Assessing the Needs of Bilingual Pupils

Living in Two Languages

Deryn Hall, Dominic Griffiths, Liz Haslam, Yvonne Wilkin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138177529
• eBook ISBN: 9781136613180
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Ever since its publication in 1995, this book has offered a means for teachers to consider why some bilingual pupils in their classrooms are not making learning progress or are academically underachieving. This new second edition has been revised and updated in the light of the new government legislation and guidance, most significantly the revised Code of Practice for Special Educational Needs.

It continues to look at ways of asking questions about the pupil, of collecting evidence of both learning and language development and of offering support within the classroom.

It contains a model and photocopiable proformas for use within schools, which should help to establish clear systems of identification of those bilingual pupils who may have special learning needs and to distinguish these from the need for language support.

1	Introduction

There has long been an unacknowledged relationship between bilingualism and special education as evidenced by the disproportionate numbers of immigrant and minority language children ‘deported’ into special education classes … in many countries.

(Cummins 1984)

Handicapping conditions do not respect ethnic, geographical, religious or any other boundaries imposed by man.

(Miller 1984)

Acknowledging our Pluralistic Society

Much educational literature is still produced without any reference to the fact that Britain is increasingly a multicultural and multilingual society. There is little excuse for this as it can no longer be seen as merely an issue for inner city schools. Linguistic diversity is now a norm in British classrooms. Most teachers across the country can expect to have some experience of pupils whose first language is other than English. Because, on the whole, schools continue to reflect the middle-class monocultural, monolingual values of a majority society, pupils’ academic potential (or IQ) is still assessed in relation to these norms. Fortunately, larger numbers of minority language pupils, and a concern for educational inclusion to ensure equality of opportunity, have caused educators to re-examine some of these assessment practices and to acknowledge that they may be inappropriate for an increasing number of pupils.

Any assessment of bilingual pupils’ learning progress needs to ascertain whether a pupil has a learning disability or is merely experiencing a temporary language barrier as a result of insufficient exposure to English. Unfortunately this assessment is no simple matter, and there is no single language and culture bias-free test that can provide ready-made answers. Rather, the issue begs a wide range of further questions. What is the nature of learning ability and disability? What are the principles of language acquisition? What is the relationship between first and second language skills? How long does it take to acquire English proficiency and what do we mean by that? What are the differences between social and academic fluency?

These questions and issues cause monolingual teachers and educational psychologists (EPs) considerable anxiety when the educational progress of a bilingual child is giving concern. This handbook suggests that the information gained will only be as good as the questions asked, the information/evidence of learning gathered and the teaching provision/intervention made. These issues are further explored in Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

Separating Issues of ‘Language’ From ‘Learning’

Since litigation in the USA during the late 1960s and early 1970s, educators have been at pains to spell out the necessity of distinguishing between second language barriers and learning difficulties that may account for an individual bilingual pupil’s failure to make learning progress. A landmark case (Diana v. State Board of Education, California 1970) established rights to a non-biased assessment for ethnic minority pupils, so that, in the 1981 Education Act (Department of Education and Science (DES) 1981) which served to define SEN for England and Wales, the following clear statement appeared:

A child is not to be taken as having a learning difficulty solely because the language (or form of language) in which he is, or will be, taught is different from a language (or form of language) which has at any time been spoken in his home.

It is important that the provision made for EAL is not confused with SEN remediation. This was underlined in the 1993 Education Act (DfE 1993). It is a sad reflection of today’s schools that some teachers still equate a lack of English language skills with learning problems and low intelligence.

Some pupils learning through EAL will need support to extend their speaking and writing repertoires and to practise new words and phrases in a relevant context. They will need to acquire sufficient linguistic competence in order that their understanding of processes and concepts is fully developed. An Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) paper describes some of the most effective lessons as those that ‘included the use of specially prepared materials to match the pupils’ levels of English and educational experience, and tasks which enabled them to work purposefully with their peers and encouraged them to become increasingly independent of support’ (OFSTED 1994b).

Pupils with SEN, on the other hand, may require specific targeted support for their individual learning difficulty (this may also involve support for a specific disability or for emotional/behavioural difficulty). The guidance issued in the Revised Code of Practice (DfES 2001) suggests that such identified pupils should be formally registered on a SEN ‘stage of concern’ by the school and their progress regularly monitored in consultation with parents and in partnership with other professionals. At the stages of School Action and School Action Plus this will involve drawing up an Individual Education Plan (IEP) (see Chapter 6).

However, both groups of pupils require support in order to gain full access to the curriculum to which they have entitlement. To some extent, it could be argued that what is good practice for one group is also good practice for the other, as the necessary degree of curriculum differentiation, thought and planning evidenced in successful lessons would inevitably improve the learning of all pupils. One such example of integrated good practice is described in ‘a school with a multidisciplinary team approach (SEN, home/school liaison and specialist EAL staff) to meet the learning needs of individual pupils. Careful planning and systematic record keeping ensured that only one additional teacher participated in any one lesson but that all teachers worked to the agreed programme of support’ (OFSTED 1994b).

However, distinction must be clearly made between the individual learning needs of bilingual pupils and pupils with SEN, and different appropriate provision needs to be offered. Schools must ensure that lack of English proficiency is not assumed to indicate SEN or learning difficulties.

Notwithstanding, a percentage of bilingual pupils is likely to experience SEN at some point of their school life and there is no hard evidence to suggest that this is either more or less than we might expect to find in the monolingual population. As this is reckoned nationally to be around 20 per cent of the school population, we can expect a proportionate and representative spread of bilingual pupils to be at each SEN stage at any given time. This is a fairly crude figure but is a simple measure that a school can use as an indicator of the understanding of the issues involved within their institution, where the numbers of pupils learning through EAL are large enough to form a representative sample.

