Melinda Clement Hardman, Anthropology
INTRODUCTION
While there are many different models for how motivation works and what it is in second language acquisition, Gardner’s model dominated the research for over 30 years and continues to be the most well-known (Oxford 1996). Gardner explained motivation in second language acquisition with what he called the Socio-Educational Model (Gardner 1998). This model distinguished between three levels of motivation which move upward toward a broader and broader degree of motivation. At the first level is integrative orientation (An orientation, according to Gardner and Tremblay 1994, is a group of reasons for studying a language). Integrative orientation deals with having a desire for cultural and linguistic integration. At the second level of Gardner’s model is integrativeness and attitudes toward the second language (L2) learning situation. Integrativeness is similar to integrative orientation with the addition of two attitudinal factors, one being an interest in foreign languages in general, and the other being attitudes toward the target community. Finally, at the third level of Gardner’s model is (1) effort, (2) desire to learn the language, and (3) attitudes toward learning the language. Later he also added another component in response to criticism for overemphasizing the socio-psychological aspects of motivation which he called an instrumental orientation that took into account non socio-psychological reasons for studying a language such as job advancement and educational achievement (Gardner & Tremblay 1994).
Problems with Gardner’s Model of Motivation
There are several problems with Gardner’s model. First, it reduces motivation to a set of attitudinal measurements and second, it assumes that it is a conscious phenomena. Both of these problems present significant difficulties with respect to looking at motivation in children’s language acquisition. First of all, it is not clear to what extent children consciously learn languages. Most of the children that I talked with in this study had difficulty explaining their reasons for leaning a new language and were entirely unable to explain how their learning actually took place. If children are not conscious of the process by which they learn a language and do not seem to have strong feelings about the language, the speakers of the language, or their reasons for learning the language, it seems almost impossible to look at their motivation using Gardner’s model. What is clear, however, is that children do in fact demonstrate varying degrees of motivation. Yet, because of Gardner’s focus on “reasons” for and “attitudes” toward studying a language, young children have been virtually left out of studies on motivation and language acquisition.
This is unfortunate because children present such an interesting case in language acquisition. They alone seem to have the potential to develop absolutely native-sounding pronunciation in a second language and they are much more likely than older learners to develop the ability to speak with native-like grammar usage (Ellis 1994, Graham 1985). Also, unlike adults, children do not seem to require conscious reasons in order to acquire new languages. The question, then, could be asked, is motivation not a factor in children’s language acquisition because they don’t appear to have conscious reasons or attitudes toward studying a new language?
One problem with assuming that motivation is not involved in children’s language acquisition is that not all children studying a new language will reach native-like proficiency. For example, (as summarized in Graham 1985, p. 80), Spilka (1976) demonstrated that in language programs where there is no native-speaking peer group, that while children do “develop highly communicative and satisfactory levels of linguistic ability in the second language, their speech is simplified in ways similar to that of adult second language learners.” Similarly, Campbell (1984) stated that such children “do not sound like native speakers [of Spanish], nor can they perform as well as native speakers in reading, writing, or aural comprehension,” (p. 131). Genesee (1985) also suggested that “it is unlikely that second language learners will ever achieve total native-like mastery of the target language as long as their learning is restricted to a school setting” (p. 546). From these examples it seems clear that availability or absence of peer interactions with native speakers in the target language affect the acquisition of the language, and that this seems to be particularly true for younger learners. Not only that, but the development or the absence of the development of near-native speech patterns in a second language learner seems to be quite consistent and predictable based on that fact.
Graham’s Model: Assimilative Motivation
Rather than discounting the possibility that motivation is in fact important in understanding children’s language acquisition, C. Ray Graham (1985) suggested that a different type of motivation is at play in children’s language acquisition. He called this type of motivation assimilative motivation. It is this type of motivation which I have chosen to use as the basis for this study on motivation in children’s language acquisition.
Unlike Gardner’s integrative motivation, assimilative motivation is not the result of conscious reasons or attitudes, but is the result of prolonged contact with the target sociolinguistic group. According to Graham (1985), children generally tend to reject the target language and culture at first but after prolonged contact they begin to embrace the new culture and language and often reject their own to some extent.
The existence of this type of motivation has been seen in patterns of first language acquisition. After describing the general absence of parental sanctions on children’s “defective syntax” or pronunciation, Graham asks the questions, “Why, then, should children go to all the trouble of becoming native speakers of the language of their environments? If they can understand and make themselves understood rather well with forms which deviate from the normal adult standard, why should they continue to develop their language until it is virtually indistinguishable from that of other members of their speech community?” He then indicates that the answer to these questions seems to be that the development of native-like speech is necessary for the child’s acceptance into the peer social group. This need for acceptance therefore, seems to be the basis for assimilative motivation, and is a direct result of contact with the target peer group.
