First, let me apologize for being way to lengthy in this prep
sheet. I spent way too long on it and will need to scale back in
the future to save time (mine and yours), even though I enjoy thinking
these issues through in writing. That said, here are my comments
on the readings:
The Peregoy and Boyle article was especially relevant to our calling as teachers of ESL students, since it dealt specifically with the underpinnings of second language acquisition.
I found the discourse on "phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics" to be pretty helpful since I had a prior understanding of some of the terms, but I had never really seen all of the terms together as a holistic explanation of how language works.
The discussion of languages and
dialects was entertaining. I especially liked the discussion
of how Portuguese and Spanish are considered "languages" even though
they are mutually intelligible, while some Chinese dialects are much
more dissimilar in terms of intelligibility but are still just
considered "dialects." However, I think his explanation for
the difference in differentiation (political status or "power") was
absurdly political itself. The plain fact is, everyone
applies greater shades of differentiation to objects that are close to
us. Hence a common American might come up with 5 or 6
different forms of American English (Ebonics, southern, Texan, etc.),
while thinking of all the highly varied dialects in England as just
"an English accent." So Spanish and Portuguese, which are
culturally close to us as western languages, receive a greater degree
of differentiation in our terminology (and it is only our terminology
we are discussing - not some world standard) than do the less familiar
languages in China. For all we know, the Chinese use the same
word to differentiate their different "dialects" as they use to
differentiate every western language one from another.
The language acquisition
theories (behaviorists, innatists, and interactionist) were interesting
- and I'm sure that each theory is at least somewhat applicable to
different situations in primary language acquisition. However,
I'm a little skeptical about applying them unmodified to second
language acquisition. For one thing, in primary language
acquisition there is no mapping between a new language and an old like
there is in secondary language acquisition. I had some thoughts
on Krashen that I moved down to the discussion of the Krashen article.
In any case, I would have liked to see the authors actually ask the learners how they perceive they are acquiring the new language.
The authors also talked about some of the social and process factors in second language acquisition, but I think I have been pretty wordy on this article as is so I'm going to leave those parts without comment.
In the Gonzalez reading, I take exception to his statement that bilingual education is recognized by the supreme court as a constitutional right. In Crawford's article (page 68), he indicated that the supreme court stopped short of mandating bilingual education, but more generally mandated some sort of accommodation be made for English learning students. Unfortunately, when an author starts an article with a broad generalization that I don't think is really true, it tends to make me suspect all of his scholarship afterwards - so this is really unfortunate. I'm sure the author could have come up with a better opening argument.
Most of the rest of the article does little to change my opinion in
the author's scholarship. It is full of unsupported assertions,
with no effort to effectively confront contrary views. I did
however like the introduction to the Separated Underlying Proficiency
(SUP) and Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) models, which at least
gives me a new reference for intelligently discussing the
subject. Also, I liked his final argument in the last paragraph,
which at least brings in a good philosophical argument for supporting
the maintenance of L1 languages as being healthy for our interactions
with other countries. Otherwise, I give the article an F. I
think it can be left out since the Cummins article addresses the best
material in more depth later.
Rhetorical message to the author: If you want to convince me of the efficacy of bilingual education, for goodness sake give me data instead of just one sided theoretical arguments. If all you have to support your side is theory (because data in this field is admitedly hard to come by), then address the theory on both sides and give me a chance to decide - and don't you dare make a factual error or misrepresentation on the way. Present me with dogma and I will simply stop listening to you and your argument altogether.
I thought that Krashen too
readily dismissed the role of "learning"
in "acquisition." Let's take juggling as an example of
learning and acquisition (since juggling is a favorite interest of
mine). The first stage in learning a new juggling move is
simply to understand how
the objects pass from hand to hand and where the hands go during each
step of the move. This is not always a trivial step since the
exact movements can be hard to take in when seeing a move demonstrated,
and many things can be happening at once since juggling is so
dynamic. When I think I know how the move works, I will start
applying what I have "learned" in practice. In order to
execute it successfully (sometimes even just once), I have to practice
the move extensively until it becomes second nature to my "muscle
memory." Sometimes I can't get to practicing the later part
of a move until my muscle memory has improved enough to get me through
the first part without dropping the balls. During this phase
I think a lot about everything that I am doing - especially the next
step in the move after I have somewhat mastered the steps that came
before. After enough repetition though, I am hardly thinking
about what I am doing at all and I have "acquired" the move.
I have to think that something similar is going on in secondary
language acquisition. In the flow of conversation it is
possible to pause once in a while to try to remember a particular
translation or concentrate on a particular grammar rule, but it is
impossible to concentrate on all rules and all the most appropriate
translations and not "drop the flow." So, there is a
conscious effort (or learning) going on - but only on a few elements of
language at one time. This is similar to Krashen's model of the
"conscious Monitor", but I think he understates its role because he
sees over use of the monitor as disruptive. I agree that overuse
is disruptive, but I also believe that the monitor does a lot to guide
the "leading edge" of our language acquisition - even on the
"listening" side of acquisition.
I like Krashen's comprehensible input theory, but I take exception
to his implication that students of differing speeds of acquisition can
all learn to their full ability in the same class. I suspect if
the slower learners are confronted with too much input containing what
is for them "i +3000" inputs versus "i+1" inputs, they will be so far
out of the flow of the conversation that they will start checking out
and their acquisition rate will slow way down. Of course, this is
just an unsupported suspicion of mine - but I have a general suspicion
that classes of mixed abilities, while possibly beneficial to the
average, are not necessarily beneficial to the outlying members of the
curve.
Also, Krashen's "affective filter hypothesis" which blames slower acquisition mostly on higher anxiety doesn't seem too well supported to me. Anxiety can be a distraction factor for sure, but I think there are other factors as well that may be much more important and this deserves more research.
By the way, I like Krashen's methodology for teaching second languages, and I'm impressed with the data that he presents on its effectiveness. I just think that some of his underlying theory is a little suspect. Oftentimes in complex fields things work without our really knowing why, and that's all right as long as we don't get too attached to our explanations.
Finally note that Krashen's research on sheltered subject matter teaching would seem to contradict Gonzalez's and Cummins' support of continued multilingual education, since Krashen argues that sheltered classes provide advancement in both the subject area (math) plus help the acquisition of a second language. We definitely have a real debate here!
The Cummins article could use an update since it refers to 1985 data for educational expenditures (2 decades old!).
I find the Cummins article immediately irritating because it starts
off with an obvious political agenda. When will these writers
learn that such forms of communication (discussions of "power
structure, etc.") are only good for preaching to the converted!
Frankly, I find his argument that better education for immigrants is in
everyone's best interests to be much more compelling than an idealistic
call for "power to the masses" which is based on a political and moral
viewpoint that has been dividing people forever. Also, is the
Lloyd Dunn that he addresses really a thinker in the academic
mainstream (if so, pumping up your own position by knocking down
extremists on the other side that few listen to is a despicable
tactic). Cummin's uses this tactic several times and it strikes
me as inflammatory and unconvincing.
After this disappointing start, Cummins goes on to make some strong arguments about problems introduced in the education of ESL students due to lack of compensation for their English language difficulties. I also like his discussion of context-embedded versus context-reduced communication, and demanding versus undemanding communication. His Common Underlying Proficiency argument is also compelling and is arguably the highlight of the article, together with his data from the bilingual programs that he sites. However, there is no comparison in his study with sheltered education programs, which is unfortunate.