Effectiveness of partial French immersion for children from different social class and ethnic backgrounds

ABSTRACTA program of partial (half-day) French immersion in the Cincinnati Public Schools was evaluated in the kindergarten year. The English and French language development of participating native English-speaking children from both working and middle class backgrounds was assessed. The results indicated, firstly, that the pupils who spent half of their academic time in a foreign language (French) progressed just as well in English as carefully matched control pupils who followed a conventional all-English program. Secondly, it was found that socioeconomically underprivileged children (both black and white) benefited from an immersion-type introduction to a foreign language as much as pupils from middle class homes did. The degree of progress made in French was not linked with the social class background of the pupils even though this background factor clearly affected the students' performance on the English language tests. These results suggest that the immersion experience may help to diminish the effects of social class background.

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The effectiveness of a foreign language immersion program for children from different ethnic and social class backgrounds: Report 2

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716400009139 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 179-198 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Naomi E. Holobow ◽

Fred Genesee ◽

Wallace E. Lambert

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

White Students ◽

Minority Group ◽

French Immersion ◽

Immersion Program ◽

Black And White ◽

Language Tests ◽

White Middle Class ◽

And Mathematics

ABSTRACTThis report presents the results of the second year of a 4-year longitudinal evaluation of a partial French immersion program in Cincinnati, Ohio. This program is of particular interest because it includes children from lower socioeconomic group and ethnic minority group (black) backgrounds in addition to majority group (white), middle-class students who have been the subject of virtually all evaluations of immersion to date. The native language development (English), academic achievement (math), and second language attainment (French) of pilot groups of middle- and working-class students and of black and white students who were in grade 1, as well as those of a follow-up cohort of kindergarten students, were assessed. The results showed that performance differences in English and mathematics between subgroups of students did not depend on the program of instruction they were receiving. Moreover, it was found that the working-class and black students scored as well as the middle-class and white students on the French language tests. The results are discussed further in terms of the immersion students’ level of proficiency in French.

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Autonomy Perceptions from Teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Diverse Colombian Public Teaching Settings

Studies in English Language Teaching ◽

10.22158/selt.v7n2p148 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 148

Author(s):

Dr. David Wealthy Guerrero

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

Foreign Language ◽

English Language ◽

Research Question ◽

General Purpose ◽

Language Teachers ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Teachers Perceptions ◽

Research Production ◽

English Language Teachers

This qualitative descriptive case study reports the features in autonomy dynamics of three Colombian English language teachers in public schools in the District in Bogota Colombia. Three semi-structured interviews and reflective journals were used for data collection. The research question that guided this study was: What perceptions about autonomy do the three Colombian English language teachers have? The general purpose of this investigation was to identify the main features in teachers’ perceptions related to Autonomy. The specific objective was to identify the strategies that promoted autonomy in Teachers of English as a Foreign Language -TEFL- in different public schools in Bogota, Colombia. The study is, therefore, particularly significant as it can play a role in encouraging Colombian English as a Foreign Language -EFL- teachers to relate the factors needed to get a high quality in Education dynamics. Data indicated that the process heightened the teachers’ awareness of ‘self’ and practice. Autonomy also activated both the teachers’ ability to critically reflect on their context as well as focus on positive aspects of their practice through the willingness to improve their academic abilities and research production. Taken together, the findings serve as baseline data to further professional development in language assessment.

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English on the Rise: Access and Resources in Internationalization

The Economics of Language Policy ◽

10.7551/mitpress/9780262034708.003.0015 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lauren Zentz

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Policy Implementation ◽

English Language ◽

The State ◽

The Other ◽

Access To Education ◽

Curriculum Content ◽

English Fluency ◽

Ineffective Policy

The data presented in this chapter highlight the Indonesian state’s influence on citizens’ access to education as it implements policies that simultaneously aim to secure a national identity through enforcing Indonesian as medium of instruction in public schools and categorizing English as a Foreign Language. The state is in a double bind, and its policies are ineffective: in globalization, English cannot be avoided, but the state lacks the resources needed to meet internationalized standards with language and curriculum content appropriate to the needs of Indonesia’s student populations and the skills of its teachers. Because of these dynamics, the English language is accessed mostly by those who already have access to mobility, wealth, and “international standard” educations. The national categorization of English as a Foreign Language combined with a contradictory rush to get citizens English alone by increasing its distribution throughout educational curricula, promises nothing more than to reinforce levels of English fluency as indicators of individuals’ access to or marginalization from wealth and state-distributed educations. Beliefs that English alone will earn the Indonesian state and its citizens prosperous positions in national and global society act to conflate the English language with the other important material factors alongside which this symbol of wealth “hitchhikes” (Mendoza-Denton, 2011), and this has led to rushed and ineffective policy implementation on many levels.

