Emergent Bilingual Youth in the United States

• In Event: Unraveling the Positioning, Problematizing, and Pathologizing of Emergent Bilingual Youth in Schools

Abstract

This presentation contextualizes the others in the panel, by providing an overview of research about emergent bilingual youth, with particular attention to recent trends and promising practices. Emergent bilinguals at the secondary level must develop both language and content knowledge, and many must simultaneously acquire literacy skills. While a new wave of applied linguistics research has begun to acknowledge terms like fluidity, ‘translanguaging,’ codemeshing, hybridity, and dynamism in the language and literacy practices of bilinguals (e.g., Canagarajah, 2011; García, 2009; Hornberger & Link, 2012), schools and their focus on standardized testing have in recent years promulgated ever narrower and more rigid definitions of language. This is especially true of ‘academic language,’ which by definition values certain language practices while marginalizing others (MacSwan & Rolstad, 2003).

After exploring the linguistic demands that schooling places upon emergent bilingual youth (Gibbons, 2009; Schleppegrell & Colombi, 2002), I focus specifically on two populations: ‘students with interrupted formal education’ (SIFE, new arrivals who have no home language literacy skills or are at the beginning stages of literacy learning) and ‘long-term English language learners’ (LTELLs, students who have attended US schools for seven years or more yet remain labeled ELLs) (DeCapua, Smathers, & Tang, 2007; Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002; Author, 2010; Olsen, 2010). This research highlights how secondary students are indeed very diverse, and at all different points along an academic language and literacy continuum.

As I argue in this presentation, this is a reality that schools need to be prepared to address. However, secondary schools face many challenges to do so within the confines of their traditional structures, which are rooted in the assumption that emergent bilinguals already possess a strong literacy foundation in their home language (Author, 2010; Olsen, 2010). Likewise, although research is conclusive that teaching students to read in their home language promotes higher levels of English reading (August & Shanahan, 2006; Goldenberg, 2008), and sustained development of both languages is associated with a range of academic, linguistic and cognitive advantages (Baker, 2011; Bialystok, 2007), schools typically remain steadfast in their monolingualism.

After overviewing the diversity of the emergent bilingual youth population and clarifying their differing learning needs, realities that stand in contrast to the rigidity typically imposed in the schools they attend, I conclude by providing examples of effective practices for meeting these needs.

Author

• Kate Menken, Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York