IMMERSION VERSUS BILINGUAL
LITERACY INSTRUCTION
Which is a better solution for our non-English speaking
students?
Susana Pinto
Fall 2009
0
Table of Contents
Pages
Abstract
3
Introduction
4
-
Statement of the Problem
4-5
-
Review of Related Literature
5 - 12
-
Statement of the Hypothesis
13
Method
14
-
Participants
14
-
Instruments
14
-
Experimental Design
15
-
Procedure
15
Results
15
Discussion
15
Implications
15
1
Pages
References
Appendices
2
16 - 21
22
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Appendix A – Student Self-Assessment Survey
23
-
Appendix B – Parental Survey
24
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Appendix C – Consent Letter to Parents
25
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Appendix D – Consent Letter to Principal
26
Abstract
3
Introduction
The educational issue that I am interested in researching is Immersion
versus Bilingual Literacy Instruction. Which is a Better Solution? This is of great interest
to me because I came to this country when I was six years old from Portugal and I didn’t
know any English, so I experienced this dilemma first hand. With our Action Research
Project I intend to see which solution is better. I will be working with two 2nd grade
classrooms in two schools and separating them into two groups. One group will be taught
to read solely in English and the other group will have bilingual supplies of the same
reading material. The two groups will practice their literacy skills every day the same
way for a period of two months. All along, I will be giving each student the same tests,
do running records and also ask questions to see if they understand the material. This will
measure which group actually understands the material better and who reads more
fluently.
Statement of the Problem
The big question with this issue is; does keeping students in bilingual classes keep
them from learning English? There is considerable controversy, among both
policymakers and researchers about how best to ensure the reading success of English
language learners or ELLs, as they are commonly referred to. The reading education of
4
English language learners (ELLs) has become one of the most important issues in
educational policy and practice. As the pace of immigration to the U.S. has accelerated
in recent decades, increasing numbers of children in the U.S. schools come from homes
in which English is not the primary language spoken and many of these children from
immigrant families do not succeed in reading.
As No Child Left Behind and other federal and state policies begin to demand
success for all children, the reading achievement of ELLs is taking on even more
importance. When a child enters kindergarten or first grade with limited proficiency in
English, the school faces a serious dilemma. How can the child be expected to learn the
skills and content taught in the early grades while he or she is learning English? There
may be many solutions, but two fundamental categories of solutions have predominated:
Immersion and bilingual education. This action research project is intended to see which
is a better fit for our students.
Review of the Literature
In immersion strategies, ELLs are expected to learn in English from the
beginning, and their native language plays little or no role in daily reading lessons. There
is however outside help that they might get, such as a bilingual aide who occasionally
provides translation or explanation or a separate English-as-a-Second-Language class to
help build oral English skills. Bilingual education differs from immersion in that it gives
English language learners significant amounts of instruction in reading in their native
5
language. There are just as many people who oppose as there are those who favor each
program. In my literature I read through many articles that made good and relevant points
about each. However, much of the literature favored bilingual education, but also raised
questions about the quality of the education that our students are receiving when they are
in literacy programs.
There have been many experiments conducted that support bilingual education,
one in particular evaluated a cooperative learning program called Bilingual Cooperative
Intergrated Reading and Composition. This program was adapted from other programs to
meet the needs of limited English proficient children in bilingual programs who were
transitioning from Spanish to English reading (Calderon, Hertz-Lazarowitz, Slavin,
1998). They found that this was the best way to teach these young students. Also, in his
book Michael Pressley believes that if instruction became more multilingual, for
example, enriching students’ vocabulary knowledge in their native language through
exposure to cognates in other languages it might help further a child’s understanding of
the English language. There are other findings that state that important cognitive
experience is gained through bilingual instruction. There is also evidence that both
languages have to be developed in order for knowledge to transfer between the two;
especially during primary years (Lenters 2004). Another study was done where the author
evaluated a cooperative learning program called Bilingual Cooperative Integrated
Reading and Composition. The study involved 222 students in Texas. The study
reinforces the idea that bilingual education is better than immersion and it found that
students who stayed in the program longer scored higher in English (Slavin, 2003).
