̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - bilingualism

Mixed early progress highlights need for sustained support for pupils with English as an additional language

tdk25 — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 10:04:14 +0000

̽��ֱ��finding is one of numerous results and recommendations in a new book about the language development of EAL pupils, and its impact on their attainment and social integration. ̽��ֱ��book, authored by a team of academics from Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin and Durham Universities, examines the complex relationship between language, education and the social integration of newcomer migrant EAL students.

According to the School Census, there are currently over 1.5 million EAL pupils in England, and the proportion is steadily rising. ̽��ֱ��trend is similar in many other English-speaking countries.

̽��ֱ��book builds on three years of research involving over 40 schools across the East of England, funded by the Bell Foundation, and highlights much good practice by teachers working in multilingual classrooms. But it also points to inconsistencies and gaps in support for EAL pupils, stemming from an absence of national guidelines, targeted assessment, and systemic problems in areas such as teacher training and school-parent communication.

EAL pupils themselves were found to make uneven progress during their first two years in English schools. While many became competent English-speakers, their written English frequently lagged behind. ̽��ֱ��authors suggest this pattern may be further exacerbated by reductions in funding for EAL support.

As well as analysing the progress of EAL pupils, the study proposes a model for a more inclusive approach to teaching EAL students.

Dr Karen Forbes, Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “At the moment, it is often left to individual teachers or schools to decide how to handle the challenges of a multilingual classroom. While many do excellent work, EAL pupils inevitably have a variable experience. Teachers and schools should be able to draw on a structured framework and a proper knowledge base so that they can give these pupils the sustained linguistic and educational support they often need.”

̽��ֱ��research suggests that while many schools rightly prioritise the integration of EAL learners into mainstream lessons, some will need ongoing, one-to-one support, especially with developing more academic English, long past the point where they appear socially-integrated and able to hold a casual conversation.

This is just one symptom of a wider need to provide schools with a structural basis to give EAL learners individualised, ‘child-centred’ support, the authors argue. They stress that the ‘EAL’ label does not describe one type of pupil, but encompasses a wide range of previous educational experiences, interests and skills.

Encouragingly, many of the schools surveyed actively encouraged an inclusive and positive environment for EAL pupils. Teachers also employed various tactics that could form part of a wider framework to support them, such as group learning and buddy systems, translated texts and different visual aids.

But the study finds that many such interventions are devised locally, by schools or individual teachers, absent more structured or systematic guidance. This can lead to inconsistencies: for example, teachers varied their approach to when EAL pupils could use their home language, which often left students confused about when to use English.

̽��ֱ��researchers argue that other mechanisms are needed to give teachers a more solid foundation for working with EAL pupils. Teachers consistently enthused, for example, about the ‘vital’ support provided by dedicated EAL co-ordinators and bilingual support staff. But many schools that the researchers surveyed have struggled to sustain such services given that funding is no longer ring-fenced for this purpose.

̽��ֱ��book also highlights the need for more EAL-specific, specialist training for teachers, both for their professional practice and to help them work successfully with local minority-ethnic and migrant communities, especially those unfamiliar with the English system of education. This is only covered briefly in most teacher-training courses, and rarely forms part of their continuing professional development or ‘on the job’ learning.

Critically, the researchers also suggest that parents of EAL pupils and their communities are an untapped resource of knowledge, strong educational values and expertise.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that many parents of EAL children have a high level of interest in their children’s education, but often are not sufficiently supported to understand context-specific curriculum choices, modes of assessment or school expectations. They argue that, as well as providing translated information and induction materials, schools should establish mechanisms such as EAL parents’ networks, empowering parents within school governance structures to inform the way that they support migrant pupils, ensure that they achieve their potential, and promote positive experiences in school.

