Multilingualism in the English-language Classroom: Pedagogical Considerations JIM CUMMINS University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada 䡲 This article addresses the issue of whet
Trang 1THE AUTHOR
Joshua A Fishman is a sociolinguistic researcher, teacher, lecturer, and author In addition to his many well-known journal and book publications, he is the recipient of
an honorary DHL from the Free University of Brussels, the Premi Institut Linguapax
(Barcelona), and a multivolume festschrift presented by colleagues and students in
honor of his 80th birthday An annual prize in his name has just been announced by the National Association for Heritage Languages of the USA and will be awarded for the fi rst time in 2009
REFERENCE
Fishman, J A (1966) Language loyalty in the United States: The maintenance and perpetu-ation of non-English mother tongues by American ethnic and religious groups The Hague,
The Netherlands: Mouton
Multilingualism in the English-language Classroom: Pedagogical Considerations
JIM CUMMINS
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
䡲 This article addresses the issue of whether TESOL should clearly artic-ulate a set of pedagogical principles that challenge the assumption that English language teaching (ELT) should be conducted monolingually
through English This monolingual principle (Howatt, 1984) emphasizes
instructional use of the target language (TL) to the exclusion of stu-dents’ home language (L1), with the goal of enabling learners to think
in the TL with minimal interference from the L1 The monolingual prin-ciple initially gained widespread acceptance more than 100 years ago
in the context of the direct method and has continued to exert a strong
infl uence on various language teaching approaches since that time (Yu, 2000)
There are strong empirical and theoretical reasons to challenge the monolingual principle and articulate a set of bilingual instruc-tional strategies that more adequately address the challenges of English language and academic development The focus is on school contexts rather than on the teaching of English to adults, but similar arguments are equally relevant in many adult learning contexts (e.g., Auerbach, 1993)
Trang 2TESOL AND THE MONOLINGUAL PRINCIPLE
Throughout the 40-year controversy in relation to bilingual education
in the United States, TESOL has consistently articulated its support for
bilingual education as a legitimate policy option for the education of
bilingual and language-minority students TESOL has joined proponents
of bilingual education in refuting the argument that there is any
opposi-tion between ESL and bilingual educaopposi-tion For both groups of advocates,
ESL represents an essential component of an effective bilingual
educa-tion program
TESOL, however, has not elaborated a position in relation to an equally
important, albeit less volatile, issue, namely, the extent to which the
teach-ing of English and other academic content in English-medium classes
should be conducted entirely through English This is not a critique of
TESOL; although the issue surfaced in the TESOL Quarterly and other
publications in the 1990s (Auerbach, 1993; Lucas & Katz, 1994; Phillipson,
1992), it has gained momentum as an urgent equity issue in United States
and international classrooms only in recent years (e.g., Cummins, 2007;
García, 2008; Manyak, 2004) Thus, the goal of this article is to highlight
the issue as an appropriate focus of policy consideration and articulation
by TESOL
Failure to articulate a position on the issue of the use of monolingual
versus bilingual instructional strategies risks linking TESOL with the
nor-malized assumption that monolingual instructional strategies are
self-evidently desirable when teaching English to children and adults
Currently, most ELT professionals and policy makers associate themselves
explicitly or implicitly with some form of communicative or task-based
language teaching As Cook (2001) has pointed out, these approaches
perpetuate the monolingual principle by consigning students’ L1 to
invis-ibility within the classroom:
Recent methods do not so much forbid the L1 as ignore its existence
alto-gether Communicative language teaching and task-based learning
meth-ods have no necessary relationship with the L1, yet the only times the
L1 is mentioned is when advice is given on how to minimize its use The
main theoretical treatments of task-based learning do not, for example,
have any locatable mentions of the classroom use of the L1 Most
descriptions of methods portray the ideal classroom as having as little of
the L1 as possible, essentially by omitting reference to it (p 404)
Cook (2001) argues for judicious use of the L1 in the teaching of
sec-ond and foreign languages but cautions that despite the legitimacy of
using the L1 under certain conditions, “it is clearly useful to employ large
quantities of the L2, everything else being equal” (p 413)
Trang 3EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL RATIONALE FOR
BILINGUAL INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES IN
ENGLISH-MEDIUM CLASSROOMS
Some of the major points articulated by various researchers to argue
for bilingual instructional strategies or translanguaging (García, 2008) are
outlined below:
A fundamental principle of learning states that learners’
pre-•
existing knowledge is the foundation for all future learning (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000) Because English Language learners’ (ELL) prior knowledge is encoded in their L1, particu-larly in the early stages of English language learning, activation and building on prior knowledge requires the linking of English concepts and knowledge with the learner’s L1 cognitive schemata (Cummins, 2001, 2007; García, 2008; Lucas & Katz, 1994) This linking cannot be done effectively if students’ L1 is banished from the classroom
Translation skill is widely found among bilingual children by late
ele-•
mentary school (Malakoff & Hakuta, 1991; Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner, & Meza, 2003) Malakoff and Hakuta highlight potential pedagogical applications, noting that “translation provides an easy avenue to enhance linguistic awareness and pride in bilingualism, particularly for minority bilingual children whose home language is not valued by the majority culture” (p 163)
For languages such as English and Spanish that have many cognate
•
connections, a focus on cognates can enhance students’ knowledge
of TL vocabulary (Nagy, García, Durgunoglu, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993)
This practice is an example of teaching for transfer , which draws on the
general principle of conceptual interdependence across languages (Cummins, 2007)
Encouraging newcomer students to write in their L1 and, working
•
with peer, community, or instructional resource people to translate L1 writing into English, scaffolds students’ output in English and enables them to use higher order and critical thinking skills much sooner than if English is the only legitimate language of intel-lectual expression in the classroom (Cummins, 2007; Reyes, 2001) Students’ dual language books can be published in hard-copy form (and checked out by other students from the school or class-room library) or made available to a wider audience through web publication (see, e.g., Baron [2001], and The Multiliteracy Project [n.d.])
