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The Silent Experiences of Young Bilingual Learners
This book offers an alternative insight to that which is most commonly available to teachers and researchers, as instead of examining language acquisition purely from a linguistic approach; it explores the learning that is occurring through a sociocultural lens and even more significantly, from the young child's perspective--the worm's eye view. The book not only initiates new understandings of second language learning, but also offers creative ideas on how to raise the achievement of children who are learning English as an additional language.
eBook
The Silent Experiences of Young Bilingual Learners: A Small Scale Sociocultural Study into the Silent Period
This ethnographic study focuses upon the experiences of a small number of early years bilingual learners' during the emergent stage of English language acquisition - the silent period.Building upon historical understandings of sociocultural theory, Vygotsky (1986), Lave and Wenger (1991), Wenger (1998), Rogoff (2003) and Gee (2004) provide the platform upon which the evolution of sociocultural learning theory is applied and tested out in relation to the interconnectedness of the spoken mother tongue, thought, and learning.Legitimate peripheral participation is examined as a workable concept through which to explore the initial learning trajectory of an emergent bilingual learner whilst negotiating participation within, through and beyond the early years community of practice during the silent period.A multi-method ethnographic approach to data gathering adopts Flewitt's (2005) 'gaze following', as an alternative means of participant observation through which to identify silent participation within an early years setting. Additional ethnographic methods include unstructured interviews with bilingual and monolingual participants, which are interspersed with significant auto-ethnographic accounts.Funnelling the data through thematic analysis facilitates both the emergence of significant patterns and the `encapsulation' of significant data within vignettes. Sociocultural theory is tested out against the research findings through the analysis of nine selected vignettes. The findings present the silent period as a crucial time for learning; distributed through a synthesis of close observation, intense listening and copying. Examining the silent period through a sociocultural lens tentatively reveals silent participation as a significant but lesser acknowledged contribution to the early years community of practice.
Dissertation
REVEALING THE PORTRAIT
Chapter 5 presents a richly coloured portrayal of ‘silent experiences’. At this point in the ‘journey’ the key characters provide key vignettes, which having being thematically analysed, will now be examined through sociocultural theorising. It is only through this iterative process that interpretations of the silent experiences of young bilingual learners can be established. This final sample represents the key findings of 150 vignettes which were initially analysed within this longitudinal study. It is at this juncture that you (the reader) are able to share in the revelation of what is actually occurring throughout the silent period. The silent period’s complexity is revealed through an analysis of nine vignettes which highlighted 3 key themes and 3 sub-themes.
Book Chapter
CLOSING THE EXHIBITION
Wenger (1990, p. 142) stated, ‘learning is above all an integral part of social practice, taken as a generative process in which persons … interact with each other and with the world and we tune our relations … with the world accordingly. In other words we learn’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 45).
Book Chapter
PAINTING THE BACKDROP
This chapter provides a ‘landscape’ through which a sociocultural perspective on learning through the silent period can be painted. Having compared learning during the silent period through two lenses, sociocultural and linguistic, it is apparent that a sociocultural lens contributes additional understandings on how a bilingual learner creates meaning through her/his silent experiences.
Book Chapter