Guadalupe Valdés

Science and Language for English Language Learners in Relation to Next Generation Science Standards and with Implications for Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics

The National Research Council (2011) released “A Framework for K–12 Science Education” that is guiding the development of the Next Generation Science Standards, which are expected to be finalized in early 2013. This article addresses language demands and opportunities that are embedded in the science and engineering practices delineated in the Framework. By examining intersections between learning of science and learning of language, the article identifies key features of the language of the science classroom as students engage in these language-intensive science and engineering practices. We propose that when students, especially English language learners, are adequately supported to “do” specific things with language, both science learning and language learning are promoted. We highlight implications for Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics.

Between Support and Marginalisation: The Development of Academic Language in Linguistic Minority Children.

Within the last several years, researchers working with linguistic minority children have focused increasingly on the development of the types of language proficiencies that are required to perform successfully in academic contexts. Most practitioners and researchers agree that, in order to succeed in schools, such learners must be given the opportunity to acquire academic, rather than everyday, language. Unfortunately, in spite of the growing interest in the kind of language that will result in school success, we currently lack a single definition or even general agreement about what is meant by academic language. This paper examines the conflicting definitions and conceptualisations of academic language and argues that limited understandings of bilingualism and of the linguistic demands made by academic interactions will lead to the continued segregation of linguistic minority children even after they have reached a level of stable bilingualism.

Leadership giftedness: Models revisited

Following a reviews of adult models of leadership and of leadership programs for young people that are derived from adult theories of leadership, we report results from a decade-long study in under-served and at-risk communities of young people identified and promoted as leaders within out-of-school youth organizations. This work reveals how emerging youth leadership differs from established measures and leadership theories drawn from adults. Views and enactments of leadership among the young focus on how leadership happens, not all who leaders are as power figures, skillful managers, or individuals bearing specific traits. These perspectives from youth carry strong links to recent work in cognitive psychology and organizational sociology that maintains the key importance of adaptation, engagement with situation, and distribution of knowledge and roles.

Interpreters, Interpreting, and the Study of Bilingualism.

In this chapter we present a brief overview of the literature on interpreting focused specifically on issues and questions raised by this literature about the nature of bilingualism in general. It is our position that research carried out on interpreting—while primarily produced with a professional audience in mind and concerned with improving the practice of interpreting—provides valuable insights about complex aspects of language contact that have not been thoroughly addressed by the existing literature on bilingualism. Examination of the literature emphasizing a category of bilinguals, who have been referred to as “true” bilinguals (Thiery, 1978a, b), provides perspectives on both individual and societal bilingualism that can complement, and possibly refocus, some current views of the linguistic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic characteristics of language contact. For applied linguists who study language minority populations around the world, the literature on interpreting suggests important new directions for research focusing on areas such as the process of high level development of two languages in diglossic contexts; the effects of instruction on the development of nonsocietal languages; the nature of language transfer; and the characteristics of communication between speakers of societal and nonsocietal languages.

Muy a tus órdenes: compliment responses among Mexican-American bilinguals

Recent work in the analysis of conversational discourse has included the study of compliment responses among English-speaking American monolinguals (Pomerantz 1978). This preliminary work suggests that compliment responses are subject to separate constraint systems that involve the receivers obligation to respond to a compliment while at the same time avoiding self-praise. This paper examines compliment responses, within the framework provided by Pomerantz, in conversational interactions between bilingual Mexican-American speakers. The strategies used by these speakers are compared with those used by monolingual English-speaking Americans and with those used by monolingual Spanish-speaking Latin Americans.

