Browsing by Subject "Two-way immersion"
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Item Language Use Patterns in a Spanish Immersion Algebra Class: Opportunities, Uptake, and Individual Learner Variables(2021-05) Truman, LaurenThis study examines the language use patterns of students in a math class that is part of a Spanish-English two-way, secondary continuation program. Audio recordings from five class periods were analyzed in order to quantify the opportunities provided for minority language by the teacher, as well as student uptake of those opportunities. This is the first known study to quantify both opportunities and uptake. Additionally, the language use patterns of four focal students were explored. These four students represent the three most common linguistic profiles of DLI students: Spanish home language, English home language, and new-to-the-country. Finally, evidence of motivation and willingness to communicate were described in partial explanation of the language patterns of these four students. Findings indicate that students were given few opportunities for sustained minority language use and student uptake patterns generally reflected this. Additionally, the DLI students in this study tended to use more English than Spanish in the classroom, while the newcomer student spoke almost exclusively in Spanish. Motivation and willingness to communicate were shown to play a significant role in students’ language use patterns. Findings support the need for modifications to the L2 Motivational Self System (L2 MSS) when analyzing the motivation of balanced bilinguals. Pedagogical implications of the study point to a need for activities and interventions that provide increased opportunities for sustained minority language use. Increasing the opportunities for sustained minority language use and sustained uptake of these opportunities are crucial steps in helping secondary DLI programs maintain fidelity to the DLI model and to helping students achieve high levels of bilingualism and biliteracy.Item Student Oral Proficiency in Grade Three Spanish Immersion: Linguistic Diversity, Student Interaction and Differentiated Scaffolding(2015-07) Young, AmySpanish dual-language immersion programs in the U.S. increasingly work with both English and Spanish home language students who bring a wide variety of linguistic resources. One important approach to adapting to this linguistic diversity in immersion schools may be to differentiate support for student language development during content instruction. This paper explores a collaborative design-based study on the efficacy of instructional practices that afford increased student oral proficiency development through language-focused differentiated instruction. The school site was a grade-three classroom in an urban two-way Spanish immersion school that included students from a variety of home language backgrounds. Students from one classroom (n=24) were assessed for oral proficiency using the Student Oral Proficiency Assessment from the Center for Applied Linguistics. Focal student language production was evaluated with attention to complexity measures at the beginning of and end of the semester-long study. Focal student interactional discourse, as well as teacher and student interviews were analyzed in relation to linguistic diversity and differentiation using constructs from interactional sociolinguistics including authentication, intertextuality and adequation/distinction. Findings suggest that 1) students increased their language complexity as measured by number of different words, mean length of utterance, and subordination. 2) Students appeared to increase their participation in relation to their engagement with the target language structures, their exposure to increasingly complex language, and their developing awareness of how language works. 3) The classroom teacher's perception of linguistic diversity shifted to become less focused on "native speakers" and his conceptualization of "attention to language" changed from a focus on form to an exploration of functional options to facilitate student interaction. Teacher-identified "socially sanctioned niches" became safe spaces for students to engage with language play that reinforced their developing bilingual identities as students negotiated their relationships and made sense of content. Design and implementation of language-focused differentiated instruction is likely to promote linguistic development to the extent that it can afford (or constrain) the local emergence of bilingual identities in connection with increased language awareness, exposure to a wider variety of complex shared texts from which to draw, and access to increased participation within academic learning experiences.