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Deconstructing communicative work-related activities using the 'Continua of Biliteracy'
Get PDFResearch on teaching Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) is notably limited, particularly in exploring initiatives that bridge SFI education with real-world contexts. This paper extends from a follow-up investigation (see Walldén, 2023) of a municipal program aimed at integrating formal SFI instruction with practical work placements (known as språkpraktik, as outlined by Thornéus, 2018). The study aims to enrich understanding of the multifaceted dimensions of multilingual development activated when students engage in teaching moments related to job search and participation in language internships.
Employing ethnographically inspired methods including observations, note-taking, and transcribed audio recordings, this research documents seven SFI lessons targeting C and D level students, focused on preparing them for placement interviews and tasks. Theoretical underpinnings draw from the continua of biliteracy (Hornberger, 1989; Winlund, 2020), which delineate four crucial dimensions: contexts, development, content, and media, conceptualized as continua.
Findings reveal a predominant emphasis on written language, such as discussing appropriate vocabulary and structure for crafting cover letters ahead of placement interviews. This process necessitated fluid transitions between everyday and abstract language. Preparations for placement tasks also facilitated movement between students' first languages (L1) and Swedish (L2), particularly evident when the teacher encouraged discussions leveraging their multilingual competence to explore grammatical features. However, the concentration on written language occasionally shifted tasks intended to enhance students' oral L2 proficiency into exercises adhering to written language conventions.
While previous studies have advocated for increased utilization of L1 in L2 teaching, this study underscores the importance of challenging the overemphasis on written language in basic language instruction to promote biliteracy development among adult migrants
Inbetweeners?: Minority language learners in the primary-lower secondary school transition in Norway
Get PDFIn this poster presentation, I will introduce my PhD project in which I aim to shed light on the language choices of individuals having the subjects of Sámi, Kven or Finnish as a second language (SKF) in their transition from primary to lower secondary education. This project is also part of a larger interdisciplinary research project on Multilingualism in Transitions (MultiTrans).
The SKF subjects are educational offerings intended for historical minorities in Norway and are chosen in addition to all the mandatory subjects. Therefore, having an SKF subject at school is a marked choice (Sollid, 2024). However, statistics show student loss in the SKF subjects throughout the educational system. In my study, I use a qualitative approach to examine how the SKF pupils experience and navigate the language choices related to the SKF subjects in the primary-lower secondary school transition. At this stage of the educational system, pupils can for the first time decide for themselves if they want to choose or opt out of these subjects.
I employ nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) as a theoretical-methodological framework to explore the making of choices related to the SKF subjects as a nexus of practice, a junction of multiple social practices and contexts. The study draws on ethnographic data (classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and various biographical methods) collected over one year in an urban space in Northern Norway. In this process, I followed the educational transition of six SKF pupils in real-time as they went from one educational level to another. My preliminary findings suggest that the choices related to the SKF subjects at this educational stage involve multiple in-between spaces on different timescales. Among these are: weekly transitions between mainstream classrooms and SKF classes; “onetime” choices in the vertical transitions between educational levels; or choices connecting to the discourses of language shift and language reclamation
Text complexity in curricula and language assessments
Get PDFTheories of language development assume that children are exposed to increasingly complex vocabulary, morphosyntax, and discourse in educational contexts, and thus typically acquire these complex linguistic concepts and structures. These theories further inform assessments and interventions for children with language disorders, as well as general educational benchmarks.
Clinical and educational assessments increase in linguistic complexity with age due to this assumption, however, there may be mismatches in: 1) overall text complexity 2) the rate at which text complexity increases 3) which aspects of text complexity increase. If language in curricula is less complex than that of assessments, students have fewer opportunities to learn tested linguistic concepts and structures. This study aims to explore this through corpus analysis of textbooks and assessments, addressing the following research questions:
Is text complexity congruent across grade-school curricula and standardized language assessments?
How does text complexity in curricula vary across grade levels?
How does text complexity in curricula vary across subject area?
