Supervising the French Second Language Classroom:

Some Background Issues

 

Sally Rehorick

This is the first article of a two -part series concerning the principal's role in supervising the second language teacher. In this article, I discuss some of the background issues which are fundamental to an understanding of the context of the second language classroom. In the second article, "But I Can't Speak French!" I will make some practical suggestions for principals to use during their visit to the second language classroom.

Second language education is in many ways the most volatile aspect of public education, given its inherent relationship to the political, social, cultural and economic fabric of New Brunswick. Because of this, second language education is not in fact like any other subject in schools. In addition the linguistic environment of the province, there are also a number of paradigms which have shaped thoughts about second language learning. Notions about what constitutes a definition of "bilingual", about the optimum age to learn second languages and about the role of the learning environment drive and determine individuals' varying perspectives on second language learning. These and other paradigms influence thinking about language in fundamental ways and have an effect on how second language programs are conceived, on how individuals define their own personal commitment to second language learning and on how the ultimate success of this educational endeavour is assessed.

School administrators and, in particular, principals often find themselves at the centre of theses issues. They are frequently called upon to inform and advise parents and other interested stakeholders about second language programs and second language learning. In addition they fulfill a critical leadership role within their own schools where they provide support and direction for curricular innovations and in class supervision of their teachers. Historically this supervisory role, particularly in French immersion classrooms, was left to district coordinators. However, with the reorganization of school districts in recent years, coordinators have much less time to work with individual teachers and consequently principals are now taking on the supervision of the second language classrooms to a greater degree than ever before. Principals have expressed concern over this increased responsibility largely because many feel they lack in the skills and the French knowledge to intervene in, particularly, the French immersion classroom (Rehorick, 1993, p23). If I can't understand the language of instruction, the thinking goes, how can I assess what is going on in the classroom? And if I don't fully understand how a person acquires a second language, how can I help teachers refine their teaching strategies?

These are legitimate concerns but they should not prevent principals from working directly with their second language teachers providing the same leadership as that provided for the rest of the school. There are many parallels which can be drawn between the English and the second language classrooms and many of these can be observed directly without a complete understanding of the language of instruction. By familiarizing themselves with second language acquisition principles and second language methodologies and by applying their knowledge about learning environment in general, principals can provide effective supervision of second language teachers. The purpose of this article is to outline a few of these principles and methodologies and to paint a picture of what a "good" second language classroom might look like.

 

What Do We Know for Sure about Second Language Acquisition?

If it were possible for a child to live in two languages at once equally well, so much the worse. His intellectual and spiritual growth would not thereby be doubled, but halved. Unity of mind and character would have great difficulty in asserting itself in such circumstances. (Laurie, 1890, as quoted in Baker, 1993, p. 107).

This quotation illustrates a belief about bilingualism which was held by many people for most of the first half of the century. According to early ideas of second language acquisition, each individual had only so much room in his brain to store and process language-related information. Any space taken by a second language was done so at the expense of the first language and had, in addition, a detrimental effect on a person's cognitive and intellectual capacities. During the 1950's and 1960's, research undertaken by Pintner and Arsenian and by Jones (as cited in Baker, 1993, p. 111) fostered the belief that bilingualism had neither a positive or negative effect on an individual.

In the last thirty years, however, there has been a great deal of research to suggest that there are social and cognitive advantages to bilingualism. Groundbreaking studies, mostly in Canada, extend these advantages to dimensions such as divergent thinking, metalinguistic awareness, communicative sensitivity and high level psycho-linguistic functioning (Peal and Lambert, 1962; Cummins, 1975; Cummins and Swain, 1986; Neufeld, 1993). The researchers found that the positive effects of bilingualism occur principally to individuals in whom the two languages are equally well-developed, the so-called "balanced bilinguals". When one language is developed to an age appropriate level and the other language is not as well developed, there is not likely to be any positive or negative consequences. If neither language is developed to an age-appropriate level, there may well be negative cognitive consequences for a child (Cummins, 19760). The key word here is "age-appropriate". Most children develop their first language at, or close to, the age which their peers do and thus will suffer no negative cognitive consequences as a result of learning a second language.

