Language and Literacy in Bilingual Children: The Miami Experience

1. Language and Literacy in Bilingual Children: The Miami Experience Rebecca E. Eilers D. Kimbrough Oller Alan Cobo-Lewis Virginia Mueller Gathercole Barbara Zurer Pearson

2. Preface • Multilingualism is a global phenomenon. • English monolingualism in the US is an anomaly. • English has become increasingly a “lingua franca”. • Yet Americans fear “balkanization” from exposure to many native tongues.

3. The Question! • The debate in the US is often framed in terms of educational outcome. • The claim is that bilingualism contributes to academic/intellectual deficits. • The question is: 1. Does bilingualism, in and of itself, cause intellectual or educational harm and 2. How do we appropriately isolate and assess the effects of bilingualism?

4. The Control of Appropriate Variables • Socio-economic status • Assessment in home language as well as English • Educational opportunities in each language • Language entry skills in each language • Timing and duration of exposure to each language • Perceived status of each language

5. Why Miami? • Single unified school district • Multiple strategies across schools for language learning • Large number of established, highly- integrated, Hi SES, Spanish-speaking and bilingual families • Significant commerce in both English and Spanish

6. The Hypotheses • Additive (Lambert) • Subtractive (Lambert) • Interdependence (Cummins) • The Grand Interaction

7. Terminology • LEP—Limited English Proficiency • SES—Socio-economic status • LSH—Language spoken in the home • OSH—Only Spanish at home • ESH—English and Spanish at home • English • IMS—Instructional method at school • 2-way– Spanish and English Instruction • EI—English immersion

8. The Core Design Replicated at Kindergarten, 2nd and 5th Grades Monolinguals Bilinguals Two-Way English Immersion ESH OSH ESH OSH Hi Lo Hi Lo Hi Lo Hi Lo Hi Lo SES

9. Probe Studies • Narrative competence • Complex syntax • Phonological awareness Utilizing subsets of the study population—Total N=952

10. Goals of Deep Description in Miami Schools • 1. Verify that language usage of teachers complies with educational design • 2. Document language usage of children in classrooms and non-instructional environments

11. Methods of Deep Description • Bilingual observers • In the classrooms and hallways • Between 25 and 50 observation per design category • Census data for school districts and schools

12. School Matching

13. Immigration Demographics of Parents • Mother’s and father’s educational attainment • Occupation • Languages spoken at home • Number of bedrooms in home • Home ownership • Country of origin • Age at immigration

14. Summary of Classroom Language Data • Teachers to students: Teachers overwhelmingly complied with classroom design, i.e., Spanish was spoken in 2-way schools during instruction in Spanish; English was spoken in IE classrooms and the English portion of 2-way education to both classes and individual children.

15. Summary of Classroom Language Data • Students spoke to teachers in the appropriate language in the overwhelming majority of cases. • Students addressed students in the appropriate classroom language except in: a. 2-way Spanish classes b. 2-way English and EI kindergarten

16. Fathers years of schooling

17. Age Children Began English Acquisition

18. Mother’s Language Proficiency

19. What we have achieved • All children born in US • Two distinctly different educational models (EI and 2-way) in otherwise matched schools • A clean separation between socioeconomic status with both OSH and ESH families represented at each level of SES and in each school type • A balanced design with respect to languages spoken at home • A matched monolingual group

20. Performance on Standardized English- and Spanish-language Tests for Monolingual and Bilingual Students Alan Cobo-Lewis University of Maine

21. 9 Standardized English- and Spanish-language Tests(Woodcock Johnson, 1989, 1991; Woodcock-Munoz, 1995 Oral Language Picture Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, Verbal Analogies + PPVT/TVIP Literacy Word Attack, Letter-Word, Passage Composition, Proofing, Dictation

22. The Group Mean Results inEnglish

23. High-SES children outperform low-SES children, especially in oral language.

24. Monolinguals outperform bilinguals, especially in oral language.

25. As they get older, bilinguals start to catch up with monolinguals in the tests where they show the biggest deficits (Picture Vocab and Peabody Picture Vocab Test).

26. Bilinguals in Eng Imm schools outperform those in2-way schools in oral lg • Bilinguals in 2-way schools do at least as well as those in Eng Imm schools (and about as well as monolinguals) in elementary reading tasks (Word Attack and Letter–Word)

27. As they get older, bilinguals in 2-way education programs tend to catch up with bilinguals in Eng Imm education programs (except for Picture Vocab).

28. Bilinguals who speak English & Spanish at home outperform those who speak only Spanish at home, especially in oral language

29. As they get older, bilinguals who speak only Spanish at home start to catch up with bilinguals who speak English & Spanish at home in the tests where they show the biggest deficits (Picture Vocab and Peabody Picture Vocab Test).

30. Summary of theGroup Mean Results in English • Outside-of-school influences—SES, “linguality” (monolinguals vs bilinguals), and language spoken at home—have their largest effects in oral lg. • Outside-of-school influences other than SES wane as children grow older. • Bilinguals in Eng Imm schools outperform those in 2-way schools in oral lg, but those in 2-way schools outperform those in Eng Imm schools in elementary reading tasks. Learning to read in Spanish may help students’ general reading skills regardless of language being tested (more on this later).

31. The Group Mean Results in Spanish

32. Children who speak only Spanish at home outperform those who speak English & Spanish at home, especially in oral lg.

33. High-SES children outperform low-SES children, but not in oral language.

34. Children in 2-way schools outperform those in Eng Imm schools, especially in elementary reading(Word Attack & Letter–Word).

35. Children in Eng Imm and 2-way schools perform very similarly in Kindergarten. Dramatic differences emerge later.

36. Summary of theGroup Mean Results in Spanish • SES effects were more straightforward in English tests than in Spanish tests, where low-SES bilinguals sometimes outperformed high-SES bilinguals. • Language spoken at home affects performance in expected directions, with effects being most salient in oral language. • 2-way children outperform Eng Imm children in Spanish, especially in reading. • Recall that this was also true in English tests. • We’ll see this again in the upcoming analysis of individual differences.

37. Individual Differences

38. Individual Differences:Principal Components Analysis of Bilinguals’ English & Spanish Data

39. Individual DifferencesComparativeFactor Analyses ofAll Subjects’ Data

40. Individual DifferencesComparativeFactor Analyses ofAll Subjects’ Data

41. Individual DifferencesComparative Factor Analyses of All Subjects’ Data

42. Factor Scores to Summarize Major Group Effects

43. Conclusions • Implications for Educational Programs • 2-way education leads to better Spanish skills. • 2-way education does not detract (much) from English skills (at least by 2nd grade). • Neither Eng Imm nor 2-way bilinguals spoke English as well as monolinguals.

44. Conclusions • Linguistic Conclusions • Reading and Writing skills cross language. • Oral skills are more language-specific.