6
Other experiments or studies that have been done revolve around patterns. One
was a three year study that examined the patterns in reading development in English
speakers and also ESL children. The participants completed standardized and
experimental measures at the beginning to see where they were at and then all received
phonological awareness instruction. At the end of the 3 years the ESL students had
comparable reading skills to those of the English speaking students and even
outperformed them on other measures. These findings suggest that early identification
and intervention is needed for ESL students (Lesaux, Siegel, 2003).
Also studied were developmental patterns among 100 bilingual children. It
showed that bilingual children sometimes write the same letters in both languages, but
read them differently. Also, in order to convey a message these students may use both
languages when writing. The article suggested that teachers of bilingual students should
provide them with many opportunities to write in both languages, so that the teacher can
see a fuller picture of the child’s writing and reading development (Rubin, Carlan, 2005).
The study above brings us to another aspect of bilingual education. Above I said
that teachers need to provide students with many opportunities to write, but sometimes
teachers haven’t had the professional development to help them with these situations.
They just don’t know what to do with these students or how to help them (Fitzgerald,
2000). I hate to say this, but some just don’t care either. Teachers need to help learners
identify skills that can help facilitate their learning. They must also provide learners with
7
new experiences to generate new ideas; keep students interested. Furthermore, studies
have shown that non-English speaking students do well when series texts have pictures. It
is all about scaffolding information for these young students and creating fun activities to
keep them motivated. Some of the activities that one article that I read described were
board games that students made themselves, field trips, and drama activities. Their
findings were that students who consistently participated made gains in learning the
English language (Balakrishnan, Hashim, 2006).
However, just like there are arguments to support bilingual education there are
arguments against it and for immersion programs. Linda Chaves’s article, One Nation
One Common Language discusses some of the flaws of bilingual education. She points
out that many children are put into ELL programs without the parents being consulted
first. These parents often feel outraged because they believe they are sending their
children to school to learn English not to reinforce their Spanish skills. Jill Kerper Mora,
also discusses the negative implications for bilingual education in the Analysis of English
Only and Proposition 227. She explains the law of Proposition 227 that was passed in
California in 1998 and was called “English for the Children”. This law banned bilingual
education and the use of languages other than English for instruction in the public
schools. It emphasized the fact that students can learn enough English in one year of
intensive instruction to function in mainstream classrooms.
Studies have been done that reinforce that idea. One study examined the relation
of language instruction, vocabulary, and spelling of Spanish-English bilingual first
8
graders receiving literacy instruction. The student’s who were solely in English literacy
instruction (ELI), wrote more words in English than the other students who were in
Spanish literacy instruction. This shows that the SLI group had not learned enough
conventional spelling patterns in English to further their literacy skills in English (San
Francisco, Mo, Carla, August, Snow, 2006). Another study investigated the English and
Chinese language performance of students enrolled in early English immersion in a
Chinese primary school. They examined factors that could predict successful English
word recognition. The students that were immersed in this program tested better than the
non-immersed students. It also showed that phonological awareness and letter name
knowledge were strong predictors of English word identification (Wei, Knell, Haiyan,
Miao, Yanping, Siegel, Lin, 2007).
Then the question becomes was California’s decision an ethical one? Many believe
that the imposition of one year of English on limited English proficient students is racist.
Also, their beliefs are that these ethnocentric ideologies that form these educational
structures and policies will be harmful to minority students (Mitchell, 2005). Englishonly ideology is against basic freedoms we should have in the USA and bilingualism is
an asset in this day and age. That is something that strikes me, in other countries students
are urged to learn other languages. Language is linked with identity and social position
and it is interrelated with literacy. A multilingual child is viewed as a “literate child”. It is
accepted as a benefit and a link to a higher educational path (Dagenais, Day, Toohey,
2006). I believe that having the ability to speak more than one language is wonderful and
9
not a hindrance and some English-only models say. It is crucial in this day and age to
speak more than one language. Bilingual skills take on a high commercial value.
