STC REflection

Multilingual Education

"Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labor in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common." - Albert Einstein

Why Is Mother Tongue Education Important?

Among immigrants in the United States, several studies have shown that children who have proficiency in both English and their mother tongue tend to be more successful in school compared to their ethnic peers. (See, for example, Social Capital and the Adaptation of the Second Generation: The Case of Vietnamese Youth in New Orleans. Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III. International Migration Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, Special Issue: The New Second Generation (Winter, 1994), pp. 821-845) This, perhaps, can be attributed in part to closer family ties and parental cultural maintenance that emphasizes beliefs and practices that are socially constructive. These two strongly correlate with a child 's retention of his or her parents ' native tongue since this language is expected to be the major means of communication between immigrants and their children.

Mother tongue education, however, goes far beyond just benefiting society. It is about preserving one 's ethnic identity and culture. It is true that choosing one language for all can be a lot more efficient, but one must also be concerned with the loss of diversity. The fact that the world has so many languages is a precious heritage, but this treasure only remains if there are people who could still read, speak and write in these languages. Some advocates of mother tongue education even suggests that basic education in the mother tongue first would facilitate cognitive development faster in young children. Thus, there are proponents that now insist that all of basic education in the early years must be given in the mother tongue of a child.

In a country like the Philippines, where there are so many languages, such is daunting task. In a blog post, Languages in the Philippines: A Challenge for Basic Education, it is pointed out that even in schools where one language is dominant, there are still a substantial number of students that speak a different language. Masbateño, for example, is a language spoken by a significant fraction of households in region 5 in the Philippines, and is the major language in the province of Masbate, but schools in Masbate have been designated to use Bicolano, a language distinct from Masbateño and spoken by the majority from Region 5. In addition, finding teachers that can teach all subjects in the native tongue of each pupil enrolled in any one of these schools is perhaps close to impossible. To preserve the mother tongue of a child, continuing instruction beyond home and into preschool, kindergarten and the elementary years is needed. If this is the objective then having at least part of the instruction during these years in the native tongue can be very helpful. This is much less demanding than mother tongue based multilingual education. Most of the subjects can therefore be taught in a second language. Of course, there is concern that development in a second language may simply compromise development in the native tongue. At least, in this case, there is effort to preserve fluency in the mother tongue.

A study published in the journal Child Development addresses the question of what happens to a child 's proficiency in a native tongue after going through school where the medium of instruction is a second language.

The languages considered in the above study are Vietnamese and English. These two languages are obviously very different unlike Spanish versus English, Tagalog versus Spanish, or even Masbateño versus Bicolano. Vietnamese and English do not even share similar character sets. Thus, this study in so many ways is highly transferable to other languages if one is asking the question of whether learning in English is detrimental to one 's native tongue.

The pupils in this study are given 90-minute instruction in Vietnamese every day, in addition to the normal classes, all taught in English, in the first five years of basic education. Thus, throughout these years, considerable effort is made to help children continue developing in their native tongue. The results of the study are summarized in the graphs below. These are measures of receptive vocabulary (being able to point to a picture that matches a given word) and expressive vocabulary (being able to name what a picture depicts) in both languages, Vietnamese (shown as dashed line) and English (shown as solid line), receptive is shown on the left and expressive is on the right:

I guess, in a way, this mimics my own experience. I can read posts on Facebook in Tagalog without any difficulty (receptive), but it is harder for me to post in Tagalog (expressive). As seen in the above figures, the ability that lags is expressive vocabulary in the native tongue. It should be emphasized, however, that for young children there is significant progress in both languages and the native tongue is not really fully compromised.

References: http://philbasiceducation.blogspot.com/search/label/MotherTongueBasedMultilingualEducation Graphic Organizer
Graphic organizers are series of visual charts and tools used to represent and organize a student 's knowledge or ideas. Graphic organizers are often used as part of the writing process to help students map out ideas, plots, character details and settings before beginning to write. As part of the reading process, graphic organizers can help a student comprehend what he has read and make comparisons to other pieces of writing.
What skills are applied when using graphic organizers?
ORGANIZATION- Students are able to organize their own thoughts about a story, which leads to better discussion.
ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND REVIEWING FACTS - Students will be able to think about concepts before and after reading, making connections to the text.
COMPARING/CONTRASTING - Students are able to compare and contrast settings, plot, character 's actions and traits, problems, morals, etc.
PATTERNING - Students are able to recognize patterns within stories such as repetition of plot or settings.
RECOGNITION OF STRUCTURE - Students are able to recognize the structure of a story such as in a circular story.
REREADING FOR DETAIL - Students are able to reread for details more efficiently if they have a task to do and a chart or frame on which to put it.
MAKING PREDICTIONS - Students are able to better predict the story 's structure once they have had practice recognizing story structures.
PLANNING - Students are able to plan their own pieces of writing better if they become aware of structures.
Types of Graphic Organizers
Webs, concept maps, mind maps and plots such as stack plots and Venn diagrams are some of the types of graphic organizers used in visual learning to enhance thinking skills and improve academic performance on written papers, tests and homework assignments.
Concept maps graphically illustrate relationships between two or more concepts and are linked by words that describe their relationship.

