English Language Learners and the New Standards. Margaret Heritage
No is my question (pero) . . .
María: Is my question, so . . .
José: Is your question?
Ms. Warren: I want you to share your questions at the table. Read your questions to the rest of your table group, and as you read, I want you to think about just one question. Alright? I want you to decide on one question that you’re going to share with all of the class.
As the students enthusiastically work together, Ms. Warren approaches a group and listens attentively to their deliberations. A student asks, “Why the particles is around the atom?” As he speaks, he twirls his pencil to emphasize “around.” A second student replies, “Oh, around the other atoms, why is going around the other atoms?” A third student says, “I think, why the electron is smaller than other atoms, and why so faster?” Hearing his question, Ms. Warren asks, “Can you say your question again, please?” He repeats, “Why the electron is so smaller and so faster?” Ms. Warren asks, “How do you know it is an electron?” The boy replies, “Because the electron is smaller, I know this.” “But we just had to observe the simulation, it didn’t say ‘electron’ in the simulation, right?” said Ms. Warren. “What did you see?” “Little circles,” the student responds. “Right, little circles,” echoes Ms. Warren. “Because we don’t know yet that it is an electron, we only know we saw little circles. So if you say it’s an electron, that is making an inference. We only know now what we can actually observe, right?”
At another table, students in a third group of four share their questions with each other and then start selecting which question they will present to the whole class. Suchada, a girl from Thailand, works with male classmates from Iran, Mexico, and Burma:
Suchada: Is there a structure of atoms?
Asef: What is this?
Ramiro: Why the particles is around the atom?
Farid: Why this little circle, eh, is smaller and, uh, faster?
Suchada: So which question are you—are we—are we going to ask?
Farid: MY question.
Suchada: Let’s do this [does “rock, paper, scissors” gesture].
I’m the only lady, so . . . No . . . I’m joking! Or maybe we can join together.
Asef: Yeah.
Suchada: Can do one.
Farid: One. Yeah. My question [finish].
Suchada: No. Let me see. No, we can all join together and just make one/once.
Let me see.
Asef: Why the particle is around the atoms?
Ms. Warren: This table: can you tell me your question, please?
Farid: [sharing the question that puts together the four students’ ideas] Why this little circle is smaller and faster and, uh, move around other atoms?
Ms. Warren: That’s a big question. Why the little . . . [starts repeating the question]
. . .
What are the major shifts we can see in this vignette? First, instead of learning language as an individual activity, students are engaged in learning as a social process through which they become familiar with science ideas. Second, rather than learning English in terms of grammar and structures, they are learning language as a means to apprentice in scientific analytical practices such as observation and asking questions, and developing scientific language uses. And third, the students are engaged in activities designed to scaffold their development and autonomy as learners.
Now we will elaborate on the pedagogical shifts outlined in table 2.1, describing the changes in practice that each one entails.
From . . . Seeing language acquisition as an individual process
To . . . Understanding it as a social process of apprenticeship
If we took a cursory look at a group of classrooms in American schools today, especially those with a high proportion of ELLs, in the majority of cases we would likely see a teacher standing in front of the room, students seated in rows, tables, or desks clustered together, silently listening to a teacher. Whether or not these teachers consciously hold this view, their actions indicate a belief that learners acquire the academic uses of a second language by listening to someone who knows how to use the language well. A reformulation of practice requires a shift from the view that language learning is something that is internally processed by the student in the brain’s “black box” as a result of external input—listening to the teacher. Consistent with sociocultural theory, students’ second-language learning is best fostered by participation in carefully structured interactions that provide them with the opportunity over time to develop conceptual understandings, analytical practices, and dynamic language use in a domain.3
An optimal way of characterizing this process of participation is apprenticeship. In any field, apprentices learn through being mentored and socialized to become members of a community of practice, for example, a community of lawyers, doctors, carpenters, or weavers. Apprentices are provided with models of their community’s practices and opportunities to develop skills, and are encouraged to take risks in a supportive environment so that they eventually appropriate the target skills.4
ELLs are no different. They become apprentices in a community of practice focused on specific disciplinary work (math, science, art, history) that entails specific uses of language. Through their apprenticeship in their classroom community of practice, all ELL students can become increasingly skilled in the language use of the discipline.
We saw student apprenticeship in action in Ms. Warren’s science class. The students are apprentices in learning an important science practice: asking questions after careful observation of phenomena to seek additional information.5 They are also developing their understanding of subatomic particles, and they are learning all of this in English, their new language. To support their learning, Ms. Warren has prepared a sequence of steps that take students from individual to group exploration of the meaning of the prefix “sub” through their viewing of, recording observations about, and formulating questions about a simulation video. Students use their own resources, including their native language when appropriate, to make sense of the task. They help each other refine their questions, and they listen attentively to partners’ queries. In the culminating activity, teams have to choose one question to be shared with the whole class. After some back and forth, one team decides to combine all of their individual questions into one. In the process, all the students have had the opportunity to meaningfully work on their emerging understanding of concepts and to express them in English.
Ms. Warren has made it possible for each and every student to think, come up with a question, express it, listen to and consider other queries, and finally, working in a group of four, decide on just one question of several offered to be taken to the larger group. In every instance, the process of conceptual, analytical, and linguistic development is mediated by interaction.
Through communicating with peers and mentors, students in Ms. Warren’s class gradually and purposefully rehearse their uses of the language, and in the process become increasingly adept at them. Nobody is silent in this class. Every student is provided with the opportunity to be an apprentice.
ELLs also need legitimacy, the recognition by members of the community that, from a shaky start, they have the potential to become full-fledged members of the group. They have the right to engage in ways that may be linguistically imperfect at first, but that nonetheless accomplish the work of communicating key conceptual understandings and processes. We saw the notion of legitimacy exemplified in Ms. Warren’s class. Both María and José know that