by Kelly Ball

December 2018

Introduction

            Throughout my lifetime, I have had experiences with different languages in different settings.  From an early age where I was exposed to French and Spanish speakers, to my later years where I was exposed to Portuguese, Korean, Japanese and once again, Spanish.  Some of these experiences were in schools while others were due to where I was living at the time.  While being exposed to different languages, I struggle to connect with any linguistic identity other than being a native English speaker.  I do find myself a bit unique, as I do not see myself as having a particular dialect as I have lived in many places throughout my life.  Until 1997, I had never lived anywhere more than 3 years at a time.  The exploration of my linguistic identity leaves me with the thought that I am a native English speaker seeking to become more proficient in English. 

            Now I as look at my life through reflective lens, it is becoming clearer that language has played a part in me establishing my own identity.  Until recently, I had not really thought about how language has affected me throughout my life, as I had not truly been in a situation where I was in need of a different language.  I can remember when I was getting ready to go to Korea, just how nervous and anxious I was prior to leaving.  A large part of this was me wondering how I would communicate with others, but more so how I would do simple things like go to a store or order food in a restaurant.  At that time, the internet was not as accessible as it is now so it was a little more difficult to research the country and the area within the country I was going to be living in.  I was very fortunate to find someone that had lived in Korea and Japan for a couple of years and he gave me some good advice.  Once there, using his advice, I quickly learned that me not knowing the language was not going to be an issue.  Most stores have signs in the front that identify two things, first that the staff speaks English and second that the store has been approved by the U.S. Army for soldiers.  Of course, I did not think too much about other stores at the time and how they might be just as open to English speaking people, and just did not know the process to become approved by the U.S. Army or to have the sign their storefront letting people know that their staff spoke English.  Due to these features, there was no need, no necessity for me to learn the Korean language. 

            When traveling and staying in Japan, it was much the same.  The only real difference was that the stores were approved by the U.S. Marines instead of the U.S. Army.  The people in both countries were very pleasant and accepting of Americans and English speaking people.  Now that I am a professional educator, I have learned that both Korea and Japan require many years of English in the public schools.  It was actually rare that for me to find someone that did not speak English enough to hold a decent conversation.  I relate this to my time working in a small border (U.S.-Mexico) school district where the majority of students were native Spanish speakers.  It just did not bother me too much; I used it as a game with my students.  We would have days where I could only speak Spanish, and they would help me, and on those days, they could only speak English, and I would help them and they would help each other.  I originally did this as a way to have make the class more interesting and to create an environment that was accepting.  The rule was there that no one was allowed to make fun of anyone else because of the way they spoke or their knowledge of the language.  I think that by me participating, not knowing Spanish very well, made an impact on the students and opened the class up to participating in discussions more.  There is a connection between academic and conversational language and how it relates to language learning. Instructional methodology used in the classroom that supports a blended pedagogic theory of instruction using academic and conversational language in both native and second language has emerged through research in recent research (Rigby, 2015, as cited in Choi & Ollerhead, 2018).

As early as 1984, the Korean education system, largely ran by the federal government instituted student tracking and a requirement for English language education for all students (Byean, 2015).  It is interesting to note that throughout the 1900’s and as recently as 2008 the Korean government has reinstated and reinforced both the student tracking systems and the requirement for English language education in public schools.  In this tracking system, students are tested, and then grouped with other students that score similar on the state mandated tests.  The research has shown that the low performing groups continue to perform lower and the high performing groups continue to perform higher.  The thought behind these groupings, according to the Korean government, is to educate students according to their ability to achieve, and even though it has been proven unsuccessful, it continues (Byean, 2015).  Perhaps the U.S. education system could learn something from this and place the focus on content education as opposed to English language proficiency for non-native English speakers. 

            In my elementary schooling, I think back to having been in a monolingual class paired with a student that only spoke Spanish while I only spoke English.  In my middle grades, I was in a predominantly upper-class English speaking school.  In high school, I took Spanish classes, my first year in an English dominant school and my second year in a Spanish dominant school.  After I graduated high school, I joined the Army and traveled to several places outside the U.S.  While being on a U.S. Army base in another country, language was not an issue or thought of as everyone on base, even the local people working there, were required to speak English primarily.  I now have an understanding of the relationship between language and culture, the importance of language as an aspect of power (Norton and Toohey, 2011), which I hope to explore by connecting linguistic theory with my own life experiences. 

