Poster display of the 4 stages of language acquisition Explanation of the "artful" presentation
Child language acquisition happens in stages. According to Jim Cummins
and Virginia Collier, two of the most respected researchers in second language
acquisition, there are steps which a child must take from first exposure
to the new language to the final step of being fluent in academic language.
Those steps are illustrated in the four posters.
I just gave a staff development session for the teachers at my elementary
school about language acquisition and how to know what stage a child is
going through. Also I talked about how the child felt at each stage.
That is what my posters illustrate.
In the first stage, pre-production, a child is hearing the language in
a meaningful way for the first time. It isn’t very meaningful at
first. The student is surrounded by words and they don’t make much
sense. Once in a while they will hear something that sounds familiar.
This is can be a very silent period as the children new to the language
will listen and try to absorb. The academic tools are out of reach
since they don’t understand the language and therefore cannot read the
books or understand the content. The girl in the poster is as small
as she can be without disappearing. The size symbolizes what she
feels inside.
Then as the students practice and are exposed to the new language more
and more, the words start making some sense. The children will try
to put them together and try to communicate on a basic level. This
experimentation with the language brings the child into the second stage,
early production. The new language learner tries to use the language
and tests whether anyone understands them. Simple dialogues
become hurtles to fling themselves over. Every successful exchange brings
more confidence. The girl starts to grow in understanding and positive
self image as she becomes a participant. She is still on the periphery
but is growing more confident as the language which surrounds her
starts to be more orderly and understandable. At this stage, the
academic tools are still out of reach but she is coming closer to being
able to access them.
The next stage in language development is emergent. At this stage,
children use language comfortably and with confidence. They sound
fluent. The only part of language development which is not fully
developed is academic language, the language they need to succeed in a
school setting. The new language is full of color as the students
start to dream, read, play and learn in it. They have the language
needed to understand TV shows, read books and look up information on the
web. Language is a part of their life. The girl in the poster
has now moved almost to the center of her surroundings as she uses her
new
language with friends. In her mind are some questions about whether
she will be able to learn all the content in her classes since the structure,
vocabulary and expressions used in academic English sound much more sophisticated
than the language she uses with friends. She is not doing as well
in her subjects as her native English speaking friends. Now she wonders
whether she will be able to pass the standardized tests and graduate.
Finally, with access to academic language as well as social language, our
girl experiences success in the academic world. She passes the high
stakes tests, gets a diploma and can now keep learning anything she wants
in her new language. Words and language are orderly around her.
Language can be found in books, magazines and newspapers. The words
she hears sound logical and orderly. She uses words to not
only survive but to flourish. She has reached the stage in language
development which will be with her as long as she uses the language.
In
depicting language development ‘artfully’, I feel that I can reach not
only the theory but the emotion behind the process. Scholars
tend to look at either how the student progresses or how the process is
followed. Except in an art form, it is difficult to mesh the two
aspects.
A
practical side of presenting the concept artfully is that I can follow-up
on the last staff development by showing these posters. The posters
succinctly summarize the presentation and graphically focus our attention
on the issue of how the child feels during the process. Many times
teachers of beginning language learners feel very frustrated because they
cannot ‘get the child to learn’. Depicting the process from the point
of view of the girl might help teachers to focus on how the child feels
about herself at different stages.
I
will hang these posters in my classroom and point them out to students
who are just learning English. It will show them that they are going
through stages which everyone goes through. It will help the students
to understand that the frustrations they are feeling in the pre-production
and early production stages is normal and universal. It will also
show them that they are on a path to academic success as they practice
and use the new language both in school and out.
In
summary, by using an artful presentation of the concept of language acquisition,
the emotional side of the process is highlighted. A straight lecture
or even powerpoint presentation on the process would not have been as successful
touching the heart of the issue which is that we are dealing not with a
process but with human beings.