A Language Approach to the Curriculum

It is now universally agreed that language in its broadest sense of communicative competence is central to the learning process in the acquisition of a second language. It was previously believed that bilingual pupils learning English needed different teaching methods and materials that were somehow separate from those relevant or appropriate to other pupils. Linguists and educationalists have recognised that the teaching methodologies developed as a response to mixed ability classes are also those that are relevant and appropriate for bilingual learners (e.g. Cummins 1996). Developments in matching teaching approaches to a wider range of learning styles present interesting opportunities in this area (see Riding and Rayner 1998). The slow recognition of the growing linguistic diversity of mainstream classrooms has reinforced the need to find inclusive teaching methods and materials.

It has also become clear that exclusive methodologies could threaten equality of opportunity and be seen as racially divisive. As a direct result of the findings of Swann (Department of Education and Science (DES) 1985) and the Calderdale investigation (Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) 1986), separate off-site withdrawal units for pupils new to English were deemed as clearly discriminatory on social, linguistic and educational grounds. It is now standard practice in this country to try to support pupils learning through EAL within the mainstream classroom as part of normal lessons. Furthermore, there is considerable interest from some other European countries who are looking at the best of this inclusive practice in Britain as a model of how to educate their own recent refugee or immigrant populations.

Encouraging skills and versatility in speaking and listening is vital in developing understanding of ideas and experiences. The metacognitive processes of thinking out loud, formulating thought and talking through ideas are an essential part of the learning process. Pupils who engage orally in the language of a subject with their peers are more likely to understand and internalise the related concepts. Language teachers, working in partnership with mainstream curriculum colleagues to plan collaborative group activities, can help to provide learning materials in which contextual clues ensure fuller access to tasks for all pupils. (Many practising teachers using this methodology swap their teaching materials through membership of the Collaborative Learning Project – see Useful addresses.) These materials allow bilingual pupils, as well as those with learning difficulties, more chance of working on their understanding at an appropriate cognitive level of challenge than materials that are reliant on decoding skills alone. Typical exchanges during oral collaborative tasks might include practising language structures such as questioning, reflecting, suggesting, prediction and forming hypotheses.

For some bilingual pupils, the opportunity to use a language other than English to support learning and understanding in the classroom will provide a way of enhancing the conceptualisation of complex ideas and confirm language and meaning. Bilingual pupils, particularly those from minority immigrant or refugee groups, need support to gain good academic qualifications without which their employment prospects will be drastically reduced. This should not be at the expense of their first language skills however, as their facility and literacy in dual languages is also a marketable commodity.

2	Bilingual Pupils

A Working Definition

There have been many attempts to define bilingualism during the past 50 years ranging from earlier narrow definitions to the broader ones of Skutnabb-Kangas (1981). The one used in this book, and from which it takes its subtitle, is the working definition adopted by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (Shell 1992):

Bilingual: In England the term is currently used to refer to pupils who live in two languages, who have access to, or need to use, two or more languages at home and at school. It does not mean that they have fluency in both languages or that they are competent and literate in both languages.

Different Groups of Bilingual Children

Teachers cannot assume that all bilingual children they may come across in schools are one homogeneous group. There are likely to be differing pressures, depending on the context in which the pupils need to acquire the new language, that will determine the pupils’ investment in learning. Bilingual pupils fall roughly into the following categories.

Elite Bilinguals

These are the children of those families who travel abroad from choice, usually for business, academic or diplomatic reasons. They are often children of upper/middle-class professionals whose first language is in no way threatened and which is maintained at home and by visits to their home country. For these children, bilingualism is viewed as enriching and they are unlikely to become educationally disadvantaged even if they do not achieve full fluency in their second language.

Linguistic Majorities

This group of pupils are those from a large group where they are learning a second language either because the schools offer a more prestigious minority/or world language (e.g. English in Hong Kong), or offer an immersion programme such as French immersion in Canada.

Bilingual Families

Some children will come from homes where a different language is spoken by one parent. If this is a minority language then there is no external pressure to become bilingual even though there may well be family, cultural or religious pressure, e.g. from grandparents.

Linguistic Minorities

This is likely to be the group of most concern to teachers. Whether they are from refugee, immigrant or minority group families, the home language is likely to have a low status or value in the new society. Children from these families will be subjected to strong pressure to learn the language of the majority community and will need to become competent in speaking, reading and writing for economic survival. They are also likely to be under pressure from their families not only to take advantage of better educational opportunities but also to retain their first language and culture. For the children from many Bangladeshi communities, for example, this often means learning standard Bengali and mosque Arabic, as well as learning English at school and retaining the spoken home language of Sylheti.

What the Research Tells Us

The following list is a summary of the most important points to emerge from the extensive research into the acquisition of second language (Cummins 1984; Dulay et al. 1982; Desforges and Kerr 1984; Skutnabb-Kangas 1981) (see photocopiable sheet on p. 78). They are well substantiated and should be adopted by teachers as basic premises.

• Children take up to two years to develop ‘basic interpersonal communication skills’ (playground/street survival language) BUT it takes much longer, perhaps up to seven years or more, to acquire the full range of literacy skills (‘cognitive academic language proficiency’) needed to cope with the literacy demands of GCSE.
• A silent (receptive) period is natural for some pupils when learning a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the first edition
• Preface to the second edition
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Bilingual pupils
• 3. The identification and assessment of bilingual pupils causing concern
• 4. Asking questions: assessing background information
• 5. Collecting the evidence
• 6. Planning support
• 7. School systems
• 8. Conclusions
• Useful addresses
• Useful resources
• Appendices: photocopiable forms/slides for INSET
• Bibliography
• Index