Theory of ELL

Gabriel Abood
z
Opening Questions

 What can you tell me about ELL?

 What are your initial thoughts on Bilingual Education?

z
Objective

 Students will be able to explain the theory of ELL.

 z

Part I: The Effectiveness Question

z
The Current Situation

 Politicians and pundits remain obsessed with the question of

bilingual education’s effectivity
 Four decades of classroom experience, curricular refinements, and
clarified methodology has swayed countless people

 “There is no question that bilingual approaches have helped to

dismantle language barriers for millions of English learners
since 1968.”
z
The Extent of its Success

 Bilingual Education does not guarantee rapid progress in

English and academic content areas

 Language of instruction is no more the sole determinant of

success for native English speakers than for English language
learners

 Resources, program design, teacher qualifications,

administrative leadership, socioeconomic status, and school
culture are more important
z
Just a Program Component

 Language may be used as a program component to foster

various goals

 Then why the heated debate?

 Politics
z
Politics

 If members of the public remain anxious over assimilation,

concerns will be voiced by representatives
 Let’s break the fourth wall: Do you find this language antagonistic,
and do you feel that there is a subliminal distinction being
established between a class of expertise/beaureaucrats and “the
public”?
z
The Road Ahead

 “Expert opinion and research evidence are overshadowed by

notions of folk linguistics… until such fallacies are convincingly
addressed, bilingual education is likely to remain a volatile
issue, easy to exploit for political purposes.”
z
Discussion

 “Autopilot” as an analytical framework

z
Research with a Tilt

 Research is often conducted to confirm the biases of policymakers

 The questions are tailored: did the government get good value for
its investment, were students learning English rapidly enough, did
the outcome warrant continued funding under Title VII

 In 1997, National Research Council disregarded the majority of this

research

 In first decade of Title VII, only ½ of 1% of the $500 million went to

research
z
Little to Go On

 Many of the required evaluations were of such poor quality that

in 1975 the US Office of Education destroyed every single
evaluation thus far submitted

 $3,000-$4,000 could only buy four to five days of an evaluator’s

time
z
AIR Study

 Initial progress report on Title VII, encompassed 38 districts with

8,200 children and spanned 10 states. There was nothing
conclusive found.

 Criticized for its poorly designed research model

z
Problems in Research

 Immigrant populations are mobile, volunteerism leads to

selection bias, and background factors are very difficult to
account for

 The National Research Council has criticized “the use of

elaborate statistical methods intended to overcome the
shortcomings” of these studies

 “If a study’s assumptions about second-language acquisition are

erroneous, its findings are unlikely to be relevant to English
learner programs.”
z
The Only Takeaway

 Even if the inconclusive findings comparing English-only and

Bilingual Education found no difference in achievement, it
proves that even with less time on task learning English does
not impair English acquisition.
 z

Part II: Basic Research on Language

z
Difficulty in Language Acquisition

 In 1987, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign

Languages found that only 3% of high school graduates and 5%
of college graduates reach a meaningful level of proficiency in a
second language- and many come from bilingual homes
z
Form over Function

 Grammatical knowledge in Latin and Greek were regarded as

rhetorical arts during the Roman Empire

 The study of grammar, by the Renaissance, was seen as good

mental discipline. Oral communication was not the focus.
z
Direct methods

 Maximilian Berlitz emphasized partial or total immersion.

 Oral language is emphasized, translation is avoided. Students

are encouraged to think in the second language.

