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Volume 31, Number 2, Fall 2016

Editors-in-Chief: Aldo Anzures Tapia and David H. Hanks

Editors’ Note (PDF)

Who and What Is the Field of Applied Linguistics Overlooking?: Why This Matters and How Educational Linguistics Can Help (PDF), Kendall A. King

Bilingual Colombia Program: Curriculum as Product, Only? (PDF), Norbella Miranda

El Papel de la L1 en la Construcción de la Auto-identificación Cultural: Análisis de las Trayectorias de Jóvenes Rumanos en Cataluña (PDF), Cristina Petreñas, Cecilio Lapestra & Ángel Huguet

Listening to Contextualization Cues: Co-constructed Power, Identity, and Learning Between a NNEST and Adult Immigrant Learners (PDF), Bingjie Zheng

Play and Bricolage in Adult Second Language Classrooms (PDF), Amanda Snell


Editors’ Note (PDF)

Who and What Is the Field of Applied Linguistics Overlooking?: Why This Matters and How Educational Linguistics Can Help (PDF)

Kendall A. King

Thousands of individuals in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere are currently endeavoring to learn highly endangered, Indigenous languages, most laboring under conditions that are radically different from the majority of world language learners. These learning contexts are defined not only by shortages of materials, limited domains of use, few proficient speakers, and wide dialectal variation, but by histories of colonialism, racism, and oppression. To date, there has been relatively limited interaction between applied linguistics scholarship on language learning on the one hand, and Indigenous language education on the other. Concomitantly, despite massive worldwide demographic shifts of recent decades, applied linguists still know relatively little about simultaneous additional language and initial literacy learning among students with interrupted or limited formal schooling. Yet, these students are among the fastest growing populations in many U.S. districts and elsewhere. Drawing on the roots and four decades of scholarship in Educational Linguistics as a field, and five years of studies in Minnesota (home to thousands of Ojibwe and ten of thousands of Somali youth), this presentation argues that deep consideration of contexts and learners such as these is productive for the development of a robust field of second language acquisition and applied linguistics more broadly.

 

Bilingual Colombia Program: Curriculum as Product, Only? (PDF)

Norbella Miranda

Bilingual Colombia Program (BCP), the current educational language policy, aims to develop English language proficiency at an independent user level, equivalent to B1 in the Common European Framework. Previous studies of the BCP have revealed a limited conceptualization of bilingualism, unfavorable school conditions for its implementation and school practices not contributing to its main goals. The ideological view of curriculum embodied in policy documents of the BCP has not been analyzed yet. Based on Shirley Grundy’s (1987) heuristics for understanding curriculum theory and practice and supported by research in the field of language policy, the paper unveils the product-oriented view of curriculum present in the BCP. It also explains why it is possible to encounter differing appropriations of this educational language policy, despite the type of curriculum promoted by the policy texts.

 

El Papel de la L1 en la Construcción de la Auto-identificación Cultural: Análisis de las Trayectorias de Jóvenes Rumanos en Cataluña (PDF)

Cristina Petreñas, Cecilio Lapestra & Ángel Huguet

Analizamos el papel de la L1, sus usos y la valoración social de las lenguas en la construcción identitaria de los jóvenes rumanos desde el interaccionismo simbólico y una perspectiva sociocultural en función de su asistencia o no al Programa de Lengua, Civilización y Cultura Rumana (LCCR). A través de entrevistas en profundidad y un análisis cualitativo, se estudian las trayectorias de 5 jóvenes que residen en Cataluña, un contexto multilingüe y multicultural. Los resultados muestran un progresivo abandono de la L1, utilizada en el contexto familiar y a la que atribuyen una dimensión emocional anclada en el origen. El factor tiempo, junto con las expectativas migratorias y la valoración social de las lenguas, condicionan la elección de la lengua de preferencia. Este proceso tiene consecuencias en la definición de identificaciones híbridas y en la consolidación del proceso de integración y la incidencia de asistir o no al Programa LCCR. 

 

Listening to Contextualization Cues: Co-constructed Power, Identity, and Learning Between a NNEST and Adult Immigrant Learners (PDF)

Bingjie Zheng

In the United States, the immigrant population explosion has been calling for increasing attention to English instruction for immigrant learners. In comparison with prolific literature on immigrant English language learners (ELLs) in K–12 educational settings, literature on English instruction for adult immigrant learners at non-profit organizations, especially through microanalysis of classroom interaction, is scarce. Using a microethnographic method, this study explores how a nonnative English speaking student teacher picks up classroom contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1977) to understand how adult immigrant learners negotiate their learning needs and how their classroom habitus (Bourdieu, 1977a) embodies the social forces outside of class. Drawing on poststructuralist identity theories, this paper discusses how adult learners’ conflicts in language learning and socialization are manifested in classroom contextualization cues, and how a non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) and adult immigrant students discursively and socially co-constructed identity and power dynamics throughout the learning/teaching process. I argue that listening to these contextualization cues has meaningful implications for teachers, who should listen for classroom details and reflectively examine their positionality in the discourse of teaching adult immigrant populations. This paper also urges rejection of stereotyped deficit views toward immigrant learners and NNESTs in the field of language teaching.

 

Play and Bricolage in Adult Second Language Classrooms (PDF)

Amanda Snell

Teachers working with adult immigrants and refugees who have beginner-level proficiency in English face a tension: Learners need to acquire basic English skills (often referred to as survival English), but survival materials often ignore the rich experiences and knowledge that students possess but cannot easily communicate in their second (or additional) language. This article argues that text-based language play and bricolage, or the construction of something new from available resources, allow adult learners with beginning English proficiency to display their multiple forms of knowledge while also practicing basic English. In this paper, I present texts created by learners in a beginning-level community-based English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom to show how learners engage in critical thinking and demonstrate symbolic competence—the ability to play with linguistic codes and meanings—through playful bricolage. The findings suggest that instruction which moves beyond a purely survival focus benefits beginning-level adult learners.