Trang 4Research has consistently supported the effi cacy of bilingual
diction-•
ary use for vocabulary learning as compared with monolingual
dic-tionary use or simply learning from context alone (Laufer & Kimmel,
1997; Luppescu & Day, 1993; Prince, 1996)
Legitimating students’ L1 as a cognitive tool within the classroom
•
challenges the subordinate status of many minority groups and
affi rms students’ identities, thereby promoting what Manyak
(2004) has called identities of competence (Cummins, 2001; García,
2008)
CONCLUSION
The perpetuation of the monolingual principle as “common-sense
knowledge” in countries around the world is associated with multiple
forms of injustice to both teachers and learners of English It reinforces
the empirically unsupported and socially problematic assumption that
native speakers are superior English language teachers as compared with
nonnative teachers This assumption is also implicated in the discourse,
very audible in countries such as Germany and the United States, that
stu-dents’ home languages are a major cause of underachievement and
should thus be undermined as early as possible through immersion in
English (Esser, 2006 ; Porter, 1990 ) Not least, it consigns newcomer
students to a nonparticipatory role in the regular (and sometimes ESL)
classroom until they are capable of expressing themselves without
embar-rassment in English, a process that can take several years for many
stu-dents Bilingual instructional strategies have demonstrated in multiple
research studies that they are capable of addressing these policy and
peda-gogical concerns, and they thus warrant serious consideration by policy
makers and practitioners An endorsement by TESOL of these approaches
would challenge the educational and social injustices associated with the
monolingual principle It would also reposition TESOL as a strong
advo-cate for empirically supported and equity-oriented approaches to English
language teaching
THE AUTHOR
Jim Cummins is a Canada Research Chair in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching
and Learning of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of
Toronto, Ontario, Canada His research focuses on literacy development in
multilin-gual school contexts as well as on the potential roles of technology in promoting
lan-guage and literacy development In recent years, he has been working actively with
teachers to identify ways of increasing the literacy engagement of learners in
multilin-gual school contexts
Trang 5REFERENCES
Auerbach, E (1993) Reexamining ESL only in the ESL classroom TESOL Quarterly,
27, 9–32
Baron, N., Chow, P., Dale, V., Kelly, A., Solomon, B., Wong, B., et al (2001) The dual language showcase Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Thornwood Public School Retrieved May 30, 2009, from http://thornwood.peelschools.org/Dual/
Bransford, J D., Brown, A L., & Cocking, R R (2000) How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school Washington, DC: National Academy Press
Cook, V (2001) Using the fi rst language in the classroom Canadian Modern Language Review, 57, 402–423
Cummins, J (2001) Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society
(2nd Ed.) Los Angeles: California Association for Bilingual Education
Cummins, J (2007) Rethinking monolingual instructional strategies in multilingual
classrooms Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10, 221–240
Esser, H (2006) Migration, language, and integration (AKI Research Review 4) Berlin:
Social Science Research Center, Programme on Intercultural Confl icts and Societal Integration (AKI) Retrieved December 21, 2007, from http://www.wzb.eu/ zkd/aki/fi les/aki_research_review_4
García, O (2008) Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective Boston:
Blackwell
Howatt, A (1984) A history of English language teaching Oxford: Oxford University
Press
Laufer, B., & Kimmel, M (1997) Bilingual dictionaries: How learners really use them
System, 19, 217–224
Lucas, T., & Katz, A (1994) Reframing the debate: The roles of native languages in English-only programs for language minority students TESOL Quarterly, 28,
537–562
Luppescu, S., & Day, R R (1993) Reading, dictionaries, and vocabulary learning
Language Learning, 43, 263–287
Malakoff, M., & Hakuta, K (1991) Translation skills and metalinguistic awareness in
bilinguals In E Bialystok (Ed.), Language processing in bilingual children (pp 141–
166) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Manyak, P C (2004) “What did she say?”: Translation in a primary-grade English
immersion class Multicultural Perspectives, 6 (1), 12–18
The Multiliteracy Project (n.d.) Retrieved May 31, 2009, from http://www multiliteracies.ca/index.php
Nagy, W E., García, G E., Durgunoglu, A., & Hancin-Bhatt, B (1993) Spanish–
English bilingual students’ use of cognates in English reading Journal of Reading Behavior, 25, 241–259
Orellana, M F., Reynolds, J., Dorner, L., & Meza, M (2003) In other words: Translating or “para-phrasing” as a family literacy practice in immigrant
house-holds Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 12–34
Phillipson, R (1992) Linguistic imperialism Oxford: Oxford University Press
Porter, R P (1990) Forked tongue: The politics of bilingual education New York: Basic
Books
Prince, P (1996) Second language vocabulary learning: The role of context versus
translations as a function of profi ciency Modern Language Journal, 80, 478–493
Reyes, M de la Luz (2001) Unleashing possibilities: Biliteracy in the primary grades
In M de la Luz Reyes & J Halcón (Eds.), The best for our children: Critical perspectives
on literacy for Latino students (pp 96–121) New York: Teachers College Press
Yu, W (2000) Direct method In M Byram (Ed.), Routledge encyclopedia of language teaching and learning (pp 176–178) New York: Routledge