Student's Native Languages as Bridges to English Academic Literacy - Dr. Andrés Ramírez, FAU
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Student’s Native Languages
as Bridges to English
Academic Literacy
Dr. Andrés Ramírez, FAU
Department of Curriculum, Culture, and Educational Inquiry
MANY WORDS IN THE ACADEMIC WORD
LIST THAT ARE COGNATES IN ENGLISH
ARE EVERYDAY WORDS IN SPANISH.
• Abandon-Abandonar !
(compare to English leave)
• Accompany-Acompañar
What other words can
(compare with English ???)
you think of that carry
these characteristics?
• Observe-Observar
(compare to English watch)
• Accumulate-Acumular Why is this important?
(compare to English pile up)
One story, one quote…
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. For example, "I do not disagree" could mean "I certainly agree”. The same is true in Spanish, for example.”
Introspect in his own narrative, he continued, “In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative”
With a rising tone of voice that reflected his confidence he exclaimed: “There is certainly no language however in which a double positive can form a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up,
!
"Yeah, right."“A Standard Language is a
Dialect with an Army and a
Navy”
Max Weinreich“A Standard Language is
a Dialect with an Army
and a Navy”
Max Weinreich
"Yeah, right."
What do you make out of these two ideas?Caribbean Spanish In Caribbean dialects (Cuban Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish) a child may delete weak consonants in the final position of words and "mas" becomes "ma." When the child acquires English, he or she may not pronounce final /s/ sounds that indicate inflection (plural or possessive in English). The word "cats" becomes "cat." In addition, Spanish plurality tends to be marked in multiple locations, including articles, noun conjugations, adverbs, and/or adjectives. Therefore, marking of one /s/ sound may not seem as vital to the Spanish speaker.
INFLECTIONAL
MORPHOLOGY
Table 4.15 English inflectional affixes
Nouns
Plural -s the books
Possessive (genitive) -’s John’s book
Verbs
3rd person sing. nonpast -s He reads well.
Progressive -ing He is working.
Past tense -ed He worked.
Past participle -en/-ed He has eaten /studied.
Adjectives
Comparative -er the smaller one
Superlative -est the smallest oneTable 11.7 Developmental order for first language acquisition
1. –ing The present participle affix (e.g., she is working)
2. Plural –s (e.g., bottles)
3. Irregular past (e.g., she taught French)
4. Possessive –s (e.g., a child’s toy)
5. Copula be (e.g., I am happy)
6. Articles (e.g., a, the)
7. Regular past (e.g., she walked quickly)
8. 3rd person –s (e.g., she walks quickly)
9. Auxiliary be (e.g., she is working)
Table 11.8 Developmental order for second language acquisition
1. -ing 4. Auxiliary be 7. Regular past
2. Copula be 5. Plural -s 8. 3rd person -s
3. Articles 6. Irregular past 9. Possessive -s
!
Table 4.15 English inflectional affixes
Inflectional morphology Nouns
Plural -s the books
accounts for most of the
Possessive (genitive) -’s John’s book
Verbs
developmental order in first and
3rd person sing. nonpast -s He reads well.
Progressive -ing He is working.
Past tense -ed He worked.
second language acquisition Past participle -en/-ed
Adjectives
He has eaten /studied.
Comparative -er the smaller one
Superlative -est the smallest oneCaribbean Spanish In Caribbean dialects (Cuban Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish) a child may delete weak consonants in the final position of words and "mas" becomes "ma." When the child acquires English, he or she may not pronounce final /s/ sounds that indicate inflection (plural or possessive in English). The word "cats" becomes "cat." In addition, Spanish plurality tends to be marked in multiple locations, including articles, noun conjugations, adverbs, and/or adjectives. Therefore, marking of one /s/ sound may not seem as vital to the Spanish speaker.
But inflectional Morphology is just the tip of the iceberg!
Cummins’ Dual Iceberg Representation
Inflectional
AND
Deriva:onal
BICS
Morphology Social
Language
(Basic
Interpersonal
Surface L1 L2 Communica:on
Skills)
Level
Academic
CALP
Language
Inflexional (Cogni:ve
Academic
AND Language
Proficiency)
Derivational
Morphology
Common
Underlying
Proficiency
Cummins.
J.
(1992).
Language
Proficiency,
Bilingualism,
and
Academic
Achievement.
In
P.A.
Richard
Amato
&
M.A.
Snow
(Eds).
Do you encourage your diverse students to bring their cultural and linguistic richness (their “maletas”) into your classroom?
Using Teachers' Linguistic, Cultural, and Professional Background to help Spanish- Speaking Children Decode English Academic Text
Big Idea: Just as English is useful for understanding Spanish, the Spanish of the students is useful for English; especially academic English.
English and Spanish Basics
Differences Rhetoric (the way whole texts and genres are organized)
Contrastive Rhetoric
“Cultures differ considerably in their
modes of constructing text”
Kaplan 1966Spanish rhyming develops prior to literacy development (Adrian, Alegria & Morais, 1995). Spanish-speaking children can identify syllables prior to identifying phonemes (Deton, Hashbrouck, Weaver & Riccio, 2000)
Embarrassed Embarazada
(Pregnant)Similarities both languages use the Roman alphabet 30% to 40% of all words in English have a related word in Spanish. As compared to English and Chinese or other non- Latin derived languages, both languages have the same basic sentence structures (one major differences are adjective before noun in English and noun before adjective in Spanish) Academic rhetoric follows English patterns
-tion A Cognate Morpheme The derivational morpheme -tion and its Spanish translation share etymologic, semantic, syntactic, orthographic, and phonologic similarities. Acumulation Acumulación Definition Definición Simulation Simulación
The vast number of English-Spanish cognates, by one estimate 20,000 words (Montelongo et al., 2009), has resulted in many English-Spanish cognate lists. However, the most important words for schooling are those that are academically related.
The Academic Word List (AWL) is a list of words which appear with high frequency in English- language academic texts and does not include words that are in the most frequent 2000 words of English. The list contains 570 word families and about 3000 words altogether. The list is divided into 10 sublists. Sublist 1 consists of the 60 most common words in the AWL.
See handout
The AWL was primarily made so that it could be used by teachers to make students college and career ready or used by students working alone to learn the words most needed in academic contexts.
Use a piece of paper to translate the following Spanish words into
English. Share with a partner.
Abstracto Apropiar/
Apropriado
Acumular
Aproximar/
Adquirir
Aproximado
Adyacente
Arbitrario
Administrar
Área
Agregar/Agregado
Asignar
Atribuir/AtributoSee handout
More than 82% of the words in the Academic Word
List are of Greek or Latin origin, indicating that the
study of prefixes, suffixes, and may be one way to
study this vocabulary.
Coxhead, A. TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer 2000!MANY WORDS IN THE ACADEMIC
WORD LIST THAT ARE COGNATES IN
ENGLISH ARE EVERYDAY WORDS IN
• Abandon-Abandonar Edifice-Edificio?
(compare to English leave)
(compare to English building)
• Accompany-Acompañar What other words can
(compare with English ???)
you find in the AWL
• Observe-Observar that carry these
(compare to English watch)
characteristics?
• Accumulate-Acumular
(compare to English pile up)
Why is this important?You can also read
