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.