[Xmca-l] Re: L2

[Alex Rosborough]

Martin,

Perhaps you're interested in dual language immersion (DLI)? I think
bilingual ed. and DLI can be somewhat umbrella terms but more
specifically, one-way DLI classrooms would be "non-native" language
speakers learning an L2 and often it's in a 50/50 model (half the day in
the L2 target lg. and the other 1/2 in English). Of course there are
variations of the time splits and such. I would still say that DLI
(whether one-way or two-way) is bilingual ed.

Also, I think Remi is right about the novelty of Vygotskian emphasis in
SL/FL. For example, when the rules of some DLI models are too strict, they
may try and sever (artificially) the L1 from the L2. The students are
still thinking in their L1 but a lot of traditional FL K-12 models don't
account for L1 private-speech/inner-speech. Merrill Swain using V. gave a
good talk about using the L1 to assist/relate to the L2 at a CARLA
Immersion conference in 2012:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsgiJndk688

A good practical piece w. V's theory. Perhaps the L1/L2 relationship plus
ZPD/Dynamic teaching might help the K-12 field and university FL courses
move beyond the usual plateaus (i.e., where students reach a certain level
of oral proficiency but haven't mastered deeper lg. concepts like Remi
mentioned). As you may be aware, most of these courses take students
through a certain lexico-syntactic level and then turn to an emphasis in
L2 literature. From an anecdotal view point, I'm seeing pre-service
teachers trying to pass the Oral Proficiency Interviews at Advanced-Mid
for DLI requirements in Utah. If they're at advanced-low (which is most FL
teachers in Sec. Ed.) they sometimes have a hard time moving up one more
level. They don't have courses they can take to improve their level and
they try and live in the target-language for a summer only to find out
that they didn't necessarily improve (perhaps trying to learn/improve
implicitly when they really needed more explicit instruction)??? I think
Lantolf's work (including Leo van Lier) and his group (as Remi mentioned)
uses V. to help this field understand how to move from/beyond implicit to
explicit problem-solving instruction/methods.

Hope this helps - Alex

On 11/3/14 7:32 AM, "Martin John Packer" <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:

>Does the field of "bilingual education", then, include cases where the
>instruction is in only one language, one which the students did not grow
>up speaking? Or would that be called something else?
>
>Martin
>
>On Nov 3, 2014, at 7:29 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@UGA.EDU> wrote:
>
>> 2. The whole field of bilingual education characterizes the areas in
>>which you say there is nothing, at least in the US.
>
>