Category: Multi-cultural multi-lingual

Diversity and "multicultural" literature

Deep into my readings on this topic and it’s not making me feel particularly cheerful.  The statistics are appalling.
On the one hand one should be glad that there are enough people who care enough to keep count. On the other, it doesn’t appear that the counting leads to any measurable improvement.

Here are the statistics from 2002 to 2014 from Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  And to take note of their criteria – it’s only the diversity of the United States that is counted – i.e. African / African Americans; American Indians; Asian Pacifics / Asian Pacific Americans and Latinos. The diversity in the rest of the world? Well who is counting? Who cares? Or are we just not able to access it?  What about the glory of the international librarian networks? Or are we really just still in our bubbles?

Looking at the translation scene in the USA via the Batchelder Awards; Garrison, Forest and Kimmel (2014) remark how:

“A brief skim of the most recent winners and honors shows that most of the books derive from European languages including French, German, and Dutch. The story settings show somewhat broader geographic diversity including places throughout Europe as well as Asia, Africa, and South America. Garrison and Kimmel (in press) found that a composite Batchelder Award winner or honor from the years 1997-­2013 would be a realistic fiction novel set in Western Europe featuring a male protagonist and dealing with a serious topic like World War II.” (Garrison, Forest & Kimmel, 2014, p. 72).
The absolute skewness in publishing is highlighted in this (dated, but probably still relevant and apparently not recently updated) dichotomy:
“While children’s literature from so-called developing countries hardly ever reaches European and American readers, a recent survey revealed that 80 per cent of books for children set in non-European and non-American cultures are written by European and American authors (Fremde Welten 2001) (O’Sullivan, 2004, p.20)…Alongside these countries which only export children’s books while almost failing entirely to import any are those which provide a market for the global corporations – 70 to 90 per cent of books available to reading children in non-European/American cultures are by European or American authors – but whose own books rarely cross the linguistic, political or cultural divide to partake in the Western market (O’Sullivan, 2004 p.22).”
Other low points include the depiction or even existence of racially / culturally mixed children or people (Chaudhri, 2013) – a reality that is strikingly obvious the moment you walk into any (international) school.
Onwards and upwards… it can’t get any worse after all.

References:

Chaudhri, A. (2013). Growing up mixed/up: Multiracial identity in children’s and young adult literature. In J. C. Naidoo & S. P. Dahlen (Eds.), Diversity in youth literature: opening doors through reading (pp. 95–123). Chicago, Ill: ALA-Ed.
Garrison, K. L., Forest, D. E., & Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Curation in translation: Promoting global citizenship through literature. School Libraries Worldwide, 20(1), 70–96. 
O’Sullivan, E. (2004). Internationalism, the universal child and the world of children’s literature. In P. Hunt (Ed.), International companion encyclopedia of children’s literature (2nd ed., pp. 13–25). London ; New York: Routledge. Retrieved from EBook Library

 

Picking the locks one-by-one

A few months ago a tradesman came to the door to fix something. Here in Singapore such people are often Muslim and therefore petrified of dogs. So my helper put the dog in a separate part of the house and closed the door, not knowing that it was one of those doors that lock themselves if the button is pressed in, which it was for some inexplicable reason. And although that part of the house has two doors leading to outside which are usually open all day every day, they’d been closed and locked due to a late afternoon rainstorm accompanied by a lot of wind.  Before calling the landlord’s agent for a spare key, I did what every other independent woman would do, I googled “how to pick a lock”. The instructions, video and otherwise all boiled down to the same simple steps.

