Pedagogical Strategies to Foster Target Language Use: A Nexus Analysis
Publication: The Canadian Modern Language Review
Volume 78, Number 1
Résumé
Résumé
L’emploi de la langue cible par les élèves demeure un défi pour les enseignants de langue seconde, notamment en raison d’un manque de lignes directrices dans les documents du curriculum, un manque d’expérience chez les enseignants dans l’utilisation d’une variété d’approches pédagogiques et la tendance à recourir à l’anglais comme langue par défaut. Les stratégies de l’approche neurolinguistique (ANL) pourraient promouvoir un emploi accru de la langue cible dans des contextes variés au Canada et ailleurs. Dans cette étude, nous avons exploré la mise en œuvre de certaines stratégies de l’ANL dans un programme allemand bilingue dans l’ouest du Canada. Six enseignants de la maternelle à la 6e année ont modélisé la séquence orale ainsi que la boucle de la littératie pendant trois cycles de deux semaines d’enseignement intensif (instruction uniquement en allemand) dans le cadre d’une étude de recherche-action d’une durée d’un an. Les chercheurs ont employé l’analyse nexus pour traiter des données qui provenaient des entrevues. Les enseignants ont indiqué que les stratégies ont mené à des occasions d’apprentissage plus structurées, délibérément planifiées et collaboratives. Les élèves se sont adaptés rapidement à la séquence orale, ce qui a permis aux enseignants de promouvoir la communication authentique et pertinente. Les enseignants ont fait appel à la boucle de la littératie pour sous-tendre l’utilisation de la langue cible, autant à l’écrit qu’à l’oral. Les enseignants ont travaillé ensemble à planifier et à enseigner, en groupe d’année scolaire, avec des classes jumelées, comme équipe d’enseignement de l’allemand. Les résultats de l’étude indiquent que les stratégies employées pourraient servir également au développement de la langue cible dans d’autres programmes bilingues similaires.
Abstract
Fostering target language use in second language classrooms is a persistent challenge for teachers. A lack of specific guidelines in curriculum documents, inexperience with a wide variety of pedagogical approaches, and the tendency to default to English have been documented as reasons behind this challenge. Strategies from the neurolinguistic approach (NLA) show promise for fostering target language use in a variety of contexts in Canada and abroad. This study examined the use of NLA strategies in one German bilingual program in western Canada. The oral modelling sequence and literacy loop were implemented by six K−6 teachers during three sets of two intensive (German-only) weeks during a collaborative action research project over the course of one year. Nexus analysis served as a conceptual framework for analysis of interview data. Teachers reported that the strategies led to more structured, purposefully planned, collaborative learning opportunities. Students quickly picked up the NLA oral modelling sequence structure, which allowed teachers to promote meaningful communication. Teachers used the literacy loop to scaffold target language use in both oral and written modes. Teachers collaborated in planning and teaching in grade teams, with buddy classes, and as a German teaching team. These results suggest the applicability of these strategies for other dual-language programs to foster target language use.
Target language use, both oral and written, is an expected outcome of students enrolled in bilingual programs of German, Spanish, and Mandarin (among others) in Canada’s four western provinces. Yet fostering productive, rather than merely receptive, skills remains a persistent challenge for teachers. Consequently, teachers continually strive to increase the active, communicative use of the specific target language in these partial immersion programs. Instruction in the target language for 50% of the school day and the teaching of content through the target language are hallmarks of bilingual programs. Through these programs, students often succeed in acquiring the target language to an intermediate level of competence (Siewicke, 2015) while scoring well in English standardized assessments (Macnab, 2010). Teachers, even those without a background in second language pedagogy, utilize a strong repertoire of strategies in teaching the target language (Dressler, 2018). This repertoire is never complete, as these teachers seek to improve their practice through collaborative action research (Stringer, 2014).
Still, the everyday interruptions of elementary school life, the dedication necessary to model the target language, and the constant search for appropriate target language materials provide challenges to teachers seeking to increase the target language output of their students. While curriculum documents carefully outline content goals, specific language goals are often articulated as non-contextualized lists (Alberta Education, 2005a). As students move from year to year, teachers desire to build upon language learning from the previous year. Professional learning to expand teachers’ ability to meet these challenges requires commitment, time, and knowledge of effective strategies.
In this study we examine the professional learning of one team of six German bilingual program teachers at an elementary school in western Canada through the conceptual lens of nexus analysis (Hult, 2017, 2019). The teachers met over the course of one year to design, implement, and evaluate three sets of two intensive German weeks in their K−6 bilingual program. They set specific target language goals and implemented new language-teaching strategies based on the approche neurolinguistique (Netten & Germain, 2009). This neurolinguistic approach (hereafter NLA) provided a frame for language teaching which put oral language use first but still resulted in quality written production. The research was guided by the following question: What is the nexus of practice around pedagogical strategies to foster target language use in a bilingual program? The analysis of a series of interviews with the teachers revealed how the combination of intensive weeks with NLA changed their practice. These changes demonstrate how these innovations could be used as a systematic way for teachers to foster oral and written target language use in other dual-language programs.