Autoenthnography Defined

            As Ellis (1999) states, “Autoethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness.”  This method of writing combines theoretical research with the author’s personal reflections of his or her own life experiences.  Education and learning are two different things, separate, each serving a different purpose.  Learning is the ability to know some pertinent information long enough to prove to someone else that you know it.  Education combines learning with life experience and application.  Education is the learning that is important to one’s own life; to their existence and their community, it is meaningful.  As Skinner (1964) states “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” 

Public School

            Now I think back to my schooling without much thought about language, yet now realizing there was more of a linguistic element than I previously knew.  In third grade, all I can clearly remember is my spelling class. The teacher had a passion, I take it, for spelling as I remember having frequent spelling tests and spelling homework every night to the point the my mother went to the school to have me put in another class.  My understanding of language at this time was to grasp the proper use of the English language, and to correctly spell the words I was given and the words I was expected to use, properly. In addition, there was an aspect of power even amongst the student depending on how well one could speak English and we positioned ourselves in an hierarchy based on our ability to properly use the language (Norton and Toohey, 2011).  Although I was in an area that was predominately bilingual, English-Spanish, I was in a monolingual class.  I say monolingual lightly as most of the students were Spanish dominant and had parents that wanted their children to learn English and felt that putting their children in a monolingual setting would be the best way for them to learn English quickly.  The prevailing theory and practice of bilingual education at the time was immersion.  This was a truly sink or swim method of teaching students English.  Looking back with what I know now, I would not doubt that many students in this type of setting were considered slow or even placed in special education settings due to language, not ability. 

            During my post-graduate studies and time spent as an educational diagnostician, I have come to realize that the standardized intelligence tests used in the early to mid-1980’s were inherently flawed and biased towards non-native English speakers as well as those born or raised outside the Midwest of the United States.  The intelligence test used at the time were largely based on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence tests, although revised many times, traced it’s origins back to the early 1900’s and was still largely based on a representative sample of students from the Midwestern portion of the United States.  This led to an inherent bias for those outside the region.  The Stanford-Binet tests was also largely focused on identifying those with mental retardation as opposed to providing a true intelligence scale for those outside the scored range of mental retardation, now called intellectual disability (Kaufman,2000).

            As a kid we all think that all the other kids in school all learning the same things, they may have different teachers, and the other kids may be different from me, but we are all learning the same things, the same way.  Now I look back to that kid I was paired with that only spoke Spanish while I only spoke English.  We were supposed to paired again the next year, but he ended up in a different class and I was paired with another student that spoke more English.  I cannot help but think that he might have been placed in special education class based on the results of a standardized intelligence test that was biased against non-native English speakers.  I wonder how many other students were wrongly placed in such classes, and what a disservice this was to those students to be labeled as a special needs student based on language.  There is a “powerful relationship between identity and language learning” (Norton & Toohey, 2011).  I can only begin to imagine the identity these students were creating while being labeled as “slow” or “special” or some other subtle description of being less than average all due to not knowing the right language.

Although Burkhauser et. al. (2016) provides evidence suggesting that learning a second or non-native language through an immersive partner process in early grades provides better results than learning a second or non-native language in later grades, there is no indication that this method provides better results that a dual-language instructional setting.  This research simply states that it is easier to learn a second language beginning in kindergarten as opposed to learning a second language beginning in middle school (6^th, 7^th or 8^th grade).  When I refer to the research present by Ericcson, Preitula and Cokely (2007) and further research by Gladwell (2008), it should take about 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything.  As this theory is applied to learning a language, Eaton (2011) points out that if a student studies a language 1 hour per day, each day while at school, that amounts to 182 hours per year, meaning it would take 54 years using this method to become an expert in that second language.  In the immersion setting the student is exposed to the second language for 7 hours per day, which is 1,274 hours per year, leading to about 8 years of study to become an expert.  Archibald (as cited in Eaton, 2011) points out that there is evidence that suggests learning a second language through content produces better, but not necessarily faster results.