“Overall, there is a need for a more systematic, whole-school approach to the education of EAL pupils,” Michael Evans, Emeritus Read in Second Language Education at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said. “This includes supporting teachers to develop their skills, providing them with a knowledge base on which to draw, and developing an effective communication system to promote parental engagement in schools. If that can be achieved, the benefits will be felt far beyond schools and EAL pupils alone.”

Language Development and Social Integration of Students with English as an Additional Language is published by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press on 16 July.

Newly-arrived pupils who speak English as an additional language (EAL) often make ‘mixed’ linguistic and academic progress during their first years in British schools, which need a proper framework to give them sustained support, a study suggests.

At the moment, it is often left to individual teachers or schools to decide how to handle the challenges of a multilingual classroom.

Karen Forbes

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School classroom

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Postgraduate Pioneers 2017 #3

ta385 — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 10:59:47 +0000

Third in the series is Draško Kašćelan, a linguistics researcher hoping to help children with language development.

My research sets out to

I’m investigating figurative language understanding in bilingual children. Nowadays, speaking more than one language is becoming a norm worldwide. Similarly, using metaphors in everyday speech is more frequent than one might assume. This frequency of use helps the development of figurative language comprehension but since bilinguals don’t have equal exposure to both of their languages as corresponding monolinguals, there is a question of whether this lack of input affects how they understand metaphors.

I am also looking into the level of autistic traits in children, since these traits are often related to the difficulties in figurative language comprehension. Hopefully, this research will give insight into how language understanding develops in bilinguals, but also offer directions for future investigation of language development in clinical populations.

Day-to-Day

My work is split between office work and data collection. At the moment, I spend most of the time in my department but I sometimes prepare experimental tasks in a cafe. But when I’m collecting data that involves visiting primary schools outside of Cambridge which gives me a really interesting change of scene. This would typically include a session with a student in which he or she does a series of computer-based cognitive or language tasks designed to look like games. Some of the sessions also include act-out tasks with toys, which makes the whole data collection quite fun.

My best days

̽��ֱ��most interesting day I’ve had so far was during the pilot of my study when I got to talk to several children about the work that I do. Explaining to primary school kids what linguistics actually is ended up being quite a challenge, especially when I was asked how long it takes to learn a language and why I don’t speak Elvish.

I hope my work will lead to

̽��ֱ��improvement of support that bilingual children get when it comes to maintaining the use of their languages. Together with other experimental work in the field, I expect to make an impact on educational policies regarding foreign language learning, which is currently far from optimal in the UK. I also hope that the findings of my investigation will offer directions for future research of language development in both typically and atypically developing individuals.

It had to be Cambridge because

Apart from academic and financial support that Cambridge offers, one of the most valuable parts of this experience is the student community. Specifically, the college system offers opportunities to socialise with people from other academic fields and from various backgrounds. This is quite different from my undergraduate experience outside of Cambridge where I would mostly only interact mostly with people from my field, which sometimes makes engaging with other areas of interest harder.

With our Postgraduate Open Day fast-approaching (3 Nov), we introduce five PhD students who are already making waves at Cambridge.

I was asked how long it takes to learn a language and why I don’t speak Elvish.

Draško Kašćelan

Postgraduate Open Day

For more information about the ̽��ֱ��'s Postgraduate Open Day on 3rd November 2017 and to book to attend, please click here.

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Speakers of two dialects may share cognitive advantage with speakers of two languages

sjr81 — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:01:24 +0000

̽��ֱ��new findings on bi-dialectalism are published in the journal Cognition, following a study undertaken by researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cyprus, and the Cyprus ̽��ֱ�� of Technology.

Although a topic of continuing academic and public scrutiny, a lot of research to date reports a positive cognitive net effect for multilingual children compared to children who speak only one language.

̽��ֱ��effect is usually manifest in attention, cognitive flexibility and the ability to inhibit irrelevant information, with some researchers arguing that the advantages of bilingualism are evident throughout the human lifespan. Until now, however, there has been very little research on children speaking two dialects which may only be separated by subtle linguistic differences.

