Biliteracy development in immersion contexts

John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Biliteracy development in immersion contexts Susan Hopewell and Kathy Escamilla University of Colorado Boulder

Biliteracy is a greater and more complex form of literacy than monoliteracy. This paper provides a brief review of the research in the area of biliteracy in immersion contexts, and culminates by setting a research agenda for the coming decade. Three critical areas for research are identified: (1) creating a comprehensive theoretical framework for biliteracy development, (2) identifying and clarifying trajectories to biliteracy, and (3) developing better pedagogical practices to accelerate biliterate competencies and improve qualities of instruction. Keywords: biliteracy, bilingualism, emergent/emerging bilingual, dual language education

1. Introduction Biliteracy, or the development of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking competencies in more than one language, is the outcome of a complex and dynamic process. It is made that much more complex because language acquisition takes place in a wide range of social contexts in which variation is the norm, and languages and literacies are in a state of constant evolution. In a world that is increasingly connected, global dexterity includes the ability to communicate both across and within multiple languages and cultures in a variety of ever-changing and nuanced contexts. It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that immersion programs, or programs that are designed so that children learn in and through multiple languages, are proliferating worldwide (see Tedick, this issue). These immersion programs share the foundational goals of language and literacy acquisition through integration with content learning, and augmented cultural and cross-cultural competence. Research indicates that bilingual education programs, in which students are educated in two (or more) languages, frequently result in superior academic outcomes and increased opportunities to learn (LindholmLeary & Genesee, this issue). In this article, we review the literature with regard

Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education 2:2 (2014), 181–195. doi 10.1075/jicb.2.2.02hop issn 2212–8433 / e-issn 2212–8441 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

182 Susan Hopewell and Kathy Escamilla

to biliteracy in immersion contexts and use it, in conjunction with the consensus established at the research convocation, to establish a research agenda for 2015 and beyond. While international attention to biliteracy is growing, most of what we know about the development of biliteracy in immersion programs comes from U.S.based studies dedicated to measuring how well emerging bilingual1 learners acquire English and English language literacy, particularly in the domain of reading (Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005; Slavin & Cheung, 2005). Further, those studies that do exist are nearly all about the acquisition of only two languages, even though we know that many children are acquiring more than two languages simultaneously, and that these learners’ processes also need to be theorized and examined as a distinct form of literacy (Hoffman, 2001). Even those studies dedicated to examining the academic achievement of students who speak the societal language and who attend immersion programs often have as an established outcome to measure the extent to which immersion in a language other than English comes at a cost to English language development (Genesee, 2008). All studies converge on the same finding. Learners who attend immersion programs do as well or better than their comparable peers in terms of English language and literacy development (Fortune, 2012; Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, 2013; Lindholm-Leary & Genesee, this issue). Again, the vast majority of studies examine how well students are doing in English rather than the extent to which students are becoming biliterate or multiliterate (Dworin, 2003; Olivos & Sarmiento, 2006; Valdés, 1992). A critical need, then, is to establish and elevate the goal of biliteracy, and offer it up as a counter-hegemonic, culturally affirming, and sustaining alternative to monoliteracy and the prevailing English-only narratives (Paris, 2012). Ultimately, the goal is to increase our knowledge base and to provide a system for aligning theory, research, and practice in our quest to understand biliteracy. We assert that biliteracy is a greater and more complex form of literacy than monoliteracy. Degrees of fluency and expertise vary across contexts, domains, and languages and are expressed along a range of continua (Grosjean, 2008; Hornberger, 1989). Importantly, they shift and change with exposure, need, and use. That there are many points along any given continuum serves to illustrate that biliteracy should not be framed in terms of dichotomous opposites. In other words, it is a mistake to describe bilingualism and biliteracy in terms of binary or mutually exclusive frameworks (e.g., social language versus academic language, receptive language versus productive language, L1 versus L2, language versus content, native speaker versus non-native speaker, strict separation of languages versus random code-switching, oral literacies versus text-based literacies). Instead, we need systems that allow us to explore and understand the nuance and tensions of becoming biliterate in widely varying contexts and languages.

