Language learning, identity
and bilingualism in education
Creating meaningful realities . . .
Angela Creese, University of Birmingham
Two educational contexts: looking at
bilingualism in English schools
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Mainstream: Primary and Secondary
schools
Complementary schools
Romantic Bilingualism?
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in which young people are turned into
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‘reified speakers of community languages,
[and] in the process their ethnicities are also
reified.’ (Leung et al, 1997:553).
Roxy Harris (2006:34) has described how
young people in his research of mainly South
Asian descent are often ‘bashful and rueful’ in
their acknowledgements of their own deficient
expertise in their community practices
Harris suggests we must take account of the
child’s agency and ‘a sense of their
multidimensionality as linguistic, cultural and
social beings’ (Harris, 2006:33).
Bilingualism, L1, community language and
EAL (Leung, 2006)
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Concurrent L1 and L2 development (e.g. UKbased bilingual persons from linguistic minority
community)
Sequential L1 (e.g. Punjabi or Polish)  L2
(English) bilingual development
Type A: L1 (home language/s, in UK)  L2 (English)
e.g. bilingual persons using home/community
language in early years until primary school
(bilingual-EAL), e.g. UK born person with Urdu or
Cantonese as home language
Type B: L1 (another language/s, elsewhere)  L2
(English in UK) e.g. 14-year-old new arrival from
Somalia (EAL-bilingual)
The term ‘Bilingual Pupil’ is very imprecise and should be
used with caution.
Who is the EAL learner?
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The term 1.5 generation or 1.5G refers
to people who immigrate to a new
country before their early teens. They
earn the label the "1.5 generation"
because they bring with them
characteristics from their home country
but continue their assimilation and
socialization in the new country. Their
identity is thus a combination of new and
old culture and tradition. (Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.5_generati
on
1.5 generation
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Quotation:
We who sat huddled in that E.S.L. class grew up
to represent the so-called 1.5 generation. Many of
us came to America in our teens, already rooted
in Korean ways and language. We often clashed
with the first generation, whose minimal
command of English traps them in a time-warped
immigrant ghetto, but we identified even less with
the second generation, who, with their AsianAmerican angst and anchorman English, struck us
as even more foreign than the rest of America.
(http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/citatio
ns/15_generation_1/)
Forever foreign?
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‘ESL identity’ which works to
reify, idealize, stereotype and
imagine students’ pasts over their
present circumstances, denying
students the possibilities of more
complex, hybrid, and shifting
affiliations and identities in favour
of an enduring, exoticized
nostalgia.’ (Talmy, 2004:150).
Complementary school
(Interview at MH with 4 teenage girls)
I
Um, do you use Gujarati in your mainstream schools?
S
No.
S
Yeah.
S
Sometimes.
I
Right…
S
Umm, no.
S
Yeah.
S
No, ‘cos I go to a Catholic school.
I
And they don’t use Gujarati?
S
No, because they’re mostly, um, Christian so they don’t.
I
Yeah. Do you…
S
But, I got a few friends who are Hindu so we speak Gujarati sometimes.
I
Oh right. Are you allowed…
S
That is so lame.
I
Are you allowed to speak Gujarati in the class?
S
Yeah.
S
Yeah.
I
Oh right, right. How many of you don’t use Gujarati at all,
S
In school?
I
in school. Your main school.
S
Yeah, I don’t.
I
You don’t.
S
I
S
I
S
S
S
S
I
S
I
S
S
S
S
S
S
No.
You don’t? Why don’t you?
It’s because I’ve got white friends and Sikh friends so, they don’t understand
talking about.
Oh right, [indistinguishable]
It’s lame.
And it is disrespect.
And it’s lame.
Talk Gujarati when English people are around.
Ah right.
They think we’re [indistinguishable – Freshies?] and that so.
<LAUGHTER>
You’re what? Freshies?
Yes, from India.
<All talking at once>
Not born here.
<All talking at once>
That is true though.
Yeah they think that.
They’re talking about them or something.
That’s a true fact. That does happen.
what I’m
FOBs and Freshies: stigmatizing new
arrivals – a new form of linguicism
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“‘Fresh off the boat’ is a noxious label
signifying a recently-arrived,
monumentally uncool, non-English
speaking rube of mythical, and for some,
hilarious proportions (Talmy, 2004).
The notion of ‘freshie’ is a term of
derision having a similar but more
pejorative meaning to ‘country bumpkin’.
(Creese et al 2005)
Linguicism
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Linguicism is akin to the other negative
isms: racism, classism, sexism ageism.
