Using ESL Students' First Language to Promote College Success

Sneaking the Mother Tongue through the Backdoor

Andrea Parmegiani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351584074
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Emerging from a critical analysis of the glocal power of English and how it relates to academic literacy and culturally responsive pedagogy, this book presents translanguaging strategies for using ESL students' mother tongue as a resource for academic literacy acquisition and college success. Parmegiani offers a strong counterpoint to the "English-only" movement in the United States. Grounded in a case study of a learning community linking Spanish and English academic writing courses, he demonstrates that a mother tongue-based pedagogical intervention and the strategic use of minority home languages can promote English language acquisition and academic success.

IV Impact on Learning Outcomes

1. Case Study: Research Questions and Epistemological Orientation

The overarching research question of the longitudinal study that accompanied the program right from its inception was very simple: “What impact is the Spanish–ESL learning community cluster having on student success?” This question, which is ongoing, and inextricably related to my pedagogical design and its implementation, calls for a case-study methodology. Case studies are recommended for questions that are explored not with regard to a large population, but with a focus on “a bounded system,” such as “an innovative teaching program” (Nuan, 1992, p. 76–77).

Defining case study methodology can be tricky, as the concept eludes clear-cut definitions and rigid research protocols. Adelman, Jenkins, and Kemmis (1976, as cited by Nuan, 1992, p. 74), argue that “case study is not a term for a standard methodological package,” and according to Nuan, “it is probably easier to say what a case study is not rather than what it is” (1992, p. 74). He compares and contrasts the epistemological foundations and data collection methods that characterize survey research, experimental research, and case study:

Unlike the experimenter, who manipulates variables to determine the causal significance, or the surveyor, who asks standardized questions of large representative samples of individuals, the case study researcher typically observes the characteristics of an individual unit–a child, a class, a school, or a community. The purpose of such observations is to probe deeply and to analyze the intensity of the multifarious phenomena that constitute the lifecycle of the unit with a view to establishing generalizations about the wider population to which the unit belongs.

(Nuan, 1992, p. 77)

Although case studies often rely on ethnographic methods for data collection, they differ from anthropological ethnographies because they tend to have a narrower scope of investigation: Case studies do not seek to provide a thorough description of a given culture, but rather, they focus on specific aspects of the culture in question (Denny, 1978). Also, unlike traditional ethnographies, case studies can involve both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection (Nuan, 1992, p. 75), as the one presented in this book does. The “bounded system” that delimits the scope of my study is the “innovative teaching system” brought about by the link between ESL and Spanish and its underlying pedagogical approach, which I discussed in Section 2.4. My quantitative methods included a comparative analysis of traditional metrics that learning institutions and policy makers take as indicators of academic success (course pass rates, progress through developmental courses retention rates, credit accumulation, average GPAs). My qualitative methods were based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with some of the students that were enrolled in the program.

In no way does my qualitative study attempt to provide a “complete account” of Latin@, Spanish-speaking, or “Dominican” culture. First of all, I don’t believe such account can be given without degenerating into essentializing descriptions that oversimplify the complexity of the human experience and promulgate cultural stereotypes that are anything but empowering (Parmegiani, p. 19–24, 2009). Second, my interactions with my students were limited to classroom dynamics, informal conversations before and after class, and the time we spent together during the interview process. It would be presumptuous of me, especially as a researcher who does not identify as Latin@, to make sweeping generalizations about my students’ culture without having spent a significant amount of time in their home environment interacting with their primary communities. What I thought would be appropriate and pedagogically valuable as a language and literacy instructor proficient in the dominant code, but with limited knowledge of my students’ language and community cultural wealth, was to heed Mendez- Newman’s call for the need to “aspire to understand my students’ worldviews, behaviors and ethics” (2000, p. 17), especially in terms of their significance for academic success within the context of the learning community.

Similarly, the limited scope of my quantitative study does not lend itself to claims of generalizability of the findings. The students who made up the “bound system” were not randomly assigned to the innovative program investigated; hence, it is possible that their metrics were higher because students who chose to enroll in the learning community possessed personal predispositions that made them more likely to succeed academically. Also, the sample of students was too small and its composition not stratified; therefore, it is impossible to claim that if the program were to be replicated among a similar population, it would lead to the same results. Finally, I would argue that even if the study met the criteria for successful experimental design, claims of generalizability would still have to be taken with a grain of salt, given that no randomized sample selection can be controlled for the infinite number of variables that come into play when a human being engages in a learning process. As Baker and Lewis (2015) have pointed out, “randomized controlled trials are normally pragmatically unachievable and ethically undesirable in education as they entail randomly allocating students to particular instructional approaches” (p. 19). In addition, this approach “only tends to work in a laboratory setting which can be reduced to simple components and controls, whereas schools and classrooms have complex multicausality, ever-dynamic and fluid, evolving and ever-changing, sometimes unpredictable and inconsistent” (Baker & Lewis, 2015, p. 19). For instance, “students, teachers, and instructional staff cannot be reduced to isolated variables and manipulated as if they were seeds in agricultural experiment research” (Baker & Lewis, 2015, p. 119).