To what extent can the research cited above inform our decisions about bilingual education programs in our schools? Is there one best way to learn a second language and if so, can we prescribe a formula for the success of each student in the schools? Perhaps the best way to answer these questions is through an analogy. A parent of a young child interested in the sport of figure skating recently approached a figure skating judge with the following question: "If I buy skates, hire a coach to give my child five lessons a week, register her for 15 hours of skating time a week, and send her to spring and summer school, will she pass her gold metal test after 12 years of skating?" Not wanting to set up unrealistic expectations in the parent, the judge replied:

Those factors certainly represent necessary components before your child can pass her gild test. However there are no guarantees. There are other kinds of variables such as her motivation, the qualifications and training of the coach, the environment and her exposure to other skaters as role models, the way in which she uses her ice-time, the quality of the skates and so forth which contributes to the eventual success of your child. She might indeed attain her gold metal and she might do it in less then 12 years; she might attain her silver or bronze metal. But whatever her level of her eventual attainment, she will be able to skate competently and will have benefited by her involvement in the sport.

This scenario is not unlike the situation facing educators responsible for second language education programs. It would be comforting to be able to say that children will achieve the "gold metal" of bilingualism at the end of the specified number of years of schooling. However there are many variables peculiar to each child and peculiar to the system as a whole which enter into the question of expectations for eventual attainment of French proficiency. All second language programs can be effective but that is not to say that all programs produce the same results.

It would be reassuring to be able to say that there is one tried and true formula for achieving success in second language learning. While it is true that there are the a number of necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for achieving language proficiency, there are nonetheless some paradigms about second language learning which are held by many people which shape thinking and can sometimes be misleading if clarifications are not made.

Some Paradigms about Second Language Learning?

 

Probably the most common paradigm is that younger is better, that the young child learns far more easily than the older learner. There have been numerous studies into the question of optimal age with very little conclusive evidence to support one starting age over another (See Ellis, 1986; Rehorick, 1983; and Cook, 1991 for summaries of this research). Very often the lay person's notion that younger is better is shaped by direct observation of children in naturalistic settings. "Of course, younger is better", one mother told me. "We lived in a French area and within weeks my four year old daughter was speaking French with her French playmates next door." It is true that in naturalistic settings (that is, not the classroom) young children outpace the older learner. The younger learner tends to have the advantage in the realm of social-psychological factors; hence the observation that they are linguistic risk-takers while the older learner tends to be more inhibited. In addition, young learners appear to have a less rigid social identity as members of a specific language had culture group. Consequently young children may be less prejudiced and more open to other languages and to difference in general. In the classroom settings, however the stronger cognitive abilities of the older learner to generalize, to analyze, and to reason are superior to that younger learner. This means that when teachers want to point out different aspects of the language in an analytical way, the older learner is more likely to respond favorably to this information. Giving feedback to the younger learner is usually most successful when dealing with the overall most success when dealing with the overall communication of the message and the younger learner responds most effectively to experiential learning.

Suitability of the immersion environment for the early childhood learner is a question asked frequently in New Brunswick. Three questions seem to be at issue.

1. Will first language development suffer in the immersion setting?

2. Can the immersion primary classroom follow the same philosophy as the English primary classroom, which is to say language-rich, play-based experiences characterized by exploration, negotiation and collaboration?

3. Are there teachers qualified not only by their command of French language but, more importantly, by virtue of their knowledge and expertise in early childhood education?

There has been extensive ethnographic research conducted in French immersion kindergartens in Edmonton by Weber and Tardif. (Weber and Tardif, 1991 and 1992; Tardif, 1994). Their observational work was guided by several questions (Weber and Tardif, 1991, p. 95).

What is the content and nature of classroom interaction? How does the child make sense of her/his experience? What does what is going on mean to the child?

They noted that their data analysis revealed three layers or categories of culture that seem important to understanding immersion kindergartens:

1. the culture of childhood,

2. the culture of schooling,

3. the culture of French immersion teaching.

They draw three important conclusions (Weber and Tardif, 1991, 104-105).

Like most kindergarten contexts, immersion and otherwise, the classrooms we observed included structured circle time, play centres, dress up corners, fine motor tasks, art activities, logic games, problem solving situations, music, and movement activities. These activities provide opportunities for children to explore, to initiate, to act on their environment, and to develop through concrete experiences.