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Standardization of Design Interfaces Applied to Language Test on-line through Ubiquitous Devices

International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM) ◽

10.3991/ijim.v12i4.9197 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 21

Author(s):

Teresa Magal-Royo ◽

Jesus Garcia-Laborda

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Foreign Language ◽

English Language ◽

General Nature ◽

Online Test ◽

Language Tests ◽

Evaluation Task ◽

Digital Environments ◽

On Line ◽

Design Interfaces

Normalization of design rules and guidelines in English language tests to help future instructors and assessment developers in the field of examination of English as a foreign language. have not been defined sufficiently until present daysIn fact, there are several experiences and investigations related to the user’s experiences in the handling of computer exams for learning a second language that have been evaluated in, for and through different experimental interactive digital environments.These interactive scenarios oriented to the user experience, UX in the ubiquitous devices, have allowed to learn technological, functional and design aspects that will be necessary in the future to establish the standards in design and vision for language tests in its online environment.The lack of effective and realistic regulations has become a functional requirement for the progress of research on digital environments adapted to the needs of competence assessment and more specifically, to the learning environment of second language (L2).Proliferation of on-line tests of language certification of ls with a structural corpus depends on where there are not really functional and formal guidelines that allow evaluating their quality and adequacy from the experience of the user and according to the level of learning competences acquired in a second language.This article describes aspects of design that should be taken into account when defining an online test of languages in a ubiquitous device that will mark verifiable guidelines of a general nature and affect the evaluation task in the formation of languages that need to be checked and evaluated periodically.

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SOCIAL IDENTITIES OF BLACK FEMALES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEXTBOOKS USED IN BRAZIL AND CAMEROON: INTERSECTIONALITIES OF RACE, GENDER, SOCIAL CLASS AND CRITICAL RACIAL LITERACY

Revista X ◽

10.5380/rvx.v14i4.66191 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 20

Author(s):

Aparecida De Jesus Ferreira

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

English Language ◽

Social Identities ◽

Black Females ◽

Black And White ◽

White Males ◽

The Social ◽

Racial Literacy ◽

Language Textbooks ◽

International Research Project

This article analyzes how the social identities of black females are represented in English-language textbooks used in Brazil and Cameroon; the intention is to generate reflections on how these social identities are portrayed. This research is linked to my participation in an international research project involving universities in Brazil and Cameroon. In the article I analyze a textbook I collected in Cameroon (Bamenda) and another textbook that is used in Brazil. I address the following: 1) What are the results of studies regarding English-language textbooks, the social identities of black females, and intersectionality with the issues of race, gender and social class in Brazil? 2) What do English-language textbooks used in Brazil and Cameroon reveal about black females and intersectionalities with social class? The reference framework that supports this discussion includes the issues of intersectionality, race, gender and social class (CRENSHAW, 1991), as well as critical racial literacy (SKERRETT, 2011; MOSLEY, 2010, FERREIRA, 2015b). The article concludes that black females are less represented than males in textbooks used in both Brazil and Cameroon. In the case of Brazil, black females are less represented than black and white males, and white females.

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Paradise Lost? Patterns and Precarity in Working-Class Academic Narratives

Journal of Working-Class Studies ◽

10.13001/jwcs.v1i1.6013 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 28-44

Author(s):

Deborah M. Warnock

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Middle Class ◽

Working Class ◽

Cultural Capital ◽

Lived Experiences ◽

Student Debt ◽

Survivor Guilt ◽

Class Culture ◽

Class Background ◽

Impostor Syndrome

Through an analysis of eight collections of autoethnographic essays written by working-class academics and published over the span of thirty-two years, I identify stable themes and emergent patterns in lived experiences. Some broad and stable themes include a sense of alienation, lack of cultural capital, encountering stereotypes and microaggressions, experiencing survivor guilt and the impostor syndrome, and struggling to pass in a middle-class culture that values ego and networking. Two new and troubling patterns are crippling amounts of student debt and the increased exploitation of adjunct labor. I emphasize the importance of considering social class background as a form of diversity in academia and urge continued research on the experiences of working-class academics.