Elementary and middle school textbooks and clinical language assessments were obtained from an American metropolitan school district conforming to Common Core Standards. Clinical language assessments frequently used by school-based speech-language pathologists were selected for analysis as well. Stimuli corresponding to each grade were selected from the assessments.
The textbooks and assessments were digitized and analyzed using computational methods drawing from traditional communication sciences & disorders measures, traditional education measures, and less frequently used computational measures. The measures assess complexity at the word-, sentence-, and discourse-level. Measures were calculated using Python scripts and Coh-Metrix.
Preliminary analyses show that textbooks have higher syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and lower readability. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is higher than the targeted grade level in textbooks, and lower in assessments. Textbooks and assessments do not differ significantly on cohesion measures. Assessments are more narrative-like compared to textbooks.
Assessments and textbooks are not linguistically congruent; reading comprehension on an assessment may be less difficult than that of curricular texts. Students’ performance on reading comprehension assessments may overestimate their ability to comprehend curricular texts, emphasizing the need for support in curricula comprehension
Reflecting on a nexus analysis network
Get PDFThe aim of this poster is to reflect upon an online study group/ research network (Nexus Analysis Network) as a site of engagement. Run by PhD students, the network unites junior and senior scholars to discuss topics related to nexus analytical research on a monthly basis. Through reflective practice, we want to better understand our roles - as researchers and participants - as situated, discursively constituted and subjectively experienced (e.g., Hassemer & Flubacher, 2020). In doing so, we inquire about this specific community of practice (Wenger, 1998) and our mutual engagement to examine how the network supports participants' professional development around methodology. We ask the research question: How does the network support participants' professional development around methodology? Using nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), we examine our own historical bodies and identify the network’s interaction order, and discourses in place within the group. As a subset of the network’s participants, we represent four countries and distinctive historical bodies as students (2) and faculty (2). We recognize how our historical bodies as researchers differ with regards to culture and language, but share common research and methodological interests that motivated our participation in the network. The bottom-up, distributed leadership structure results in an interaction order that gives agency to newer members and encourages democratic participation. The interaction order is technology-mediated through the use of a video platform (Zoom) and communications platform (Discord and Google Drive). Discourses in place include flexibility, agency, differentiation, and reflective practice. In this poster, we reflect upon the social action of discussing methodology in the study circle meetings and how this participation has supported our professional development as researchers. This network can serve as a model for other communities of practice
Socialisation into a school language for non-native speakers
Get PDFOver the past two years, the number of non-native Czech-speaking pupils has rapidly increased in the Czech Republic. The reason is the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The presented study aims to describe the process of socialisation into a school language. Two research questions were set:
What vocabulary forms the centre of the school language?
How do non-native speakers understand this vocabulary?
In addition to the acquisition of the regular language, non-native speakers must also acquire the school language. The school language is very specific; therefore, it is often considered to be a special type of foreign language (cf. Šalamounová, 2015; Higgins, 2003; Lemke, 1990). Along with the education itself, pupils also learn this specific language at school. The school language is dominated by a characteristic vocabulary. The main requirement is the linguistic economy (e.g. by using nouns instead of verbs) teachers achieve the so-called condensation of meanings (Sharpe, 2008, p. 135).
The methodological design consists of a comparative frequency analysis of data from the SCHOLA2020 corpus and an analysis of the instructions used in the textbooks. Based on the results of the analysis, a basic list of lexemes typical for the school language was defined. This list was transformed into a didactic test with various types of tasks. In the second phase, the test was given to pupils aged 10-15 years (respondents included non-native Czech speakers and a comparative sample of native speakers).