. . . our observations of English kindergartens (which were similar in many respects to the immersion kindergartens) lead us to hypothesize that, in many important ways, immersion kindergartens are not very different from other classrooms. Although the fact that the teacher speaking a language that the children cannot understand would seem a priori to be a major source of frustration and difficulty, contrary to our expectations, the second language element seemed to play a minor, albeit significant, role in a classroom communication, Meaning is continually being interpreted and negotiated within the social context of the classroom: between individual children and the teacher, between small groups of children, and among the larger group.

Weber and Tariff research does not explore the issue of the first language department. However, there had been numerous investigations since the inception of immersion programs about the effect of mother tongue development. It is a well-established fact that early total immersion students experience a lag in literacy-based language skills but this lag is temporary. Within one year after the introduction of English language art instruction, they usually reach parity with control students in all-English programs (Genesee, 1987, p. 43). Moreover, there appears to be a general consensus among researchers that (Danesi, 1993, p, 8-9):

The presence of more than one language code in the neurocognitive system of children makes them generally more aware of language form and of how it allows them to interact with the world . . . The bilingual learner has access, therefore, to more than one way of processing information, and this cannot help but diversify and enhance the child's overall cognitive capacities.

The picture painted of the young child schooled in an early immersion setting is one of an effective and flexible learner who handles ambiguity with ease (Danesi, 1993, p.7.)

Nor is there any long-term disadvantages to the early French immersion student. Research recently conducted at the University of Ottawa examined the question of "whether or not disruption in the development of the mother tongue that must result in any intensive second-language program taken between the ages of five and inhibits the growth of psycho linguistic skills requisite for the use of language in complex thinking in adulthood" (Neufeld, 1993, p. 9). On all measures except one, the immersion students showed no difference from the English-only control group. The immersion students scored significantly higher on the measure of figurative metaphoric use of English prompting Neufeld to speculate about ". . . the positive indication of the linguistic and cognitive benefits of learning another language early in school" (p. 10).

Closely tied to the question of optimal age is the issue of quantity of instructional time in French. Most people seem to feel that more is better. They point to the higher results achieved by early immersion students on the oral proficiency interviews as proof. Research comparing early and late immersion programs has generally shown that the early immersion students outperform the late immersion students in oral production, oral comprehension and written comprehension (Rebuffot, p. 110). These research results have not been consistent and Genesee, in particular has pointed out that "there are no simple or consistent relationship between amount of time in immersion and achievement" (1991, p. 193). As important as the amount of instructional time is how the time is spent. Students in immersion classes are given very little opportunity to engage in active, meaningful discourse (Genesee, 1991, p.190). Increased attention to teaching strategies might improve this situation (Netten, 1991). A useful way to describe the amount of instructional time necessary for effective language learning might be enough time over time. Thus, the immersion programs, anything less than 50 present of instructional time in a given academic year would be unproductive. In the first few years of an immersion program, a much higher percentage of time will produce better results. If the percentage of time drops to below 50 percent during the later years of an immersion program, then the program should not carry the immersion designation. In addition to the intensity of instructional time, the extensity of this time is important. Thus the grade 7 student who begins an immersion program with 50 to 60 percent of instructional time in French and who continues for three years will not achieve as high a competency level as one who continues over a period of six years.

 

What Do We Know About Effective Second Language Teaching Strategies?

 

As with all teaching Strategies, second language methodologies have evolved substantially over the last thirty years. The following table illustrates some of the features of major trends.

Recognizing that individual learners approach each learning task differently, teachings are now using an eclectic variety of teaching strategies. Rather than adopting either a strictly experiential approach or strictly analytic approach, they now know that these two approaches do not represent dichotomies but rather two sides of the same coin.

The relationship between experiential and analytical learning has been the focus of recent research into the teaching strategies in French immersion classroom (Lyster, 1990, 1994 and Dicks, 1992). This research has arisen partly out of questions dealing with the characteristics of the speech of immersion students. Lyster (1987) found the high proportion of fossilized errors in speech of early immersion students at the secondary level to be more than a little disconcerting. He noted that teachers paid little attention to the form of their students' speech but rather attended more to the message expressed. This is true particularly at the primary level where teachers don't like to interfere with the efforts of their students. He speculated that, by introducing contextualized, targeted "negotiations of form" within language arts and content lessons that students would learn to communicate more correctly. His in-class interventions with teachers at the junior high level have shown that students can indeed learn to improve certain aspects of their linguistic competence with the analysis of the forms and functions of language within meaning contexts followed by opportunities for practice. It is worthy of note that Lyster research is with older learners. The degree to which pupils at the primary level could respond as well to the analytical interventions is a question that has yet to be answered.

