Benefits of Bilingualism in Academic Writing: Multiple Perspectives

• In Event: 26.030 - An Innovative Social Justice Curriculum Through the Eyes of Students

Abstract

Bilinguals must grasp the language, and therefore the perspective, of others in order to communicate: not everyone in their environment speaks both of their languages, so they must choose what language to use with each interlocutor. Even very young bilinguals use the right language at the right time (Genesee, Boivin, and Nicoladis, 1996), and these language selection experiences prompt the early development of 'theory of mind' (ToM) – the ability to take another person as an (intentional) agent (Goetz, 2003).

The increased social adeptness of bilingual children appears at times to compensate, in the classroom, for limited English proficiency. When Dray, Selman, and Schultz (2009) asked students to produce persuasive (socially-inflected) essays, high social awareness effectively erased the impact that possessing weaker literacy skills would otherwise have on the writing quality of English language learners (ELLs) relative to English proficient students (EPs). This finding indicates that the social sensitivities possessed by ELLs might be harnessed to augment their academic writing skills.

Classroom interventions involving discussion and debate typically emphasize the need to acknowledge and assume other students' perspectives, and such interventions translate into improvements in written argumentation (e.g., Reznitskaya, Kuo, and Anderson, 2007), of which perspective-taking (PT) itself is a key component. Interestingly, ELLs have proved particularly receptive to one such intervention curriculum, Word Generation (WordGen: Snow, Lawrence, and White, 2009). The present study hypothesizes that bilingual children's writing should display advanced PT skills, relative to the writing of their monolingual peers: given that the modes of linguistic interaction of ELLs differ systematically from those of EPs and have consequences for a cognitive stance toward other minds (e.g. in ToM development), within WordGen the written work of ELL students should differ from their EP peers’ as well, specifically with respect to PT.

Essays written by ELLs in the context of WordGen unit responses were compared with EPs’ essays from all participating grade levels (4-8) in order to obtain a developmental perspective. These were scored for sophistication of perspective-taking using a coding scheme from CCDD (2010), then related, using a computational model, to three other indicators of children's language exposure and competence: grammatical complexity, home language profiles, and state standardized test scores. Relative to EPs, ELLs utilized a larger number of perspectives, and used them in a more sophisticated way, to express and motivate opinions as called for in the WordGen curriculum; the results of computational models incorporating the three predictor variables will also be presented.

With the many challenges surrounding the education of ELLs, understanding the advantages with which their linguistic experience endows them will allow researchers and practitioners to fashion new tools to foster academic growth in this population of students – a crucial step if we are to achieve authentic justice for all our students. What is more, encouraging mindful and flexible PT in students from various backgrounds may lay the foundation on which they themselves can build a more just future for themselves and for generations to come – the cognitive basis for communal change.

Author

• Lisa Hsin, The University of Alabama