As I think about the research mentioned above about learning, about becoming an expert at something, the obvious truth about learning languages in the U.S. public schools becomes apparent.  The current method, used for many years now that somehow expects a high school student to learn a second language in two school years, or roughly 360 hours is a predictable failure.  At the same time, we expect any student that is a non-native English speaker to master English well enough to pass a federal (and state) mandated standardized test in English in only three years. I am speaking loosely hear about non-native English speakers, because in all reality, the U.S. school system only favors bilingual programs that address native Spanish speakers.  So, if a student is non-native English speaker that speaks a language other than Spanish, there are only English as second language strategies, but no real dual language programs available.  It interesting to note that in Texas the law requires any campus with more than 20 students whose primary language is other than English to implement some type of bilingual program, and even though the law does not specifically mention dual language being English-Spanish, certification through the Texas Education Agency as a bilingual teacher is only offered in English and Spanish (Texas Administrative Code Chapter 89).  Within the preparation programs for becoming a bilingual certified teacher, the preferred methods mention the use of culture significant materials from the student’s native culture in an effort to promote the development of their bicultural identity (Texas Educator Preparation Manual, Bilingual Education Supplement, 2018).

 I took my first year of Spanish in the ninth grade in a school that was predominantly English speaking.  So much so that I cannot recall anyone that did not speak English (of course that could have been due to the people I was around at the time).  This Spanish class was very basic and was a memorization model of teaching.  Most days in class, which was almost 100 students, we listened to a tape recording of a man or woman speaking Spanish and repeated what they said as a class.  There was little homework and I was far from being able to hold even the basic of conversations in Spanish, I did know my numbers and how to ask where the library was!  Now, tenth grade was very different.  Over the summer, I moved to El Paso, Texas, and went to school that was predominantly Spanish speaking.  I was enrolled in year two Spanish for non-native speakers.  There was a huge gap between my first year and second year Spanish classes.  On the first day of year-two Spanish, the teacher came into class and only spoke Spanish.  I was completely lost not understanding anything the teacher was saying.  The next day I went to my counselor and spoke to the teacher about this and was told that everyone speaks Spanish here and that I should learn quickly or find someone to help me.  That is exactly what I did.  I found out the students around me were either football or basketball players.  Most of them were in either the eleventh or twelve grades and some of them were in my other classes, several were in my upper level math and science courses.  We came to an agreement that they would help me with my Spanish class and I would help them in all their other classes.  So, I managed to pass this class without really learning anything. 

In the current educational setting non-native English speaking students are not only expected to learn the language, they are expected to learn content at the same time.  The problem lies within the education system where language is taught without content, context or meaning. Language should be taught through content and within the contextual nature of the student’s needs making language immediately useful while promoting the student to further explore and discover the second language through use (Gee, 2003).  Non-native English speaking students are struggling to learn conversational English, academic English and content at the same time.  When countries such as Korea and Japan implement second language learning within public schools, there is structure that includes both academic and conversational use of the second language. The second language is tested and students are tracked on their progress beginning in the elementary grade levels, some as early pre-kindergarten (Byean, 2015).  As I was fortunate in the U.S. to be a native English speaker, the problem I ran into was that I was expected to master English quickly and be able to be a partner to a native Spanish-speaking student helping him to learn English.  As a child, I thought nothing of it and did was I was told.  Now I think back and wonder how that worked when we could not understand each other.  Sure, we picked up phrases and words from hearing them, but again, without content or context there was no true meaning to the language.  At a young age the power struggle is not as evident as it is at older ages, however my knowing English was the key to my partner’s ability to access his environment while at school.  Unsettling as it may be, I had the ability to choose for him, to allow or disallow him access to a lot things and places within the school.  I do not know just how appropriate it is to give a third grade student that much control over another third grade student.

It is in school where we learn how to learn.  Along with this, we are taught social skills and those in power decide what is important enough for us to be taught.  As mentioned earlier, the education system is not designed to teach language through content or context, it is also not designed to reward students who do well; rather the design is only to punish those who do not conform.  As Skinner (1979) states, “Education has a long punitive history.”  Skinner (1979) continues, “Even without corporal punishment, teachers are still so punitive that most students simply study to avoid the consequences of not studying.”  As an educator, I find it troubling to think that a teacher would punish a student for not knowing the language.  However, this happens, I know it does.  When a student, when anyone, is not good at something, or does not understand something, they will avoid it.  Students, in this case children, do this by acting out or misbehaving.  The reaction to this misbehavior, regardless of the reason, is punishment.  Skinner (1979) explains:

The ordinary teacher, probably burdened by too many students and poorly designed instructional materials, is likely to fall back on punishment – on criticism or ridicule, if not a more violent corporal form. They are all the more likely to do so because, especially when busy, we all tend to deal only with those things which are brought to our attention. Students are always reminding the teacher that it is time to criticize or complain but seldom that it is time to praise or commend. Misbehavior is the signal for punishment. When students are behaving well, the teacher is tempted to “let well enough alone.” But “letting well enough alone” is a fatal principle, Students should be given attention when they are behaving well, not when they are behaving badly. A great change usually takes place in the classroom when teachers learn to look for chances to use positive reinforcement.

