Sounds like there's some convergence with Lily Wong Fillmore's findings
that the more gregarious personalities, who throw themselves into exchanges
with mainstream speakers and do a lot of "faking it" with the little L2
they have, are the fastest L2 learners.
In other words, personality plays a big role, and may even be more
important than actual language competence.
Pete Farruggio
>On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, Mike Cole wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Angel-- The least you owe us for using xmca to communicate with
>> Kathleen is a summary of why her paper, "Learning English as a
>> second language in kindergarten: A community of practice perspective."
>>
>> Sounds like just the sort of thing that ought to be published in
>> Mind,Culture, and Activity, it sounds like. What does it say?
>> :-)
>> mike
>>
>
>Hi Mike and fellow xmca'ers,
>
>Yes, a summary that was what I thought some of you might run after me for...
>(cannot be lazy :-)
>
>Well, I think it would be best for Kelleen to do it... (but I guess she's
>been off-line for some time... appeared so in her note to me attached to
>her paper...)
>
>OK summary here: (see if I could do it in 5 minutes' of typing :-)
>
>(1) Site: Canadian kindergarten, children about 5 years old; a mainstream
>classroom of 20, 11 non-English-speaking; recent immigrant children;
>Kelleen focuses on 2 children, a boy from Singapore, a girl from Hong Kong;
>
>(2) Theme: practices, identitiy construction, and access to classroom
>resources and PLAY with others (it's my key word approach :-) : the
>relationship among the 3
>
>(3) Problem facing the non-English speaking children: how to get accepted
>into the mainstream English-speaking children's community
>
>(4) Things that help:
>
>:construct an identity that's acceptable to the
>norms of the mainstream community so that this new comer can have the
>role of a LPP
>
>: if the newcomer happens to have the skills valued by the community,
>e.g., making gifts, skills in using crayons and scissors, writing one's name
>
>: an identity that is palatable to the community e.g., a quiet cute
>little girl
>
>(5) Things that may not necessarily help: English lingusitic competence
>(contrary to what traditional L2 research says)
>
>
>(6) Kelleen's point: SLA is embedded in the larger project of the
>newcomer seeking access to the mainstream community, in her/his
>relative success or failure, and involves those things that help or not
>help the newcomer to enter into the COP...
>
>
>Alright, does this summary help?
>
>Angel
>
>P.S. I have some queries that I'd like to discuss with Kelleen, mainly
>around the question of "identity"... what is meant by "identity" in her
>paper? The notion seems to need some more work...