Theoretical Foundations - Teaching English Language Learners

English Language Learners (ELLs) are " students in provincially funded English language schools whose first language is a language other than English, or is a variety of English that is significantly different from the variety used for instruction in Ontario’s schools, and who may require focused educational supports to assist them in attaining proficiency in English" (English Language Learners: ESL and ELD Programs and Services, 2007, p. 8).

The aforementioned ministerial definition for a distinct population of students who may need assistance or additional supports to take advantage of the English services and programs in publicly-funded education in Ontario provides a wide scope of interpretation for school boards and schools. As an educator of ELLs, I am aware that many resources or artifacts are available to support this public initiative, and several of them are useful to draw specific attention to. In this posting, I have collated a few artifacts that will be highlighted and used henceforth in developing my pedagogical relationships with students. The following entry bears two artifacts I am adding to my collection: i) Default Mode - which consists of a video featuring Dr. Allan Luke; and (ii) Language and Learning - featuring a TVO Broadcast on the Television program "Your Voice," and reference to Coelho (2004) work on Adding English: A Guide to Teaching in Multicultural Classrooms.

The Default Mode

According to Allan Luke, the initial position that an educator regularly or comfortably finds her-/himself when confronted with a challenge, problematic, or situation. Such a context is one where the educator draws upon his/her teaching background, and accordingly, awakens a heuristic moment in that an implicit paradigm of knowledge and ways of doing things are surfaced and revealed. Instead of a shift in solving a problem using innovation or ingenuity, the heuristic demands allegiance and attachment, thus knowledge is extended, repeated, or further standardized to address the occasion. This account of the initial position is what Allan Luke describes as a default mode of teaching.

The use of worksheets, rote exercises, chalk-and-talk sessions might very well be elements of teaching practice that are part of one's repertoire of default pedagogical modalities. As an rotary prep teacher in my last assignment, I resisted the temptation to use these elements as research shows that student-centred practices are more fruitful in supporting the English language development of ELLs (see Supporting English Language Learners: A practical guide for Ontario Educators, 2008). This means that building learning goals and success criteria with and among the whole classroom, as well as providing engaging options for students to demonstrate their learning along a continuum of inquiry or project-based learning provides a more robust and fulfilling picture of understanding English as a Second Language than restricting pathways and obliging students to conform to the teacher's biases about what counts as knowledge, as learning, and as meeting curricular expectations. I accept Dr. Allan Luke's challenge and it is one where I keep conscientious attention to in my pre-planning stages of long-range planning, unit design, and lesson construction.

Language and Learning

The question about how language is acquired is one where I became very curious about. I already knew of Noam Chomsky. Indeed, I am a bibliophile, having read his perspectives on politics, history, cognitive science and philosophy. I am less familiar about his theory of universal grammar, but have considered it before while an undergraduate student in philosophy at Queen's and taking symbolic logic and Latin courses. So I read some conversations on the development of language through three main theoretical viewpoints taken from Coelho (2004): behaviourism, innatism, and social interactionist.

Behavourism understands language development as a process of inputs and outputs, where stimulus (series of inputs) works to deterministically shape performative acts (collections of outputs). While behaviorist models help to explain general language patterns in use among a population, not all language patterns can be understood in this plane of thinking. For example, the usage of verb conjugations like bringed or broughted are not introduced but imagined and deduced from previous experiences, so there is some intrinsic apparatus that must be present that explains for these sorts of appearances. Furthermore, behaviorism is not capable of sufficiently explaining why there are variances in language competencies among populations, especially if any experiment is controlling for stimulus and responses among each and all members. Why, for example, do some language users appear gifted, while others struggle to demonstrate proficiency? Some cognitive mechanisms must factor into such an analysis. Hence, the innatist view.

This viewpoint can be understood as a form of linguistic rationalism in that such a perspective holds that language development proceeds (verbal and nonverbal) through a series of dialogic acts (whether there exists another human being in one’s presence or not) where patterns and conventions become known and language users can deduct further patterns based on familiarization of pre-existing ones. Language on this view is an open-construct, ever evolving as new terms and expressions become part of our word-bank based on extensions of previous patterns. Although the innatist view shows why language users are distinguishable from each other based on their own language acquisition device located within the spheres of the human brain, such a view does not fully explain the motivational factors in bringing human beings into communicative acts with one another. Furthermore, not all language users are motivated by deep learning and consciousness-striving contexts to arrive at self-truth and conceptual development, but are more prone to be shaped by peers and the social communities in which they use language. Thus, the emergence of the social interactionist viewpoint.

Social interactionism extends the picture of language development to include the view that language learning is both shaped by cognitive processes (innatist) and socio-cultural interactions (behaviorist), where the influence of the learning environment is most key to future language development. Social interactionism help to explain why there are variants of language use among a population (e.g., Queen's English, Australian English, Canadian English, American English, and so on, and also region-specific within these national versions), but is limited by the presence of why some members among a population (e.g., savants, prodigies, and geniuses)demonstrate exceptional language proficiency without the ongoing requirement for or continuous utilization of peers, adults, and other community partners.

As an educator of ELLs, I see value in understanding how language is acquired and which modes can be utilized in the classroom, as research and practice do mutually inform one another. If I co-construct with learners what it means to have a safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environment, I might use a behaviorist framework, as there would e attached to these constructs a series of rewards and consequences for adhering to such guidelines in the classroom. If I show through modeled instruction, using think alouds, read alouds, and other forms of explicit instruction, I might leverage an innatist viewpoint to support the awareness of grammar acquisition and language terms, expressions, and concepts. If I organize learning into social pods, group activities, and collaborative partnerships among peers mediated by the teacher, then I would give call to a social interactionist framework of language acquisition. I believe using all three theories in balanced and comprehensive manner allows ELLs to grow and use English in a developmentally appropriate manner.