Fostering Dual Language Learners’ Classroom Conversations: Home Language Use and Codeswitching across Instructional Contexts

• In Event: Supporting Multilingual Language Development at Preschool: Evaluating the Influence of Language Input from Teachers

Abstract

Children’s oral language skills lay the foundation for later literacy development and learning and can be fostered through responsive interactions with teachers (e.g., Cabell et al., 2015). However, such conversations are rare in preschool classrooms, particularly between teachers and dual language learners (DLLs), or students who speak a minoritized language at home (Sawyer et al., 2017). Previous studies have found that DLLs benefit when their home language is used and instruction is provided in small groups (Burchinal et al., 2012; Farver et al., 2009). Some scholars have proposed that hybrid language practices such as codeswitching support DLLs’ social emotional wellbeing and meaning-making in early childhood classrooms (Gort & Pontier, 2013). And yet, little is known about what these practices look like in preschool classrooms without an explicit language model serving predominantly Spanish-speaking DLLs. Specifically, how do teachers’ language practices differ by instructional context (whole group vs. small group) and how do their DLL students differ in their verbal participation across instructional contexts?

The current study draws on 10 transcribed video-recorded observations from a larger study on teacher-child interactions in racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse Head Start-funded preschool classrooms in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. These observations were selected from the full corpus of 137 observations because: 1) the teacher used both Spanish and English; 2) the teacher had usable recordings of a small group lesson with DLL students and a whole group lesson in which the same DLL students were present; and 3) the observation occurred prior to the professional development intervention of the larger study. The final sample for this analysis consisted of five teachers (four lead teachers and one assistant) and 25 target DLL students. They had 3-12 years of preschool teaching experience and taught classes comprised of 47%-100% Spanish-speaking 3-5 year-old DLLs. The videos were transcribed in CHAT format and features of teacher and child talk (including total number of words, mean length of turn, and balanced turn-taking) were derived using CLAN (CHILDES; MacWhinney, 2000). The transcripts were then coded for the types of codeswitches (within-turn or cross-speaker). While the study aims were primarily exploratory, we anticipated that teachers would use more Spanish and codeswitch more frequently in small group compared to whole group. Furthermore, we expected that DLLs would mirror the language practices of their teachers, using more Spanish and codeswitching more often in small group.

We found that on average, teachers’ percent Spanish use did not differ by instructional context, but teachers codeswitched more frequently in small group than in whole group. We also found that teachers engaged in more balanced conversational turn-taking in small group lessons (see Table 1). The target DLLs spoke more frequently, took longer turns, used more Spanish, and codeswitched between speakers more in small group than in whole group (p’s <.05, see Table 2). Our results suggest that teachers who use Spanish with their DLL students codeswitch more frequently in small group than in whole group and that small group may be an important setting for fostering DLLs’ participation in classroom conversations.

Authors

• Sarah Surrain, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Michelle Curenton, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cecilia Jarquin Tapia, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author