Developing children's language awareness: switching codes in the language classroom

Abstract

This article examines how learning an additional language can positively affect children's opinions and feelings about languages and how this process can be enriched when different languages – namely, the additional language and the children's L1s – are present and used in the classroom in an informed way. It is hypothesised that this will benefit children as language learners and, ultimately, as learners. A qualitative and quantitative study was carried out with 25 young learners for a school term. Their L1s (Catalan and Spanish) were brought into the English classroom and activities incorporating translation and codeswitching (CS), namely the pedagogically based CS, were developed. This switching of codes was promoted by the teacher but used by the students. Based on the research results, the article concludes by describing and discussing the positive development observed in the children's language awareness and plurilingual competence.

Keywords:

• beginning learners
• codeswitching (CS)
• third language acquisition
• metalinguistic awareness
• plurilingualism
• translation tasks

Notes

1. The research project the article is based on is part of ongoing research carried out by the Research Group on Interlinguistic and Intercultural Competences in Teaching and Learning Languages (CILCEAL) in the Faculty of Psychology, Education and Sports Science Blanquerna, Ramon Llull University and was partially presented at a Conference held at the University of Oxford (27–28 March, 2009) entitled ‘First and second languages: exploring the relationship in pedagogy-related contexts’.

2. In the Catalan (and Spanish) educational context Primary Education starts at six and ends at 12.

3. The activities and results described in this article relate to the first topic, food and drinks.

4. Word order is one of the areas that has been identified as being more sensitive to transfer in early ages: ‘Young children learning a second language can draw on specific features of their first language to achieve particular purposes. One feature that children sometimes carry into the L2 is the dominant word order of their L1’ (Nicholas & Lightbown, 2008, p. 40).

5. A further difficulty has to do with the fact that, in Catalan, as in English, there is also only one word to refer to these two concepts: peix.

6. Other research instruments that were used were a teacher's diary, observation in class, videorecording in class and the revision of tasks produced by children.

7. The answers given by the children – whether in written documents or in the interviews – were always in Catalan (and, when presented here in Catalan, children's mistakes have been kept) and have been translated into English by the researcher. A selection of comments is also included here.

8. Many studies have shown the potential link between bilingualism and phonological and word awareness skills – the fact that these skills are implicated in early literacy means that the role that bilingualism plays in enhancing literacy development in early childhood needs to be taken into account (Bee Chin & Wigglesworth, 2007).