PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: ON LINGUISTIC ACCOMMODATION
المؤلف:
Tara Goldstein
المصدر:
Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School
الجزء والصفحة:
P35-C2
2025-09-24
266
PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: ON LINGUISTIC ACCOMMODATION
While Max Yeung's linguistic strategy in the multilingual math classroom was to accommodate the English-speaking students' preference of English, Evelyn Lo's strategy was to use English in the public role of teacher and reserve the use of Cantonese and Mandarin for private exchanges when her students were stuck or sought her out for advice on academic and personal issues. Neither of these linguistic strategies, however, prevented Theresa from feeling disadvantaged in the math classroom. Such a situation not only presented a dilemma for Mrs. Lo, who needed to respond to Theresa's concern at the same time as she as she responded to Max's learning needs, it also raised questions for other educators working in multilingual schools. Should teachers who are able to bring multilingual teaching practices into their classrooms be encouraged to do so? Who is accommodated? Who is not? Who benefits? Who doesn't?
In answer to the question of whether teachers should be encouraged to use languages other than English in their classrooms, many educators and parents would say "No." And they, like Theresa, would support their answer with arguments centered on issues of favoritism and fairness in the classroom. However, when we revisit how beneficial and efficient it is for students like Rose and Max to work with Mrs. Lo in Cantonese, an efficiency recognized by the Learning for Learning policy, it is a waste of linguistic resources to simply respond with the answer, "No." Furthermore, if English is the only language that is used by a multilingual teacher in a multilingual classroom, it could be argued that those students who use English as their primary language have an unfair advantage over the students who do not.
Perhaps it is not a question of whether or not we should bring multilingual teaching practices into our linguistically diverse classrooms, but a question of how. One way of beginning to deal with issues of linguistic advantage and disadvantage in multilingual classrooms is by talking about them in a direct, forthright manner. Teachers like Mrs. Lo, who have linguistic resources that, when used, can benefit students in their classrooms, might wish to talk to their students at the beginning of the year and initiate a discussion concerning language practices in the classroom. Language practices, like other classroom practices, can be discussed and even negotiated with students. If teachers and students establish some expectations at the beginning about when, how, and why languages other than English will be used in the classroom, students like Max would not feel that they had to use their less developed language in order to maintain positive interethnic/interracial relationships in the classroom.
That being said, I know that it is important to remember that negotiation around classroom language practices occurs in a larger, educational, political, and economic context. In a discussion about this issue, my educational colleague, researcher Judy Hunter, has told me that she has overhead conversations among White, English-speaking students that suggest that there is strong resentment of Cantonese-speaking students. This resentment has to do with the favorable stereotypes teachers seem to have of them,1 their perceived and actual membership in privileged economic classes, and their perceived social exclusiveness. Teachers who want to initiate a discussion or negotiation of multilingual classroom practices need to take such resentment into account. We need to understand that the acceptance and legitimizing of multilingualism can lead to conflicts in our economically stratified, multilingual, multicultural, and multiracial society. Although I have never undertaken a discussion or negotiation of multilingualism in my own teacher education classroom (which, like other university classrooms in Toronto, imposes English on students), my students and I negotiate classroom rules for talking about issues of discrimination in schooling. Not everyone in the classroom has agreed with all the rules I suggest at the beginning of each term, but my students have always agreed they could "live with them" and would "try them on." When we revisit the rules halfway through the course, there is an opportunity to refine the rules in light of our classroom experiences. Such a process may be helpful to the discussion or negotiation of language practices as well.
Moving from the issue of multilingual teaching to the issue of exclusion when languages other than English were used to learn in small group work, I would like to discuss an approach used by Anglo-Canadian English teacher Greg Dunn, who placed his students in linguistically and racially mixed groups that worked together for the entire 4-month semester. Unlike the student groups in Mrs. Lo's class, which were unassigned, self-selected, and sometimes fluid (i.e., had students moving from one group to another), the groups in Mr. Dunn's class had been put together purposely with a view to provide students with more opportunities to practice English. As will be recalled from the Introduction, students who socialized and worked almost exclusively in Cantonese at school reported that they did not have many opportunities to practice English. To the extent it was possible, Mr. Dunn separated students who spoke languages other than English so that students would be encouraged to communicate with other group members in English, which was a common language they all shared. However, because of the large number of Cantonese-speaking students at the school, there was usually more than one Cantonese speaker in each group. Sometimes two or three students who shared Mandarin or Korean were assigned to the same group. Mr. Dunn began his first group work activity by asking students to write out the things they liked and didn't like about group work on a piece of flipchart paper. This activity provided an opportunity for team or community building. Each group's likes and dislikes were then presented to the rest of the class. These presentations provided a space for the issue of exclusion to emerge and a space for Mr. Dunn to talk about the issue of working across linguistic difference with the students in his class. It is in such a space that language use practices might be negotiated by students and teachers. In classrooms like Mr. Dunn's, where students are working together in the same groups all semester long, each group can negotiate and develop their own rules and strategies for managing linguistic differences among themselves.
I have discussed how the practice of accepting and legitimizing the use of languages other than English to teach and learn at Northside productively responded to some of the difficulties ESOL students faced at school. I have also discussed how accepting multilingualism created a number of difficulties for teachers and students. I have argued that given how beneficial and efficient it is for ESOL students to work in their primary languages, teachers at schools like Northside do well when they accept and promote multilingualism. However, I understand that accepting and promoting multilingualism sometimes requires educators to deal with feelings of resentment and exclusion. The following activities for further reflection and discussion allow my students and me to talk about resentment and exclusion and other issues associated with negotiating dilemmas of multilingualism at school.
1 See Lee (1996), Maclear (1994), and Nakanishi and Nishida (1996) for a discussion of how Asian students are stereotyped as the "model minority."
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