ERIC Number: EJ867865
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Jun
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0039-8322
EISSN: N/A
Middle-Class English Speakers in a Two-Way Immersion Bilingual Classroom: "Everybody Should Be Listening to Jonathan Right Now..."
Palmer, Deborah K.
TESOL Quarterly: A Journal for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of Standard English as a Second Dialect, v43 n2 p177-202 Jun 2009
Two-way bilingual immersion education, offered in a fast-growing number of primary schools in the United States, provides primary language maintenance to minority language speakers while simultaneously offering an enrichment "foreign" language immersion experience to English-speaking children in the same classroom, generally with the same teacher. This fusion of two different groups of children, two different sets of expectations, is controversial: Is it possible to accomplish both goals at once, or will teacher and program inevitably end up serving the needs of dominant English-speaking children first? The equation is further complicated when the English speakers in a program come from mainly highly educated middle-class families, and the Spanish speakers come from mainly working-class immigrant families, as is the case in many of these programs. Drawing on audio and video data from a year-long study in a second-grade two-way classroom that shares this class gap between language groups, and using a methodology that fuses ethnography and discourse analysis, this article explores the ways English-speaking children can impact classroom conversational dynamics. (Contains 3 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Language Maintenance, Language Minorities, Immersion Programs, Bilingual Education, Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, Immigrants, Bilingualism, Middle Class, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Grade 2, Classroom Communication
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. 700 South Washington Street Suite 200, Alexandria, VA 22314. Tel: 888-547-3369; Tel: 703-836-0774; Fax: 703-836-7864; Fax: 703-836-6447; e-mail: info@tesol.org; Web site: http://www.tesol.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 2
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A