LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS AN ALTERNATIVE LANGUAGE (EAL) “Reading in two languages allowed me to fall in love with a different symphony of sounds and rhythms, landscapes, characters, and behaviors. When I began to read in English, I noticed not only a different grammar order, but different life perspectives, too.” —Dr. F. Isabel Campoy, award-winning language scholar and author
KEY FINDINGS
> > Free voluntary reading or independent reading is one of the most powerful tools we have in language education. Research suggests that the acquisition of English as a second language is enhanced by native language use. Thus, effective teachers, to the extent possible, provide emerging bilinguals with trade books in both languages (Krashen, 2011; Goldenberg, 2011; Freeman et al. 2016). > > “Krashen, Lee, and McQuillan (2006) reported that more access to school libraries of at least 500 books was associated with higher reading scores for 10-year-olds in 40 countries, tested in their own language. This result held even when SES was controlled” (Krashen, 2011) > > “Educational linguists have developed a theory of bilingualism that has significant implications for teaching emergent bilingual students. The centerpiece of this perspective is that bilingualism is no longer viewed as a mastery of two discrete languages but instead as the ability to strategically and continuously weave in and out of languages depending on the context and audience—a skill linguists call translanguaging” (Garcia and Wei, 2014; Flores, nd). > > “Translanguaging is the discursive norm in bilingual families and communities” (Garcia and Wei, 2014). In other words, bilinguals have one linguistic repertoire, and when expressing themselves, draw from all the languages that they possess in order to communicate. > > Learning to read in their native language capitalizes on what children already know before their schooling begins. “When children enter school, they are equipped with a working vocabulary and a general ability to communicate in
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CHAPTER 1: READERS
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