 These highly structured, teacher-centric lessons prove effective

for diplomats and businessmen.
z
Audiolingual Method

 Backing from the Modern Language Association

 Begins with the premise that each language has a distinct set of
speech habits

 Need to learn the new habits

 Special attention is paid to the differences between the two grammars

 Pattern drills, memorization, mimicry, repetition

 However, these students seldom reach more than novice level of oral
proficiency
z
Revolutionary Theory

 Chomsky revolution in linguistics

 BF Skinner’s behaviorist view saw language learning as another
branch of learning, where the mind can grasp through imitation and
reinforcement

 Chomsky rejected this notion that children will internalize a finite

set of linguistic responses for all the stimuli they will encounter
z
Revolutionary Theory pt. ii

 In any language, the number of sentences is infinite

 There is no limit to the grammatical combination of words

 While exposed to relatively small amounts of data, children

master complex syntactic structures in their native language

 They learn to produce utterances they have never heard before

 Language use is a creative, open-ended process rather than a

closed system of behavioral habits
z
Discussion

 Jot down as many words as you can think of that are foreign in
origin.

 Do you recognize the words your classmates wrote down? Do

you have a more difficult time pronouncing these words rather
than ones with Germanic or Latinate origin?
z
Chomsky

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7HC_Lv9fnM
z
More Chomsky

 Chomsky hypothesizes that human beings have an innate

capacity for language

 The mind is endowed the linguistic universals

 Heredity has hard-wired the human mind to acquire certain

kinds of linguistic structures (Arabic, for example, does not have
a future tense, and Russian language does not include articles
we use)
z
Natural Acquisition

 MacSwan and Rolstad find that children know things about

sentence structure for which they have no evidence at all

 Language use differs across social groups

 Most children have the capacity to acquire new registers, given

sufficient exposure to them

 Chomsky distinguishes between linguistic competence (ability to

generate infinite number of sentences) and linguistic
performance, or how it is used in real-world contexts
z
Dismissing Myths

 There is evidence that supports the claim that older students

actually acquire new languages at a quicker pace than younger
students

 There is also substantial variety in students’ acquisitions of

language

 Differences in social setting seem to matter much more than

differences in the learners

 It is the quality of the teaching, not the student’s cognition

z
Theory of Second-Language Acquisition

 Accounts for the strengths and weaknesses of instructional

programs

 Direct methods have been more effective than audiolingual

approaches

 Immersion benefits some, but not others… why do you think?

 Why does more English exposure sometimes lead to less

English acquisition by language minority students?
z
Input Hypothesis

 At its basic level the theory distinguishes between language

acquisition and language learning

 Fluency cannot be learned- conscious knowledge of grammar

does not prepare for communication

 We acquire language when we understand it. It is incidental,

involuntary, subconscious, and effortless.

 The key factor is comprehensible input- messages in the second

language must make sense, because vocabulary and grammar
are encoded in this
z
Keep it Simple, Student

 Gestures, context, and simplified speech are more important- it

is quality over quantity.

 Have you ever understood what someone was saying because

of these factors? (German bratwurst story)
z
Grammar Acquisition through Quality
Input

 We acquire grammatical structures in their natural order,

provided we get sufficient amounts of high-quality input

 Question for Lucas- has the lack of English grammatical

knowledge surprised you? Why do you think students can be
fluent in English without understanding its structure? Does this
support the Input Hypothesis?
z
Critique

 “The obvious implication is that language teaching should be

based on giving people messages they understand.”

 How can students understand anything in a foreign language?

How have you picked up any of the second language you might
speak?

 This contributes to a critique of the sink-or-swim, and total

immersion approach. Immersion must be of high-quality, and the
student must have some basic understanding in order to
process any input
z
Application to ESL

 Kraschen notes that “For ESL students, a well-taught geography

lesson, if it’s comprehensible, is a language lesson. In fact, it’s better
than an ESL class, where we’re always wondering what to talk
about.”

 Called sheltered-instruction

 Tailors lessons to students’ proficiency in English

 Produced excellent results

 Languages are not learned when learning about the language. They
are learned when learning in the language with high-quality input.
z
Cummins and Bilingualism

 Cummins explored how first-language skills influence second-

language acquisition

 Idea 1: The “intuitively appealing arguments… that deficiencies in

English should be remediated by intensive instruction in English”

 Idea 1: Children cannot learn in a language they have yet to master.