Literature review
Fostering target language use is a commonly mentioned challenge in second language programs (Netten & Germain, 2009; Ranta & Lyster, 2007; Tedick & Lyster, 2020). Alberta’s bilingual programs provide instruction in the second language, but teachers are often hired based on language proficiency rather than pedagogical training and are not always familiar with the current research on pedagogical strategies to foster target language use in students (Dressler, 2018; Tedick and Lyster, 2020). Tedick and Lyster (2020, p. 131) suggest that teacher planning that includes scaffolding and the activation of prior knowledge are helpful, as “students are better equipped to deal with the challenge of engaging with content in a language they know only partially, as they draw on the contextual clues provided in the scaffolding and also on prior knowledge.” Haj-Broussard, Olson Beal, and Boudreaux (2017) noted that specific strategies can foster target language use, but since teachers need to teach both language and content, an explicit focus on content sometimes shifts the balance away from language. To investigate how specific strategies might foster target language use, an understanding of bilingual programs in Canada, their pedagogy, and the specific pedagogical strategies in this study are needed.
German bilingual programs in Canada
Dual-language programs in Canada bear the name “immersion” if referring to instruction in an official language (French or English) and “bilingual” if referring to partial immersion programs for other languages (Governments of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, 1999). While bilingual programs are considered part of the landscape of bilingual education in Canada, they are actually a feature unique to the four western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, which have provisions in their respective school acts for instruction in a non-official language for up to 50% of the school day (Prokop, 1990). The bilingual programs for German, along with their Ukrainian counterparts, represent the oldest of the programs, having started in Alberta in 1978 (Prokop, 1990); therefore, German bilingual programs can be considered representative of bilingual programs in Canada.
In Alberta, for kindergarten to grade 6, students in the German bilingual program typically receive instruction in German in two core subjects: German language arts and mathematics, with additional instruction in other non-core subjects (Siewicke, 2015). While the School Act outlines the “up to 50% of the school day” guideline, it does not set out target language achievement goals. Most students entering the program do not have German as a home language (Dressler 2012; Kampen Robinson, 2010). However, by the end of Grade 6, many bilingual program students have reached the A2 level (“basic speaker”) of the Common European Framework of References for Language (Naqvi, Schmidt, & Krickhan, 2014). Thus, the German bilingual programs in Alberta are conceptualized as content-based language instruction at a beginner level of language proficiency in German.
Since German bilingual programs have two languages of instruction, two unique situations arise. First, English language arts and German language arts are two separate subjects, compared with English-only programs or French immersion, which offer only one language arts subject (either English or French, respectively) from kindergarten to Grade 2. Therefore, while other teachers can focus on one language arts for 30% of the school day (Alberta Education, 2014), bilingual program teachers are allotted 35% total for both language arts subjects (Alberta Education, 2019). Second, German bilingual program teachers typically teach both languages (Dressler, 2011). In contrast, in the Mandarin bilingual program, different teachers instruct in Mandarin from those who instruct in English (Sun, 2016; Zhang & Guo, 2017). Having different teachers for English and Mandarin creates what Leung (2005) describes as a speaker division, time division, and curriculum division. While some German programs have a time division of German in the morning and English in the afternoon, typically the language of instruction changes from subject to subject (a curriculum division) several times over the course of the day. Clear divisions (like those in the Mandarin program) can be considered an advantage for maintaining a focus on target language use, but teachers who teach both language arts subjects can capitalize on the overlap in general language arts curriculum outcomes. Therefore, German bilingual program teachers are in the position of having to negotiate the language of instruction but have flexibility in how they meet general language arts outcomes. Having two language arts subjects and one teacher for both languages necessitates the choice of strategies to maximize target language use.
Bilingual program pedagogy
In bilingual programs, no one teaching approach is mandated, and since many teachers are not second language specialists (Dressler, 2018; Zhang & Guo, 2017), they are often not aware of the pedagogical strategies from other programs such as French immersion and rely heavily upon professional learning to develop their repertoire. Therefore, the following description is restricted to pedagogical strategies documented in the specific bilingual program under study. In the German bilingual programs, content and language instruction in German is characterized by pedagogy emphasizing oral communication, a focus on meaning over form, and practices that integrate drama, music, and art (Dressler, 2018; Prokop, 1990). Collaboration in the form of team-teaching partner classes (two classes at the same level) and cross-aged buddy classes have been observed in past research (Dressler, 2012). Intensive weeks are a recent innovation that address challenges with logistical constraints upon German instruction but can be found in other second language contexts (e.g., intensive French programs) and schools in Germany in the form of Projektwochen [project weeks].
Translanguaging as a pedagogical practice is used in bilingual programs in both strategic and naturalistic ways (Dressler, 2012; Naqvi et al., 2014; Zhang & Guo, 2017). These practices, which draw upon all of the linguistic resources of the students during a given lesson (Lewis, Jones, & Baker, 2012), have been shown to support meaning making and identity construction (Cummins, 2014; Dressler, 2018). However, to foster target language production, teachers in this study favoured systematic practice that goes beyond rote repetition to develop procedural knowledge and target language output (DeKeyser, 2010; Tedick & Lyster, 2020). Embedding systematic practice within the German intensive weeks was seen by the team of teachers in this study as a strategy for building up the linguistic repertoire of the students in German. Ballinger, Lau, and Lacasse (2017) argue that the appropriateness of translanguaging as a pedagogical strategy is context-dependent, so in this context, where most students are home-language speakers of English, the dominant societal language, an exclusive focus on German is justified (Lyster, 2019). Acknowledging that teachers and students draw upon other linguistic resources at other times in the bilingual program, we limit our focus here to the use of German in a monolingual mode (Grosjean, 2008) through the use of NLA strategies during three sets of German intensive weeks, during which other languages are not explicitly used or referenced.