Graham makes five claims regarding assimilative motivation. He states that, “It appears to be (1) an essential part of normal language acquisition and, like the capacity for language acquisition itself, a consequence of species membership, (2) largely a peer-group phenomenon, (3) the primary impetus for developing native-like speech in a second language, (4) strongest during infancy and childhood, gradually becoming weaker through adolescence and into adulthood, and (5) capable of being disrupted even during childhood by certain external social factors” (p. 77).
Assimilative motivation is important because it indicates that what makes the greatest difference in children’s language acquisition is not the amount of interactions that take place, but rather, with whom and in what language interactions are taking place. Also important is the age of the participants and the degree to which these interactions can be classified as spontaneous or unforced, as it is through these types of interactions that identity and peer-group membership are established.
The Purpose of This Study
The previously mentioned studies in the acquisition of a second language in the absence of a native-speaking peer group (Spilka 1976, Campbel 1984, and Genesee 1985) referred specifically to one-way immersion programs in which children are placed in structured classrooms with other non-speakers of the target language. These can be majority-language students being taught entirely in a foreign language, or minority-language students attempting to learn the majority language in a classroom that is limited to other non-speakers of the majority language and which is taught entirely in the majority language. This study will demonstrate that even in classrooms where there is a native-speaking peer group, children must choose to receive and initiate opportunities to interact with their native-speaking classmates in the target language or they will not acquire the target language with native-like proficiency.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Two-Way or Dual-immersion programs
The type of program in which I chose to conduct my research is known as a dual-immersion or two-way immersion program. There are a variety of different approached to two-way or dual-immersion programs. The one thing which they all have in common, however, is that they place students whose first language is the majority language with students whose first language is a minority language, in the same classroom and teach them their subjects using both languages as the medium of instruction. Donna Christian (1996) stated, “Typical goals for two-way immersion programs include language, academic, and affective dimensions: Students will (a) develop high levels of proficiency in their L1 and in a second language (L2); (b) perform at or above grade level in academic areas in both languages; (c) demonstrate positive cross-cultural attitudes and behaviors and high levels of self-esteem” (p. 67).
Two-way immersion programs have a long history, particularly in the United States and Canada where huge influxes of immigration are experienced every year. Some of the most well-known programs include the Coral Way Bilingual Elementary school in Miami, Florida, which was started in 1963 and continues to offer two-way immersion programs today; Oyster Bilingual Elementary School in Washington D.C., where each classroom contains two teachers, a majority language speaking teacher and a minority language speaking teacher, and the language of instruction depends on which teacher is conducting the lesson at any particular time; and the Amigos Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in which students are taught 50% of the time in the majority language and 50% of the time in a minority language (Christian 1996). The majority of programs in the United States focus on developing bilingualism in Spanish and English. Similar programs can be found throughout Canada, with the focus mostly being on bilingualism in English and French. When and how much instruction takes place in each language is determined by the individual programs. For this reason, it is difficult to make comparisons between programs because there is so much variation in the implementation and structure of each program.
Research Setting:
The Anytown Elementary School Spanish-English Dual-Immersion Program
Anytown Elementary School is located in a small suburban city in the Western United States. The ethnic make-up of the city is reflected in the proportions of different ethnic groups within the elementary school. Currently there are a total of 559 students at that school. Among those are 284 Hispanic children, 245 Caucasian children, 17 Native American children, and 13 children from various other ethnic groups. Percentage-wise that equates to approximately 51% Hispanics and 44% Caucasians.
The dual-immersion program at Anytown Elementary School has been in operation for the past five years. When the program was started, it was only implemented in the first grade. The following year, a kindergarten program was also introduced. The program has continued from year to year, adding a new grade each year as the original enrollees have progressed to higher and higher grade levels. Currently the program is run through fifth grade and it is anticipated that next year they will implement their first sixth grade class.
Before the dual-immersion program was implemented, minority-language students at Anytown Elementary School were typically placed in main-stream classrooms and were pulled out for individual instruction in English. Even now that there is a dual-immersion program at the school, the majority of the teachers in mainstream classrooms are ESL endorsed and some minority-language students continue to attend main-stream classes rather than participating in the dual-immersion program.