Bi-dialectalism, the systematic use of two different dialects of the same language, is widespread in many parts of the world. In the USA millions of children grow up speaking African American English at home as well as Mainstream American English at school.

Similar situations arise in many parts of Europe, such as the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, where school-children may only feel comfortable to talk about school subjects in High German, but switch to Swiss-German for everyday conversation.

British English, Gaelic and Welsh have well-established dialects as well as newly emerging ones such as Multicultural London English, which has a rising number of speakers, especially among young, urban people.

To date, bi-dialectalism can be found in Lowland Scotland (in speakers of Scots and Standard Scottish English), in parts of Northern Ireland and elsewhere. However, the criteria for classifying two varieties as dialects rather than independent languages are not strictly objective and it could be debated whether these are cases of bilingualism instead.

Dr Kyriakos Antoniou and Dr Napoleon Katsos from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge studied the cognitive performance of children who grew up speaking both Cypriot Greek and Standard Modern Greek – two varieties of Greek which are closely related but differ from each other on all levels of language analysis (vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar).

̽��ֱ��study showed that multilingual and bi-dialectal children exhibited an advantage over monolingual children that was evident in composite cognitive processes including memory, attention and cognitive flexibility; suggesting that advantages previously reported for multilingual children could be shared by children speaking any two or more dialects.

Dr Kyriakos Antoniou, from Cambridge’s Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, said: “What is exciting and encouraging about our findings is that we were able to replicate the advantages of bilingualism in children who speak two varieties of the same language. They need not be as diverse as English and Mandarin Chinese.

“ ̽��ֱ��distance between languages and dialects does not make much of a difference according to our tests and findings. Systematically switching between any two forms of language, even quite similar ones, seems to provide the mind with the extra stimulation that leads to higher cognitive performance.

“Our findings could be significant for parents and children in the UK and countries across Europe and beyond where children speak a variety of different dialects. Germany, Italy and Spain all have significant numbers of dialectal speakers, as do parts of the US and China. With the rise and increased recognition of dialects in the UK, bi-dialectalism might become even more relevant in the UK in the near future.

“What our research suggests, contrary to some widely held beliefs, is that we don’t have to treat multilingual or bi-dialectal children as problematic. When it comes to language, plurality is an advantage.”

̽��ֱ��study consisted of 64 bi-dialectal children, 47 multilingual children and 25 monolingual children. Comparisons between the three groups were performed in two stages and the socio-economic status, language proficiency, and general intelligence of all children taking part was factored into the research methodology.

Dr Napoleon Katsos, one of the study authors, said: “Previous research has documented positive associations between childhood bilingualism and cognitive abilities.

“ ̽��ֱ��novel and most important contribution of this study is that it showed similar positive effects extend to children speaking two closely related dialects of the same language. In qualitative terms, the effects of bi-dialectalism and multilingualism were, in general, quite similar. However, more research is needed on this topic.

“Dialects are very much under-recognised and undervalued. This kind of research can make people appreciate there is an advantage to bi-dialectalism and this may be important when we think about our identity, about how we educate children and the importance of language learning.”

Dr Antoniou and Dr Katsos are now retesting and extending their hypotheses on a larger scale in Belgium, in collaboration with researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Brussels. Belgium offers an ideal testing ground, with dialects of Dutch such as West-Flemish, being spoken alongside more standard versions of Dutch and French. ̽��ֱ��new study includes larger samples and new measures, to better understand the effects of bi-dialectalism on cognitive and linguistic development and their relation to bilingualism.

Reference:

K.Antoniou et. al. ‘ ̽��ֱ��effect of childhood bilectalism and multilingualism on executive control’ Cognition 149 (2016)

DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.12.002

̽��ֱ��ability of children to speak any two dialects – two closely related varieties of the same language – may confer the same cognitive advantages as those reported for multilingual children who speak two or more substantially different languages (such as English and French).

Dialects are very much under-recognised and undervalued.