Pedagogical strategies to foster target language use
One promising approach to fostering target language use is through the implementation of strategies from NLA (Netten & Germain, 2013), originally conceptualized for French as a second language setting where Germain (2018) observed that students spent years studying French but are often unable to converse or use complete sentences to communicate by the end of their K−12 educational experience. The NLA emphasizes target language use, the use of full sentences, and meaningful communication. NLA unit planning draws on project- based pedagogy (Stoller, 2006) and backwards design (Sleeter, 2018) to provide structure for language practice.
Teachers follow a modelling sequence to demonstrate oral language use; students imitate the model, inserting personalized and meaningful lexical items, and use the model as demonstrated in order to master it. The oral modelling steps are sequenced to provide students with opportunities to use the language in personalized utterances, following the teacher’s model and tailoring each sentence to express their own personal meaning by gradually integrating vocabulary that expresses what they want to say. As all students master the sentence (and subsequent related sentences) following the steps, the teacher can gradually increase the complexity of the sentences, adding adjectives and phrases and otherwise making the meaning richer.
The oral modelling steps are presented entirely in the target language and progress as follows:
1.
Teacher models oral sentence – embedded in a short, personalized narrative and ending with a question, using the same vocabulary as in their narrative.
2.
Teacher asks individual students to respond to the question.
3.
Teacher asks one student to ask another, several times so that all students hear the modelled question/response sequence several times, with personalization.
4.
Teacher asks two students to demonstrate the question/answer sequence in front of the class.
5.
Teacher asks students to turn to a partner and ask the question, partner responds, and they switch.
6.
Class brings attention back to the teacher, who asks several students who their partner was and what their response was (this step is often repeated so that students can converse with several classmates).
The goal is to allow the student to hear the question-and-answer sequence (with personalization) multiple times, so that they have the chance to internalize complete sentences and master them as part of their personal repertoire. Germain (2018, p. 20) notes that “with respect to the number of model structures that they must use and reuse, all the while adapting them to their own life experiences, these must be limited in number.” Limiting students’ exposure to carefully selected structures and vocabulary allows them time to observe language patterns and to practice with guidance. Teachers need to purposefully plan the question-and-answer sequences, thinking about the potential for expansion with descriptive phrases to increase the richness of students’ language.
The oral modelling sequence is part of a literacy loop (Germain & Massé, 2018). When students are able to speak orally about the theme, the focus moves to the reading phase. The reading passage is carefully crafted or selected to allow students to read comfortably, keeping in mind structures and vocabulary that students have just worked through during the oral phase. The teacher models reading of the text, allowing students to witness and then imitate the reading of complete sentences, focusing on intonation and pronunciation of words they already know how to say. During a second reading, the teacher focuses on targeted sound/letter combinations and grammatical structures by asking students to search the text and identify specific features, which may be typographically enhanced to make them salient. Enhancing language awareness in this way will ultimately provide students with support for future reading and writing. Throughout the reading sequence, the teacher continues to ask questions and provides students the opportunity to use the language they already have in new ways.
Germain (2018) pointed out that for students to be able to write a meaningful sentence, they need to be able to say that sentence spontaneously, so the writing phase follows the speaking and reading phases in the literacy loop. Students and the teacher talk about what they will write about and how they will personalize their product. The teacher then models the writing, asking students to offer sentences to construct a cohesive text. Students then produce their own personalized written passage. Once students have completed their own writing, the teacher will invite them to share their writing, either reading it aloud to the whole class or to a partner, or recording it. Classmates will then pose questions or offer comments, reusing the oral language they know and thereby closing the literacy loop.
Recent research has shown success in the implementation of these strategies in intensive French (Carr, 2009; Mueller, 2018; Netten & Germain, 2005), French immersion, and French as a second language classrooms (Mueller, 2018). In intensive French, students are able to participate in conversations about personal topics, speaking in complete sentences and using at minimum the present and passé composé verb tenses by the end of the five months of intensive French (Netten & Germain, 2005). In the late French immersion context, teachers noted that their own use of complete sentences and encouraging students to follow models allowed students to quickly build their ability to speak (Mueller, 2018). Based on the success of the strategies of the NLA in various contexts, we decided to investigate whether the combination of intensive weeks and NLA strategies would foster oral language use in a German bilingual program.
Research design
In this collaborative action research, we draw from the theoretical lens of language ecology: “interactions between any given language and its environment” (Haugen, 1987, p. 325). This lens informs nexus analysis as our choice of conceptual framework for analysis and discussion. Emerging as an “ethnographic methodological strategy” (Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. 9), nexus analysis is growing in application in educational linguistics and sociolinguistics (Hult, 2019), as it provides a contextualized view of language use as a social action.
Nexus analysis sheds light on the nexus of practice, the coming together of three elements that influence language use: the historical body, interaction order, and discourses in place (Scollon & Scollon, 2004). Drawing from Nishida’s (1998, p. 31) understanding of the historical body as existing “at the very time and place where it is a function of the historical world,” the historical body provides a means to illuminate the influences of the past, present, and anticipated future experiences of the social actors. It encompasses the embodied experiences of the teachers working together to plan the school’s intensive weeks. The interaction order pertains to accepted, habituated, sometimes dictated ways in which social actors behave in a given milieu. The use of this term is in line with Goffman’s (1983, p. 2) definition of interaction order as “that which uniquely transpires in social situations.” The interaction order of the program includes two language arts classes separated by language of instruction and content-based language teaching in mathematics (Alberta Education, 2016). Discourses in place refers to the discourses that circulate and are reproduced in a given context, as these “enter into a place where an action occurs and [only some] are most relevant in mediating [the social action]” (Hult, 2017, p. 99). Discourses in this German bilingual program include the desire of the teachers to increase German language use in a monolingual mode. Examining the nexus of practice requires engaging with the nexus by identifying the elements, navigating it to determine how these three elements interact, and ultimately changing the nexus by shaping how the social action is mediated going forward. The changing of the nexus involves examining the results of the implementation of NLA strategies during German intensive weeks in this study.
