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Abstract
The everyday reality of children's multilingualism is a significant resource for expanding students’ perspectives on the world, but many questions remain regarding the negotiation of these resources in mainstream classrooms. Drawing on research from a long-term Canadian study of multiliterate pedagogies, this paper explores mediation of home language use in mainstream classrooms, the functions it performs in students’ texts and the contribution of home language to students’ academic development. Three very different student texts and the contexts for their production are used to illustrate (a) differences between the mediational properties of multilingual models and talk about the models; (b) the contribution of monolingual educators’ to the students’ efforts; (c) the transformation of home literacies into academic practices and (d) students’ independent development of mediational tools. We argue more attention must be paid to pedagogic practices that capitalize on children's multilingual capacities if educators are to better support these students’ growth as meaning-makers.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank David Barton, Margaret Early and Geoff Williams for their thoughtful comments on this paper's original draft, and the many students who were our collaborators over the years. This study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Notes
1. We have chosen to use home language rather than L1, mother tongue or heritage language because for the students in this study, the additional languages in which their texts are realized originate in and continue to dominate communication in the home. In addition, use of home language(s) allows us to sidestep contested issues of language(s) vs. dialects, definitions of heritage languages, etc. We recognize the term is problematic; it can be misinterpreted to suggest students’ homes are monolingual and/or that these students do not sometimes mix, combine and interweave languages at every level from word to text. This is not what we mean to communicate. Yet we cannot avoid creating some form of distinction, and as Duff (Citation2001) has discussed in relation to English learners, terminology is inevitably problematic. Our choice reflects our best attempt to represent the students’ understanding of their multilingual resources, and the students, in their words and actions, had classified their non-English capacities as separate from school and their academic studies.
2. The unmodified language(s) is used throughout this paper when discussing language as a semiotic resource.
3. Practices that conflate language and nation-state, essentialize cultural groups, and/or position students as spokespeople for their heritage culture have long been critiqued within the EAL field (see, for example Atkinson Citation1999; Kubota Citation1999; Spack Citation1997). We share these concerns, and thus note this instance of communication occurred: (a) within a history of classroom discussions regarding differences in students’ nominally identical languages (e.g., differences in Andrew's and Frida's [Guatemalan] Spanishes) and (b) in the context of established classroom practices of contributing out-of-school experiences to the group's shared knowledge.
4. Kristine had not previously used Tagalog in the classroom and it is difficult to assess her control over the language as there were no other Tagalog speakers in the class. Her self-descriptions suggest that while her oral skills were well developed, she could only read and write an extended text with assistance.
5. Although multiple students were fluent in the postcards’ languages, none but the Spanish speakers were confident readers.
6. As many are aware, the oral languages of Chinese (e.g, Cantonese, Mandarin, etc.) are frequently mutually unintelligible although they share a common written script. Though at the time of this research, Helen had also begun to study Mandarin in an after-school program, Helen and her siblings describe themselves, their parents and their grandparents as speaking Cantonese. Thus, we refer to Cantonese when discussing her home language, to Chinese when referring to the written text and to Mandarin when it is referenced by the students.
7. The class used the term first language to refer to the language which they initially developed in interaction with their parents.