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Biliteracy development in immersion contexts 183

Becoming biliterate differs in significant and fundamental ways from becoming literate in only one language (Bernhardt, 2003; Moll & Dworin, 1996; Valdés, 2003). Fundamental to this concept is our growing understanding that bilingual learners use all of their linguistic resources when producing and interacting with text (García, 2009; Gort, 2012; Hopewell, 2012, 2013; Hornberger & Link, 2012; Orellana, 2009). Additionally, empirical data reveal the essential role that oral language plays in the attainment of mature biliteracy (August & Shanahan, 2006; Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2006). The implication is that pedagogies and methodologies designed for mainstream, monolingual, majority language children are inadequate for the vast majority of bilingual students. The charge to the fields of immersion and bilingual education, therefore, is to determine which elements overlap, and will, therefore, transfer; and which differ and will, therefore, require explicit and focused attention. Contrary to early conjecture that students would be confused by simultaneous exposure to print in two languages, we have increasing evidence to indicate that this is not the case (Kenner, Kress, Al-Khatib, Kam & Tsai, 2004; Reyes, 2012). In fact, even in contexts where biliteracy is not purposefully nurtured in school, we know that students experiment with and develop spontaneous incipient biliteracy (De La Luz Reyes, 2012; Kenner, 2004; Reyes, 2008; Smith & Murillo, 2012). This development is greatly influenced by the literacy practices supported by the home and community. Rather than being confused by early exposure to two languages, students absorb the languages and literacies of their communities, and they are quite capable of becoming biliterate in more than one language concurrently from an early age. Although we have evidence that students engage in acts of spontaneous biliteracy, a thoughtfully developed and enacted formal school-based bilingual education results in more sophisticated and mature biliteracy. Such programs should center on the use of direct and explicit teaching methodologies, as we know that emerging bilingual learners demonstrate greater academic achievement when they are taught using methods that are direct and explicit while also capitalizing on the sociocultural importance of learning (Genesee & Riches, 2006). Further, we have evidence that metalinguistic awareness increases students’ ability to capitalize on transferable skills and dispositions (Bialystok, Luk, & Kwan, 2009). These include cross-language awareness and application of phonological awareness, cognate vocabulary, syntax, and morphology (Lyster, Collins, & Ballinger, 2009; Lyster, Quiroga, & Ballinger, 2013). Currently, there are a cadre of scholars calling upon the field to explore how to engage students in contrastive analysis, translanguaging,2 and the creation of dual-language identity texts (Cummins, 2005, 2014; García, 2012). These recommendations apply to both one-way and twoway immersion contexts (Ballinger, 2013; Hornberger, 2003; Soto Huerta, 2012).



Moreover, they also apply to biliteracy contexts in which the languages share an alphabet (e.g., French and English; Spanish and English) as well as those that do not (e.g., Mandarin & English or Korean and English) (Bialystok, 1997; Wang, Perfetti, & Liu, 2005; Wang, Park, & Lee, 2006). Note that school-based research in biliteracy has focused primarily on reading, oral language, and metalinguistic awareness. There is a veritable dearth of research with regard to biliterate writing, though we do have evidence of the following: (a) emerging bilingual students experience a period of interliteracy3 in which they use language strategically to compose (Gort, 2006), (b) students’ biliterate writing is best examined side-by-side (Soltero-González, Escamilla, & Hopewell, 2012), and (c) teachers need greater guidance on how to read and interpret biliterate writing (Butvilofsky & Sparrow, 2012). When we examine students’ writing side-by-side it enables us to observe interliteracy strategies and other types of cross-language transfers (Soltero-González et al., 2012). As can be seen, we know that formal bilingual education results in positive long-term academic achievement, however, we know very little about how best to design and deliver that instruction such that we maximize students’ potential to become biliterate. There is a clear need for a focused and sustained body of research that extends and deepens our understanding of biliterate development. The following summarizes expert opinion in terms of directions for research agendas. 2. Setting a research agenda Given the relative dearth of research with regard to biliteracy, and the increased demand worldwide for programs that develop bilingualism and biliteracy, the demand for a focused research agenda looms large. During the 2012 researcher convocation (see Tedick, this issue), the following three lines of research were identified as particularly salient: 1. creating a comprehensive theoretical framework for biliteracy development including how this development may differ for varying populations; 2. identifying and clarifying a range of typically developing trajectories to biliteracy and concomitantly summative and formative assessment tools to measure these trajectories; and 3. establishing and advancing better pedagogical practices to accelerate biliterate competencies. Each of these must be explored in relation to varying contexts, languages, populations, and immersion models. As an example, consider that a trajectory to biliteracy may vary in rate and pedagogy depending on the type of immersion model