Participants and context: Identifying elements of the nexus of practice
Within a given context, the social actors can be viewed as individuals whose experiences with language influence their behaviours, but they also act as a collective that has its own experiences with language in the specific setting. The historical body of the collective of six German teachers included all members of the teaching staff of one school that offered a German/English bilingual program who invited the researchers to embark on this one-year action research study of their teaching practice. The teachers decided to implement NLA strategies as part of their intensive German weeks and could opt into periodic interviews and the collection of artefacts from their professional learning with the researchers.
This context is a German bilingual program in which German was taught for up to 50% of the school day (see Dressler 2011, 2018 for research on this and similar programs). In this school, combined grade classrooms were the preferred configuration. For example, there were two classrooms in which teachers taught both Grade 1 and Grade 2 students (hereafter Grade 1/2). Table 1 introduces the German teaching team.
| Teacher (pseudonym) | Grade assignment | Previous years of teaching | Post-secondary education | German as a child |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frau Fischer | K | 9 | Canada | yes |
| Frau Hochmann | 1/2 | 1 | Canada | yes |
| Frau Fitsch | 1/2 | 2 | Canada | no |
| Frau Tischler | 3/4 | 0 | Canada | no |
| Herr Hafen | 3/4 | 12 | Germany | yes |
| Herr Köhler | 5/6 | 16 | Canada | yes |
Data sources and analysis
The data sources for this study are the transcripts of three interviews each for all six participants (n = 18). Each interview was 15–30 minutes long. Artefacts and observation checklists were discussed within the context of the interviews to meet ethics requirements of the school jurisdiction that restricted how classroom observations were conducted and required the identity of children to be masked when discussing artefacts. The interview followed a semi-structured form, with both researchers present.
A nexus analysis of the transcripts focused on the following research question: What is the nexus of practice around pedagogical strategies to foster target language use in a bilingual program? In conducting the analysis, we read through the transcripts of the interviews with the research question in mind, marking sections that demonstrated how the NLA strategies were used by the teachers as well as challenges that arose. We then met to discuss the nexus of practice that emerged, noting that structure, purposeful planning, and collaboration were evident throughout the data. We then returned to the transcripts to pull and sort the quotes using these three descriptors.
Results: Navigating the nexus of practice
The nexus of practice around target language use during the German intensive weeks can be described as structured, purposefully planned, and collaborative. While elements of structure, purposeful planning, and collaboration existed in this social context prior to the introduction of NLA strategies into the intensive weeks, the teachers noted throughout their interviews over the course of the year that the strategies enhanced their professional learning and teaching in these ways.
Structure
Teachers in the German bilingual context were quick to embrace the structure of the intensive weeks, supported by the strategies of the NLA (that is, oral modelling and the literacy loop). Due in part to the immediacy of their professional learning about the NLA just prior to the beginning of the school year, the opportunities for discussion about the possibilities for their intensive German two-week blocks, and the extensive planning in teams, the German teachers felt confident implementing these strategies and adapting them to the needs of their students and their curricular goals. Teacher satisfaction with the NLA strategies of oral modelling and the literacy loop emerged early in the intensive weeks.
Oral modelling
For oral modelling, teachers followed a sequence of steps to allow students to practice sentences, personalizing them (with teacher support) to ensure that they were meaningful and personalized to students’ experiences. Frau Hochmann inspired students to participate in the modelling sequence, accompanying verbal language with gestures and props to encourage their participation:
We would sit in a circle and I would start modeling it and I would pick out some of the grade twos, or some of my kiddos that do German at home, so I know that they can model it. And I would ask them...can you be my helper?... Ich habe braune Augen. Welche Augenfarbe hast du? [I have brown eyes. What colour of eyes do you have?] And always using...the visual cues, so pointing at my eyes, pointing at their eyes...and...we have our colours on little laminated cards too, to hold them up. So braun oder blau oder grün oder blau-grün, grün-blau [brown or blue or green or blue-green, green-blue], whatever it was.
The modelling sequence became familiar to the students. Frau Fitsch noted that “they’ll use some of those questions that [I modelled], sometimes they’ll forget how to pose them, but they’ll kind of remember...some of the key words.” In fact, this same teacher noted later in the year that student willingness to use German was greater than in previous years: “I’ve been noticing more of them are having a willingness to...even if they don’t know all of it in German...they try and say something in German. And then they fill it in with the right − you know like last year I didn’t notice quite as much of that,...and now I’m noticing a lot more the kids who...don’t speak German at home are trying to stick in the little bits that they know.” The oral modelling sequence provided structure that fostered target language use.
Literacy loop
Teachers caught on quickly to the possibilities of the literacy loop during the intensive weeks. They admitted to some growing pains, but most of them came to appreciate the benefits of scaffolding oral language, reading, and writing, albeit in various configurations according to their grade levels. Frau Hochmann said that
the first day was a little tricky, just getting them all used to it. Especially doing it all in German. But after we did it for a few days, they were really, really used to the pattern. And it was really nice, once we had this in place, students know what to expect. And they knew, okay, first we’re going to draw. Then we talk about it. Then we read something or do a game about it. And then we write about [it]. And so every day they knew what to expect...because we stuck with it right from the start and it was something easy...they knew the pattern.
