Rod E. Case

Chinese attitudes towards varieties of English: a pre-Olympic examination

This study reports on findings of an investigation into Chinese students’ attitudes towards varieties of English before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. One hundred and eight college students in mainland China evaluated six English speeches by two American English speakers, two British English speakers, and two Chinese English speakers for social status, attractiveness, and language quality. To triangulate the data, an informal retrospective interview was conducted with a group of students, pertaining to their awareness of varieties of English and their attitudes towards the English language. Statistical analysis showed that native varieties were preferred to non-native varieties and that standard native varieties were favoured over less standard native varieties. Retrospective interviews revealed that the students’ attitudes were influenced by the entrenched native models in their teaching materials and learning environment. The interview data, on the other hand, disclosed that these students were aware of the plurality of Englishes, and some challenged the standards of acceptable English.

The Intersection of Language, Education, and Content: Science Instruction for ESL Students.

earning the language of science is itself a formidaL ble challenge for young science students (e.g., Laplante 1997; Lenike 1990; Solomon and Rhodes 1995). Lemke explains that ”learning science means learning to talk science” and the linguistic demands that science instruction presents represent an important barrier to learning for many students (1990, 1). Learning to ”talk science” involves mastering the specific academic language to discuss observations, classifications, hypotheses, natural phenomena, and so on (Laplante 1997). This specialized language contains interlocking definitions, technical taxonomies, and words that mean one thing in science and another in common use (Solomon and Rhodes 1995). Overcoming the language barriers that science presents is even more difficult for ESL students, who must learn science content while they are still learning English (McKeon 1994). While the ability to use social language develops within the first two years of arrival in an English-speaking setting, the language needed for learning academic content may require five to eight years to develop, depending on the students’ ages and their prior formal schooling (Collier 1995). This means that while ESL students may be able to comprehend a particular concept and express it in their first language, they will struggle to express their understanding in their second language for several years. Nowhere is this challenge to close the gap between language and content knowledge greater than among newcomers-ESL students who enter middle or high school with less than three years of formal schooling and no native literacy. A number of researchers have identified the connections between prior literacy and academic achievement (e.g., Cummins 1989; Collier 1995). Thus, a general foundation for a discussion of the needs of newcomers exists, but work which addresses the specific needs and backgrounds of newcomers has been limited to a few practitioner articles (Case 2000) and studies (Short 2002; Short and Boyson 1997). Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to identify how teachers can ground their instruction and assessment in an understanding of the ways that students’ educational backgrounds intersect with the content and language demands of science. I will use selected instructional and assessment activities from a four-week unit on circuits taught to a class of newcomers at Northeast High School in Kansas City, Missouri, to illustrate specific suggestions for practice.

How to Assess Language in the Social Studies Classroom.

been paid to the language and academic needs of English as a second language (ESL) students in the social studies classroom. In the most recent review and one of the few written on social studies texts and instruction, Short (1998) found that ESL students do not receive the language and academic support they need to master the abstract vocabulary and difficult reading and writing assignments that are endemic to social studies. In spite of the lack of recent research into the language demands of social studies, recent textbook series have responded to pressure from schools around the country to address the needs of ESL students. In a review of six teacher’s annotated editions of high school U.S. history textbooks published between 1995 and 1998, which included Boyer (1998); Danzer et al. (1998); Downey, Giese, and Metcalf (1997); Drewery and O’Connor (1995); Mason et al. (1997); and Ritchie (1997), we found that publishers have made good progress in addressing the needs of ESL students. All but one of the texts contains varied suggestions for accessing the content and providing background or the prior student knowledge assumed to be held by most students. Activities such as teaching suggestions that include cultural background activities, Spanish language editions, vocabulary exercises, the use of audiotapes, and heterogeneous grouping were common in the texts. Still, there is much work that must be done. To succeed and function independently in an English-only classroom, an ESL student must reach a level of competence that Cummins (1979) termed Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). According to Cummins, CALP concerns the ability to express in writing higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. That ability is interdependent with the first language. Students who enter the classroom without having developed higher-order literacy skills in their first language spend from five to seven years gaining those skills in their second language. Given the fact that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation requires that ESL students enter mainstream classroom work within three years, few students will enter a social studies classroom with the necessary skills. After three years of ESL, most students will have achieved Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS). Students at that level can ask and answer simple factual recall questions, converse about personal experiences, and describe the events in their lives, but their reading and writing skills may be extremely low. The disparity between ESL students’ current level of language development and the language demands of the social studies classroom presents a difficult situation for social studies teachers. Even those who are knowledgeable in the most effective techniques for ESL instruction find themselves forced to assess students who have learned a great deal orally but have not had the time to develop the cognitive academic language proficiency needed to succeed in class. Written assignments, for instance, which require students to compare and contrast two figures in history or to evaluate the actions of a particular group, are very common but represent a difficult challenge for students who have not achieved CALP because such an assignment calls on students to How to Assess Language in the Social Studies Classroom