Teaching the Generation 1'5 student

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Teaching the Generation 1.5 student

• Sandra Gollin Kies
• Dept of languages and Literature

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What do we mean by Gen. 1.5?

• Bilingual students who may have grown up in a
  home in which a language other than English is
  spoken
• Born (or arrived young) and secondary-educated in
  the USA
• May speak a language other than English in family
  contexts
• They tend to use English in everyday life, at
  least outside the home
• May be the translator and lifeline for their
  family
• In contrast, for many international students,
  English is a foreign language. Other
  internationals regard themselves as native
  speakers, but speak a distinct dialect of English
  (e.g. Indian English).

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Identifying Gen 1.5 students

• Very diverse
• May regard themselves as native speakers (and to
  a large extent they are indistinguishable, but
  they are more accurately called bilingual, or
  multilingual)
• May not want to be singled out.

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What are the learning issues for these students?

• Cultural and language issues affect learning of
  all students, positively and negatively
• Issues are not unique to Gen 1.5
• At either end of the spectrum, Gen 1.5 can share
  similar issues as international students or
  underprepared native speakers
• They also bring intercultural strengths to the
  classroom.
• What are they?
• How to utilize?

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Cultural issues

• Often have good local knowledge
• Can share knowledge from another culture
• But
• May be unaware of academic discourse expectations
  and conventions.

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Possible language issues

• Discrepancies between oral and written skills
• Uneven grammatical competence
• Limited formal academic vocabulary
• Weak spelling and punctuation
• Weak reading skills
• Weak summary and paraphrase skills

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Do language culture issues affect content
learning?

• Taking in information
• Reading and researching
• Discussing
• Dealing with cognitive complexity in academic
  assignments in L2
• Moving from knowledge telling to knowledge
  building.

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Grammatical knowledge

• Gaps in grammatical knowledge
• May have had little formal instruction
• little metalanguage
• L1 interference
• Commit 20 most common errors1 and some ESL
  errors.
• L1 interference and fossilization in errors.
• Can usually find ESL errors if focused on
  editing, and can fix some of them without help.
• 1 Connors, R.J. A. A. Lunsford. (1992)
  Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College
  Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research. In
  Robert Connors and Cheryl Glenn. The St. Martin's
  Guide to Teaching Writing 2nd ed. Ed. New York
  St. Martin's.

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Sentence level issues

• Some write short, choppy sentences with few
  logical connectors
• Some prefer coordination (e.g. joining ideas with
  and, or but) over subordination (e.g. joining
  ideas causally using words like because)
• Some write very convoluted sentences, fragments
  and run-ons (like conversation).

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Whole text issues

• Writing may lack cohesion at paragraph and whole
  text level
• Pronoun reference within and between sentences
  may be confused
• May be repetitive
• Conjunction may be overused or illogically used.

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Vocabulary issues

• Know and use the most common 2,000
• Know and use a lot of colloquial terms
• May recognize but not use academic words,
  technical and rare vocab.
• May not be able to move easily up and down range
  of specificity (e.g. climate- weather-storm-rain)

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Oral vs written language

• Oral skills often much more developed than
  written
• Oral fluency can mask difficulties with writing.

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Reading issues

• Some are reluctant and slow readers
• Sometimes miss the main ideas
• Can miss the nuances in academic text
• Difficulty summarizing and paraphrasing

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Summary and paraphrase

• Can summarize to some extent, but rely heavily on
  original wording and structure
• At risk of (generally accidental??) plagiarism.

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Can we single Gen 1.5 out? Should we try?

• Pros
• Cons
• Is there another way to assist?

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Adapting classroom practice

• Syllabus
• Presentation of material
• Design of learning activities
• Management of activities
• Assessment
• Feedback

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Principles for support

• Be clear and explicit in teaching and giving
  instructions
• Model what is expected
• Deconstruct learning processes
• Provide more than one channel of information
• Provide feedback and opportunities to redraft or
  resubmit
• Allow more time to prepare and respond
• Use the strengths of peers

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• Provide alternative means of assessment (e.g.
  opportunities to speak or provide visual
  response)
• Scaffold assignments (break down into sub-units
  and build up slowly)

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Some examples of adaptation

• Modeling the critical reading process
• Scaffolding group discussion
• Tape-recorded feedback

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Take-home task

• Adapt one of your existing teaching/learning
  activities or assignments to better accommodate
  the needs of gen 1.5 students
• Bring materials or ideas to discuss on March 31.