The Promise and Realities of Two-Way Instruction

Vignette: A Moment of Success and a Moment of Failure

It is a sunny spring morning in Senora Soto's Kindergarten classroom and I am sitting cross-legged on the floor, notebook in hand, trying to extract meaningful field notes from the din and chaos of children playing together in the Housekeeping and Blocks Centers. It is official Spanish time, the time of day when children, regardless of whether they speak Spanish or English at home, are expected to speak with the teacher and with each other only in Spanish. This rule is strictly enforced by Sra. Soto, who is a native Spanish speaker herself and committed to the goals of this two-way immersion (TWI) Kindergarten as she sees them: to make sure English speakers learn Spanish, to make sure Spanish speakers learn English without losing the language their families brought to the USA, and to make sure all children value Spanish and those who speak it. In the mornings, she is Sra. Soto and we speak Spanish, in the afternoons we speak English with her English-speaking alter ego, Mrs. Soto.

I can barely hear Sra. Soto chatting with a small group of children who are working on a puzzle at a table on the other side of the classroom. They are speaking in Spanish, for the most part. I'm impressed, since some of these children only speak English at home. Another boy, despite being a native Spanish speaker, had categorically refused at the start of the year to speak Spanish in this classroom. Laughter erupts from the table; obviously, they are having fun. I realize I have been distracted from documenting the mostly English interactions going on in the Housekeeping Center.

Rashid, an African-American child who has been learning Spanish in this TWI classroom for about seven months now, approaches me and whispers in English, 'Why was Sra. Soto laughing?' Still trying to regain concentration on the nearby Housekeeping play, I shake my head and shrug my shoulders. Then, forgetting myself, I respond to his English question with my own, equally transgressive, English question, 'Why are you speaking to me in English?' Rashid replies, still whispering, 'Because I don't know Spanish'. When I glance (involuntarily?) over at Sra. Soto, Rashid seems to interpret this as a plan to turn him in. He smiles slyly, cocking his head to one side and touching my arm. He says, still in English, 'No no no. Don't tell her. I was only tricking you'. He walks off, looking back at me and still smiling.

This brief vignette illustrates some of the promise but also the reality of trying to teach a minority language such as Spanish in the USA. Over the course of the first seven months of this brand-new Spanish-English TWI Kindergarten program, Sra. Soto was able to help some English-speaking children learn some basic Spanish. She managed to convince some reluctant Spanish speakers to keep speaking the home language that they shared with her in the face of enormous social pressure to speak English, and only English, in this country (Alba, 2007; Suarez, 2002; Wong-Fillmore, 1991). Furthermore, the classroom had a generally friendly and lively atmosphere: children played together with dolls in the Housekeeping Center, they laughed together with the teacher as they put together a puzzle. Overall, this classroom seemed a cheerful, welcoming place. Sra. Soto was strict at times, and was also a warm, caring and imaginative teacher.

Nevertheless, the vignette also illustrates the realities that make TWI teaching a particular challenge. Rashid and I, both native English speakers, knowingly violated the important official Spanish time rule. Both of us were able to speak Spanish, although neither of us was an especially confident speaker at the time. We were probably both up to the challenge of expressing our simple questions in comprehensible Spanish, but we didn't. And we both clearly understood that Spanish was to be spoken, since the division of the day into official Spanish time (mornings) and official English time (afternoons) had been clearly and consistently signaled and enforced since the beginning of the school year in September. We had both witnessed Sra. Soto painstakingly explaining something with repetitions, gestures and pantomime to a child rather than using the child's stronger language, and we had both witnessed children carefully and awkwardly stringing together two or three Spanish words rather than resort to fluent English. Rashid himself had done that. Yet, there was something about two people who share fluency in the same language, safe in the knowledge that we were momentarily alone, that nudged us into speaking English during Spanish time.

Looking back on this vignette, actually, I am appalled. I had chosen to conduct this study because I strongly advocate programs designed to develop and maintain heritage languages like Spanish in the USA, and my own experience of learning Spanish only served to support my conviction that language development requires persistent use of the target language. I find my momentary collusion with Rashid to undermine the classroom 'Spanish-only' rule, a rule I advocated myself, distressing. What was behind this lapse, was it familiarity, laziness, distraction, self-consciousness, a reluctance to code-switch, some peculiar English-speaker solidarity or maybe a little of each? Whatever moved Rashid and me at the time, I am pretty sure these same forces and more were constantly at work in this classroom against the use of Spanish. My observations throughout the school year also made me notice something I had not anticipated: children's interactions often did not require any language at all. Over and over, I witnessed children share classroom tasks and play together happily without saying much at all, and the activity unfolded perfectly well without the linguistic interactions so fundamental to the TWI model.

