Additive v. Subtractive Bilingualism

Additive versus Subtractive Bilingualism:

How School Policy and Teacher Attitudes affect Bilingual Students’ Scholastic Achievement

by Amy Atkinson

Literature Review

Bilingual Education

ESOL models

Any Questions?

Additive v. Subtractive

Pull-out method

Inclusion

Classroom Language Use

(cc) photo by Franco Folini on Flickr

(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr

Language Policies (English-only)

(cc) photo by jimmyharris on Flickr

(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr

Knowledge Requirements

Participants

Teacher attitudes

6 practising GA public school teachers with no ESOL endorsement or FL certification

Culture

Language& Accent

Currently teaching at least one ELL or taught one in the most recent past school year.

Graduated from a Georgia university with an education degree in or after 2005

Monolingual English-speaking, and Non-Hispanic.

Results

Interview Questions

School Policy

Positive Responses

I don’t think so. Especially because in today’s world, I mean gosh what a disservice to our students! Because if our students graduate becoming bilingual, gosh they have some many more opportunities for their careers, and just in general that knowledge. I mean I feel like that would be ridiculous!

• Do you think schools should enact an “English-only” policy? Why or why not?
• Do you allow students to use a language other than English in your classroom?

• How important do you think it is for ELLs to use English outside the school environment?
• Do you think teachers should encourage parents to speak English in the home? Why or why not?

• How important do you think it is for ELLs to maintain their home language?
• Do you think schools should play a role in helping students maintain their home language? If so, in what way?

Methods

I think that schools should encourage and embrace all the cultures of the students that are within them, as well as teachers within their classroom. And by doing that I think a byproduct of that is going to be to embrace the cultures and show students that those cultures are valuable.

Inclusion/Pull-out

Well actually, the ESOL teacher...would come over and modify a couple things for them. She would, say if one morning we’re going on a field trip, and we didn’t go til--school starts at 8:25 and we didn’t go ‘til 9:15--she would come in...they were on like the computer, some kind of interactive [program]--“Can they come in, can they do their assignment for like 30 minutes since y’all aren’t really doing anything, you’re getting ready to go on the field trip?”

We’re trying to make our school more bilingual, so we do have social studies and sciences now taught in Spanish and English. At least in the lower grades. It started off in the upper grades, and then there were some issues. They had to scale back a little bit. I think they went too fast. So they’re gonna start with the lower grades and try to build.

Bilingual Education

Interviews

Cultural Awareness

In the beginning, we would encourage for kids to develop their products in English and in Spanish...and now they’ll, some of them will come up with it on their own. But what’s exciting too is that even kids that their first language is not Spanish now will, as they’re seeing their friends do that, and then they’ll try and learn. And then we also have some kids that are branching out too, like our kids are really interested in language now...we have some students that are wanting to learn Japanese this year.

Don't discourage, Don't encourage

I’m not very comfortable with [Hispanic culture] in the classroom, so I don’t discourage it, but I don’t encourage it either in my class….In the past I haven’t encouraged it, but I haven’t discouraged for those reasons that—I haven’t taken the time to figure how I want to invite it into the classroom.

They [the teacher’s school] don’t discourage the diversity, but they don’t …uh…I don’t know, cherish it, encourage it, make students to see that it really is a strength of theirs.

We [at this school] don’t discourage diversity at all. But I don’t think we do a good job you know having a diversity night, having a cultural night, having, you know, a math night where we look at math in other cultures. Things like that.

I think that you should encourage them to be aware of their heritage and their culture… Maybe not discourage it, but not encourage it either. I think that it should be something that’s left up to the parents and the students, because that’s, I mean, I don’t know, I mean that’s more their home life than it is school I guess.

Qualitative

Study

Research Log

I think that practicing any type of language learning is going to increase cognitive development, and that could help in learning English or in other language areas or in other academic areas.

[We say] If they were gonna read with them at home to let their child read to them in English. Or if the parents can speak it, read with them, ask them questions. But then I really would, we tell our kids all the time to be reading in Spanish too at home. We tell our parents too it’s okay to ask them comprehension questions, you know, read to them or with them in Spanish and then ask them the comprehension questions in Spanish too…I definitely want them to have those skills to be able to do that in both languages.

They have all kinds of books in lots of languages. [We] Let them explore, and that’s when they decided what they liked best, they wanted to focus on. And then we broke up into three groups and they got to choose which language they wanted to focus on. And then they wrote their own story, what was interesting to them. Like as a group, like shared writing kind of thing, and then we translated it in the different languages that they chose…And we had like a big, they had a big party and shared their books, and I think they put them in our school library.

At Home

Home Language Use

I think it would be beneficial for the student if the parents could speak English in the home.

At School

The only way to fully learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. So if a student isn’t taking every opportunity to immerse themselves in [English] then they’re putting themselves on a crutch and they’re always going to fall back on that crutch.

If a student is planning on being a useful and productive citizen in the United States, English is our official language and so therefore I feel it’s highly important that that be the primary focus.

I don’t know very much Spanish, so I’m not very comfortable with speaking Spanish in the classroom...When students who are ELL students who have other ELLs of the same language or culture in the classroom, if they want to say something and they know the teacher can’t speak the language, then sometimes they’ll do it in their own language as a way to get around whatever consequences there might be for saying that

There’s a big struggle for parents of ELLs because when they’re not fluent in English or proficient in English, then they can’t communicate with teachers. So I think the same responsibility that’s on the children to become fluent, or proficient, in English is on the parents. So I think that parents should work at becoming as proficient as possible in English. And if that involves speaking English at home instead of Spanish, then I think that they can find a balance between the two.

Research Questions

Thematic Analysis

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Participant Quotes

Effect of school policy and teacher attitudes

Language policies and practices of participants' schools

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School/Teacher cultural attitudes and policies

Teacher attitudes towards language use at home/school

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Align with Research?