Arnulfo G. Ramirez

ESL Methodology and Student Language Learning in Bilingual Elementary Schools.

The effect of ESL teaching techniques on student learning was investigated. A group of 18 ESL teachers and their classes were observed across four lessons with similar content. Students were preand posttested over a six-month period by two measures of language performance: oral comprehension and production. Teaching behaviors such as asking guided questions, correcting grammatical structures, explaining new vocabulary, and teachers knowledge of linguistics were found to influence student growth positively, while a rapid pace and an exaggerated use of modeling were found to have negative effects. The effects of these teaching behaviors held for student growth measured in terms of either oral comprehension or production. Regression analysis of selected teaching behaviors accounted for two-thirds of the explained variance in student learning.

The Acquisition of English and the Maintenance of Spanish in a Bilingual Education Program.

Spanish and English versions of a 38-item grammar test were administered to 40 Spanish-surnamed pupils equally divided by sex at grade levels K, one, three, and five (10 subjects per grade) in a bilingual education program. The test was a revision of part of an earlier test for oral proficiency in Spanish and English. The reliability of the new test, measured by Cronbach a, was .95 for the Spanish version and .96 for the English version, but many items failed to elicit the expected grammatical constructions. English scores increased significantly with grade level, while Spanish scores varied only slightly among grade levels. Balance between mean scores on the English and Spanish versions was reached at grade three. Test subjects were also questioned about language use and preference. The relationships between reported language use and test results appeared to indicate that Spanish proficiency was determined by use of the language in the home. English proficiency showed some relationship to use with the peer group. There were no significant correlations between the English and Spanish version scores and only very slight relationships among the factors influencing them. Achievement in English thus appeared to be unrelated to the maintenance of Spanish for bilingual children.

Language Use in an English/Hebrew Bilingual Preschool Classroom

A sociolinguistic analysis of language use among preschool children in a bilingual English/Hebrew bilingual classroom was conducted to examine the effects of teacher background (U.S. or Israeli born/educated) while interacting with children from bilingual or monolingual backgrounds and teacher’s participation (presence or absence) in classroom context. The results suggest that the bilingual (Israeli) teacher had a different interactive style than the American teacher. Children interacted differentially with each teacher and, as a result, varied both their speech and their involvement. The children’s backgrounds also influence their language use patterns in the small peer group interaction context with the teacher absent.