This book, then, is a critical analysis of the TWI model. It is critical in the sense that I closely examine and interrogate some assumptions about language learning and classroom design that underpin the model. Nevertheless, this is meant to be a constructive criticism. I support these programs wholeheartedly and hope they continue to proliferate in the USA and internationally. There is plenty of evidence that they are effective; overall, children do learn English and another language, usually Spanish, while continuing to achieve academically (Collier & Thomas, 2004; E.R. Howard et al., 2003a; Lindholm-Leary, 2005; Lindholm-Leary & Borsato, 2002). Yet, I believe we need to understand better how they work. My goal is to provide some insights that will help improve TWI instruction. Using an extended ethnographic study of one Kindergarten classroom, my hope is that by closely examining this teacher's accomplishments and challenges, I can help teachers better understand the complexities of children's linguistic (and non-linguistic) interactions and the ways that teaching design can help or hinder language use and development.

What is Two-Way Immersion Instruction?

Language is learned and maintained through interaction, in practice rather than as a separate entity to be studied; 'the co-construction of linguistic knowledge in dialogue is language learning in progress' (Swain & Lapkin, 1998: 321). TWI programs are designed based on this theory. Rather than teaching languages directly, language is used as a medium of instruction and speakers are expected to interact with each other as part of the learning process (Christian, 1994; De Jong, 2002). Children who speak a majority language, or the language that is dominant in the community, are grouped with children who speak a minority language, and all receive instruction in both languages. Occasionally, the term 'dual language' is used to refer to this program design, but can be confusing because it can sometimes refer to a single language immersion model (see Thomas & Collier, 2003 for this distinction). In single immersion programs, children all speak the same language and are all immersed in a common second language, such as French for English-speaking Canadians (Lazaruk, 2007) or English for Chinese speakers in China (Knell et al., 2007). In TWI programs, by contrast, all children are native speakers of one of the two immersion languages and are expected to act as language resources to help each other learn.

Other bilingual models include transitional bilingual education (TBE), where the student's first language is used only long enough to make learning comprehensible in the early years and developmental bilingual education (DBE), where the student's first language is used along with English as long as possible to ensure that the student develops proficiency in both languages (Center for Research on Education Diversity & Excellence, 2001). For English speakers in the USA, there are both total immersion programs, where a foreign language is used exclusively for instruction in the early years and partial immersion, where instruction is divided between English and the foreign language (Lenker & Rhodes, 2007). Like DBE, TWI programs are expected to help children develop full bilingualism, but TWI differs from all these in that both English speakers and English learners are served at once.

The TWI model design suggests a set of implicit understandings of language acquisition; how these manifest in particular teaching practices and interact with other teaching philosophies is explored in more detail in Chapter 3. Language immersion programs in general are based on the assumption that the most effective language learning occurs through meaningful linguistic interactions in the context of natural communication in the second language, through everyday activities that require language use to achieve the communicative task (Lafford & Salaberry, 2003). In this sense, there is less conscious focus on the language than on the communicative goals, and some linguists distinguish unconscious language acquisition from conscious language learning (Krashen, 1985). The language takes on the role of a means to an end rather than the goal of learning itself, a goal whose own means traditionally have taken the form of grammar exercises and memorization of vocabulary.

Providing sufficient, comprehensible yet challenging language input is considered to be one of the basic principles of immersion education in general, and TWI in particular, which implies that languages be clearly separated and that each be used as an exclusive medium of instruction (E.R. Howard et al., 2007). This means that in the early years, monolingual children will need considerable support to enhance comprehension of the language with which they are not familiar. In a total immersion setting, language can be made comprehensible initially through the use of repetition and references to the immediate context (Krashen, 1985) as well as by using formulaic language that children tend to remember in chunks before they are able to parse it (Ellis, 2008). Specific activities might include providing opportunities for children to participate in unison in songs and chants so that they can savor the sound and feel of a new language without risking exposure of language imperfections (Fassler, 2003), employing activities and games that combine physical movements with their descriptions (Asher, 1984) and using multiple linguistic and extra-linguistic cues (Peregoy & Boyle, 1999).