Linguicism can be defined as ideologies
and structures which are used to
legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an
unequal division of power and resources
(both material and non-material) between
groups which are defined on the basis of
language (on the basis of their mother
tongues).(Skunabb-Kangas 1988: 13)
Identities can be
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imposed
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assumed
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negotiable
(Pavlenko and Blackledge 2003)
Roles for EAL practitioners: from the
data
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A language ‘aware’ pedagogy
An understanding of classrooms as
cultural and linguistic ecologies
Things to ponder: how the two teachers
similar and different in the way they interact?
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Number of questions
Type of questions
Pedagogy used
Ownership of the teaching task
Analysis
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Number of questions (8, 19)
Type of questions (closed and open,
display and referential)
Pedagogy of transmission versus
pedagogy of facilitation (telling the
curriculum, negotiating the
curriculum?)
Ownership of the task (I want you
to vs, what you need to do is)
Questions: The ST asks eight
questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
You done that?
Yes?
It is hot in summer and cold in winter?
In the rainforest, it is?
Is it cold?
It is hot all the time, isn’t it?
The temperatures are they hot or are
they cold?
OK?
The EALT asks nineteen
questions.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
The rainforests do or don’t have seasons as we
know them?
What is a season, season?
Temperatures are cool or hot all year round?
Of course we are talking of Brazil now, yes?
You remember where Brazil is?
How much rain is there every year in England, in
London?
8, 80, this is?
How much rain is there in Brazil?
Do you know?
How do you find out how much there is?
The EALT’s questions.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
And what must you do to the rainfall?
What do you think you have to do to see how
much there is for the whole year?
And what month is that?
So if you want to find out how much rain there is
every month, what do you have to do?
What is the word that we say?
If you were to take 340, 360, what would you be
doing?
What is that number, I mean symbol?
It is not times, it is?
OK?
Commands/imperatives (directive
function (ST)
•
•
•
•
Join the dots to give a line graph.
Join.
Join with crosses
Look at this and think.
Write it on the paper
Transmission
of subject Knowledge (referential function)
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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This is a bar
A rectangle is what we call a bar
These are what we call a bar graph
Seasons are winter and summer
Seasons equals winter, spring, summer, autumn
Weather, yes it goes up and down. So it’s a season.
Winter, summer, spring.
We have our winter holidays, summer holidays. In
England. In Turkey, it is hot in summer and cold in
winter.
26 degrees centigrade is hot, isn’t it?
We don’t need sweaters and it is hot in January,
February, March, April, May, June, every month.
Every month it is high.
So we can say there is not seasons.
The rainforests don’t, do not, do not have seasons.
Use of Modals
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•
•
•
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What you must do now
You need the book
Now, can you tell me
Now, what you have to do is.
And what must you do to the
rainfall?
So you must add those numbers.
What do you think you have to do
to see how much there is for the
whole year
Classrooms as micro-ecologies
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The classroom is a complex and active
ecosystem comprising multiple
participants (teachers and pupils), their
beliefs, teaching/learning styles and
histories, institutional rules and
memories, local community and national
policy influences. Skilful EAL teaching
has to navigate around and through these
constantly shifting influences to provide
the optimal teaching, learning and
support opportunities for EAL pupils.
Bilingual EAL teacher, secondary
school
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Well, I am glad you asked me this
question because I have been teaching
now for nearly 6 years, but it is the first
time in my life that I am enjoying it so
much. Because, I don't know whether it
is right, but this is how I can explain. I
feel I am needed. And I can see the
improvement with my students as well. . .
. I have a pastoral class, so it is the whole
issue. I know even their life stories, I
know so much about my students. I
understand them, and of course English
comes into it. (A3)
Bilingual primary school classroom
teacher
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Because as soon as I start speaking
it [Urdu) the children will start using
their own languages and for them
to understand that it is alright to
speak another in the classroom to
express yourself, it’s all about
setting a role model. (Bilingual
primary school teacher)
Shamila and Saima (Sylheti/Bengali/
English)
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Angela Do you feel like in school both of your
languages get stronger or is it really only one language
that is getting stronger?
Shamila I think both languages are getting stronger
because I…I…I…speak English and sometime home
language in school for about six hours and then I speak
all day in Bengali with my Mum and Dad and
sometimes English with my big brother and it’s like half
and half
Angela So both kind of equal
Saima Yeah
Angela Or is one more
Saima I think both of them are like equal they both go
in together and they mix up and you just get this stir of
like a pot yeah where you’ve got English and Bengali
together