Students cannot be expected to learn content, language or anything if the only form of motivation is one of avoiding punishment.  There needs to be shift from a punitive based education system to a meaningful learning education system (Hammond and Snyder, 2015).  Meaningful learning looks beyond the notion that all students should graduate high school college ready, the thinking is that students graduate from high school life-ready.  Hammond and Snyder (2015) state that meaningful learning provides “a new paradigm for educational accountability” in that it provides “an accountability approach that focuses on meaningful learning, enabled by professionally skilled and committed educators, and supported by adequate and appropriate resources, so that all students regardless of background are prepared for both college and career when they graduate from high school.”  This shift in the methodology used in the current U.S. education is not intended exclusively for non-native English speakers but for all students.  If we look again at Skinner (1979), people will avoid things they do not like or feel they are not good at it, this is no different for students.  Much like meaningful learning, this is not limited to teaching language. 

After High School

            Once I graduated high school, I was unable to do much other than work and go to community college due to my age.  Once I turned 18, my main goal was to move, to leave where I was living.  Although this had nothing to do with language, once I left, language played a bigger part of my life.  At this time, I joined the Army and went to Georgia.  Once out of my training I stayed at Ft. Benning and began my Army career, which was not really a career since it was only four years.  I quickly learned that there were quite a lot of non-native English speaking soldiers on post and in my unit.  Due to the location of the post, many people from Puerto Rico were stationed there.  Although they spoke Spanish, a little different from what I was used to, the dialect from Puerto Rico was very different from that from El Paso.  I did notice that there was some prejudice towards these soldiers. 

On post there was a training area called the School of the Americas.  At this school, U.S. soldiers trained soldiers from South American countries with techniques and skills that the U.S. military uses.  There were many derogatory names for the school and assumptions about the people there.  Looking back, some of this was due to the egocentrism that is part of the typical U.S. viewpoint while some of it was towards the people because they often spoke Spanish to each other.  The expectation was that these soldiers from other countries would speak English or quickly learn English.  I was asked several times to instruct at the School of Americas, then when people would find out I was from El Paso, they assumed I spoke Spanish.  There was a level of privilege and power at the school within the South American students based on their level of proficiency in English.  Again, I look to Norton and Toohey (2011) and the power associated with language.  Instead of little kids, these grown men and women were non-native English speakers living in an English-speaking world.  Looking back with a linguistic point of view, it was not always rank that gave these soldiers authority, often it was knowledge of the English language.  These English speakers gave access to outside places, services and other things to those soldiers did not have a strong command of the English language. 

Looking at my post-Army life in education, it has become more evident the role that language has played in my life.  Throughout my teaching and administrative career in education, the school districts I have worked in have been predominantly Spanish speaking.  I currently work in the largest district in the Region, one of the largest districts in Texas and the country serving close to 60,000 students over 90 plus campuses.  Not only is there a dominance of native Spanish speakers, because of our military post, there is also a large number of native German, Korean, and Arabic speakers on some of our campuses.  This makes it more difficult to provide true bilingual programs on our campuses that serve these students and their families.  On the military post, there is a school that teaches in the German language with English being taught as a second language, however, this school is only available to the German soldier’s children that are on post. 

Educational Career

My most memorable experience is the time I spent in the Fort Hancock Independent School District. This is small district of just over 500 students, with three campuses located about 40 miles east of El Paso.  The middle and high school campuses, located next to central office are in walking distance to the U.S.-Mexico Border.  I have worked in several districts, and even though they all have similar demographics and similar proximity to the border with Mexico, “The Fort” stands out.  I am reminded of my time in Korea and Japan thinking about how I needed to learn enough language to get by then realized there was no need as I was able to do whatever I needed using English.  This was the same situation in Fort Hancock and the entire El Paso area, the students, and parents can do anything they need to do in Spanish.  There is no true “need” to learn English.  The only time the students are required to know English in is on the state mandated standardized tests.  There are acceptable second language programs based on the Texas law that districts can use.  At the time of my arrival, Fort Hancock was using a percentage model of dual language instruction in the elementary.  Secondary grades all use English as a Second Language (ESL) strategies as opposed to a dual language model (Note, this is specific to Texas, other states may have or allow different models or methods, Texas Administrative Code, Chapter 89). This percentage program meant that teachers were supposed to provide instruction for a certain percentage of the day in English and the rest in Spanish.  This did not work very well as the English dominant teachers taught more in English ignoring the Spanish and the Spanish dominant teachers did the opposite.  Thanks to a change in administration the district went to a dual language program that the state calls immersive dual language, although it really is not.  The students in elementary would all have two teachers, one taught in English and the other in Spanish.  The students would have half the day in English and the other half in Spanish.  As I feel this is the best method, the problem I had with the implementation was that it started with a kindergarten class, leaving out all students currently in school in a program that the district had decided was not working.  Even though it might have been difficult at first, the program should have been implemented at once throughout the entire elementary school.  I was there long enough to see the results of the different programs as the students came to the middle school.  There was a huge difference in the language acquisition of the students, being quite fluent in English and Spanish and there was an increase in overall academic achievement. 

