Understanding English Oral Language Development Among Secondary Latino English Language Learners

• In Event: Understanding Growth: The Challenges of Documenting Bilingual Oral Language Development in Linguistically Segregated Schools

Abstract

Purposes
This longitudinal study examines oral second language development of three students in rehearsed presentations produced from grades 9-12 in a U.S. high school. These adolescents (classified at beginning to intermediate levels of English proficiency) attended a linguistically isolated school in which they completed annual oral presentations, called “exhibitions,” judged by a committee of teachers, community members, and peers. The purpose of this study is to document language growth in adolescent ELLs attending a linguistically isolated school by looking at a recurring genre feature – student self-reflection – that was present in all student presentations.

Theoretical framework
This study draws from complexity theories of second language acquisition (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), conceptualizing growth as patterned but non-linear changes that vary according to the social contexts in which language is learned and used. Following from these notions, learning how to speak (“communicative competence”) involves not only grammatical competence but also discourse, sociolinguistic/sociocultural, and strategic competence (Canale & Swain, 1980; Canale, 1983).

Methods and data sources
Videotaped recordings of students’ annual oral presentations were gathered as part of a larger ethnographic study. All presentations were transcribed, and initial analysis indicated that despite varying curricular foci, presentations at every grade level included a section in which students reflected upon their preparation for the presentation. Because of the consistent nature of this task, “self-reflections” were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to determine patterns of growth.

Analysis
Quantitative analysis was first used to calculate standard measures of syntactic complexity and accuracy for all instances of self-reflection (Iwashita, Brown, McNamara, & O’Hagan, 2008). This workshop will focus on the qualitative, iterative process of inductive and deductive coding (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996) that subsequently identified three aspects of developing communicative competence relevant to students’ self-reflections: 1) ways in which students “connected” pieces of discourse at conceptual and linguistic levels, 2) ways in which students’ language reflected the sociolinguistic and sociocultural norms of exhibition presentations, and 3) ways in which students engaged in strategic forms of linguistic “self-repair.”

Results
While students evidenced little development in syntactic complexity or accuracy over time, qualitative analysis suggests development in all three areas of communicative competence. First, students produced longer reflections over time, which required more connections among ideas, conceptually and linguistically. Second, students maintained an appropriate formal register throughout all presentations – a sign of sociolinguistic competence – but sociocultural patterns of growth were clearer: students learned over time how to conceptually frame their self-reflections in ways that highlighted their shortcomings as opportunities to learn, thus enacting discourses of perseverance and “redemption” valued by the school community. Third, students engaged in self-repair only to correct their pronunciation: their use of notecards in initial years appears to have “scripted” speech and made other forms of self-repair unnecessary.

Significance
Such research contributes to contextualized theories of oral language development, particularly as they apply to notions of communicative competence in linguistically isolated schools. From a methodological standpoint, this analysis suggests that qualitative approaches may hold particular value for researching oral language growth in linguistically isolated settings.

Author

• Amanda Kibler, University of Virginia