In terms of my research question (“What impact is the Spanish–ESL learning community cluster having on student success?”), comparing academic success metrics in the learning community to the general BCC population will not provide enough evidence to argue that the BCC learning community model is a magic wand for putting college completion within reach of language minority students across the world or even nationally. Nevertheless, this sort of comparison can be useful to convince administrators that, at the institutional level, this program is making a difference in helping a particular student population succeed academically. At the same time, without making claims of universal validity, if the students in the sample did better, it could still be argued that the differential could be a good reason to try the model in different learning contexts and generate more case studies that, taken together, could potentially point to a more solid statistical trend.

Finally, metrics alone cannot give a thorough answer to the overarching research question. Traditional quantitative academic success indicators can tell whether students in the program, on average, did better than the general population in terms of retention, credit accumulation, and average GPA, but they don’t say much about how the program impacted the progress made by individual students, not only in terms of language and academic literacy acquisition but also in terms of the way to see themselves as learners and human beings driven by aspirations of upward socioeconomic mobility. Moreover, metrics cannot describe how specific aspects of the program shaped the learning process and answer fundamental questions for pedagogical design, such as the following:

How did taking two classes in the same cohort affect students’ level of engagement with academic discourse? How did the Spanish class affect students’ understanding of academic literacy? How did my role as language learner/participant observer impact class dynamics? What role did Spanish play in the ESL class? How did this role impact students’ second language and academic literacy acquisition?

To find answers to these questions and all the others that stem out of the central question, I had to examine the experience of the human beings who were involved in the program. My experience and my perception of my students’ experiences have been documented in a teaching journal where I recorded personal observations and reflections of class dynamics I collected in my ESL class and in the Spanish class. My students’ experiences have been collected through interviews. I discuss my qualitative data collection method in the following two sections.

2. My Observations and Reflections

In my journal, I kept track of classroom activities, assignments given, and students’ engagement with academic discourse as evidenced by not only their level of participation but also the type of discourses they produced as they carried out academic literacy tasks in their mother tongue and their second language. Because I was a language learner in the Spanish class, my observation included new Spanish words, phrases, idiomatic expressions, grammatical structures, and unfamiliar cultural references and discursive patterns. These notes were the starting point of the translingual check-ins I did in my ESL class, often at the beginning of the period, to help students transition to their second language by asking them to use it to explain aspects of their mother tongue as experts. For example, I would write on the board a list of new Spanish words I had picked up in the last class; ask my students to check their meaning in English, in case I thought I had been able to figure it out; or ask them to give it to me, in case I had no clue. Sometimes it was a phrase or idiomatic expression that ended up on the board or an idea that I thought was interesting or that I couldn’t quite follow. Whatever the case, my students’ expertise on their mother tongue helped us transition from their first to their second language by using all their linguistic resources and recognizing the value of their knowledge base. These check-ins were certainly useful and fun for me, but more important, they helped set the tone for the rest of the class by inviting students to carry over that sense of comfort and self-confidence they developed in the Spanish class, which they mentioned over and over again in the interviews (see Sections 4.5.a, 4.5.b, 4.5.c). They also gave students the opportunity to engage in metalinguistic tasks that were actually quite complex in a low-pressure situation. Explaining the workings of a language in another language is not easy, nor is it easy to explain discursive input received in one language using a different language. Last but not least, these translingual check-ins were opportunities for me to model the language-learning behavior, for example, by reminding students of the importance of writing down new words, checking their meaning, and reviewing them.

The notes in my journal also chartered the emotional journey I experienced as an additional language learner trying to participate in a class that, being geared to native speakers, was challenging. Among other things, these notes functioned as a “learning diary” (Lennard, 1982; Lowe, 1987), collecting insights “used to raise awareness of the difficulties learners face learning a new language in a formal classroom setting” (Wildsmith-Cromarty, 2003, p. 141). I recorded the moments of confusion, the sense of inadequacy, and the performance anxiety I felt anytime I was called on by the Spanish instructor to say something in front of the rest of the class. That feeling used to be a big part of my life in middle school, after I left Italy and started attending an American school without knowing English, but it had been so long since that happened that I had forgotten how crippling it could be to be put in a formal situation where I had to express myself in front of other people using a language of which I had a limited command. At the same time, however, there were moments of elation in the Spanish class, as I found myself being able to make more and more sense of a new language, a language that is so important for social interactions on campus and throughout New York City. Those moments were also recorded in my teaching journal.

From my perspective as an English instructor teaching at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Spanish seemed to be ubiquitous, but it also seemed to occupy a marginal position. Every class I taught at BCC had a strong Spanish-speaking presence, and there would always be times when students would use this language, even in credit-bearing courses, to talk to each other, to help each other with the task I assigned, but they would never use it with me, let alone to say something in a class discussion. Similarly, I always heard Spanis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Contributor
• Introduction
• I Linguistic Diversity and the Achievement Gap in the United States
• II Language Inequality: Theoretical Perspectives and Implications for Academic Literacy
• III Using Spanish as a Resource at Bronx Community College
• IV Impact on Learning Outcomes
• V Conclusion
• Index