Mileidis Gort

Strategic codeswitching, interliteracy, and other phenomena of emergent bilingual writing: Lessons from first grade dual language classrooms:

This qualitative study investigated the writing processes of eight emergent bilingual children as they composed stories in two languages in a Writing Workshop (WW) context. The research was situated in two grade 1 classrooms in a Spanish/English Two-Way Bilingual Education program in the north-eastern USA. For six months, researchers observed students in Spanish and English WWs, interviewed students about their writing behaviors and understandings, and collected samples from all stages of the writing process. Cross-case analyses of individual bilingual writing profiles revealed similarities and differences in students’ cross-linguistic skills, as well as patterns of transfer. Patterns of bilingual writing related to strategic codeswitching, positive literacy transfer, and interliteracy led to the development of a preliminary model of bilingual writing development for English-dominant and Spanish-dominant bilingual learners.This model presents phenomena unique to bilingual writers, relates these to bilingualism and biliteracy, and proposes anticipated expression of the phenomena for developing Spanish-dominant and English-dominant bilingual writers.

Navigating Hybridized Language Learning Spaces through Translanguaging Pedagogy: Dual Language Preschool Teachers' Languaging Practices in Support of Emergent Bilingual Children's Performance of Academic Discourse.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in early bilingual development and the unique role of the educational setting’s language policy in this development. In this article, we describe how one dual language preschool teacher, in partnership with two co-teachers, navigated the tensions between language separation ideology and its practical realization in early bilingual education by co-constructing and enacting flexible bilingual pedagogic practices in support of Spanish-English emergent bilingual children’s participation in language and literary activities and performance of academic discourse. Teachers’ translanguaging practices of code-switching, translation, bilingual recasting, and language brokering drew on children’s linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge, supported experimentation with new language forms, and integrated various languages and language varieties, while recognizing, validating, and expressing their shared bilingual identities.

Exploring bilingual pedagogies in dual language preschool classrooms

In this paper, we present an analysis of the language practices of four Spanish/English dual language (DL) preschool teachers, focusing on the ways in which the teachers mediate bilingual interactions with students and distribute Spanish and English across different classroom discourse functions. Findings reveal teachers’ flexible and strategic use of each language to support childrens developing bilingual competencies as well as to negotiate several communicative, academic, and management functions. Findings further illuminate the utility of bilingual speech/interaction as a communicative and academic resource and suggest that a strict language separation approach, as traditionally implemented in DL programs, may be at odds with the natural social interactions of bilinguals who draw on a number of communicative strategies, including codeswitching and tandem talk, to construct meaning.

Code-Switching Patterns in the Writing-Related Talk of Young Emergent Bilinguals.

This qualitative study examined code-switching patterns in the writing-related talk of 6 emergent Spanish-English bilingual first-grade children. Audio recordings, field notes, and writing artifacts documenting participant activities and language use in Spanish and English writing workshops were gathered over the course of 6 months and analyzed for code-switching prevalence, form, content, and purpose in relation to the writing process. The percentage distribution of oral code switching across the two linguistic contexts suggests a sociolinguistic imbalance between the two languages, wherein English played a prevalent role in the creation of Spanish texts, but Spanish did not appear to have the same utility in the development of English texts. Four general categories of code-switching functions emerged, indicating emergent bilingual writers’ (a) evaluation and self-regulation skills, (b) sociolinguistic and sociocultural competence, (c) metalinguistic insights, and (d) use of code switching to indicate a shift in topic, person, or syntactic form. These findings intimate children’s capacity to exploit their developing bilingual linguistic repertoire for a variety of academic and social purposes and illuminate the potential of code switching as a cognitive and linguistic resource in the process of writing.

Transforming Literacy Learning and Teaching Through Translanguaging and Other Typical Practices Associated With “Doing Being Bilingual”

Recent scholarship and theorizing on the language practices of individuals and communities conceptualize language as an activity, or something language users do, rather than a structure or a system they draw on (Pennycook, 2010). This focus on language practices has been signaled by the adoption of the term languaging (Jørgensen, 2008; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Shohamy, 2006), a concept that emphasizes the agency of language users as they utilize semiotic resources at their disposal in strategic ways to communicate and act in the world. A languaging lens postulates that language users have access to features from a wide range of different sets of features (Jørgensen, 2008) and that this repertoire of language features might be wider or narrower across different domains. As agentive social actors, language users act upon—and sometimes against— socially constructed linguistic norms and standards, including prevalent monoglossic language ideologies that position monolingualism as the norm and frame bilingualism from a monolingual perspective (Flores & Schissel, 2014; García, 2009; Heller, 2006). Monoglossic language ideologies, which emerged alongside the creation of nation-states in Europe (Flores & García, 2013), continue to dominate education policy and practice for emergent bilinguals.1 Such paradigms legitimize the languaging practices of monolinguals, and thus, monolingualism, as the norm (García, 2009). In the United States, monoglossic ideologies are reflected, for example, in [monolingual] general education programs that privilege the standardized variety of the national language, English, over the home language/s and language practices of emergent