Since I could access the garage and all the tools and assorted things like paperclips and hairclips (grateful for once for stuff lying around the house instead of being tidied up) – I set to work. In the process I discovered that the lock was “the wrong way round” to my sensibilities – do you notice that – doors and locks having to be turned “the other way” to what you’re used to in your home country?
Needless to say, there is a good reason why I’m not a burglar, nor a locksmith and the spare key had to be called into action. If you want to find out more about locks and security – here’s a great episode of 99% invisible.
After that huge digression to come to my point. As I wrote earlier, I have a large population of ELL students who come through the library and I’m always trying to find “that” book that will unlock their desire to read in English (actually I’m trying that for everyone, just this population seems to have the highest and most immediate needs.
Sometimes things happen quite by accident.
My G4 classes have been doing a unit on poetry as part of “how we express ourselves” and besides some great activities with spine poetry (much to the horror of my library assistants who are not used to such free-wheeling attitudes to taking books off the shelf) one day I decided to promote verse novels.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert on any aspect of children’s literature, but I’m a keen learner, so I looked for some lists of verse novels for elementary students and then tried to see how many I had on hand. I’d read “inside out and back again” which is a fabulous book, so I felt it may work.
For each of my next G4 classes I had a pile of verse novels and I picked out one page to read from each.  Since my darling dog had just been put down the previous night, it was with a chocked voice I read from “Love that Dog” and luckily I had a whole pile of those to dish out since one of my predecessors had the foresight to order them in duplicate.
After the lesson a few of the books were borrowed and I didn’t think that much of it. Then a week later one of my Chinese students sidled up to me during lunch time and asked me for a book “like that dog” book, and I gave him “Hate that cat”, and yesterday he came to me and said he’d finished it and wanted more books like that.  I said “more about animals, or more like poetry” and he affirmed more like poetry, and I passed on “Inside out and back again” and told him it was one of my personal favourite – he quickly scanned inside the book and happily said “yes”.
And yes of course it would work.  I’ve not studied this stuff and I’m feeling my way along, but sometimes our students just help us to discover what it is they want and need.  Coming back to it rationally – verse is short and beautiful and evocative and free. And now it’s just one more tool in my arsenal of lock-picking equipment.
Here are some resources:

 

A linguistic Trio – part 2 Crisfield

Crisfield (Blog)

Like Rojas, Crisfield began by dispelling some of the common “mummy myths” around language, particularly that it was easier to learn for children – she said something that every parent with older children will have personal experience of – “no it’s still hard, but they’re just too small to complain”. Although they are more phonetically sensitive and therefore more likely to speak other languages without an accent. She emphasized that the role of parents was to ensure that we make our children’s language journeys as easy as possible, and to do this we have 6 tasks:

1. Learn the theory
2. Set Goals
3. Plan to achieve the goals
4. Communicate with our children
5. Communicate with others
6. Know when to get help.

Learn the theory

We commenced with a little bit of jargon, what is mother tongue, L1, home language etc. (see my glossary here for a complete vocabulary).

One of the most important things she touched on is how we need to take care of the messages (verbal, non-verbal and behavioural) we give our children about the relative importance of our mother tongue and our attitudes towards it, particularly in the case of languages with a lower status.

Set Goals

This was a discussion on what level of mastery of language (communicative and literary) was aimed for and why.  It was important to think the whole language journey through (or at least while they were students). While it was possible to impose our language expectations on our children while they were younger, we would need to be able to communicate a valid good reason for continuing the regime as they matured and formed their own opinions. In the case of multiple languages we needed to order our priorities and give reasons for them.

In setting goals, we should ensure we have the necessary knowledge and support network to support those goals and that the goals are realistic (I’ve written more on this here in theory, and as it relates to my family situation).

Plan to achieve the goals

Here the concept of a COP (community of practise) was introduced – i.e. is there a linguistic community around you that you can get help from.  The smaller the COP, the more planning and logistics were required.

The most fundamental issue was planning for enough language input.  According to Crisfield, research showed that for bi/tri-lingualism children needed around 30-35% of their linguistic input to be in the target language. (You will note I’ve said bi/tri-lingualism rather than multi-lingualism, which is what I used to say … I’d not heard the 30-35% statistic before and need to follow up on this). She stated that if language input was only say 20%, the child would understand the language but would most likely become a passive bilingual.  The 30-35% targeted input suggests that three languages are the most realistic option initially – with the caveat that this could change as the child got older.