The research backs up this method and the time the students are exposed to learning a new language in conjunction with their native language (Burkhauser et. al. 2016; Ericcson, Preitula and Cokely 2007; Gladwell 2008; Eaton 2011).  It is evident that the increased time spent learning content in both languages increased achievement in both languages.  It is still frustrating that the U.S. Educational system still places such emphasis on learning English as opposed to learning content.  There is always a struggle with not having enough time to do what needs to be done; this seems especially true in teaching.  Teaching a language should be done through content, as there is not enough time to teach a second language without content.  As Eaton (2011) explains, using Gladwell’s (2008) 10,000 rule to become an expert, then the more instruction in the second language the better chances of the student becoming fluent.  Yet, according to this research, even if the student receives four hours a day for 5-6 years in the second language, they may become somewhat fluent, but will not have mastered it. 

I feel the same struggle as I live in a border town that has a large percentage of native Spanish speakers.  It takes practice and dedication to learn a new language, and the older I get the harder it seems.  Unfortunately, I do not have the opportunities to practice as much now that I am not in the classroom.  I do find it interesting after reading Choi & Ollerhead (2018) that although I am a native English speaker there are still nuisances within speaking English that exist.  It is not simply speaking English, there exists an hierarchy that is tied to one’s overall knowledge and expertise of the English language, and more so as a native speaker.

References

Burkhauser, S., Steele, J. L., Li, J., Slater, R. O., Bacon, M., & Miller, T. (2016).  Partner-language learning trajectories in dual-language immersion: Evidence from an urban district.  Foreign Language Annals, 49(3), 415-433.

Byean, H. (2015). English, tracking, and neoliberalization of education in South Korea. TESOL Quarterly, 49(4), 867-882.

Choi, J., & Ollerhead, S. (Eds.). (2018). Plurilingualism in teaching and learning: Complexities across contexts. New York, NY: Rutledge.

Eaton, S. E., (2011). How long does it take to learn a second language” Applying the “10,000 hour rule” as a model for fleuncy. Onate Press. Calgary, Canada.

Ellis, C., (1999). Heartful autoethnography; Keynot addresses from the first annual advances in qualitative methods conference.  Qualitative Health Research 9(5), 669-683.

Ericcson, K. A., Prietula, M. J., & Cokely, E. T. (2007). The making of an expert. Harvard Business Review.

Gee, J.P., (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Hammond, L.D., & Snyder, J. 2015). Meaningful learning in a new paradigm for educational accountability: An introduction. Educational Policy Analysis Archives 23(7).

Heo, J., Han, S., Koch, C., & Aydin, H. (2011). Piaget’s egocentrism and language learning: Language egocentrism (LE) and language differentiation (LD). Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(4), 733-739.

Kaufman, A.S. (2000). Intelligence tests and school psychology: Predicting the future by studying the past. Psychology in the Schools, 37(1).

Norton, B., & Toohey, K. (2011). Identity, language learning and social change. Language and Teaching, 44(4), 412-446.

Skinner, B.F. (1964). New methods and new aims in teaching. New Scientist, 122.

Skinner, B. F. (1979). The non-punitive society. Keio University, Japan.

Texas Administrative Code, Chapter 89. Adaptations for Special Population. Subchapter BB. Commissioner’s Rules Concerning State Plan for Educating English Learners.  Amended and finalized July 15, 2018, under 43 Texas Regulation 4731.  Retrieved from: http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter089/ch089bb.html.

Texas Educator Certification. Texas Examinations of Educator Standards Program.  Preparation manual for Bilingual Education Supplement (164). (2018) Texas Education Agency. Retrieved from: file:///D:/BIL%20616/Midterm_Final_Paper/164PrepManual.pdf.