Furthermore, just because you put a child into an immersion program doesn’t mean
that child will do good in it. There are several studies where students failed to learn
English. An example was Mei, a 14-year old 6th grader from China. After various
attempts from her teacher Mei did not excel at reading. The reasons were mainly because
her teacher was not successful in trying other options and she gave up on her. If you see a
student is doing poorly one way, why wouldn’t you try it a different way? Again we turn
to professional development questions and quality issues.
Tim Shanahan, professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois
Chicago and director of its Center for Literacy and a team of more than a dozen
researchers from institutions across the nation completed a synthesis of all the available
research on literacy, including second language literacy for the U.S. Department of
Education. They found that kids did somewhat better if they received some amount of
instruction in their home language, but the data concerning how much wasn’t clear. An
interesting fact was that only 17 studies were concerned with educational quality,
compared with more than 450 studies examining types of reading programs. Shanahan
believes that maybe the focus should be on the quality of the education and not the
instruction. I also have a feeling that we aren’t looking at this problem the correct way.
10
Unfortunately there is a lot of politics when dealing with this topic and it gets in
the way. Maybe the question isn’t who’s right or who’s wrong, but maybe it should be
just to provide assistance to staff. We should provide teachers with professional
development because some don’t know how to deal with their students and the parents.
There are many things teachers can do; starting with helping learners identify skills that
can help facilitate their learning. As per Vygotsky, interaction is important to facilitate
language. Learners should experience new things in order to generate new ideas. The
material has to be interesting and teachers should increase the students’ self-esteem. It
shouldn’t only fall on the teachers, schools in general should work together. It is a shame
that sometimes good teachers are viewed as inadequate because they lack training with
ESL students.
Recently I heard about a high school in Long Island City, Queens where the
students are all immigrants. The school is called New Comers High School and what I
found fascinating was that this school which has both immersion and bilingual programs
is ranked 6th in the nation. The school found a way to help the students succeed and the
scores prove it. Also helping resolve this issue, are schools like the Medgar Evers
School. They have a program for ESL students and their goals are to promote
bilingualism and biliteracy, build cross-cultural understandings among the parents,
students and staff, and achieve high academic success in the classrooms. By becoming
more familiar with the culture of the students that they are teaching they can draw on the
knowledge that these students might already have (Shin, 2008). Also, involving the
parents is a great asset. Parental involvement emphasizes to the students that literacy is
11
important (Flood, Lapp, 1996). A series of agreements have to be met in order for literacy
instruction to become a success among English language learners. Instead of
policymakers and activists arguing over which method is better they should start focusing
on what is important; all students succeeding in literacy.
12
Statement of the Hypothesis
HR1 – Implementing an intensive language learning instructional environment
with English language learners over a two month period will increase their reading skills
more so than the group that is being taught in a bi-lingual environment.
13
Method
Participants
My proposed intervention is to work with two 2nd grade classrooms in two
schools (PS X and PS Y). Both schools are in the Bronx and both set of students have the
same language issues. They are all Spanish speaking immigrants. The areas of the
schools are both in low income neighborhoods. In the first group there are three students;
one boy and two girls. The other group has four students; three boys and one girl.
Instruments
First I will give out consent letters to the principal and parents. These will be in order
to introduce myself and get permission to complete my project. Then I will give surveys
to the students and their parents in order to get to know them a little better. I will also use
tests and running records to assess the students and see what their literacy skills are.
14
Experimental Design
Procedure
Results
Discussion
Implications
15
References
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Reading: Gateway to English as a Second Language and Literacy Learning.
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Balakrishnan, Vishalache & Hashim, Fatimah. (2006). Language Immersion for
Low Proficiency ESL Learners: The Alemac Project. Reading Matrix, 6 (2),
186-201. Retrieved on October 8, 2009, from Education Research Complete
Database. (EBSCO Document Service Number 23087146).
