Teaching and learning Chinese: heritage language classroom discourse in Montreal

This paper explores issues of teaching and learning Chinese as a heritage language in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo Saturday School, in Montreal, Quebec. With a student population of more than 1000, this school is the largest of the eight Chinese Heritage Language schools in Montreal. Students participating in this study were from seven different classes (grade K, two, three, four, five, six, and special class), their ages ranging from 4 to 13 years. The study took place over a period of two years between 2000 and 2002. Focusing on primary level classroom discourse and drawing on the works of Vygotsky and Bakhtin, I examine how teachers and students use language to communicate, and how their communication mediates teaching, learning and heritage language acquisition. Data sources include classroom observations, interviews with students and their teachers, students’ writings, and video and audio taping of classroom activities. Implications for heritage language development and maintenance are discussed with reference to the findings of this study.

Disambiguating with Bourdieu: unravelling policy from practice in the teaching of children with English as an additional language

This article explores the use of Bourdieusian analysis for examining how policy and practice interact in the teaching of English and therefore in the development of children’s language and literacy; in particular how Bourdieusian analysis uncovers the ways in which teachers’ practice has been influenced unconsciously by centralised shaping of the curriculum for English in England while the pupil demographic in schools has become more linguistically diverse. Data were collected from interviews with both newly qualified and very experienced primary school (pupil ages 5 – 11) teachers, whose pedagogical norms for the teaching of English were challenged by the arrival of non-English speakers in their classrooms. The discussion highlights how the use of Bourdieusian constructs of field, habitus and capital can disambiguate teachers’ practical classroom decisions from the influences of policy expectations.

Motivational trajectories for early language learning across the primary-secondary school transition

The transition from primary to secondary school is an area of concern across a range of curriculum subjects, and this is no less so for foreign language learning. Indeed problems with transition have been identified in England as an important barrier to the introduction of language learning to the primary school curriculum, with implications for learners’ longer-term motivation for the subject. This longitudinal study investigated, through a questionnaire, the development of 233 learners’ motivation for learning French in England, during the transition from primary to secondary schooling. It also explored whether levels and patterns of motivation differed according to the type of language teaching experienced, comparing a largely oracy-focused approach with one with greater emphasis on literacy activities. Learners showed high and increasing levels of motivation across transition, placing particular value on learning French for travel. Being taught through an oracy or a literacy-focused approach had less impact on learners’ motivation than broader classroom experiences, with the development of a sense of progress and feeling that instruction met their learning needs being especially important. A growing disjuncture emerged between valuing the learning of French for travel/communication and learners’ low levels of self-efficacy for communication with native speakers, together with a desire for more communication-based activities. By the end of the first year of secondary school less positive attitudes towards learning French and less optimism about the possibility of future progress were beginning to emerge. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of the study for classroom practice in language learning.

When school is not enough: new initiatives in intergenerational language transmission in Wales

This paper examines language reproduction in the family in the context of a highly innovative project in Wales, where the Welsh language has been in decline for over a century. Although Welsh-medium schooling has played a pivotal role in slowing and even reversing language shift in recent decades, there is mounting evidence of the dangers of over-reliance on education. The Twf (Growth) Project was established in 2002 with funding from the National Assembly for Wales with the aim of raising awareness of the benefits of bilingualism among parents and prospective parents. Analysis of interviews with the main stakeholders in the project (managers, the Twf project officers, parents, health workers and a range of other partners), publicity materials and observations of project staff at work suggests that the achievements of the project lie in two main areas: the recognition of the need for building strong alliances with professional groups and organisations that work with families with young children; and the development of a marketing strategy appropriate for the target audience. It is argued that the experience of the project will be of interest to those addressing the issue of intergenerational transmission in a range of other minority language settings.

Reading the world through words: cultural themes in heritage Chinese language textbooks

This paper explores the social and cultural knowledge embedded in the textbooks for language and literacy education in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo School, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It examines how Chinese language arts textbooks introduce the child reader to cultural knowledge considered legitimate and valued in China as well as in Chinese diasporan communities. Furthermore, it looks at the construction of cultural knowledge in Chinese language textbooks in relation to the mainstream ideology to which immigrant children are exposed in and out of mainstream school classrooms. It looks at how the power relationship between legitimate cultural knowledge in majority and minority contexts is established and to what extent it affects language minority students' literacy practices in mainstream school and heritage language school contexts. Data sources are the Chinese textbooks used from kindergarten to Grade 5 in a Chinese heritage language school.

Grammatical gender and the notion of default: insights from language acquisition

The aim of this study is to investigate the contrast in the timing of acquisition of grammatical gender attested in Dutch and Greek child learners. Greek children show precocious acquisition of neuter gender in particular, while Dutch children experience a long delay in the acquisition of neuter nouns, which extends to school age. For both Dutch and Greek, neuter has been claimed to be the default gender value on grounds of syntactic distribution in contexts where gender agreement is inert. To reconcile the contrast between the learner and the language facts in Dutch, as well as the contrast in the timing between Greek and Dutch monolingual child learners, we consider two sets of criteria to define the notion of default: one set pertains to the notion of linguistic default and the other to the notion of learner default. We suggest that, whereas Greek neuter is both the linguistic and the learner default value, Dutch neuter is the linguistic but not the learner default, leading to a learnability problem.

Virtualization for cost-effective teaching of assembly language programming

A virtual system that emulates an ARM-based processor machine has been created to replace a traditional hardware-based system for teaching assembly language. The proposed virtual system integrates, in a single environment, all the development tools necessary to deliver introductory or advanced courses on modern assembly language programming. The virtual system runs a Linux operating system in either a graphical or console mode on a Windows or Linux host machine. No software licenses or extra hardware are required to use the virtual system, thus students are free to carry their own ARM emulator with them on a USB memory stick. Institutions adopting this, or a similar virtual system, can also benefit by reducing capital investment in hardware-based development kits and enable distance learning courses.