Based on the evaluation of the test results, lexemes that are difficult for non-native speakers were identified and will be usedfor teaching purposes
Explicit teaching of general academic vocabulary in multilingual classrooms: An intervention in grades 2 and 5
Get PDFThe aim of this ongoing intervention study is to advance the teaching of general academic vocabulary (GAV) in multilingual classes. Our research questions are whether and how explicit teaching of GAV increases vocabulary development. Prior research has shown that academic vocabulary is crucial for students to be able to follow the teaching, to read and understand textbooks, instructions (Snow 2010, Zwiers 2013) and assessment items (Townsend et al 2012). In a Swedish study of vocabulary in teaching materials (Lindberg & Johansson Kokkinakis 2007), it was concluded that not only the vocabulary related to specific disciplines could pose barriers to students' understanding, but also interdisciplinary high frequency vocabulary. Explicitly working with vocabulary has shown to have good effects on the learning for adult learners of Swedish as a second language (Lim Falk & Riad 2023). Similar findings have been obtained by Kim (2017) in an academic vocabulary intervention project with low income preschool children. The teaching of disciplinary academic vocabulary has been widely researched; however, research on the explicit teaching of GAV seems to be scarce. Our project started with in-service teacher training and continued with interventions in four classes (grades 2 and 5). The teachers were asked to focus specifically on GAV collected from their working materials in Swedish/Swedish as a second language, Mathematics, Science and Social Science during four weeks. One class in each grade was appointed experimental class and had, apart from explicit reviews of the vocabulary during the reading of texts, also assignments to do using the vocabulary, such as working with flash cards, writing word lists etc. The control class was asked only to work with the reading of the texts and to review the vocabulary orally. A pretest, immediate tests each week and a delayed post test were conducted. The teachers also filled out a questionnaire on how often and how they used to teach vocabulary before and after the intervention. The explicit teaching of GAV is expected to reveal positive outcomes on the students’ vocabulary learning, and to improve teaching development. Implications for GAV teaching among multilingual students will be shared and discussed
Signs of language development in the school subject Swedish as a second language
Get PDFIn this study, upper secondary school teachers and a researcher are collaborating on planning, implementing, and evaluating research-based teaching, aiming to strengthen multilingual students’ language development and content learning. The collaboration takes place within a commissioned university course where both the teachers and the researcher participate and build on a design research approach. The aim of the study is to describe and explain multilingual students’ language development over the course of four month of a research-based intervention. Two overarching questions, which will be specified later, guide the project:
What signs of students’ language development can be identified during the intervention?
To what extent can the signs of language development be related to teaching practice?
This poster presents the initial results of a case study involving one student during a teaching sequence in the subject of Swedish as a second language in upper secondary school. The data consists of the student’s written reflections, oral peer interaction, and the oral interaction between student and teacher, both individually and with the rest of the class. Data consists of screen-, video- and audio recording, students’ notes and assignments, classroom observation field notes, and teaching materials. The data forms a sequential and holistic text chain (Holmberg, 2012) of the student’s oral and written verbal utterances during the teaching sequence. Drawing on social semiotics (Halliday, 1993) as a theoretical framework, the linguistic analysis was done inductively and exploratively. The poster will present early results from these analyses, i.e. signs that may show how the student is progressing towards a language that is functional for meaning making within the specific practice of the school subject Swedish as a second language
Automatic objective reading fluency measures of child and adult speech
Get PDFAim and research questions: The aim of the present study is to gain insights into the possibilities of obtaining reliable, valid and robust objective measures of reading fluency for automatic reading assessment. The research questions are 1) to what extent can we calculate reliable, valid and robust objective measures of read speech fluency?; and 2) how do such measures calculated for child read speech relate to corresponding measures computed for adult read speech?
Theoretical framework: Recent findings published in the PIRLS and PISA surveys offer an alarming picture of reading proficiency among Dutch youngsters, which has led to a call for innovative solutions that can boost reading instruction. One important aspect in reading education is how to keep track of reading development so that timely intervention becomes possible before it is too late. Current reading tests in school are laborious for teachers to administer. In addition, these tests only measure reading accuracy and automaticity, and not the third aspect of reading fluency, which is prosody (Kuhn et al., 2010). Automatic reading assessment through AI-based speech technology is the research avenue that is being explored in this study to overcome these limitations. It is important to include prosody measures in reading assessment, since these are important indicators of reading comprehension (e.g., Morrison & Wilcox, 2020).