This comment reveals the value of establishing this approach as a structure. When students were comfortable, they were more apt to participate and reap the benefits of scaffolding language in this way. Herr Hafen noted that the loop contributed to the success of writing: there was better “buy-in” because students had heard the words before. Teachers were deliberate about fitting into students’ predicted attention span: Herr Hafen revealed that he frontloaded new material in the morning to ensure students’ full attention and then reworked the new material for the rest of the day. The structure provided by the NLA strategies proved supportive and flexible for fostering target language use.
Purposeful planning
In this study, teachers reported on their purposeful planning and how they felt it fostered target language use. First, they chose which topics, vocabulary, and syntactic structures would promote communication in the classroom. Then they customized resources to bridge the gap in reading materials they encountered. As well, where applicable, they integrated content learning to enrich the time they were spending in the target language. Learning more about how to do purposeful planning often shed light on their prior practices and led to professional learning.
The use of the NLA oral modelling and literacy loop strategies worked especially well when teachers preplanned linguistic input. Frau Fitsch remarked, “when I’m planning, I’m thinking more about what are my specific...sentence structures or vocabulary or things that I need to focus on in order to get these things across.” Compared with previous years, Frau Hochmann noted, “I always tried to get them to do full sentences. But I think last year...my focus was more on talking to them.... my focus now is more on having specific vocabulary.... Or a specific sentence structure.” Using NLA strategies, teachers were able to focus on more complex sentence structure because they were creating scenarios in which these complex sentences were contextualized. Herr Hafen said, “Weil [because] is coming up more...I did some warum [why].” As well, Frau Tischler reported, “we’re starting to definitely get some of the relative clauses because I’ve kind of worked that into most of the things that we did.” Whereas prior to the intensive weeks, teachers had reported difficulty focusing on certain linguistic structures, through purposeful planning using NLA strategies, they found that such planning facilitated target language use.
Since the literacy loop has a reading element that usually requires books in alignment with the chosen theme of the intensive weeks, teachers searched for appropriate books and came up short. Grade 1/2 teacher Frau Hochmann remarked, “we don’t have any books that are so simple, to support [NLA],” and Grade 3/4 teacher Frau Tischler explained, “I looked through the library downstairs...I looked through all of my books in my room, and nothing was simple enough...because I could not find a book about the things we were doing.” In light of the lack of appropriate books, teachers found themselves purposefully planning their lessons around other reading material. Some used online books from Storybooks Germany (Storybooks Deutschland, n.d.), while others created letters from a class mascot written specifically on the topic covered. “In the afternoon, Herr Teddybär always had a letter prepared for us,...it literally had the exact stuff that we wrote from his perspective” (Frau Tischler). In the end, some teachers preferred the customized resources. Herr Hafen remarked, “I just find that tailor-making that has become − that for me is one of the biggest takeaways. Yes, it is hard, but it’s so much more pinpointed.” Even though it would have been convenient to have commercially produced material suited to NLA, the teachers found that the purposeful planning for customized reading material served them well.
Although the original intent of the researchers working with the German team was to foster target language use during German language arts, some of the teachers were eager to extend these strategies to their content teaching (e.g., math, science, social studies). Frau Hochmann was continually imagining the possibilities of integrating language and content: “our focus has been a lot on Social Studies, and German Language Arts, and I’d really like to connect Science...and Math.” Herr Hafen and Frau Tischler created a social studies unit on the regions of Alberta (Alberta Education, 2005b). Frau Tischler found “it was a little bit harder to adapt the approach so that you’re still doing the loop in the proper way and you’re still doing enough oral sequencing, but with new content that they don’t necessarily know.” The teachers recognized the challenges of adapting NLA strategies to teach content, since the approach is intended primarily for language teaching and is more easily implemented into language arts goals, but this did not deter them and remains an area of further professional learning.
Collaboration
The results reveal evidence of collaboration among the German teaching team at three levels: whole team, partner teachers, and Division 1 and 2 buddy classes. The whole team consisted of the six German bilingual teachers and their principal, supported by the researchers. Partner teachers referred to the two Grade 1/2 teachers, who often team-taught, as well as the two Grade 3/4 teachers, who often planned their units together. The Division 1 and 2 buddies refers to the paired classes across the grade levels: Frau Fischer’s kindergarten class was paired with Frau Tischler’s Grade 3/4 class, Frau Hochmann’s Grade 1/2 class with Herr Köhler’s Grade 5/6, and Frau Fitsch’s Grade 1/2 class with Herr Hafen’s Grade 3/4. The collaborations were not new to the historical body of teachers, but they were new to the interaction order of German intensive weeks, when compared with the pre-research year.
As a team, the German bilingual teachers planned for the German intensive weeks by determining where they best fit into the school year and how they could communicate the nature of these weeks to the parents. During the initial planning days, those teachers in partner arrangements came up with a theme and final product from which they did backwards planning (Sleeter, 2018) to decide which question-and-answer sequences and activities to use for each day of the two-week set of intensive weeks. For Frau Tischler and Herr Hafen, it meant “[we] had the same idea but different approach but learned from each other’s experience” (Frau Tischler). During the last planning day of the year, some teachers decided to make plans with their buddy class teacher. These configurations emerged organically as teachers decided which configuration would work for each set of intensive weeks.