Napoleon Katsos

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Conversations by Steve McClanahan via Flickr

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Opinion: There are also drawbacks to being bilingual

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 14:17:08 +0000

̽��ֱ��ability to speak more than one language certainly has its perks. It enables you to work in another country, for example, interact with people while travelling, or consume foreign media.

Bilingualism is very common – current estimates are that more than half of the world’s population is bilingual and that this prevalence is rising.

Cognitive psychologists have been interested in how bilingualism shapes the mind for almost a century. There are those who suggest that in order to speak in one language, bilinguals have to suppress the influence of the other. Research from the past three decades has argued that this unique form of language processing “trains the brain” in the use of non-verbal abilities known as “executive functions” such as ignoring irrelevant information or shifting attention.

Bilinguals of different ages and cultural backgrounds have been shown to be faster and more accurate than their monolingual peers when performing cognitive tasks demanding these abilities. Furthermore, it has been argued that bilingualism may lead to a delayed onset of symptoms associated with dementia.

But the scientific community recently has become increasingly sceptical of the bilingual advantage hypothesis. One of the main points of criticism is that differences between monolinguals and bilinguals when it comes to executive function are not always apparent. This has generated a heated debate, especially in the Bilingualism Forum of the scientific journal Cortex, about whether bilingualism is associated with cognitive advantages or not.

Fresh challenge

It appears that research on bilingualism is at a turning point. We need to pursue a new approach to understand, beyond those individual examples of executive functions, how the bilingual mind works. We have attempted to address this challenge by testing whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ in terms of how accurately they can assess their own performance.

This ability is called metacognition and is associated with, but separate from, other areas where bilinguals have been shown to have an advantage. Surprisingly, however, we found that bilinguals had less insight into their performance than their monolingual peers.

Joining the dots

In an effort to find out whether bilinguals also display advantages in other cognitive abilities (beyond executive function), we evaluated metacognitive processing in young adult monolinguals and bilinguals. Metacognition is the ability to evaluate one’s own cognitive performance or simply to have “thoughts about thoughts”.

This ability is a crucial function of everyday life, when we have to make decisions where the outcomes are not immediate. For example, when an entrepreneur reviews their company’s performance, they need to take into account a variety of factors – including, for example, revenues and expenses – in order to evaluate whether the company is doing well. Confidence in their ideas and performance can be the determining factor in whether they decide to keep investing time in their company or give up and apply for another job (the so-called “exploitation exploration trade-off”).

In our research, we presented participants with a situation in which they had to observe two circles on a screen and guess which one contained more dots. Sometimes the difference was obvious, making the decision easy, while at other times the decision was very difficult (for example, one circle contained 50 dots and the other 49). Participants were then asked to determine how confident they were in their decision on a scale from less to more confident than normal.

Illustration of the metacognition paradigm employed by Folke et al., 2016. Folkes et al, 2016, Author provided

Over the course of two experiments, we found that bilinguals and monolinguals were equally likely to choose the circle containing the highest number of dots. However, monolinguals were better able than bilinguals to discriminate between when they were right and when they were wrong. In other words, bilinguals had less insight into their performance than monolinguals. This went against our initial predictions, as we expected to find a bilingual advantage in metacognitive processing. These results indicate that bilingualism may be associated with cognitive disadvantages as well as benefits.

What’s next?

̽��ֱ��Multilanguage & Cognition lab (MULTAC) at Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ�� is currently undertaking a three-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust to enhance our understanding of the bilingual mind.

̽��ֱ��lab has already published evidence of cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism, suggesting that bilinguals are better at filtering out verbal interference as well as visual attention, specifically spotting the difference in a visuo-spatial working memory task.

This new research indicates that bilingual people may experience a disadvantage in metacognition. We hope that this new direction in bilingualism research will encourage further attention and enable us to resolve theoretical debate through the adoption of open-minded, empirically driven exploration of cognitive effects (both positive and negative) that may be associated with learning more than one language.

