‘Things should be explained so that the students understand them’: adolescent immigrant students’ perspectives on learning the language of schooling in Finland

In this article, Sandra McKay and Sau-Ling Wong argue for a revision of code-based and individual learner-based views of second-language learning. Their position is based on a two-year qualitative study of adolescent Chinese-immigrant students conducted in California in the early 1990s, in which the authors and their research associates followed four Mandarin-speaking students through seventh and eighth grades, periodically interviewing them and assessing their English-language development. In discussing their findings, McKay and Wong establish a contextualist perspective that foregrounds interrelations of discourse and power in the learner's social environment. The authors identify mutually interacting multiple discourses to which the students were subjected, but of which they were also subjects, and trace the students' negotiations of dynamic, sometimes contradictory, multiple identities. Adopting B. N. Peirce's concept of investment, McKay and Wong relate these discourses and identities to the students' exercise of agency in terms of their positioning in relations of power in both the school and U.S. society.

Download Full-text

Silenced Partners: Language Learning and the Role of Bilingual Peers in High School

Teachers College Record ◽

10.1177/016146811812001105 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 120 (11) ◽

pp. 1-28

Author(s):

Avary Carhill-Poza

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

English Learners ◽

Classroom Discourse ◽

Language Use ◽

Academic Language ◽

Immigrant Students ◽

Spanish Speaking ◽

Emergent Bilingual ◽

Peer Talk ◽

Adolescent Immigrant

Background In schools, a major obstacle to drawing on emergent bilingual students’ knowledge and skills in their first language is a widespread lack of awareness about language use among adolescent English learners, including how peer talk can connect knowledge and abilities in both languages to school-based learning. Although research often acknowledges the importance of engaging students’ home language and culture to bridge to academic literacies in English, few have explicitly examined bilingual peer talk as a resource for language learning during adolescence. Purpose This study explores how emergent bilinguals engaged multiple linguistic codes to scaffold their own academic language development with peer support. Research Design Ethnography and discourse analysis of student interactions were used to contextualize and analyze the academic language use of four Spanish-speaking adolescent immigrant students, taking into account the affordances of classroom discourse structures and peer talk. Conclusions The study describes the linguistic resources available to Spanish-speaking adolescent immigrant students through their peers and shows that emergent bilingual youth used academic language in both Spanish and English most frequently—and in more elaborated interactions—while off-task or in less supervised spaces. Classroom discourse structures often limited student participation, particularly when students used nonstandard linguistic codes.

Download Full-text

Explaining English Language Proficiency Among Adolescent Immigrant Students

American Educational Research Journal ◽

10.3102/0002831208321443 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 45 (4) ◽

pp. 1155-1179 ◽

Cited By ~ 61

Author(s):

Avary Carhill ◽

Carola Suárez-Orozco ◽

Mariela Páez

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

Language Proficiency ◽

English Language ◽

Immigrant Students ◽

Immigrant Youth ◽

The United States ◽

English Language Proficiency ◽

Individual Student ◽

Academic English ◽

Adolescent Immigrant

This study aims to increase understanding of factors that account for academic English language proficiency in a sample of 274 adolescent first-generation immigrant students from China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Central America, and Mexico. Previous research has shown the importance of English language proficiency in predicting academic achievement measured by GPA and achievement tests. The present study describes the academic English language proficiency of immigrant youth after, on average, 7 years in the United States and models factors that contribute to variation. Findings show that although differences in individual student characteristics partially explain variation in English language proficiency, the schools that immigrant youth attended are also important. The amount of time that students spent speaking English in informal social situations is predictive of English language proficiency. These findings demonstrate that social context factors directly affect language learning among adolescent immigrant youth and suggest a crucial role for school and peer interventions.

Download Full-text