Mind Maps are visual representations of hierarchical information that include a central idea or image surrounded by connected branches of associated topics or ideas.

Brainstorming webs show how different categories of information relate to one another.

References:

http://classroom.jc-schools.net/read/graphicorgan.htm http://www.inspiration.com/visual-learning/graphic-organizers Authentic Assessment

Authentic assessment is an evaluation process that involves multiple forms of performance measurement reflecting the student’s learning, achievement, motivation, and attitudes on instructionally-relevant activities. Examples of authentic assessment techniques include performance assessment, portfolios, and self-assessment.

Performance assessment consists of any form of assessment in which the student constructs a response orally or in writing. Portfolio assessment is a systematic collection of student work that is analyzed to show progress over time with regard to instructional objectives. Student self-assessment offers opportunities for the student to self-regulate learning, and the responsibility of appraising his or her own progress. Integrated assessment refers to evaluation of multiple skills or assessment of language and content within the same activity. A written science report, for example, might include assessment of language skills, information selection and use skills, and reasoning skills as well as scientific content knowledge.

Other terms help to define the meaning of authentic assessment. In a broader sense, assessment is any systematic approach for collecting information on student learning and performance, usually based on different sources of evidence. Alternative assessment involves approaches for finding out what students know or can do other than through the use of multiple-choice testing. Authentic assessment, therefore, is a subset of these alternative evaluation processes, and is based on the assumption that there is a much wider spectrum of student performance that can be displayed than that limited by short-answer, standardized tests. This wider spectrum should include real-life learning situations and meaningful problems of a complex nature not solved with simple answers selected from a menu of choices.

The increased interest in authentic assessment is based on two major issues: Current assessment procedures do not assess the full range of essential student outcomes, and teachers have difficulty using the information gained for instructional planning. Multiple-choice examinations, for example, have emphasized the assessment of discrete skills and do not contain authentic representations of classroom activities, social interactions, use of multiple resources, or real-life situations.

In the classrooms, students read interesting literature, write creative papers, integrate resource information with personal viewpoints, work on projects in teams or other cooperative settings, share information while summarizing their conclusions, and use information from one content area (such as science or math) to solve problems and integrate information in other content areas (such as history or economics). The ability to select accurately one of a number of options to brief questions does not reflect what students will be expected to do in solving complex problems, communicating constructive ideas, persuading others on important positions, organizing information and managing human resources, and working cooperatively with others in the workforce.

J. Michael O’Malley, supervisor of assessment at the Prince William County Public Schools of Virginia, and Lorraine Valdez Pierce, of the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University, have listed characteristics of student performance that should be considered in authentic assessment.

Constructed Response: The student constructs responses based on experiences he or she brings to the situation and new multiple resources are explored in order to create a product.
Higher-Order Thinking: Responses are made to open-ended questions that require skills in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Authenticity: Tasks are meaningful, challenging, and engaging activities that mirror good instruction often relevant to a real-world context.
Integrative: Tasks call for a combination of skills that integrate language arts with other content across the curriculum with all skills and content open to assessment.
Process and Product: Procedures and strategies for deriving potential responses and exploring multiple solutions to complex problems are often assessed in addition to or in place of a final product or single-correct-response.
Depth in Place of Breadth: Performance assessments build over time with varied activities to reflect growth, maturity, and depth, leading to mastery of strategies and processes for solving problems in specific areas with the assumption that these skills will transfer to solving other problems.

O’Malley and Pierce have also categorized common types of authentic assessment and the student actions that should be observed and documented. Their examples include the following:

Oral Interviews: Teacher asks student questions about personal background, activities, readings, and other interests.
Story or Text Retelling: Student retells main ideas or selected details of text experienced through listening or reading.
Writing Samples: Student generates narrative, expository, persuasive, or reference paper.
Projects/Exhibitions: Student works with other students as a team to create a project that often involves multimedia production, oral and written presentations, and a display.
Experiments/Demonstrations: Student documents a series of experiments, illustrates a procedure, performs the necessary steps to complete a task, and documents the results of the actions.
Constructed-Response Items: Student responds in writing to open-ended questions.
Teacher Observations: Teacher observes and documents the students attention and interaction in class, response to instructional materials, and cooperative work with other students.
Portfolios: A focused collection of student work to show progress over time.

References:

O’Malley, J. Michael, and Lorraine Valdez Pierce. Authentic Assessment for English Language Learning: Practical Approaches for Teachers. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1996.

References: O’Malley, J. Michael, and Lorraine Valdez Pierce. Authentic Assessment for English Language Learning: Practical Approaches for Teachers. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1996.