Julia Ouzia, PhD candidate in cognitive psychology, Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ�� and Tomas Folke, PhD candidate, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Tomas Folke (Department of Psychology) and Julia Ouzia (Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��) discuss the cognitive disadvantages that may be associated with learning more than one language.

R/DV/RS

Bilingual street name sign in Bangor, North Wales

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Opinion: Speaking in tongues: the many benefits of bilingualism

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 10:40:24 +0000

We live in a world of great linguistic diversity. More than half of the world’s population grows up with more than one language. There are, on the other hand, language communities that are monolingual, typically some parts of the English-speaking world.

In this case, bilingualism or multilingualism can be seen as an extraordinary situation – a source of admiration and worry at the same time. But there are communities where bilingualism or multilingualism are the norm – for example in regions of Africa. A Cameroonian, for example, could speak Limbum and Sari, both indigenous languages, plus Ewondo, a lingua franca, plus English or French, the official languages, plus Camfranglais, a further lingua franca used between anglophone and francophone Cameroonians.

On a smaller scale, we all know families where bilingualism or multilingualism are the norm, because the parents speak different languages or because the family uses a language different from that of the community around them.

How difficult is it for a child to grow up in such an environment? And what are bilingual children capable of? Well, they are capable of quite a lot, even at a very young age. They can understand and produce expressions in more than one language, they know who to address in which language, they are able to switch very fast from one language to the other.

Noses for grammar

Clearly we are talking here of a range of different skills: social, linguistic and cognitive. Social skills are the most known: bilingual children are able to interact with speakers of (at least) two languages and thus have direct access to two different cultures.

But they also have linguistic skills, some very obvious, such as understanding and using words and expressions in different languages. A less obvious aspect is that bilingual children have a raised awareness for how language “works”. For example, bilinguals are better than monolinguals of the same age at pinpointing that the sentence “apples growed on trees” is bad, and “apples grow on noses” is fine, but doesn’t make sense.

Less known are the cognitive skills developed by bilinguals, an issue of great interest for research at the moment, as seen, for example, in work by Ellen Bialystok and colleagues. Probably due to the practice of switching languages, bilinguals are very good at taking different perspectives, dealing with conflicting cues and ignoring irrelevant information. This skill can be applied to domains other than language, making it an added value of bilingualism.

Is it worth it?

What if one of the languages is not a “useful” one because, for example, it does not have many speakers (for example, Cornish)? Is it worth exposing the child to it? ̽��ֱ��linguistic, social and cognitive advantages mentioned above hold, independently of the specific languages. Any combination of languages has the same effect.

A common worry is that trying to speak two (or more) languages could be too strenuous for the child. But there is no need for concern: learning to speak is more similar to learning to walk than it is to learning a school subject. Learning to speak is genetically programmed. ̽��ֱ��brain is certainly able to cope with more than one language, as research and experience shows.

There could be a practical problem, though, in providing enough exposure to the languages. ̽��ֱ��stress is then on the parents to ensure the opportunity to interact with speakers of the languages in question. Bilingualism is not genetic: having parents who speak different language does not guarantee a bilingual child.

Code-switching is cool

Another frequent worry is that of the child learning two half languages, short of the “proper” version of either of them. One may, for example, hear bilinguals – children and adults – using words or expressions from two or more of the languages in their linguistic repertoire in a single sentence or text, a phenomenon known as code-switching.

Often people assume that the main reason for doing this is a lack of sufficient proficiency in one of the languages, such that the speaker cannot continue in the language they started in. They also often assume that the choice of the words from one language or the other is random. Far from it. Code-switching is common among bilinguals and, contrary to popular belief, it follows grammatical rules.

Research has shown regular patterns in code-switching, influenced by the languages concerned, by community norms and by which language(s) people learn first or use more frequently. Very often, code-switchers are very highly proficient in the languages concerned. Code-switching also follows social rules: bilingual children only use it if they know the interlocutor knows the “other” language.