being implemented (e.g., one-way, two-way, heritage, or indigenous). The implication, of course, is that there are countless individual questions to be studied within each of these larger arenas. 2.1 Theoretical frameworks for biliteracy The prevailing theories of bilingualism privilege parallel monolingualism or fractionalized understandings of language acquisition and are predicated upon sequential language acquisition (Grosjean, 1989). Parallel monolingualism is the outdated notion that true bilingualism is only attained when a person’s language proficiencies are comparable to a monolingual speaker’s abilities in each language (Fitts, 2006; Heller, 2001). In the U.S., for example, students in immersion contexts include children for whom English is their first and only language upon entry in the program as well as emerging bilingual students in the U.S. who arrive to school having acquired more than one language simultaneously. Theories of language and literacy acquisition need to account for both sequential and simultaneous language acquisition experiences. In short, there is a great need in the field for fresh understandings about how best to educate children bilingually. If our programs are to be successful, we need to ground them in theories and pedagogies predicated upon both simultaneous and sequential acquisition of languages with an expected outcome of biliteracy (Escamilla & Hopewell, 2010). While we have some promising lines of theoretical conjecture, we lack a coherent and sufficiently well developed theory to explain the complexity of biliterate achievement. Below, we will briefly allude to some of the more encouraging lines of thinking, and will end with a description of the necessary elements of a fully operationalized theory of biliteracy. Some have answered the cry for theoretical and pedagogical lenses that explain and embrace biliteracy through the actualization of holistic bilingualism (García, 2009; Gort, 2006; Grosjean, 1989; Escamilla et al., 2014). Holistic bilingualism views languages and literacies as interdependent and universally available. Individual languages contribute to an integrated and augmented system that can never be understood by examining only one language. It begins from a stance that languages are mutually reinforcing while concurrently recognizing that knowledge and vocabulary may be distributed differently across languages. This means that any time spent studying one language is time that contributes to the entire linguistic system. A seemingly small change, the addition of a single vocabulary word, for instance, is not just a gain in one language, but a gain in the whole linguistic system. Fully theorized, this lens would challenge the way we talk about teaching and learning in bilingual and immersion contexts.



