Bernard Spolsky

Family language policy – the critical domain

Abstract Introducing a pioneering series of studies of family language policy and management, this paper points out that classic language policy dealt almost entirely with the nation-state, although it did recognise the critical role of the family in determining natural intergenerational transmission of a variety. After arguing for the need to look at each of the levels, or, rather, domains making up a speech or political community, it shows how these studies deal with internal pressures (such as ideology or grandparents) and external domains (especially the school) which aim to influence the family domain. More studies of these domains, including the family, are needed to provide a clear understanding of language policy.

The limits of authenticity in language testi ng

Setting authenticity as a criterion raises important pragmatic and ethical questions in language testing. Lack of authenticity in the material or method used in a test weakens the generalizability of results. Any language test is by its very nature inauthentic, abnormal language behaviour, for the task is not to give so much as to display knowledge. With examinees who do not know or who are unwilling to play by the rules of the game the results of formal tests will not be an accurate and valid account of their knowledge. Only part of this difficulty can be overcome by authentic-seeming tasks. Observation of authentic behaviour (even allowing for the observers paradox) is another partial solution. Long, patient and sympathetic observation by observers who care to help seems the only full solution.

Reassessing Maori regeneration

After nearly two centuries of contact with Europeans, the Māori language of New Zealand was, by the 1960s, threatened with extinction. Accompanying a movement for ethnic revival, a series of grassroots regeneration efforts that established adult, preschool, and autonomous school immersion programs has over the past two decades increased substantially the number of Māori who know and use their language, but this has not yet led to the reestablishment of natural intergenerational transmission. More recently, responding to growing ethnic pressures, the New Zealand government has adopted a Māori language policy and is starting to implement it. Seen in its widest social, political, and economic context, this process can be understood not as colonial language loss followed by postcolonial reversing language shift activities, but as the continuation of a long process of negotiation of accommodation between autochthonous Māori and European settlers.

Language in Israeli society and education

Depending on their language ideologies, countries are likely to develop different concerns for language-education policy. Countries with a monolingual ideology, which may ignore the multilingual reality, will be concerned with correctness and normativism. A country that recognizes two or three languages as equally important, or countries that recognize multilingual complexity, will need first to determine the status of each. While Israel is historically and actually multilingual, the strength of the monolingual ideology used to effect the revitalization of Hebrew has led to downplaying the claims of other languages, even the rights of the autochthonous second official language, Arabic. However, the inexorable penetration of English as a world language into Israeli society, the major effects of 600,000 Russian speakers arriving in the last few years, and the slow changes brought about by the ongoing peace process all worked to encourage the development of a new multilingual ideology while presenting pragmatic pressures encouraging acceptance of diversity. It is this changed atmosphere that has led the recent Ministry of Education to a policy for language education in Israeli schools

Bridging the Gap: A General Theory of Second Language Learning

This article explores the requirements for a general theory of second language learning that can account both for the fact that people can learn more than one language and for the generalizable individual differences that occur in such learning. Such a general theory will be able to explain and describe differences between second and foreign language learning, between learning for general and special purposes, between formal and informal learning, and between developing knowledge and skills. It will need to be precise and clear on the nature of the goals and outcomes of learning and to recognize the complexity of the concept of knowing a second language, which can vary almost without restriction in both kind and amount. The model must be integrated and interactive, to assume that all or many parts of it apply to any specific kind of learning and that there is close interaction among the various parts. The theory proposed allows for a formally valued eclecticism, provided by the use of a preference model. This article considers the formalization of such a model in an expert system and the more recent implications of the Parallel Distributed Processing model.

Formulating a Theory of Second Language Learning

This article is intended to establish a framework for the formulation of a comprehensive theory of second language learning in which theories of first and second language learning may combine to form a unified theory. It proceeds through a critical assessment of currently one of the foremost theories, the monitor model (Krashen, 1982). Each of Krashens five hypotheses is considered, and counteropinions, fortified with the results of research, are presented. The article concludes with a call for a more comprehensive theory that accounts for the diverse ways in which people develop their ability to use a second language.