Since the teachers had a common structure for the intensive weeks, the planning became more focused and the collaboration benefitted the students as well. First, collaboration encouraged German language use by teachers, as Frau Hochmann noted: “we need to speak more German with each other in front of the students as well. It’s just so easy to revert to English.” Second, it facilitated mutually beneficial activities: “Without buddies, I don’t think it would have happened like that. [In] winter we did a scavenger hunt with our grade 5/6 buddies,...some of the grade 1/2s could help the 5/6s more. And the other way around” (Frau Hochmann). Thus, collaboration among teachers resulted in collaborative learning among students as well.
Discussion: Changing the nexus of practice
At the beginning of the study, the nexus of practice around the social action of meaningful target language use followed teachers’ understanding of immersion pedagogy (Dressler, 2018; Lyster, 1998) but did not include the NLA strategies. Through the action research with these strategies, the nexus of practice was changed (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), resulting in more structure, purposeful planning, and collaboration in the German intensive weeks. One way to view this change is through the changes in the three elements of nexus analysis: historical body, interaction order, and discourses in place.
Historical body
The team of teachers began the project with a curiosity about their practices and an openness to trying new strategies. As researchers, we observed that the teachers used each progressive planning day more effectively than the previous one. As their familiarity with the NLA strategies grew, they were able to settle into planning together more quickly and more efficiently.
Although the German team had a history of working in collaborative teams, the NLA strategies afforded new ways of thinking about collaboration. They saw and made use of opportunities to work with partner teachers or buddy classes. Configurations changed as the year progressed as teachers became excited about additional collaborative possibilities. They planned as a whole team across grades in order to share inspiration and resources, they leveraged their previous experience in terms of buddy classes to increase opportunities for students to produce meaningful oral language, and they planned together in grade teams to ensure continuity for the students. Their reflections show that they recognized the value of this collaboration, and it has become an integral part of their pedagogy.
The team quickly became known beyond the school. They were asked to present at a school jurisdiction professional learning event during the second half of the year. They made mention of their use of the NLA strategies at program promotion events, and their use of the NLA strategies was featured in a publicity video created by the school jurisdiction. As they anticipated potential staffing changes and upcoming student teachers, they discussed as a team how those newcomers would be mentored in the NLA strategies. Changes in the nexus of practice around target language use could be attributed to changes in the historical body of the team of German teachers that resulted from their implementation of the NLA strategies.
Interaction order
The interaction order of the intensive weeks before the implementation of the project was determined largely by each individual teacher. When they adopted the NLA strategies, the interaction order followed the oral modelling and the literacy loop steps to structure the intensive weeks. By deliberately focusing on instructional practices that include “more teacher- student interaction; more opportunities for meaningful interaction among peers; less reliance on non-verbal cues to convey meaning” (Lyster, 2007, p. 5), teachers were able to encourage both oral and written target language use. Teacher practice was affected in more nuanced ways also. Teachers spoke confidently about changes to their practice. Frau Fitsch remarked that “now I’m noticing a lot more the kids who...don’t speak German at home are trying to stick in the little bits that they know.” Frau Tischler noted, “writing in general is a lot more, a lot more time with a lot more editing and a lot more sharing in a loop, to get a better work product in the end.” More than one teacher observed an increase in the quality and quantity of writing for some children, as well as increased engagement. The strategies were affecting their students, which served to confirm the teachers’ pedagogical decisions as formed by the professional learning about this approach.
The teachers reflected on their learning from their experience using the NLA strategies and literacy loop and indicated that their practice would change going forward. In previous research exploring the use of the NLA in various French language contexts (French immersion, intensive French, and French as a second language) (Mueller, 2018), teachers reflected in a similar way about their learning and offered multiple suggestions for supporting their colleagues, and unique applications of the strategies to benefit the language development of their students. Herr Hafen, for example, reflected during the second round of two weeks that “we actually prolonged it for the second week, so it was longer than two weeks, because it worked so well.” He mused at length about the possibilities for extending the model of three two-week intensive periods because of the success he’d had: “you see it. You see it work” and “maybe even expand it to a fourth one (period of two-weeks)...more, not less. More of it.” After the intensive weeks, Herr Hafen integrated NLA strategies by spreading the stages of the loop (oral, reading, writing) over several days: “I use the first day to [introduce] the topic, lots of speaking, and to use the vocabulary...[in the] second session to get the students to speak [and] model it again. [In the] Third session, revision.1 And then...reading...then the fourth session...[we] use the writing.” The use of the NLA strategies beyond the intensive weeks emerged as teachers’ experiences with them increased.
The interaction order changed within the nexus of practice around target language use to such an extent that teachers altered their conceptualization of bilingual program pedagogy to include the oral modelling and literacy loop as essential components not only of the intensive weeks but also of their pedagogy throughout the year.
Discourses in place
The discourses in place − the ways of speaking about how target language use could be fostered in partial immersion − changed in the nexus of practice as well. Prior to the implementation of NLA strategies, discourses in place around immersion pedagogy could be described as content-based language teaching, but without a specific structured approach to language teaching. At first, teachers were ambivalent about the benefits of using a given structure for their lessons and expressed concerns that fostering target language use might lead to excessive teacher-fronted instruction. They felt challenged by how to introduce linguistically complex forms such as the German past tense, how to encourage reluctant speakers and younger children to speak in complete sentences, similar to the teachers reported by Haj-Broussard et al. (2017). With each successive set of intensive weeks, the teachers observed that the use of NLA strategies resulted in more student talk in the target language than they had previously seen in the classroom. Frau Fischer commented in her interview that her students “definitely have been speaking more than they have in previous years.” The teachers attributed the increased speaking to the “confidence building for them to speak in front of others” (Frau Fischer) that students gained from familiarity with the question-and-answer sequences and their ability to personalize their examples. The discourse of second language writing as “too hard,” especially in the afternoon, was replaced when the literacy loop strategies resulted in increased quality and quantity of writing scaffolded on the oral modelling. While challenges in fostering German use still remain when teachers consider content-based language teaching, something Germain himself considered “ambitieux [ambitious]” (Germain & Massé, 2018, p. 55), teachers saw their discourses in place changing and expanding to include the use of NLA strategies as part of what defined bilingual program pedagogy within their classes and school.