Observational research conducted in classrooms in Newfoundland has shown similar results. Conclusions of s study of three classrooms (Netten and Spain, 1989) point to firm linkages between classroom processes (teaching strategies) and achievement in French immersion classroom. The findings show us that in the classroom with a lot of lecture and drill type activities with a great deal of teacher-talk, lower achievement of students was reported than might have expected, given the profile of the students. Classrooms with high priority placed on the affective development of students produced better results than the first type and results more in line with the profile of the students. The classroom in which the teacher gave high priority to learning the content of the matter as well as the language achieved the best results relative to the student profiles. Netten and Spain conclude that "despite a common curriculum, teachers organize and instruct their classes differently, and these differences are significant with the respect to the learning outcomes for pupils" (p. 153).

Immersion classes have often been the target of criticism from those who see teaching strategies as too teacher-centered and traditional. Observational research of immersion classes, identified as excellent examples of child-centered classes, have shown that these classes can be just as child-centered as regular classes if the appropriate teaching strategies are used (Halsall and Wall, 1992)

When immersion was first introduced in the late sixties, it was thought that the second language would be learned by virtue of the content being learned. In the intervening years since its inception, immersion has been researched and studied more than any other educational innovation. While the integration of the content and language instruction remains a fundamental feature of immersion, we know that "it is not merely the integration of content and language instruction that is important, but rather how they are integrated." (Genesee, 1991, p.188). A belief that was prevalent until only recently, was that "comprehensible input" was all that was necessary for a competent speaker of the second language to emerge (Krashen, 1985).

We know as well that, just as listening to a piano music cannot make one a piano player, receiving comprehensible input is not enough and does not produce, on its own, competent speakers. Comprehensible output and analysis feedback on that output are the other part of an equation (Swain, 1985, 1993). The implication for second language learning is that teachers need to know how to structure collaborative activities in their classroom; this kind of group activity has been shown to increase opportunities for the extended discourse and negotiation of meaning (Lyster, 1994).

The relationship between content and language is just as true for the core French classroom as it is just for the core French classroom as it is for the immersion environment (Handscombe, 1993). Within increasing value being placed on integrating curricula and integrating language across curricula, it would seem to make good sense to ensure that he core French classes build on the curriculum being taught in the English classes. The integration of language and content "provides a substantive basis for language teaching and learning, in that content . . . provides cognitive hangers on which new language structures can be hung" (Genesee, 1991, p.186).

In this article, I have delineated some background issues concerning second language learning. In the next article, "But I Can't Speak French!" I will offer some practical suggestions for principals.

 

Second Language Methodology

 

where it has been

-Grammar method focusing on translation and literature

-Cross lingual comparisons between first and second languages

-Language viewed as a set of structural rules; primacy of linguistic code or form

-Emphasis writing and reading above oral skills

-Audio-lingual method in which language was seen as a set of habits to be learned and the learner is trained through stimulus/response activities; influence of behaviorist psychology of Skinner

-No tolerance for error

-Overall approach characterized by explicit language analysis (learning about the language rather than learning the language)

 

where it has been more recently

 

-Communication at the expense of the linguistic code; understand and be understood ("get the message across")

-Implicit language learning through learning of content matter (especially in the immersion classroom)

-Belief that providing comprehensible input from a variety of sources eventually leads to language production.

-Errors seen as a natural part of the learning process

-Experiential performance-based activities which mirror "real-life" situations; little focus on analytical or explicit language learning

-Intralingual only; no translation; no comparisons between languages

 

where it is now

-Flexible set of learning principles which include both linguistic and content (i.e. subject matter) objectives for core French and immersion programs

-Comprehensible input is combined with comprehensible output (i.e. producing language which is understandable and correct)

-Errors seen as part of the learning process but more focus on feedback and self-correction of errors followed by opportunity for practice

-Experiential performance-based activities combined with analytical activities

--Recognition that in "real life" tasks can be a mixture of first and second languages (e.g. serving as interpreter for a unilingual friend, transmitting contents of a phone call, taking notes from a reading in one language for a project in the other language)

 

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