 Neither holds up to examination. There is no reason to believe that

first and second language functions are independent in the brain. The
idea that native language development comes at the expense of
second-language development has not “one shred of evidence”.
z
Cummins’ Common Underlying
Proficiency

 Skills in different languages inhabit the same part of the brain,

reinforcing each other at the base while different at the surface

 A child who has mastered the basics of reading and thinking in

the first language will perform well on entering a second-
language environment

 “Once you can read, you can read”

 Given achievement tests in English, students often perform well

even though they learned the material in Spanish
z
Language Mismatch Hypothesis

 Instruction in a child’s first language is much more than a carrier

of the subject matter. It is the means through which
communicative proficiency is developed

 Students should become proficient in their own languages

before being rushed in English language learning programs

 ELL students judged proficient in English were falling behind in

the classroom

 Performed poorly also in their mother tongue- supports his

hypothesis, demonstrating an illiteracy in two languages
z
Gradual-Exit Model

 Students must become proficient in their native language

 This approach has proven successful

z
Deficit Model

 Cultural deprivation theory- working class homes function on a

contextual linguistic basis. Without the ability to think and speak
out of context (elaborated codes), “poor […] children were so
[deprived] in speech development by their family backgrounds
that they effectively had no language at all”

 Permeated with “ethnic prejudices”

 Challenged by Lavov- children who spoke “African-American

Vernacular English” were just as capable of expressing complex
ideas as those who communicated in Standard English
z
Prescriptivism

 Cummins attributes limited bilingualism to sociopolitical factors

rather than inherent deficiencies in language minority children

 Cummins has been accused of prescriptivism- the implication

that superior language abilities for those who have acquired the
discourse styles typical of the middle class

 Mastery of academic language does not represent a higher level

of linguistic competence, just as boatbuilders and farmers will
know concepts and words foreign to academics
z
Academic Literacy

 What do you think? Do you agree that mastery of academic

language is not equivalent to a higher literacy?
z
Cummins’ Last Stand

 Cummins’ response to these criticisms is that conversational

fluency in English is not a good indicator of English proficiency
in general
z
Part III: Program Alternatives

 The work of Cummins and Kraschen raises logical questions

about the value of alternative approaches in educating English
learners
z
Canadian Immersion

 English-speaking children in Quebec can learn French through

total immersion in early grades, with all subjects taught in the
second language
z
French Immersion

 Language was taught incidentally, without making students

conscious of their performance

 Immersion was a success in teaching French

 Students achieved native-like skills

 Bilingualism was attained at no cost to achievement in English

or other subjects
z
Immersion for Linguistic Minorities?

 Canadian experts feel that immersion techniques are only

appropriate for language-majority children- there is no such
program for French students to learn English

 Extralinguistic variables, then, are crucial in determining

educational treatment

 Support Chomsky’s comprehensible second-language input in a

low-anxiety environment
z
Additive versus Subtractive

 For language-majority, bilingualism is additive. For language-

minority, it is subtractive.

 Do you agree?
z
Longitudinal Immersion Study

 Ramirez report compared early-exit bilingual education versus

all-English immersion and late-exit. Students in bilingual
classrooms were outperforming their peers in immersion
classrooms in reading, language, and math.

 The results were “unexpected”

 Late-exit provided the most excellence, but immersion and

early-exit programs were paralleling each other in achievement.

 The study found that English acquisition is not slowed by greater

expose to native-language instruction
z
Thomas-Collier Study

 It takes time to transfer foundation of other content areas to a

new language

 Confirmation of Cummins and Kraschen

z
Miami Study

 Found that there is no tendency for competence in one

language to inhibit competence in another

 Literacy skills transfer between languages

 Oral language skills do not cross the language barrier

z
Conclusion

 English learners may face social disadvantages that affect

academic development, but school can serve as an equalizer,
provided it has well-designed programs.