Maori bilingual education and language revitalisation

The attempts at Maori language revival started in the 1970s, at a stage when there were few children still growing up speaking the language. The most important innovation has been the development of pre‐school language nests; several thousand children now come to elementary school after a pre‐school programme taught entirely or mainly in Maori. There are some bilingual schools; a growing number of elementary schools with Maori immersion in the first one or two years; and some high school programmes. The paper describes a number of these schools, discusses the way that the bilingual programmes define and establish Maori space in the schools, mentions the issue of local and tribal concerns, and argues that there is the basis here for revitalisation of the language.

What does it mean to know howto use a language? An essay on the theoretical basis of language testing:

Language testing and linguistic theory must both try to define language knowledge and use. There are three main approaches. The Structural claim, which assumes that knowledge can take the form of a grammar or structural description of the language, forms the basis of discrete point tests. The Functional approach assumes that the nature of language knowledge is best captured by listing the various uses to which it can be put; it is embodied in the communicative competence model, the notional-functional curriculum, and the interest in teaching and testing pragmatics. The General Proficiency claim is based on the notion that individuals vary in possessing measurable amounts of an indivisible body of knowledge. It underlies arguments for a general factor underlying batteries of tests or for the trait measured by certain test methods like the cloze. The theoretical strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and the impossibility of showing that any one is completely correct forces us to consider all three as basic to testing. Anybody who knows a second language must be assumed to have all three kinds of knowledge, so that we can only achieve the full picture of language proficiency if we use many different measuring method and know what trait is being tapped by each test.

Introduction to a Colloquium: The Scope and Form of a Theory of Second Language Learning

This paper introduces a colloquium on the scope and form of a theory of second language learning. It argues for the value of a general theory, considers the relation of theory to practice, and argues that the papers that follow-by McLaughlin; Bialystok; Long; Schumann; Sokolik; and Hatch, Shirai, and Fantuzzi;-point to a field where new and competing paradigms are being explored. The history of language teaching is sometimes written as though it follows a simple progression: Every few years, a new theory appears to drive out the old one and furnish a new method. Analysis shows that this view is flawed. First, new theories do not generally succeed in replacing their predecessors but continue to coexist with them uncomfortably; second, theories have not usually been realized in new methods but have more mundanely provided ideological underpinnings, intellectual backing, or advertising slogans for some newly discovered teaching panacea; and finally, teaching practice in the foreign language classroom has not usually been derived from the new methods but continued as a loosely eclectic amalgam of old habits with new garnishes. Recent study of the reality of language teaching has in fact shown that it is often economic or political factors rather than theoretical ones that have determined school policy and classroom practice (Phillipson, 1990; Richards, 1984). Nor do the theories offer a firm and unchanging basis. For a short time in the 1950s and early 1960s the harmony of the pact between structural linguists and Skinnerian psychologists provided justification for the Audiolingual Method. By the 1970s the hegemony of transformational grammar and cognitive psychology empowered much of second language acquisition research. More recently we

Acquiring Literacy in a Diglossic Context: Problems and Prospects

Many people still believe, as once was commonly assumed, that literacy simply means knowing how to read and write a particular script. Thus, we divide people into literates and illiterates, and worry about how to teach the latter a skill that would move them into the former class. However, as a result of the work of Scribner and Cole (The psychology of literacy. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), we are now more inclined to talk about “literary practices”, the application of reading skill “for specific purposes in specific contexts of use” (1981, p. 37). The old simple model that assumed that literacy was a result of schooling has been shown to leave out the many cases in which various groups develop literacy skills for particular purposes, and scholars nowadays are as likely to speak about literacies or multi-literacies (See Macken-Horarik and Adoniou (2008), Handbook of educational linguistics (pp.367–382). Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing) as about being able to read and write. This complexity is important when we attempt to understand the problem of the relationship between literacy in a standard or sacred language and literacy practices in the vernacular variety. In this paper, we will discuss problematic aspects of developing literacy in a diglossic situation. We will then describe a project that attempted to address some of these difficulties in the context of diglossic Arabic.