Mandarin Chinese Dual Language Immersion Programs

Ko-Yin Sung, Hsiao-Mei Tsai

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781788923958
• eBook ISBN: 9781788923972
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

The first dual language instruction book to focus on a non-alphabetical language, Mandarin Chinese.

This book discusses multiple aspects of Chinese dual language immersion (DLI) programs, with a focus on the controversial Utah model. The first part of the book focuses on the parents, teachers, and school administrators. It looks at the perceptions of the three groups toward the Utah model, how they build a supportive DLI classroom with an emphasis on teacher–teacher and teacher–parent communication, and how the teachers position themselves in teaching through their teacher identities.

The second part of the book emphasizes classroom research and explores teaching and learning strategies, corrective feedback and learner uptake and repair, translanguaging in authentic teacher–student interaction, and Chinese-character teaching.

As the first DLI book to include a non-alphabetical language, Chinese, it addresses the need for more research on DLI programs of languages other than Spanish. The book will benefit not only Chinese DLI educators and administrators in the US, but will also offer some useful suggestions and thoughts to educators and administrators of similar programs worldwide.

1 Introduction

Introduction

In the increasingly multilingual and multicultural society of the United States, educational programs which promote biliteracy and cross-cultural learning are gaining in status. Among the different types of bilingual educational programs, dual language immersion (DLI) programs, which provide academic instruction in English and a second language, are increasing in popularity across the nation. In 2000, there were only about 260 DLI programs in K–12 US schools; however, the programs have flourished across the country since then and the number of programs reached 2000 in 2011 (Wilson, 2011). This is almost an eight-fold increase. In addition, the majority of states (39 of 50), and the District of Columbia, reported the implementation of DLI programs during the 2012–2013 school year. In other words, DLI programs in the US have grown rapidly, both in number and location.

Although US educators and administrators have recognized the importance and the urgency of investing in DLI programs in various languages, the pace of the current research on DLI programs does not seem to sync with the rapid program growth. The research in the DLI area is limited in terms of its scope, and the topics and languages covered. For instance, there tends to be a lack of focus on languages other than Spanish in DLI research, which is an issue as one cannot assume that all of the benefits identified and pedagogies suggested in Spanish programs can also be seamlessly applied to DLI programs of other languages. Taking Mandarin Chinese (hereafter referred to as ‘Chinese’), a non-alphabetical language system, distinctive from Spanish, as an example, studies (Grenfell & Harris, 2015; Lee-Thompson, 2008) have shown that successfully learning how to read and write the language requires specific teaching and learning approaches. Therefore, the need for more research on DLI programs of languages other than Spanish is one reason that drove us to research Chinese DLI programs for this book. Moreover, the state of Utah, where the current studies described in this book were conducted, is the most ambitious state in growing DLI programs and is seen by other states as a model. At the same time, the state received many criticisms that its model targeted primarily white students for the purpose of world language enrichment, rather than for non-white students to maintain their heritage languages (Delavan et al., 2017; Valdez et al., 2016b). The large number of Chinese DLI programs, coupled with the controversial issues related to the Utah model, have made Utah a promising research site for Chinese DLI study.

This book consists of two major parts and delves into Chinese DLI programs in multiple aspects. Part 1 of the book, Chapters 2 to 5, involves parents, teachers and school administrators as they take important roles in aiding students’ learning. This part of the book focuses on the participants’ opinions regarding current DLI programs and how they collaborate with one another, and how Chinese DLI teachers position themselves in teaching through their teaching identities. Part 2 of the book, Chapters 6 to 9, emphasizes classroom research conducted in the second author’s classes. As mentioned earlier, the Chinese language system is non-alphabetical, which is challenging and takes unique approaches to master; hence, Chinese DLI classroom research, which touches upon strategy use, corrective feedback, Chinese-character teaching and authentic teacher–student interaction, all offer unique findings and contributions to the current literature.

This book contains a few objectives. First, by researching the different stakeholders’ opinions toward the rapidly expanding Utah DLI programs and how the stakeholders work independently and collaboratively under the newly developed structure of the Utah model, this book presents up-to-date information regarding the current operational state of the Utah model from the stakeholders’ perspectives. The target audience for this information are DLI policymakers, administrators, teachers and researchers. The information about the current state of the model can be used as a checkpoint for our readers to be reflective and for them to continue developing or consider modifying their policymaking, teaching techniques and research agendas. Second, in the second half of the book, we lead our readers to pay attention to specific areas of classroom research that are identified as still lacking (e.g. effectiveness of separation of two languages, student performance beyond standardized tests, language teaching methods) in DLI research (Christian, 2016). At the micro level, the results of the classroom studies will offer useful teaching implications for DLI educators. At the macro level, the findings of the classroom research will prompt DLI policymakers and administrators to rethink whether the Utah DLI model is aiding the process of social reproduction and whether the structures and policies of the model promote minority educational equality and maximize teaching effectiveness for all student populations from distinct backgrounds. Finally, this two-year long book-length DLI research serves as an example of research in the rarely investigated, but rapidly growing, one-way foreign language immersion programs. This book can be seen as an invitation to call out DLI researchers to target their work toward gaps found in the newly developed one-way immersion research. As former and current Chinese DLI educators, we believe that this book will benefit not only Chinese DLI educators and administrators in the US, but will also offer some useful suggestions and thoughts to other educators and administrators of similar programs worldwide.

The rest of this chapter provides readers with the foundational knowledge necessary to understand the sociopolitical context of the Utah Chinese DLI programs. It starts with the definition of bilingual education, the introduction of the various types of bilingual education worldwide and a discussion of how US bilingual education has been formed and viewed through a political lens.

Bilingual Education

Bilingual education (BE) is a commonly and internationally used term in the education field; however, it is a ‘simplistic label for a complex phenomenon’ (Baker & Wright, 2017: 197). Freeman (2007) noted that ‘there is considerable confusion and conflict about what bilingual education means, who is served by bilingual programs, (and) what the goals of a bilingual program are for its target populations…’ (2007: 3). Indeed, because BE has been developed in distinct educational contexts globally, wide variations of BE exist, which serve different purposes to fulfill different populations’ needs. Abello-Contesse (2013) sorted BE programs by their purposes and placed them into four major types.

The first type of BE is created to preserve a minority language through language revival programs. The languages in need of maintenance include indigenous, heritage and immigrant languages. In such programs, the minority languages are taught along with the majority languages. Abello-Contesse (2013) listed some program examples such as Spanish-Catalan in Spain, Spanish-Quechua in Peru, English-Welsh in Wales and English-Maori in New Zealand.

The second type of BE is inte...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Benefits, Challenges and Suggestions: Voices From Teachers and Administrators
• 3 Benefits, Challenges and Suggestions: Voices From Parents
• 4 Exploring Chinese DLI Teachers’ Identities
• 5 Creating an Effective and Supportive Dual Language Classroom
• 6 Language Teaching and Learning Strategies Employed in a First-Year Chinese Dual Language Immersion Classroom
• 7 Applying the Concept of Chunking in Teaching and Learning Chinese Characters
• 8 Oral Interactions Between Teacher and Students: Corrective Feedback, Learner-Uptake and Learner-Repair
• 9 Translanguaging: A Documentation of How Emergent Bilinguals Use Translanguaging in Their Daily Communication
• 10 Conclusion
• Index