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Race vs Class in Teachers' Expectations

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1973.32.1.105 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 105-106 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Harry L Miller

Keyword(s):

Social Class ◽

Middle Class ◽

University Of Florida ◽

Black And White ◽

The University ◽

Middle Class Families

A study from the University of Florida showed that race of student did not affect teachers' estimates of his achievement. In an extension and replication, the present sudy indicates that social class did influence 118 teachers' expectations, based on 1-paragraph descriptions, for black and white boys of working and middle-class families.

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Insider Perspectives or Stealing the Words out of Women's Mouths: Interpretation in the Research Process

Feminist Review ◽

10.1057/fr.1996.17 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 53 (1) ◽

pp. 57-73 ◽

Cited By ~ 44

Author(s):

Diane Reay

Keyword(s):

Data Analysis ◽

Social Class ◽

Middle Class ◽

Research Process ◽

Ethnographic Study ◽

Personal History ◽

Primary Schooling ◽

Class Differences ◽

Class Background ◽

Dividing Line

This article examines the ways in which social class differences between the researcher and female respondents affect data analysis. I elaborate the ways in which my class background, just as much as my gender, affects all stages of the research process from theoretical starting points to conclusions. The influences of reflexivity, power and ‘truth’ on the interpretative process are developed by drawing on fieldnotes and interviews from an ethnographic study of women's involvement in their children's primary schooling. Complexities of social class are explored both in relation to myself as the researcher and to how the women saw themselves. I argue that there is a thin dividing line between the understandings which similar experiences of respondents bring to the research process and the element of exploitation implicit in mixing up one's own personal history with those of women whose experience of the same class is very different. Identification can result in a denial of the power feminist researchers exercise in the selection and interpretation of data. However, researchers are similarly powerful in relation to women from very different class backgrounds to their own, and I attempt to draw out problematic issues around power and ‘truth’ in relation to the middle-class women whom I interviewed. I conclude by reiterating that, from where I am socially positioned, certain aspects of the data are much more prominent than others and as a consequence interpretation remains an imperfect and incomplete process.

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Producing bilinguals through immersion education: Development of metalinguistic awareness

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716412000288 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 177-191 ◽

Cited By ~ 48

Author(s):

ELLEN BIALYSTOK ◽

KATHLEEN F. PEETS ◽

SYLVAIN MORENO

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

Language Proficiency ◽

Executive Control ◽

Verbal Fluency ◽

English Language ◽

Developmental Differences ◽

French Immersion ◽

Metalinguistic Awareness ◽

Education Development ◽

Immersion Education

ABSTRACTThis study examined metalinguistic awareness in children who were becoming bilingual in an immersion education program. The purpose was to determine at what point in emerging bilingualism the previously reported metalinguistic advantages appear and what types of metalinguistic tasks reveal these developmental differences. Participants were 124 children in second and fifth grades who were enrolled in either a French immersion or a regular English program. All children were from monolingual English-speaking homes and attended local public schools in middle socioeconomic neighborhoods. Measures included morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, and verbal fluency, with all testing in English. These tasks differed in their need for executive control, a cognitive ability that is enhanced in bilingual children. Overall, the metalinguistic advantages reported in earlier research emerged gradually, with advantages for tasks requiring more executive control (grammaticality judgment) appearing later and some tasks improving but not exceeding performance of monolinguals (verbal fluency) even by fifth grade. These findings demonstrate the gradual emergence of changes in metalinguistic concepts associated with bilingualism over a period of about 5 years. Performance on English-language proficiency tasks was maintained by French immersion children throughout in spite of schooling being conducted in French.

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Foreign Language Teaching in Over-Crowded Classes

English Language Teaching ◽

10.5539/elt.v12n1p169 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 169 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Halil Küçükler ◽

Abdullah Kodal

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Classroom Management ◽

Language Learning ◽

English Language ◽

Language Teaching ◽

Foreign Language Learning ◽

Foreign Language Teaching ◽

International Language ◽

Classroom Order

The importance of English in Foreign Language learning has been widely accepted in recent years and the English language is now well established as an international language. There is a growing significance of foreign language in education. As English has been widely used internationally, many people are interested in English and prefer learning English. When it is considered in public schools, English teaching has become more intense in school curricula. There are many barriers in language teaching in from primary education to higher education. One of the most important barriers in foreign language teaching is crowded especially over crowded classes. In crowded classes, classroom management, getting results from language approaches becomes difficult. In addition to this, a small number of class hours per week is another barrier in language teaching. The purpose of this study is to examine this issue and to examine the question of how language teaching is handled in these crowded classes and what different activities are useful to apply. If the educators are unable to change the classroom order, what are the appropriate language activities and how to apply them.

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