I Don't Get It: Emergent Bilinguals Seeking and Receiving Help From Peers in Language Arts

• In Event: Title: A Critical Look at Pedagogical Scaffolding During Literacy Instruction With Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

Objectives: Alexandra is a bilingual 4th grader who began acquiring English in kindergarten. At home, Alexandra speaks English with her siblings and Spanish with her parents. At school, Alexandra was classified as an English learner (EL) and struggled to meet grade level academic expectations. She is one of eight children highlighted in this study. Alexandra’s experience is one among the many stories of young ELs who face significant academic difficulties. With the inception of the more rigorous Common Core State Standards, ELs are expected to need more support than ever before (Fillmore & Fillmore, 2012; Goldenberg, 2013).

One way for ELs to obtain help is by seeking the assistance of their classroom peers. The Standards’ emphasis on collaborative discussions is likely to lead classroom teachers to increase the number of group- and partner-related activities in an effort to provide more exposure and practice for peer-to-peer talk. Simply providing opportunities for small group work, however, is not sufficient to increase student academic achievement or English language development (Webb, Ing, Kersting, & Nemer, 2013). This study asks, how do young emergent bilinguals seek help from peers? Are these help-seeking requests successful?

Theoretical Framework, Data Sources and Methods: This study draws on illocutionary competence (Bachman, 1990) and views language as action or “doing.” Rather than viewing language as static and easily captured by “correct” grammatical forms, language- as-action views language as a dynamic meaning-making process (van Lier & Walqui, 2012). To study how eight fourth grade ELs sought help and how peers responded to their requests, I recorded and transcribed eight fourth grade ELs’ classroom talk in language arts over a period of 6 months and took field notes describing classroom activities. I used conversation analysis to identify help-seeking requests and limited my analysis to instances of help sought and received –or not—from peers only. Then, I followed the coding conventions in the Webb et al. (2013) study of seventh grade math students’ help-seeking behavior. I coded requests for help as general or specific requests for help. Finally, adapting the coding conventions of Webb et al. (2013), I coded peer responses as no response, non-content response, answer to all or part of the question, elaborated response and refuse to help.

Results & Scholarly Significance: By looking at how English learners seek assistance from peers during language arts, I found that ELs more frequently use general requests than specific requests to obtain help. The students in this study posed general requests in various forms, including using “what” to begin their query, indirect requests and commands for help. When their request for help received no response, emergent bilinguals sometimes persisted and asked again. Overall, however, only 41% of emergent bilingual requests for help succeeded in eliciting helpful peer responses. This study calls attention to the need to support students in assisting one another in ways that will promote academic understanding.

Author

• Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica, Santa Clara University