Revealing and Mobilizing Multilingual Funds of Knowledge Among Adolescent Language Learners

• In Event: Adolescent Language Learners Engaging in Literacy Practices: Multilingual Pathways to Writing

Abstract

Objectives
This study examines an extracurricular program which brings together students in high school who are learning English (minority-language students) with students who are learning Spanish (majority-language and heritage language students) to promote two-way language learning opportunities. The following research questions guided this inquiry: How can this language-exchange context mobilize students’ linguistic funds of knowledge, and how do students draw upon two or more languages as resources as they participate in multimodal (Jewitt, 2006) literacy practices?
Theoretical framework
This study employs a sociocultural framework to understand language learning as a socially mediated process (Vygotsky, 1978) and draws upon theoretical constructs such as the Third Space (Gutierrez, 2008), collaborative dialogue (Swain, 2000), and languaging (Swain, Lapkin, Knouzi, Suzuki & Brooks, 2009) to explain the ways that learners use language as a mediating tool and to examine the ways that learners co-construct knowledge in interaction.
Research methods and data sources
Research methodologies for this study were modeled after ethnographic and discourse analytic studies (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto & Shurat-Faris, 2005; Castanheira, Crawford, Dixon, & Green, 2001; Freeman, 1998; Valdés, 2001) and data collection included participant observation, interviews, students’ written work and multimodal presentations, and audio recordings of student interactions once a week over two school years. Transcriptions of audio recordings were coded for “language related episodes” (LREs), which Swain and Lapkin (1998) define as “dialogue where the students talk about the language they are producing, question their language use, or correct themselves or others” (p. 326). LREs were flagged when students drew upon two or more languages as resources during their writing together. This study applies microgenetic analysis (Lantolf, 2000), or close analysis of interactional discourse, to identify instances of learner uptake and appropriation of partners’ language expertise and to capture language development occurring in the dialogic interaction between students.
Findings
Findings demonstrated that students often drew upon two or more languages during the writing process as they sought to enhance meaning in their interactions with other learners who had distinct language expertise. For example, as students wrote and revised text together they sought help from peers and built on each other's language knowledge to expand their collective linguistic repertoire in their multimodal texts. This context, in which students were engaged in developing multimodal literacies in two languages, offered opportunities for language-minority students to be positioned as experts as they created linguistic bridges for students learning Spanish. Multilingual students demonstrated sophisticated meta-cognitive strategies to compare languages, which were helpful for students who were just beginning to learn a second language.
Significance
This study will contribute to educational research and practice by shedding light on adolescent learners’ practices that mobilize linguistic funds of knowledge in a secondary school context, where multilingual resources often go unrecognized (Moll, 2010). This study ties together theoretical and practical work across the disciplines of foreign/world languages and English-as-a-second-language (which have been separate, despite their great potential to inform each other) in order to transform the way we think about language learning as a multidirectional process.

Author

• Melinda E. Martin-Beltran, University of Maryland - College Park