Ideally, enrollment in a program like this would be limited to those students whom the principal felt would benefit most from the program and would also be limited on the basis of achieving a balance between L1 and L2 speakers. However, due to logistical issues that this and other programs like it often face, enrollment at the Anytown Elementary School program is open to any students whose parents choose to place them in the program, regardless of where the students live or what language they speak. In fact, when I talked with the principal, she informed me that in an effort to get enough new students enrolled in order to keep the program going, she has spent a significant amount of time during the summers preceding each new school year in which the program has been in operation sending out letters to the parents of children whom she feels would be interested in the program.
The structure of the program various among the different grade levels depending on such factors as the availability of teachers and the number of students enrolled at each grade level. The kindergarten class, for example, is taught entirely by one teacher who is fluent in both English and Spanish. The second grade, which is where my research focused, on the other hand, is taught by two different teachers, Ms. Sanchez and Ms. Wilson. While both of these teachers are in fact fluent in English and Spanish, Ms. Wilson is a native English speaker (henceforth NES) and is designated as the English teacher for the second graders and Ms. Sanchez is a native Spanish speaker (henceforth NSS) and is designated as the students’ Spanish teacher.
In previous years, there were two second grade dual-immersion classes, both containing a mixture of NES and NSS students, which would switch off between teachers half way through each school day. This however proved to be extremely hard on the teachers, as well as complicated for the students who would have to constantly carry their backpacks and the contents of their desks between classrooms, often wasting a lot of time in the process. In an effort to come up with a better system, the program has been altered somewhat this year. Instead of dividing up each day between English classes and Spanish classes, the second graders currently spend an entire week in their English classroom, followed by an entire week in their Spanish classroom, and so forth.
When I talked with Ms. Sanchez, the Spanish teacher, she told me that she was not given a Spanish curriculum to work with in the program. Instead, she spends many hours on her own time translating the materials from the English curriculum into Spanish. In this way, the students actually receive the same material in both classes. In addition to instruction in their regular classrooms, students who appear to be struggling in either language are often pulled out of class for one-on-one tutoring in the language of difficulty. The students are tested on this material in both classes. However, at one point Ms. Sanchez voiced her frustration to me that the tests in Spanish are given only to provide incentive for the students and to give her feedback as to how they are doing in her class. They are not used in the calculation of their official grades. Additionally the students know that the final tests which they must pass each year are given entirely in English.
Relating to the effectiveness of the dual-immersion program, I was informed by the principal that with the implementation of this program, the school has seen a dramatic increase in the rate at which the NSS are acquiring English. The same has not been true for the NES in their acquisition of Spanish. Not only have they lagged behind their NSS peers in the acquisition of their L2, but they have also lagged behind their peers in regular classrooms in their overall test results. The principal stated that this is to be expected at first, but that by sixth grade, they should in fact begin to out-perform their peers in regular classrooms. This remains to be seen.
My desire in choosing to focus on second grade students in this study was to look at children who had been in the dual-immersion program for at least one year and who were young enough that they would not be as swayed by the mainstream culture, yet old enough that they could attempt to describe their own friendshipping and peer-oriented socializing patterns to me. My purpose in selecting a dual-immersion program was to look at the differences in peer interaction patterns between the two language groups.
Research Methods
In order to get a good idea of how the children in the two second grade Spanish-English classrooms are socializing, I used several different research methods. The main method was participant observation. Over the course of about two and a half months, I spent between 2 to 6 hours in these second grade classrooms. I accompanied the children to the library, to the gym, to the cafeteria, to the playground, and even to music classes and observed them in both their English-immersion classroom and in their Spanish-immersion classroom. While I made observations of both groups of students, I tended to spend more time in one than the other. This was because that group seemed to have a more even mix of NSS and NES.
During my observations I kept a notebook with me in which a wrote a series of field notes. There is an incredible amount of activity going on in a second grade classroom. Because of this, I felt that keeping these field notes was important, and I therefore chose to inform the students from the start as to the purpose of my continual visits. Still, my visits seemed to fascinate them, particularly in the beginning. Students would often approach me when the teacher was not watching and ask me what I was writing. They marveled at the amount of notes I took. Generally, however, the students went on with their every day activities quite unconcerned with my presence in their classroom.
Perhaps my greatest difficult rested in the fact that I myself am not a fluent Spanish speaker. While I am currently studying Spanish at my university, I am not yet confident in my ability to keep a conversation going. For this reason I generally used English when addressing the children. This presented a slight issue in the Spanish class where the students were not supposed to speak in English. At firs I was extremely hesitant to speak at all in the Spanish class. However, as time went on I became more comfortable, particularly because Ms. Sanchez herself did not hesitate to address me in English in front of the students when she needed to address me nor did she seem to view it as a dilemma.
