Biliteracy References
From LiteracyTentWiki
1.Klaudia Rivera, Native Language Literacy and Adult ESL Learners Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus December 1999 http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/natlit2.html
Excerpt:
“Research conducted with adults in the United States in recent years shows that reading in the native language aids the acquisition of and reading ability in a second language. A study conducted with adult learners from diverse language backgrounds such as Spanish, Cambodian, and Korean suggests that these learners may benefit from their native language literacy skills because there is a transfer in basic reading skills from the first to the second language irrespective of the scripts involved.”
Adult learners “also come with many strengths embedded in their language, culture, and experiences. By incorporating learners' native language, programs have the potential to draw upon these strengths in facilitating their learning English and becoming literate in their native language and in English.”
2. Heide Spruck Wrigley and Larry Condelli, "What Works for Adult ESL Students," Focus on Basics, Volume 6, Issue C, September, 2003. www.ncsall.net http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/vision.pdf
Excerpt: "Judicious use of the native language made a difference in both reading and oral language skill acquisition as shown by results on standardized tests. We didn't have any native language literacy classes, and we didn't have any classes in which teachers did a great deal of translating for the students. But students had higher gains when the students in the class shared a language - (in our case, Spanish) - and the teacher was bilingual and used Spanish here and there, to give instructions, or to clarify, or to offer a quick translation of a difficult term."
3. Adult ESL Language and Literacy Instruction: A Vision and Action Agenda for the 21st Century Presented at the National Literacy Summit, 2000http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/vision.pdf
4. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Recommendations for Addressing the Needs of English Language Learners March 20, 2009 PRINTED IN CAL NEWS, APRIL 2009 http://www.cal.org/
Excerpt: "At the same time, most schools fail to capitalize on the linguistic resources that ELL students do bring to the classroom, undermining a critical foundation for school success. A solid research base supports the use of students' home language to help them acquire the literacy skills in English that are essential for school success and workplace competitiveness."
"In addition, bilingualism and biliteracy further enhance social, economic, and intellectual opportunities for students and are goals that many parents and educators wish to pursue. Current policy and practice do not align with what the scientific research shows about the value of the home language in promoting ELLs' school success. Nor as a nation are we taking advantage of ELLs as a source for developing the multilingual and multicultural resources of our society, which are so valuable in today’s global economy."
5. Elsa Auerbach: Reexamining English Only in the ESL Classroom [www.ncela.gwu.edu]
6. Hugo, Y.H. Lee (2009). Exploring biliteracy developments among Asian women in diaspora. Doctoral Dissertation. Indiana University.
7. Kalmar, Tomas Mario Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy: Latino Migrants Crossing the Linguistic Border, Published: November 1st, 2000, Routledge Press.
FROM THE REVIEW AT AMAZON.COM: Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy--based on four years of intensive fieldwork in a small rural community in Southern Illinois--is a landmark work in the area of adult literacy, combining insights from linguistics, anthropology, literacy studies, and education in a culturally situated exploration of the language and literacy practices of migrant workers. As such, it is a substantive contribution to the linguistic study of indigenous literacies; to sociocultural approaches to language, learning, and literacy; and to ethnographic and critical approaches to education.
The book begins with a true story about illegal aliens who, in the summer of 1980, in the town of Cobden, Illinois, decided to help each other write down English como de veras se oye--the way it really sounds. The focus is on why and how they did this, what they actually wrote down, and what happened to their texts. The narrative then shifts to how and why the strategies adult immigrants actually use in order to cope with English in the real world seem to have little in common with those used by students in publicly funded bilingual and ESL classrooms. The book concludes with a discussion of the ideal of a universal alphabet, about the utopian claim that anyone can use a canonical set of 26 letters to reduce to script any language, ever spoken by anyone, anywhere, at any time. This claim is so familiar that it is easy to overlook how much undocumented intellectual labor was invested over the centuries by those who successfully carried the alphabet across the border from one language to the next. From this undocumented labor, without which none of us would now be able to read, everyone profits.
To make his story and his argument as accessible as possible, Kalmar steers clear of jargon and excessive technical terminology. At the same time, however, readers who are familiar with any of the current postmodern discourses on the social construction of symbolic forms will be able to bring such discourses to bear on what he has to say about the game, the discourse, and the scene of writing that constitute the focus of his theoretical analysis.
When people today argue about illegal aliens in the United States, probably the last question on their minds is the one to which this book is devoted: how do illegal aliens use an alphabet they already know in order to chart the speech sounds of colloquial English? It is the author's hope that readers will interpret his story as a parable with serious political implications. Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy is a compelling, vitally relevant book for researchers, students, practitioners, and anyone else interested in language and literacy in social, cultural, and political contexts, including bilingual and ESL education, second-language acquisition and development, applied and sociolinguistics, multicultural education
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