In the case of language, it appeared that “less is more” should be our motto to ensure our time and effort is focused and is not spread too thinly.

It was also paramount to plan for multiple literacy, so that the language would not be lost over time and children could continue to resource their language maintenance on their own through reading and writing.  Once again, the reminder that BICS (conversational) language takes 1-2 years while CALP was a 3-9 year process (I’ve heard 5-7 years more commonly used).  She also cautioned that problems in other subjects may be masking a problem in language or a learning difficulty.

And in our globally mobile environment – we needed to think about a future in different countries or environments and how this would impact our plan and resourcing.  Language acquisition and sustainability was a long term process that couldn’t rely on one school or community if this was not likely to be permanent.

Communicate with our children

As mentioned earlier, at a certain point we will need to justify our choices to our children and to ensure that they are part of the discussion / conversation around language, and who speaks what and why in the family.  Choices are valid, but they should be properly communicated.

Communicate with others

One should communicate language goals, expectations and intentions with people around you. Like grandparents and other family, babysitters and others in the community to ensure their actions and language they speak are aligned. School teachers and administrators need to be kept in the loop about what is happening linguistically at home.

Know when to get help

If children are exhibiting delays in speech and language, or learning issues it’s important to look at all languages globally and not just at the dominant language. Any therapist, professional or doctor needs to understand the developmental and educational issues around bilingualism so that a proper assessment can be made. It is not good practise for a professional to suggest that one language should be stopped (e.g. to stop the home language to encourage the school language).

5 further issues were also discussed, literacy, content, cognitive development, confidence and social development.

Literacy

Children were learning to read and write in two or more languages.  In doing so, they could use translanguaging, which is where one language is used to help or scaffold the other, languages are used together and used strategically. This did not imply mixing languages or inserting words or sentences of one language into conversations randomly, but rather a strategic use in order to bridge gaps.

In order to become literate, children needed to go beyond merely being able to read in both languages to comprehending and understanding the content. Parents needed to check for understanding after reading to children or when children read to them.  This may require the reading of a story in both languages to ensure that meaning is conveyed, or reading the story more than once.  Reading to children in all languages was fundamental.  And, ironically children could often write before they could read, if they know letter formation and are left to creative phonetic spelling without correction.  Experience rather than accuracy should be emphasized.

Literacy in both languages could be simultaneous (at the same time) or sequential (where reading and writing of one language is started with and then the next added). In the case of a third language it is usually advisable to give children a mental break before adding the literacy of a third language.

Talk about the second language in the MT, compare and contrast and mediate in order to clarify similarities and differences.

Content

If the school language is different to the home language, one should support content at home using the home language with the help of websites or textbooks (in the home language). Conversations at home should include what is being learnt at school so that children gain vocabulary in the home language and make links between the school language and home language. This will enhance the quality of conversation in the home language as well.

Cognitive Development

Research has show that achievement in the school language is dependant on keeping up literacy in the mother tongue, and that if children are incapable of doing things in the mother tongue, they may struggle to do it in any language. It is the mother tongue that pulls all other languages up and if MT is not maintained there will be gaps in cognitive development and difficulties in conceptual thought and conversation.

Confidence

The use of MT encourages confidence in self and in one’s cultural identity.  It encourages cognitive growth and learning and allows children to experience competence at home and at school.  Children are not as resilient as we’d like to think they are, and we need to help them in their language journeys so it is not a case of sink or swim.

Social development

Encourage using the MT socially, during holidays and with family.
In conclusion this was a talk with a lot of very practical advice and tips for families around bringing up children in a bilingual environment, whether the result of two parents speaking different languages, or a child going to school with a non-home language, or even where three languages (mother, father and school) were involved.