Methodological design: Using AI-based speech technology, we compute automatic measures of reading fluency directly from read aloud speech recordings by Dutch adult and child speakers. We validate the automatic measures by comparing them with measures calculated from manual speech transcriptions and annotations. Subsequently, we analyze the relationship between these objective measures of reading fluency and multidimensional subjective measures of reading fluency for both adult and child speech.
Expected findings and conclusions: We expect to be able to compute automatically several objective measures related to different dimensions of subjective read speech fluency that are reliable, valid and robust. Since the children are still in the process of learning to read, we expect to find differences in scores on these measures between children and adult
English-medium instruction in Sweden: Parental motivation in school choice
Get PDFEnglish-medium instruction (EMI) has long been offered in upper secondary schools and higher education in Sweden. More recently, the number of schools offering EMI for younger pupils has increased. Aiming to understand the linguistic aspirations and imagined outcomes behind the parental choice of the EMI option in compulsory schools (Years 0-9), we conducted a small-scale interview study (Paulsrud & Cunningham, forthcoming) with five parents who chose EMI for their children. Our interview questions encompassed topics such as factors influencing the choice, knowledge and impressions of the school, and beliefs about language use in the school context. The analysis of the parents’ motives was framed in Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment (capital, ideology, and identity), as well as informed by theories of language ideologies, linguistic hierarchies, and parental aspiration. Our findings reveal that the perceived benefits of fluency in English, high academic achievement, and calm environments interconnect explicitly with first, linguistic aspirations, as seen in the parents’ investment in the assumed capital afforded by the English language; second, an ideology of the English language as connected to a better academic situation than the Swedish language; and third, an identity ascribed to their children as able and willing to accept the challenges of instruction through another language. Tensions in the three key areas of investment were also evident, as parents struggled with the effects that their linguistic aspirations and imagined outcomes may have on their children’s use and development of Swedish. In conclusion, an exploration of parental motives in choosing EMI for their children reveals that unpacking the motives behind and the consequences of their desires should be of interest to educators and policymakers in all contexts where EMI is offered to young learners
Linguamapping: the new frontier in language processing
Get PDFIt is fairly undeniable that phenomena such as global warming and COVID have had a significant impact on the way we do research in educational linguistics. In this context, traditional lab-based instruments intended to measure incremental language processing such as eye-tracking and self-paced reading have had to come to terms with several limitations (Boyce, Futrell, Levy, 2019; Spencer Patterson & Nicklin, 2023) such as testing participants located remotely, decreasing the amount of travel to testing sites, and minimizing human contact.
The aim of this talk is to introduce a new tool in linguistic processing research, Linguamapping, that is more sustainable, accessible, and affordable than eye-tracking and self-paced reading, yet equipped to yield comparable, albeit not as sophisticated, data. The tool marries two types of software, one designed for the creation of conventional word order exercises used in textbooks and a specific cloud-based heat mapping software, Plerdy, intended to record an internet-user’s mouse movements and clicks across the screen. We exemplify the tool reporting results from a pilot demonstrating how Linguamapping can track L1 Spanish transfer to L2 English sentence processing in real-time. A word order exercise testing knowledge of English word order in 4 sentence types (sorry no space is allocated by the call for papers to repor examples in the abstract) comprised 24 items, 6 per sentence type. It was made up of a word list at the top followed by a line with gaps where participants dragged and dropped words from the list. Above and beyond accuracy scores on the number of correct sentences, we recorded 3 measurements of processing: videos recording mouse movement while reordering; the total number of clicks on each word; the most frequent word order for critical words.
Results confirm L1 transfer affected participants’ response and showcase Linguamapping’s ability to explicitly capture L1 transfer in real time via videos and numerical click data which traditional behavioral tests achieve only via inferencing of correct and incorrect responses and eye-tracking/self-paced reading achieve via more expensive, and less sustainable and accessible means. We conclude the talk discussing limitations of Linguamapping at its current stages of development