Another approach to theorizing biliteracy is the metaphor of the Kahikatea tree used in New Zealand to think about the transacquisitional bilingualism of the Māori (Sophie Tauwehe Tamati, personal communication, October 17, 2012). The Kahikatea is an important tree in the Māori culture. It grows to a height of 180 feet with a 3-foot diameter, and to survive in the swampy lowlands, the trees cluster together and intertwine their roots to offer added stability. Scholars use the deep and enduring understanding about the importance of this root system to represent symbolically the fact that as languages are acquired they must interconnect and work together. Similarly, the metaphor extends to the importance of students, families, and educators working interdependently. Finally, just as roots grow and change, so, too, do languages. The greater the connections, the stronger the foundation. A third and frequently referenced theory is that of the Continua of Biliteracy (Hornberger, 2004). Hornerberger’s theory posits that biliteracy consists of a series of nested and intersecting continua involving contexts (e.g., oral — literate), media (e.g., simultaneous — successive exposure), content (e.g., contextualized — decontextualized), and development (e.g., oral — written). Like theories of holistic bilingualism and the metaphor of the Kahikatea, it situates biliteracy as a series of intersecting relationships. Fundamental to this conceptualization is the strong framing within a sociopolitical context that includes concepts of power and privilege. Recently, Hornberger’s work has been used extensively as the lens with which researchers have grounded their empirical studies. See, for example, the work of Gentil (2005), Huerta, 2012, or Martínez-Roldan and Sayer, (2006). Gentil combined Hornberger’s Continua of Biliteracy with Bourdieu’s critical social theory to understand the opportunities for biliteracy acquisition of three Francophone university students attending an English-medium university. Contrast this to Martínez-Roldan and Sayer, who used the Continua of Biliteracy as the primary means of analyzing and interpreting the biliterate reading development of a group of Latino third graders. Finally, Huerta uses the Continua, not as a mechanism for data analysis, but rather as a way to describe the complexity of becoming biliterate for a group of 4th grade students from Texas. These examples serve as representative of the variety of ways researchers have grounded their studies in Hornberger’s theory. A sufficiently well developed comprehensive theory for simultaneous biliteracy development will serve to help the field to predict and explain biliterate development and behaviors in ways that will help us to know if students are proceeding well in their efforts to become biliterate. They will further help us to design instructional pedagogies that accelerate and capitalize on bilingualism. Finally, they will serve as a lens to use when collecting and interpreting empirical data. An improved conceptualization of biliteracy will inform what questions we pose, how



we design studies, and indicate how best to make sense of the empirical patterns we observe. The theories cited thus far are primarily used to understand and make sense of the language learning of students whose home language differs from the majority language (circumstantial bilingualism/biliteracy). New theories should include the experiences of those who have acquired the majority language at home and in the community, and are attending school in an additional language (what Fishman [1977] called elite bilingualism/biliteracy). 2.2 Biliterate trajectories We hypothesize that trajectories of biliteracy exist and that these trajectories likely differ based upon linguistic and sociocultural variables such as home language(s), time in the country, opportunities to learn, motivation, communities of residence, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, language status and political issues, among other factors. In other words, an accelerated trajectory to biliteracy for a recently arrived Spanish-speaking immigrant with monolingual Spanish-speaking parents who has just started school in the U.S. will most likely differ from the trajectory of a third-generation, Spanish- and English-speaker whose parents are English speakers and who has attended the same school for her entire academic career. Further, there is no reason to believe that these U.S. based trajectories are similar to those of indigenous language learners becoming biliterate in South American, African, or Middle Eastern contexts or to those of students becoming biliterate in European autochthounous minority languages, such as Basque, Irish, or Welsh (Nissilä & Björklund, this issue). There is a dire need to generate empirical evidence to better understand academic outcomes for biliterate students schooled in immersion settings and there is an absolute need to include contexts of schooling into our research methods. To understand these trajectories, researchers need to engage in longitudinal case study analyses in which collective experiences are documented and described in terms of the biliteracy development of differently intersecting language and learner profiles. Finally, there is a great need to account for the world-wide dominance of English as its potential influence on these trajectories. Nascent theories, supported by longitudinally collected data regarding biliteracy outcomes at the elementary school level, have begun to inform the description of biliteracy trajectories (e.g., Escamilla, Soltero-González, Butvilofsky, Hopewell & Sparrow, 2009). These analyses, however, are limited in that they only examine reading trajectories and are limited to Spanish-speaking emerging bilingual learners in particular sociopolitical contexts. There is a need to create composite trajectories that include reading, writing, and oral language for diverse populations of students. How, for instance, might the trajectory differ for students acquiring