Bilinguals and bilingualism : language policy in an anti-immigrant age

In monolingual nation-states, problems do not endfor members oflinguistic minority groups when they become Speakers of the societal language. This is especially the case in Immigrant nations during those periods in which anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise. This paper examines the policy problems that confront members of such Immigrant groups by examining the case of Latinos in the United States. It argues that this populations well-being is almost exclusively in the hands of English-speaking monolingual individuals who — as recent legal decisions illustrate (e.g. Cota v. Tucson Police Department, Perez v. F.B.L, Hernandez v. New York) — have little or no understanding of the condition of bilingualism and little sympathy for the problems encountered by Immigrant populations. The paper includes. a discussion of a number of different language issues that have been encountered by the Latino population in this country within the legal, employment, and educational domains, as well as an outline of concerns andquestions that need to be examinedby those who are concerned about the language rights of minority populations.

Latin@s and the Intergenerational Continuity of Spanish: The Challenges of Curricularizing Language.

This paper focuses on the future of Spanish in the United States and on the tensions and challenges that surround what Fishman (1964) referred to as intergenerational continuity. It examines the teaching of language itself and the role of such instruction in the development and maintenance of Spanish/English multicompetence (Cook, 1996), that is, of the complex linguistic repertoires of Latin@s in the United States. Because language instruction generally continues to view languages as autonomous codes and systems of rules and structures, the paper draws attention to specific pedagogical questions that must be addressed by those committed to both educational access and equity for Latin@s as well as to their linguistic multicompetence in a context in which members of the new Latino/Hispanic category struggle with issues of race, class, and language, with their membership in the new panethnic category itself, and with the ways in which they are constructed by their teachers and their mainstream peers.

Testing Bilingual Proficiency for Specialized Occupations: Issues and Implications

In 1978 a news item appeared in the Albuquerque Journal that read in part: Bilingual Teaching Efforts under Fire SANTA FE (AP) - None of 136 teachers and aides in bilingual programs in New Mexico’s schools who were tested could pass a Spanish reading and writing exam at the fourth grade level, the director of bilingual education for the state Department of Education said. Henry Pascual concluded that colleges of education are spending a lot of federal money turning out Spanish-English bilingual teachers who don’t know much Spanish. (3 October 1978) The article also went on to report that Henry Pascual had observed that even in “bilingual” classrooms, all instruction was taking place in English. Spanish monolingual children placed in such “bilingual” classrooms had thus gained nothing from the implementation of bilingual education in New Mexico. They were still being totally immersed in the English language and continued to fall behind conceptually just as their older siblings had done in the days before bilingual education.

Constructing Maching Texts in Two Languages: The Application of Propositional Analysis

Experiments which seek to compare reading achievement in two different languages by the same children, or reading achievement of two groups of children each reading in their first language must select or construct reading texts in each of the two languages which are comparable in both form and content. Valid comparisons across languages can only be made if experimenters have ascertained that the texts used actually do “match” in terms of the demands that both surface-level features and the total meaning of each passage make upon their readers. This paper discusses how the procedures currently in use for selecting/constructing equivalent texts may lead to error because of their specific limitations. It proposes the utilization of micro-propositional analysis coupled with the use of word-frequency lists and readability formulas for the construction of “matching” texts. A series of procedures are presented which can be used by researchers working in English and Spanish for the construction of parallel texts.

From language maintenance and intergenerational transmission to language survivance: will “heritage language” education help or hinder?

Abstract In much of his work on reversing language shift, Fishman cautioned those devoted to improving the sociolinguistic circumstances of regional, ethnic, and religious languages against a premature dependence on schools, especially schools controlled by speakers of the dominant societal language. He argued that efforts on behalf of minoritized languages that seek such recognition before intergenerational transmission has been established within the group frequently leads to intergroup conflict and to disillusionment. In this article, I draw from Fishman’s stated concern about the limitations of school effectiveness in connection with mother tongue transmission as put forth in his discussions of reversing language shift, but I problematize the notion of language maintenance and intergenerational transmission from the perspective of current theoretical shifts in the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. I focus on the dilemmas facing the implementation and design of heritage language teaching and assessment programs given the various mechanisms involved in curricularizing language: that is, in the process of treating language as if were an ordinary academic subject.