When a Monolingual English Speaker Becomes an English Learner

• In Event: Negotiating Bi/Multilingual Identities in and Across Diverse Sociolinguistic Spaces

Abstract

By definition, English learners (ELs) are nonnative speakers of English who require linguistic support services (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). However, because of the lack of standardization in the initial EL identification procedure and flawed methods of EL identification (Bailey & Kelly, 2013; Goldenberg & Rutherford-Quach, 2012), immigrant students who are monolingual English speakers may be incorrectly classified as ELs (Zehr, 2010). This study examines the processes and consequences of such misclassification through an ethnographic case study of a Black immigrant student from Liberia, Sam. I highlight how Sam’s race and gender and the nonstandard variety of English he spoke were invoked by the school as justifications for his EL designation and how his EL status in turn compromised his academic preparation in high school and his college options.

This case study is part of a larger study of ELs’ transition from high school to college in which I followed eight ELs’ college planning and application process across two years at a public high school. The data collection consisted of regular interviews with students and educators, classroom observations, and collection of students’ test scores and high school transcripts. Sam was the only one of the eight “EL” participants who was a monolingual speaker of English. Through the lens of positioning theory (Harré, Moghaddam, Cairnie, Rothbart, & Sabat, 2009; Van Langenhove, 2017), which examines how social actors “are positioned or position themselves with respect to rights and duties to act within evolving storylines” (Harré et al., 2009, p. 5), I analyzed both the school staff’s justification of an institutional positioning of Sam as an EL and Sam’s resistance towards this positioning.

The school knew that Sam was a monolingual speaker of Liberian English. However, EL teachers justified their decision to keep him in the English as a Second Language (ESL) program, arguing that Liberian English was sufficiently different from Standard American English. But more covert considerations also went into Sam’s EL designation: namely, that the ESL program would “protect” Sam, a Black male student, from negative peer influences of other male students of color. Thus, Sam’s positioning as a Black male student played a role in his ESL placement. Sam resented being positioned as an EL, to the point that he refused annual testing for his English proficiency, ironically prolonging his position as an EL. His status as an EL prevented him from taking advanced-level courses because, in this school, ELs were confined to remedial and general-level courses, which, in turn, limited his postsecondary options.

Based on the results, I argue that the current EL identification procedures are far too vague and can lead to misuse at the school and district levels. Considering a student’s race, gender, and national origin in EL classification decisions is a clear violation of the student’s civil rights (Zehr, 2010), and yet EL teachers believed that they were fulfilling their moral duty by protecting Sam from negative influences. This study provides evidence for an urgent need to develop an accurate procedure for EL identification.

Author

• Yasuko Kanno, Boston University