logographic languages in conjunction with alphabetic languages? Through sophisticated analyses of larger and more diverse populations, we can begin to understand and define how biliteracy development differs from monoliteracy development. Sugarman and Howard (2007) remind us that there is an urgent need to conduct research to establish language and literacy benchmarks. These researchers specify the following two questions as critical needs within the field: “What benchmarks should we expect students to meet in language proficiency and literacy development in the partner language?” and “Should these benchmarks differ based on students’ native language or the program model?” (p. 1). Lacking this information, educators use benchmarks established for monolingual speakers of the dominant societal language. Monolingual benchmarks and approaches toward literacy and language development cannot account entirely for biliteracy or multiliteracy development (Moll, 2001; Moll & Dworin, 1996; Reyes, 2001; Schwarzer, 2001). Research indicates that using monolingual criteria to judge bilingual development may result in erroneous conclusions about student achievement. In fact, a recent study demonstrates how monolingual student assessment systems resulted in the over-identification of students as “at-risk” resulting in relegation to unnecessary remedial instruction (Hopewell & Escamilla, 2014). Therefore, linked to the urgent need to develop biliterate trajectories is the need to create assessment systems that evaluate language and literacy development in reference to established biliteracy trajectories. These systems must “expand what we notice, measure, and study” (Orellana & D’Warte, 2010), and facilitate a changed discourse from one in which the prevailing focus is on a perceived achievement gap, to one in which biliteracy is in and of itself the goal and the yardstick. All of this is made more urgent by political movements worldwide to elevate the status of some languages over others. Witness, for instance, the requirement in most European Union countries that adult immigrants demonstrate proficiency in the dominant language before being granted entrance, residence, work permits, or citizenship (Extramiana & Van Avermaet, 2011). In the U.S., the move to standardize learning through the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)4 narrowly defines literacy in terms of English-only. Biliteracy education has the potential to result in achievement levels that exceed the expectations of single language curricula; yet, it will likely not happen in the same way or at the same rate. Hence, the critical need to document and understand biliteracy trajectories. 2.3 Biliteracy pedagogies As we identify and clarify trajectories to biliteracy, it is also incumbent upon us to explore how best to accelerate students along these trajectories. Biliteracy should



be nurtured through its own pedagogies, curriculum, materials, and assessments. We need a viable set of practices that that fit the students we teach and our outcome goals of biliteracy. Instead, what is more common is the use of pedagogies and materials developed for monolingual contexts within bilingual settings. The underlying structures of languages, even when they share an alphabetic script, differ. This compels us to move away from the application of universal principles of teaching and learning that have largely been derived from research conducted in monolingual contexts and toward pedagogies developed initially for bilingual learners. Further, we should explore how literacy is taught and developed globally. What might we take from syllabary languages (e.g., Cherokee & Japanese), semantic character-based languages (e.g., Chinese), or even signed languages (e.g., American Sign Language) to inform biliteracy? Why do we treat emerging bilinguals as if all languages interact identically? Why do we insist that literacy assessments developed in English can be appropriately translated and used in other languages without concomitant research to insure validity and reliability have not been compromised? By way of example, consider our insistence on testing letter name knowledge in Spanish when consensus is that Spanish is better learned through sound-symbol association and syllables. We have vast anecdotal evidence that educators teaching Spanish literacy in bilingual contexts waste precious time during literacy teaching letter names simply because that is what will be tested. This does not make sound pedagogical sense. Creating pedagogies of biliteracy education will require us to understand promising practices. If we know, for example, that patterns between and among languages allow for exponential linguistic growth, as is the case when a student grasps the concept of cognates, why then do we not develop and research pedagogies that capitalize upon this? How might our theories of biliterate development inform the pedagogies and practices we develop? As we outlined in the research review above, we know that students are not confused by the early and simultaneous introduction to literacy in more than one language, that languages need not always be strictly separated, and that direct and explicit instruction appear to be more effective than process approaches. How might we design opportunities to learn that capitalize upon this knowledge? What are the potential practices that will be theoretically sound and will result in accelerated biliterate learning? Twoway immersion programs, for instance, have a solid research base to support their wide implementation, but does this model work equally well with all languages and in diverse contexts (Lindholm-Leary & Hernández, 2011)? Another practice with some promise is the implementation of paired literacy (Slavin & Cheung, 2005). Paired literacy is an approach to biliteracy instruction in which students learn to read, write, speak, listen, view, process, create, and analyze in two languages simultaneously beginning in kindergarten or first grade. In