Additionally, if asked for clarification, they know if they have spoken too quietly or used the wrong language, and only switch in the latter case. Both bilingual children and adults have a range of reasons, including sociolinguistic reasons to code-switch. Code-switching can be cool!

All typically developing children will learn one language. To learn more than one they need the opportunity and the motivation. Growing up with more than one language is an asset well worth the investment.

Teresa Parodi, Lecturer of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Dr Teresa Parodi (Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics) discusses the linguistic, social and cognitive advantages of speaking more than one language.

Emma Taylor

From Within a Book

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Unconscious language learning

lw355 — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:00:20 +0000

When linguists talk about unconscious or implicit language learning, they don’t mean learning while you sleep. Rather, they are talking about one of the most intriguing of all mental phenomena: the ability to learn the complex and subtle regularities that underlie a language without even realising.

For children, such ‘implicit’ language learning seems to happen spontaneously in the first few years of life; yet, in adulthood, learning a second language is generally far from effortless and has varied success.

So marked is the difference between first- and second-language learning – at least when it takes the form of classroom learning – it might suggest that implicit learning makes no significant contribution to learning a second language. Or it may indicate that typical foreign language teaching doesn’t take full advantage of the process.

̽��ֱ��challenge that faces linguists is how to test whether implicit learning is taking place. How can you differentiate between a person consciously recognising a certain pattern or rule in the language they are learning and the same person unconsciously knowing that something sounds right simply because their brain has judged it to be right?

̽��ֱ��new approach to solving the puzzle taken by Dr John Williams at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and his collaborator, Dr Janny Leung from the ̽��ֱ�� of Hong Kong, has been to invent an artificial language. Participants were tested to see whether they correctly acquired, over periods as short as one hour, an understanding of patterns embedded within the artificial language.

An example of their technique is to teach participants four novel forms of the word ‘the’ (gi, ro, ul and ne), telling them that the forms encode a certain meaningful dimension (e.g. gi and ro should be used for describing near objects, ul and ne for far objects). ̽��ֱ��aim is to see if the participants can spontaneously pick up a correlation with another, hidden, meaning (e.g. that gi and ul should be used with animate nouns and ro and ne with inanimate nouns). ̽��ֱ��novel forms are embedded in English phrases such as ‘I was terrified when I turned around and saw gi lion right behind me’.

Do they pick up on the concealed pattern when tested? “ ̽��ֱ��answer is yes,” said Dr Williams, whose research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. “We found significantly above-chance selection of sentence constructions that were ‘grammatically correct’ according to the hidden pattern. Yet, the participants had no awareness of what they had learned or how. Moreover, we were able to show learning of the same material by native speakers of two typologically very different languages, English and Cantonese.”

Interestingly, picking up the hidden pattern unconsciously doesn’t always happen – if, for instance, the hidden pattern is linguistically unnatural, such as a correlation with whether an object makes a sound or not. “One explanation could be that certain patterns are more accessible to language learning processes than others. Perhaps our brains are built equipped to expect certain patterns, or perhaps they process some patterns better than others,” he added.

̽��ֱ��research provides a window onto unconscious learning processes in the mind and highlights an important element that has practical implications for language teaching. In each test, the learner’s attention was directed to the part of the sentence that contained the hidden pattern. By directing attention, it seems that other elements of the sentence construction are picked up unconsciously.

“In a teaching situation, merely teaching the rules of a language may not be the only answer,” explained Dr Williams. “Instead, using tasks that focus attention on the relevant grammatical forms in language could help learners access unconscious learning pathways in the brain. This would greatly enhance the speed of acquisition of a second language.”

Unconscious learning could be the secret to speeding up learning a second language.

In a teaching situation, merely teaching the rules of a language may not be the only answer.

Dr John Williams

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Looking up in a dictionary

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