equally distributed.Summary: While it is likely that both types of students develop higher levels of Spanish in dual immersion classrooms than in other program types, diglossia may be inevitable. The findings suggest that students may use more Spanish if teachers monitor them more closely during groupwork and if the school encourages them to develop investments in identities as Spanish-speakers; their proficiency may increase as a result of greater focus on form.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-02, Section: A, page: 0470.
Adviser: Anna Maria Escobar.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.
Dual immersion classrooms, also known as “two-way” bilingual immersion, combine language minority students with English-speaking students learning the non-English language in order that both groups learn each other's language. Research indicates that students achieve above-average academic and linguistic proficiency in dual immersion, but to date there have been no quantifications of students' Spanish use in these classrooms. Given that using a language is crucial for SLA as well as for heritage language maintenance, we need to explore how much Spanish is used and for what purposes by both groups of students.
This case study recorded the output of four fifth-grade students, two Spanish L1 and two Spanish L2, over five months of Spanish-language classes. The 2,203 turns of speech were coded according to nine variables. Overall, students used Spanish 56% and English 44% of the time, but four major trends were apparent: (1) The girls used Spanish more often than the boys, regardless of L1. (2) The students averaged 82% Spanish when talking with the teacher, but dropped to 32% when talking to peers. (3) Spanish was mostly used for on-task topics; off-task social turns were made only 16% of the time in Spanish. (4) Students' peer English covered a wider range of functions (including playing, teasing, and other off-task activity) than did their peer Spanish.
These findings lend support to proposals that a kind of diglossia exists in immersion classrooms (despite the presence of native Spanish-speaking students) with Spanish fulfilling mostly academic functions and rarely being used for socializing. Additional ethnographic data suggested that students who invested in identities as Spanish-speakers more frequently spoke Spanish in the classroom, regardless of L1, and that opportunities to practice Spanish were not equally distributed.
While it is likely that both types of students develop higher levels of Spanish in dual immersion classrooms than in other program types, diglossia may be inevitable. The findings suggest that students may use more Spanish if teachers monitor them more closely during groupwork and if the school encourages them to develop investments in identities as Spanish-speakers; their proficiency may increase as a result of greater focus on form.
School code: 0090.
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