Barnett, W. S., Yarosz, D. J., Thomas, J., Jung, K., Blanco, D. (2007) Two-way
and monolingual English immersion in preschool education: An experimental
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Dagenais, D., Day, E., Toohey, K. (2006) A Multilingual Child’s Literacy
Practices and Contrasting Identities in the Figured Worlds of French Immersion
Classrooms. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism,
9(2), 205-218. Retrieved November 5, 2009, from ERIC database. (ERIC
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16
Fitzgerald, Jill. (2000). How Will Bilingual/ESL Programs in Literacy Change in
the Next Millennium? Reading Research Quarterly, 35 (4), 520-524. Retrieved
on October 8, 2009 from Education Research Complete Database. (EBSCO
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Flood, J., Lapp D. (1996) Literacy instruction for students acquiring English:
Moving beyond the immersion debate. Reading Teacher, 50(4), 356-360.
Retrieved November 18, 2009, from Education Research Complete database.
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9704162791).
Hamilton, Kendra. (2006). Bilingual or Immersion? Diverse: Issues in Higher
Education, 23 (5), 23-26. Retrieved on September 14, 2009 from ERIC
Database. ( ERIC Document Service Number EJ764681).
Jongejan, W., Verhoeven, L., Siegel, L. S. (2007) Predictors of Reading and
Spelling Abilities in First and Second Language Learners. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 99(4), 835-851. Retrieved November 4, 2009, from
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17
Lenters, Kimberly. (2004). No Half Measures: Reading Instruction for Young
Second Language Learners. Reading Teacher, 58(4), 328-336. Retrieved on
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Lesaux, N. K., Siegel, L. S. (2003) The Development of Reading in Children Who
Speak English as a Second Language. Developmental Psychology, 39(6),
1005-1019. Retrieved November 4, 2009, from ERIC database. (ERIC
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Lindsay, E., B., Baron, S. (2002) Leading Information Literacy Programs:
Immersion and Beyond. Journal of Library Administration, 36(1/2), 143-166.
Retrieved November 18, 2009, from Education Research Complete database.
(Education Research Complete Document Reproduction Service No.
7682340).
Mitchell, Candace. (2005). English Only: The Creation and Maintenance of an
Academic Underclass. Journal of Latinos & Education, 4 (4), 253-270.
Retrieved on October 8, 2009 from Education Research Complete Database.
(EBSCO Document Service Number 18105842).
Mora, Jill, Kerper. Debunking English-only Ideology. San Diego State University.
Retrieved On October 26, 2007from
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http://coe.sdsu.edu/peopple/jmora/prop227/EngOnly.htm
Palmer, Deborah. (2007). A Dual Immersion Strand Programme in California.
The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10 (6),
752-767. Retrieved on September 17, 2009 from ERIC Database. (ERIC
Document Service Number EJ764681).
Reyes, S., A. (2007) Beetles and Butterflies: Language and learning in a Dual
Language Classroom. Journal of Latinos & Education, 6, 81-92. Retrieved
November 18, 2009, from ERIC database. (ERIC Document Reproduction
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Rubin, R., Carlan V. G. (2005). Using Writing to Understand Bilingual Children’s
Literacy Development. Reading Teacher, 58(8), 728-739. Retrieved on October
29, 2009, from ERIC database. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No.
EJ684437).
Rueda, R., Garcia, E. (1996). Teachers’ Perspectives on Literacy Assessment and
Instruction With Language-Minority Students: A Comparative Study.
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from ERIC database. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. EJ518681).
19
San Francisco, A. R., Mo, E., Carla, M., August, D., Snow, C. (2006). The
Influences of Language of Literacy Instruction and Vocabulary on the Spelling
of Spanish-English Bilinguals. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary
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Teacher Development, 12 (1), 57-65. ) Retrieved on October 8, 2009 from
Education Research Complete Database. (EBSCO Document Service Number
28768155).