These strategies provide an alternative to the traditional transmission approach to language instruction that has been referred to as sheltered instruction (E.R. Howard et al., 2007). Sheltered instruction strategies in TWI programs must be carefully distinguished from the so-called sheltered English immersion or structured English immersion (SEI) programs mandated for children with limited English proficiency under California's Proposition 227, as these are based on deficit views of bilingualism and foster transition (second/majority language acquisition at the expense of first/minority language loss) rather than bilingual enrichment (Mora et al., 2001). TWI programs are based on a holistic understanding of a bilingual person as having a unique and complex multilinguistic profile rather than on fractional bilingualism, or the expectation that a bilingual person is the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals (Baker, 2006).

The TWI program is also based on research suggesting that extended instruction in one's native language is necessary to achieve long-term academic competence and has a positive effect on second language acquisition (Collins, 2007). Successful English acquisition in children enrolled in TWI programs that offer more instruction time in Spanish than in English supports this interpretation (Quintanar-Sarellana, 2004; Smith & Arnot-Hopffer, 1998). Language interaction between children from different language backgrounds and between the teacher and students is also considered to be more effective than more traditional transmission models of teaching, as this not only provides native language modeling, but also fosters creativity and dialogic engagement (E.R. Howard et al., 2007). In this approach, 'students are not perceived as individuals with empty minds who will learn a language ... (rather) ... both teachers and students critically perceive their realities and create knowledge within dialogue' (Moraes, 1996: 105).

There are two main approaches to language use in TWI programs. In the 50:50 model, English and the minority language are used for equal amounts of time throughout all grades. In the 90:10 model, the minority language is used almost exclusively in the first year or so of schooling and English is gradually added until the languages are used equally, as in the later years of the 50:50 model. There are three main ways to organize language distribution: by time block (e.g. half-day, alternating days, alternating weeks), by subject area (e.g. math and science in one language, other subjects in the other) and by teacher. In this last version, a teacher may have one group of children for the morning and another for the afternoon, but she/he always uses the same language. It is recommended that Languages Arts is taught in both languages (E.R. Howard & Christian, 2002). The separation of language by teacher (one who uses only English and one who uses only Spanish) can be quite effective in terms of maintaining strict separation of languages, but does require teachers to work well as a team (Morison, 1990). An example of separation by content area is the '50-50 Content Model', developed for schools in the Rio Grande border area where there is a high percentage of minority language speakers; the languages are separated by content area (math in English, science and social studies in Spanish, etc.) (Gomez et al., 2005).

In the study described in this book, the classroom assumed the 50:50 model (although there was some adjustment, which will be discussed further in Chapter 4). Languages were distributed by time block (Spanish in the morning, English in the afternoon). In this self-contained classroom, there was one teacher who taught in both languages.

In the USA, where English is the majority language, Spanish is by far the most common minority language of instruction, with 320 of the 346 TWI programs offering Spanish as the minority language of instruction (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2009). The earliest example was the Coral Way Elementary school, which adopted the model in 1963 largely in response to a growing Cuban immigrant community and the increasing interest in multilingualism in Florida (Pellerano et al., 1998). In the classroom described in this book, Spanish and English were used as languages of instruction, therefore I will focus here on Spanish-English TWI programs in the US context, where English is the majority language and Spanish is a minority language. However, it is important to keep in mind that other minority languages, such as Korean and Navajo, are also supported through TWI programs in the USA. It is also important to keep in mind that language status is socially constructed, and that Spanish is actually the majority language in other sociopolitical contexts, such as the Valencian and Basque regions of Spain (Blas-Arroyo, 2002; Sagasta-Errasti, 2003), in Mexico (Terborg et al., 2007) and in Guatemala (Arriaza & Arias, 1998).

The ideal and the reality of two-way immersion instruction

Fundamental to the philosophy of TWI instruction is that it is an efficient and culturally sensitive way to meet the linguistic and academic needs of both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking children (Bickle et al., 2004; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). For English speakers, the most obvious benefit is learning a second language in a country where foreign language fluency is unfortunately rare (Oxford, 1998). Monolingual English-speaking children are immersed in a foreign language at a young age, when intensive language learning is most effective and beneficial (Bialystok, 2006; Foreman, 2002). Other, less obvious benefits cited for English speakers have included confidence in their ability to learn languages, competence in their own native language, raising self-esteem (learning to take risks in the learning process), an understanding of the objective nature of language and appreciation for another culture (Walker & Tedick, 2000).