The changes within the historical body, interaction order, and discourses in place resulted in a changed nexus of practice around target language use. Moving forward, the nexus of practice comprised structure, purposeful planning, and collaboration through the use of NLA strategies. This changed nexus had the most influence on the intensive weeks during which the strategies were most intentionally used, but with the changes in the historical body, interaction order, and discourses in place, the potential for the use of NLA strategies outside of those weeks was identified.
Conclusions
The results from this study reveal the potential for intensive weeks and NLA strategies to address the challenge of fostering target language use in Canada’s immersion and partial immersion programs. The professional learning of the teachers was structured around the focus on German during intensive weeks and the use of the oral modelling sequence and literacy loop. Through the lens of nexus analysis, the changes in the German teaching team’s historical body, the interaction order of the intensive weeks, and the discourse in place that circulate within the program emerged. In examining the professional learning of the teachers, we documented the changed nexus of practice. Teachers embraced the strategies that encouraged purposeful planning to foster the use of German. The teachers’ observations of students’ use of German revealed how NLA provided a structured approach to language teaching that previously had not been a part of the discourses circulating in the program. Additionally, working in various configurations (partners, whole team), collaborating around a specific approach (NLA strategies in intensive weeks), provided for strengthened collaboration in the nexus of practice. Thus, the professional learning around the implementation of intensive weeks and the use of NLA strategies are credited by the teachers with fostering target language use.
We acknowledge that these results are specific to this German bilingual program context and that claims about increased target language use were based solely on teacher observation. This research design decision was deliberate, as this program, like others of its type, does not have the enrolment necessary to facilitate large-scale comparative testing. We suggest that further research is needed to demonstrate how NLA strategies might influence students’ growth in linguistic competence over time. However, in light of the above limitations, which exist in other bilingual programs as well, we recommend future research into professional learning of bilingual program teachers in other language contexts. Scholarship around bilingual pedagogy is informed by the results from this study, especially as explained through the lens of nexus analysis.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the teachers who participated in this study for their generous sharing of time and insights. Funding for this research was provided by the Alberta Advisory Committee for Educational Studies.
Footnote
1.
As a native speaker of German, Herr Hafen often used the English word “revision” rather than “review” which is what he was actually describing here.
References
Alberta Education. (2005a). German language arts: Kindergarten to Grade nine. Edmonton, AB: author. Retrieved from http://education.alberta.ca/media/371307/german-language-arts-kindergarten-to-grade-9.pdf
Alberta Education. (2005b). Social studies kindergarten to Grade 9 Program of Studies. Edmonton, AB: Author. Retrieved from https://education.alberta.ca/media/3273004/social-studies-k-6-pos.pdf
Alberta Education. (2014). Handbook for French immersion administrators. Edmonton, AB: Author. Retrieved from https://education.alberta.ca/media/3115178/frimmhandbook.pdf
Alberta Education. (2016). Mathematics kindergarten to Grade 9. Edmonton, AB: Author. Retrieved from https://education.alberta.ca/media/3115252/2016_k_to_9_math_pos.pdf
Alberta Education. (2019). School administrator’s guide to implementing language programming. Retrieved from https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/2ef0f149-cdb4-4821-b077-d63d1e59ae5b/resource/5c498229-ed8e-4804-9931-22de85c31421/download/edc-guide-to-implementing-language- programming-2007-updated-2019.pdf
Ballinger, S., Lau, S.M.C., & Lacasse, C.Q. (2020). Cross-linguistic pedagogy: Harnessing transfer in the classroom. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 76(4), 265–277. https://doi.org/10.3138/CMLR-76.4.001-EN
Carr, W. (2009). Intensive French in British Columbia: Student and parent perspectives and English as Additional Language (EAL) student performance. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 65(5), 787–815. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.65.5.787
Cummins, J. (2014). Rethinking pedagogical assumptions in Canadian French immersion programs. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 2(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.2.1.01cum
DeKeyser, R. (2010). Practice for second language learning: Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. International Journal of English Studies, 10(1), 155–165.
Dressler, R. (2011). German-English bilingual programs: Transitioning to a dual immersion model? Forum Deutsch, 19(1), 11–22. Retrieved from http://www.forumdeutsch.ca/f/nf30catg
Dressler, R. (2012). Simultaneous and sequential bilinguals in a German bilingual program (Doctoral dissertation). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/27789
Dressler, R. (2018). Canadian bilingual program teachers’ understanding of immersion pedagogy: A nexus analysis of an early years classroom. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 74(1), 176–195. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.3407
Germain, C. (2018). The neurolinguistic approach (NLA) for learning and teaching foreign languages. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Germain, C., & Massé, O. (2018). Approche neurolinguistique : le français en tête. Le français du monde, 47, 52–61. Retrieved from https://liseo.france-education-international.fr/index.php?lvl=bulletin_display&id=9801
Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095141
Governments of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. (1999). The common curriculum framework for bilingual programming in international languages, kindergarten to Grade 12: Western Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Basic Education. Retrieved from https://education.alberta.ca/media/481780/the-common-curriculum-framework-for-bilingual-programming-in-international-languages.pdf
Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying bilinguals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Haj-Broussard, M., Olson Beal, H.K., & Boudreaux, N. (2017). Relating French immersion teacher practices to better student oral production. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 73(3), 319–342. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.3521
Haugen, E. (1987). Blessings of Babel: Bilingualism and language planning: Problems and pleasures. Berlin, Germany: Mouton De Gruyter.