Slavin, Robert. (2003). Effective Reading Programs for English Language
Learners. John Hopkins University.
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Dual Language Books. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 7(2), 71-84.
Retrieved November 4, 2009, from ERIC database. (ERIC Document
Reproduction Service No. EJ832209).
Wei, Z., Knell, E., Haiyan, Q., Miao, P., Yanping, C., Siegel, L. S., Lin, Z.
(2007). Early English Immersion and Literacy in Xi’an, China. Modern
Language Journal, 91(3), 395-417. Retrieved on October 29, 2009, from ERIC
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Wiese, A. (2204) Bilingualism and Biliteracy for All? Language & Education: An
International Journal, 18(1), 69-92. Retrieved November 18, 2009, from
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Elementary ESL Learning. Modern Language Journal, 92 (3), 431-451.
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(EBSCO Document Service Number 34050088).
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Appendix
22
STUDENT SELF ASSESSMENT SURVEY
Directions: Please pick one that you most agree with and write down the number
on the appropriate line.
1. strongly agree 2. agree
3. disagree 4. strongly disagree
1. I like to read stories.
1. ____
2. I like to read aloud.
2. ____
3. I like to read information books.
3. ____
4. I like to go to the library.
4. ____
5. I like to watch TV better than reading.
5. ____
6. I like to read comics or magazines.
6. ____
7. I like to read with the help of an adult.
7. ____
8. My parents read to me.
8. ____
9. I think reading is hard.
9. ____
10. My teacher gives me interesting things to read.
23
10. ____
PARENTAL SURVEY
Directions: Please pick one that you most agree with and write down the number
on the appropriate line.
1. strongly agree 2. agree 3. disagree 4. strongly disagree
24
1. I speak and read in English.
1. ___
2. I read to my child.
2. ___
3. I want my child to be taught in his native language.
3. ___
4. I encourage my child to go to the library.
4. ___
5. I buy books as presents.
5. ___
6. I completed High School.
6. ___
7.
7. ___
I completed Junior High School.
8. I completed Elementary School.
8. ___
9. I think schooling is more important than working.
9. ___
10. I am comfortable speaking with my child’s teacher.
10. ___
CONSENT LETTER TO PARENTS
Dear Parent or Guardian:
My name is Susana Pinto and I am a graduate student at Brooklyn College. I am
currently working on a project to see if children learn to read better using a students
native language or if they do better when solely taught in English. I would like to work
with your child since they are currently in the ESL program at their school. This will be a
two month project where I will work with your child in a group setting. I promise that
this will not interfere with any of their other school work and no names will be used in
my report. Please check the yes or no box and sign your name. Furthermore, if you wish
to speak to me more about this please let me know and I will make arrangements with
you.
I thank you in advance.
Kind Regards,
Susana Pinto
YES
Parent’s Signature
25
NO
CONSENT LETTER TO PRINCIPAL
Dear Principal __________:
My name is Susana Pinto and I am a student at Brooklyn College currently
enrolled in their Elementary Education. The class that I am presently taking requires us to
complete an action research project. My Professor is Dr. O’ Connor and the class is
702.22. The topic that I decided to work on is bilingual education versus immersion
education and which one is better in literacy instruction.
With your permission I would like to work in your school for a two month period
with the ESL students in second grade class X. I will also be working with another
second grade class in P.S. ABC. In one school I will use bilingual education to help the
students with their literacy skills. However, with the other group I will solely use
immersion methods for their literacy skills. I will be assessing the students during this
time in order to see which method yields better results.
I promise that this will not interfere with any of their other school work and no
names will be used in my report. Please check the yes or no box and sign your name.
Furthermore, if you wish to speak to me more about this please let me know and I will
make arrangements with you.
I thank you in advance.
Kind Regards,
Susana Pinto
YES
Principal’s Signature
26
NO