Doing being applied linguists: the importance of experience
SEVEN CASE STUDIES
Literacy acquisition
In addition to critical (and sometimes skeptical) comment on current received opinion on language learning and teaching issues, applied linguistics also contributes its careful reading of published results in these fields. The study that is now briefly described, the critical literature review of biliteracy illustrates the applied-linguistic contribution to the ongoing debate on literacy in education.
As part of a project investigating schooled literacy in the second language (in this case, English in Australia for speakers of other languages) a critical literature review from an applied linguistic perspective was commissioned (BIP 1997). Given the prevailing view among English as a Second Language (ESL) practitioners of the need to establish prior literacy in the first language (L1), it was important to sift the published evidence carefully.
During the twentieth century, literacy has broadened its scope beyond reading and writing. The term ‘multiple literacies’ expresses one type of broadening by validating often unacknowledged skilled language practices. A plausible interpretation of the broadening to more and more domains is that literacy has extended its province from the apparently straightforward sense of learning the skills of reading and writing to the more all embracing sense of the demands of contemporary education. According to this interpretation, contemporary literacy and schooling are synonymous. What this means, of course, is that traditional ideas of schooling have also adapted so as to incorporate these wider demands. Surprisingly, therefore, literacy and schooling are still in step with one another. Just as schooling used to mean becoming literate in reading and writing, so present-day literacy means being schooled in multiple literacies.
Much of the discussion about becoming literate, both in the narrower sense of acquiring reading and writing skills, and in the broader sense of schooling, emphasizes the ‘rules of the game’ aspect, that is seeing (and accepting) what it’s for (where ‘it’ encompasses reading/writing and schooling).
An issue of concern in schools with multilingual populations is that of the role of the first language (L1), and particularly of L1 literacy, in the acquisition of second-language (L2) literacy, that is of literacy in the school language. Applied linguists become involved with this type of literacy question in two ways, first in helping define literacy in such a way that it is possible to distinguish between the skills of reading and writing and the wider sense of ‘reading the world’ (Olson 1994), and second in clarifying what is meant by being literate in the traditional skills, that is at what point or cut-off a learner is not literate. In discussions of the relationship between the L1 and the L2, the consensus seems to be that since literacy skills transfer from L1 to L2, L1 literacy should be taught prior to, or simultaneously with, L2 literacy.
There is a weak version of this view and a strong version. The weak version states that for full L2 literacy development it is desirable that there should be prior adequate development in L1 literacy. The strong version goes further, claiming that unless there is an adequate base of L1 literacy there can be no L2 literacy development. Views such as these derive in part from the earlier work of Jim Cummins (1984).
Those taking up the strong position emphasize one of two values of prior L1 literacy: the first is that literacy in a second language is easier because learners know what literacy is from their first-language experience. The second value makes the knowledge argument, that proper cognitive development is possible only where literacy has been acquired in the L1.
There is of course a skeptical view. That is that what is needed to acquire literacy in an L2 such as English is more and better instruction in that L2, in this case English. The underlying argument here is that there is no general connection between L2 literacy and the L1 and that a case-by-case approach should be taken when considering policy. School success, it is pointed out, depends on a number of factors, including attitude to schooling. In the morass of individual variation the school turns out to be uniquely powerful. What this suggests is that the good school can make all the difference to the acquisition of literacy in an L2, while the bad school can jeopardize the L2 student’s chances. No surprise there! Interestingly, of course, it places the responsibility for an L2 learner’s success as much on the school as on the student’s attainments in the L1.
If there is a moral to the study of schooling in a second language, it is that there is no homogeneity, except for the school. Languages differ, learners differ, contexts of learning differ, and the L1–L2 relationship differs. It is incumbent on researchers and teachers therefore to take account of previous learning and at the same time not to assume that all previous learning in the L1 is necessarily what matters most for subsequent learning in the L2.
The contribution of applied linguistics to a study of schooled literacy in a second language is to demystify the role of the first language and to examine carefully just what influence it has, motivationally, cognitively and linguistically.