2005, Slavin and Cheung evaluated the results of ten experimental studies that compared paired biliteracy to English-only approaches to literacy instruction, and determined that although the number of studies was small, the great majority (all but two) resulted in positive effects favoring paired literacy for students who were in bilingual contexts in which English was an additional language. The remaining two simply found no effect. It is important to note that the studies that employed randomized assignment resulted in greater effect sizes. Slavin and Cheung report, for instance, that Plante (1976) found an effect size for Grade 2 of +0.78 and Grade 3 of +0.26 for a weighted mean of +0.50 in favor of paired literacy. Huzar (1973), who also conducted experiments at the elementary level, reported a weighted mean effect size of +0.45 in favor of paired approaches. At the secondary level, Covey (1973) reported an effect size of +0.72, while Kaufman (1968) found a weighted mean effect of +0.23. As can be seen, there is great variety across studies; however, the preponderance of evidence suggests that paired biliteracy holds much promise. While early iterations required either two literacy blocks within one school day or literacy blocks that alternated languages by day, current models are being explored that deliver instruction in a unified literacy block. Paired literacy practices are not duplicative, but they are cohesive and coordinated across languages (Escamilla et al., 2014). Further, they begin with literacy instruction that is valid for the internal structure of each language. Studies should be conducted to understand whether these effects are constant across grades and program models. Is paired literacy as effective for students whose dominant language is that of prestige? Are the results different when the school is in the midst of preserving or resurrecting an indigenous or heritage language? A fully realized pedagogy of biliteracy will require us to replicate effective practices across many and varied educational contexts. Finally, given the dearth of research in the area of biliterate writing, a solid pedagogy of biliteracy would be incomplete without research to better understand the developmental process of learning to write in two languages, and the accompanying instructional implications that should guide classroom practice. It is critical that we reexamine our notions that reading achievement is the sole indicator of literacy, and expand our understanding of the role of writing in biliterate contexts. Research is needed to understand the relationship of biliterate writing to the overall goal of becoming bilingual and biliterate. 3. Conclusion In sum, biliteracy is a greater form of literacy than monoliteracy, and while we have an emerging database to indicate this, more research, global in scope, is



needed. In the next decade, there will be a critical need to refine our theoretical frameworks for understanding biliteracy development, to identify and clarify trajectories to biliteracy that examine the relationships of reading, writing, oracy, and metalanguage, and to develop better pedagogical practices to accelerate biliteracy through greater quality of instruction.

Notes 1. While we applaud and celebrate Ofelia García’s (2009) use of the term “emergent bilingual,” we choose to alter it slightly to “emerging bilingual,” as this term denotes for us a process rather than a stage. In the United States, we apply this term to children who are acquiring a nonEnglish language and English at the same time. Further, we are aware that some researchers are currently (mis)using the term emergent bilingual as a synonym for “semi-lingual.” We wish to distance ourselves from any terminology that might suggest that students in the early stages of biliteracy development are deficient as opposed to typically developing. 2. First coined by Cen Williams (1994) the definition of translanguaging has been refined and expanded by García and Wei (2014) to mean, “an approach to the use of language, bilingualism, and the education of bilinguals that considers the language practices of bilinguals not as two autonomous language systems … but as one linguistic repertoire with features that have been societally constructed as belonging to two separate languages” (p. 2). 3. Gort (2006) defines interliteracy as “the literacy in development of bilinguals [that] may include the application of rules of one written language when writing the other” (p. 337). 4. The CCSS were developed by a consortium of education and political leaders from 48 states and articulate K-12 standards in English language arts/literacy and mathematics to prepare students for college and careers. For more information see http://www.corestandards.org/.

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Authors’ addresses Susan Hopewell University of Colorado Boulder School of Education UCB 247 Boulder, CO 80309

Kathy Escamilla University of Colorado Boulder School of Education UCB 247 Boulder, CO 80309

[email protected]

[email protected]
