From Test Scores to Language Use: Emergent Bilinguals Using English to Accomplish Academic Tasks

ABSTRACT

Prominent discourses about emergent bilinguals’ academic abilities tend to focus on performance as measured by test scores and perpetuate the message that emergent bilinguals trail far behind their peers. When we remove the constraints of formal testing situations, what can emergent bilinguals do in English as they engage in naturally occurring classroom interactions about content? Using six months of naturally occurring emergent bilingual talk, this article shows that (1) emergent bilinguals produced a wide range of academic speech acts in English while engaged in English language arts tasks, (2) these speech acts were aligned with state academic expectations, and (3) even emergent bilinguals considered “struggling” by conventional standards used in schools showed evidence of using English to accomplish academic tasks in ways aligned to state academic expectations. I argue that determining emergent bilinguals’ English language proficiency using test scores alone provides an incomplete view of what they can and cannot do in English.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom discourse
• emergent bilinguals
• English language arts
• speech acts

Notes

¹ I follow Ofelia Garcia (2009) and use the term “emergent bilingual” in place of “English learner” because I want to emphasize the children’s potential bilingualism. In some instances, I use “English learner” to highlight the term used by the school and state department of education.

² The speaker may want to take a strong stance, for instance, because she knows it will get the intended response.

³ All proper names are pseudonyms.

⁴ Data were unavailable for two students.

⁵ Most of Alexandra and Silver’s classroom talk is in Ms. Yang’s class, but some is from Ms. Nielson’s class after the intensive reading class ended.

⁷ Su indicates “Successful” student.

⁸ St indicates “Struggling” student.

⁹ C indicates the researcher.

⁶ Transcription conventions are as follows:

[Overlapping talk]Two or more people talking at the same time

= Latching indicates no silence between two turns or two parts of a turn

:Stretching of a sound

°Quiet/soft voice°Indicates quiet or soft voice, but not a whisper

°°Whisper°°Indicates whispering

-Indicates self-interruption or cut-off

£Indicates use of smiley voice

((description of events))Words inside double parentheses describe events

(possible hearing)Words inside single parentheses indicate a possible hearing.