Demanding More: Legal Standards and Best Practices for English Language Learners

In the current english-only programs in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts only a small percentage of students are learning English and subject matter content. This violates the success in practice prong of Castañeda v. Pickard (1981). Further, these program failures bolster the claim that these programs also violate castañedas sound theory and qualified expert support prong. Previous legal actions focused on the latter requirement and failed. Focusing on program failure creates a greater likelihood of successful legal challenge. This article calls for a change in interpretation of ELL rights and program requirements based on the majority consensus of best practices research.

Coordinated Translanguaging Pedagogy as Distributed Cognition: A Case Study of Two Dual Language Bilingual Education Preschool Coteachers' Languaging Practices during Shared Book Readings.

ABSTRACT This study examined how a pair of Spanish/English dual language bilingual education (DLBE) preschool teachers enacted their bilingualism while working cohesively and simultaneously toward common instructional goals. We drew on classroom video data, field notes, and other relevant artifacts collected weekly during shared readings of English- and Spanish-language storybooks over the course of one academic year to document coteachers’ book-based interactions with each other and their students. Guided by translanguaging (O. García, 2009a, 2009b; O. García & Wei, 2014) and distributive cognition (Brown & Campione, 1996; Hutchins, 1995) frameworks, findings elucidate how teachers drew on their own and each other’s dynamic bilingualism through both monolingual and bilingual performances, supporting the coordination of instructional targets (e.g., vocabulary, narrative genre) and instructional practices (e.g., translation, explanation). Findings have implications for DLBE program language policy and practice as they highlight the utility of a bilingual pedagogy.

Journal of Literacy Research: Editorial

We have been preparing this issue of JLR for nearly a year. It is our first issue as new editors, so there was much to learn. Not surprisingly, the steepest learning curve has been juggling it all, all at once, all the time—while striving for quality at every turn. The most rewarding part of the juggle has been learning about the important research that you and others are doing. The slope of this curve has been like no other. While our learning continues, the plan we proposed for our term as editors has remained largely intact. In the paragraphs that follow, we outline this plan, as well as our editorial policy. First, however, we begin with a few words about us as an editorial team.

An Emergent Bilingual Child's Multimodal Choices in Sociodramatic Play.

In this case study, situated in a preschool classroom within an early childhood Spanish/English dual language programme, we examine how an emergent bilingual child engages with multimodal resources to participate in sociodramatic play discourses. Guided by sociocultural and critical discourse perspectives on multimodality, we analysed ways in which Anthony, a four-year-old emergent bilingual child, engaged in meaning-making during play through verbal, visual and actional modes and in conjunction with additional subcategories in his transmodal repertoire (e.g. translanguaging, sentence types, actual versus signified use of artefacts). Our results revealed differences in the ways Anthony engaged his verbal modes (e.g. monolingual languaging versus translanguaging; varying sentence types) together with actional and visual modes to accomplish adult-centric tasks versus creatively engaging in child-centric play. His translanguaging furthered his communication in tandem with the affordances of his visual and actional resources, depending on his play purposes and collaborators. Anthony’s case illustrates how emergent bilingual children access a variety of modes to participate in literate discourses in complex and varied ways. This article concludes with a discussion on the importance of thoroughly accounting for the contexts and multimodal supports in interactive learning spaces.

Hey! today i will tell you about the water cycle!”: Variations of language and organizational features in third-grade science explanation writing

This study investigated third graders’ use and variation of linguistic resources when writing a science explanation. Using systemic functional linguistics as a framework, we purposefully selected and analyzed writing samples of students with high and low scores to explore how the students’ use of language features (i.e., lexicogrammatical resources) reflected those expected in the discipline, or register, of science, as well as alternative language patterns used to realize the cyclical explanation genre in science. The language features used in high-scored samples were more aligned with those of the discipline compared with the low-scored samples. Although the low-scored samples revealed that students possessed some valid scientific understandings, these understandings were not as evident due to the students’ limited use of language features commonly found in the science register. This work fills important gaps in the literature concerning the contribution of lexicogrammatical resources in conveying elementary students’ science knowledge through written explanations.