Hult, F.M. (2017). Nexus analysis as scalar ethnography for educational linguistics. In M. Martin-Jones & D. Martin (Eds.), Researching multilingualism: Critical and ethnographic perspectives (pp. 89–103). London, England: Routledge.
Hult, F.M. (2019). Toward a unified theory of language development: The transdisciplinary nexus of cognitive and sociocultural perspectives on social activity. Modern Language Journal, 103, 136–144. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12527
Kampen Robinson, C. (2010). “Es kommt nur naturally”: Language use of sixth grade students in an English-German bilingual program (Master’s thesis). University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10012/5669
Lewis, G., Jones, B., & Baker, C. (2012). Translanguaging: Developing its conceptualisation and contextualisation. Educational Research and Evaluation, 18(7), 655–670. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2012.718490
Lyster, R. (1998). Immersion pedagogy and implications for language teaching. In J. Cenoz & F. Genesee (Eds.), Beyond bilingualism: Multilingualism and multilingual education (pp. 64–95). Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.
Lyster, R. (2007). Learning and teaching languages through content: A counterbalanced approach. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Lyster, R. (2019). Translanguaging in immersion: Cognitive support or social prestige? The Canadian Modern Language Review, 75(4), 340–352. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.2019-0038
Macnab, J. (2010). Investigation on the longitudinal effects of immersion and bilingual programs on first language development. Edmonton, AB: Confucius Institute in Edmonton.
Mueller, K. (2018). Investigating the intensive French approach: A report on the 2017−2018 phase and Final Summary Report on the Longitudinal Study for the Calgary Board of Education. Calgary, AB: Calgary Board of Education.
Naqvi, R., Schmidt, E., & Krickhan, M. (2014, June 17). Evolving 50-50% bilingual pedagogy in Alberta: What does the research say? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00413
Netten, J. & Germain, C. (2005). Pedagogy and second language learning: Lessons learned from Intensive French. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(2), 183–210. Retrieved from http://www.aclacaal.org
Netten, J., & Germain, C. (2009). The future of Intensive French in Canada. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 65(5), 757–786. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.65.5.757
Netten, J. & Germain, C. (2013). Pour une nouvelle approche de l’enseignement de la grammaire en classe de langues : grammaire et approche neurolinguistique (ANL). Revue japonaise de didactique du français, 8(1), 172−187. https://doi.org/10.24495/rjdf.8.1_172
Nishida, K. (1998). The historical body. In D.A. Dilworth, V.H. Vigliemo, & A.J. Zavala (Eds.), Sourcebook for modern Japanese philosophy (pp. 37–53). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Prokop, M. (1990). The German language in Alberta: Maintenance and teaching. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press.
Ranta, L., & Lyster, R. (2007). A cognitive approach to improving immersion students’ oral use abilities: The Awareness-Practice-Feedback sequence. In R.M. DeKeyser (Ed.), Practice in a second language: Perspectives from applied linguistics and cognitive psychology (pp. 141−160). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S.W. (2004). Nexus analysis: Discourse and the emerging internet. London, England: Routledge.
Siewicke, N. (2015). Partial immersion in German: The English-German bilingual program in Edmonton Public Schools. In K. Haataja & R.E. Wicke (Eds.), Qualifiziert Unterrichten: Sprach- und fachintegrietes Lernen in der Zielsprache Deutsch (pp. 81–84). Munich, Germany: Hueber.
Sleeter, C. (2018). A framework to improve teaching in multicultural contexts. Education and Self Development, 13(1), 43–54. https://doi.org/10.26907/esd13.1.05
Stoller, F. (2006). Establishing a theoretical foundation for project-based learning in second and foreign language contexts. In G.H. Beckett & P.C. Miller (Eds.), Project-based second and foreign language education: Past, present, and future (pp. 19–40). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
Storybooks Deutschland. (n.d.). Storybooks Deutschland. Retrieved from https://global-asp.github.io/storybooks-deutschland/
Stringer, E.T. (2014). Action research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sun, M. (2016). Peer collaboration in an English/Chinese bilingual program in Western Canada. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 72(4), 423–453. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.3362
Tedick, D., & Lyster, R. (2020). Scaffolding language development in immersion and dual language classrooms. London, England: Routledge.
Zhang, Y., & Guo, Y. (2017). Exceeding boundaries: Chinese children’s playful use of languages in their literacy practices in a Mandarin–English bilingual program. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 20(1), 52–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2015.1037713
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
The Canadian Modern Language Review
Volume 78 • Number 1 • February / février 2022
Pages: 75 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 2022.
History
Published ahead of print: 17 September 2021
Published online: 1 February 2022
Published in print: February / février 2022
Keywords:
Mots clés :
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Related Content
Citations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
Download article citation data for:
The Canadian Modern Language Review 2022 78:1, 75-90
The Canadian Modern Language Review 2022 78:1, 75-90