In addition to participant observation, I also made recordings of some of the interactions among the students in the classroom using a small wireless microphone that had been sown into the inside of a vest. The microphone was hooked up to a small transmitter that sent a signal to a receiver that fed the feedback into a tape recorder. This also proved fascinating to the students and they often pleaded with me to be the next one to wear the vest. Ideally, I would have liked to have recorded interactions on the playground and in the cafeteria, where they were more likely to be natural, unforced interactions. This however was complicated by the need to set up the equipment and eventually proved to be impossible due to the 100 yard range of the receiver. As a result, the tape-recorded interactions were limited to instruction time within the main classroom.
Towards the end of the research period, I distributed a sociogram (see Appendix A) to each of the students and had them fill it out for me. The sociogram consisted of a diagram in which the student was placed in the center and extending from the center were 16 circles representing different people the student spends time with. I instructed the students to fill in the circles with the names of the people with whom they spend the most time with. They were told that it was not necessary to fill in all of the circles. Each student was then assigned a student ID number, which was used to identify their individual sociogram, and the sociograms were then collected for later use in the final phase of the research.
The final phase of my research involved the conducting and recording of 13 informal interviews from among the 27 students currently attending the Spanish-English dual-immersion program in second grade at Anytown Elementary School. During these interviews I asked the students to tell me a little about their experience in the program, as well as their background and home life. I then had the students go through the names they had written on their sociograms, telling me a little about each person, why they liked to spend time with him or her and what they like to do with them, and what language they use during this time. As I was the sole interviewer, all of the interviews were conducted in English.
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
Structures Imposed on the Students
As with most second graders, there are numerous structures imposed on the students in the Spanish-English program at Anytown Elementary School. The students do not have a lot of unstructured time. In the classroom they are always engaged in some kind of activity and even in the hallways they are expected to walk silently in an organized line. The order in which they are to line up is set by the teacher, and is at least somewhat based on privilege, with those students who have been well-behaved being privileged to either lead the line or to bring up the rear.
Visits to the library are another time when a very strict structure is imposed on the students. As they enter the library they must file past the librarian at her desk and hand her their library books which she then checks in for them. If they do not have their books, they will not be allowed to check out any new books. The children are then to go directly to an area where there are carpeted steps from which the students are to watch a presentation given by the librarian. While there are two different ways that the students could enter this area, one is designated as an exit and the students will be censured if they attempt to either enter through the exit, or exit through the entrance. At the conclusion of the presentation, the librarian stands at the exit and calls on various rows to enter, based on her perception of who has been quiet and respectful during the presentation. As the students exit with their rows, they are given a laminated strip of construction paper which is to serve as a shelf marker so that as they take various books from the shelves, they will know where to return them to if they decide not to check them out. Upon finding a book, the students are supposed to sit and read silently for the remainder of the time. If they are doing what they are supposed to, they are given a yellow slip of paper which entitles them to receive a small prize from their teacher at the end of the week.
Even the lunch room contains a set of expectations and structures which the students must adhere to. For instance, students are not allowed to run in the lunch room and if caught doing so, they will be stopped and required to go back to where they started and walk the distance that they have just run. In the older grades, certain students are assigned to clean the tables and throw away any trash that other students have left behind. Once students are seated with their food, they are free to talk and laugh, as long as their voices do not rise above the general hum of the other voices. It is expected that they will attempt to eat all of their food and before they can leave the lunch room, they are required to raise their hand until the lunch room supervisor sees them and nods that they may leave. At times he will comment on uneaten food or unnecessary messes that they must take care of before they can leave.
Getting Around the Structures
Despite the constant evidence I saw of extremely rigid structures imposed on the second graders at Anytown Elementary School, the students were surprisingly adept at getting around them. This is not to say the students always consciously set out to get around the structures. In fact, at times the students themselves placed sanctions on each other for non-compliance. For example, on one occasion one of the students failed to raise his hand and receive the nod of approval from the lunch room supervisor before getting up from his seat to leave. Immediately another student called out, “Hey, you haven’t been released yet!” and commenced to raise his own hand in an effort to get the lunch supervisor’s attention.
However, for the most part the students simply did not allow the structure to restrict the expression and development of their unique personalities and identities. This can be seen in one example from the music class that the students attend twice a week. The music teacher, Ms. Johnson, has very strict expectations for the students when they attend her class. She does not tolerate any deviation from what she deems as “good and respectful behavior.” On one particular occasion a student called out without being called on. Immediately Ms. Johnson responded with “Oh, Miguel, I think you need to go to the back.” Rather than expressing penitence or dejection for being publicly exposed to censure, Miguel, with a broad grin on his face, responded by saying “OK!” and quickly went to the back of the room. He seemed quite elated to be allowed to be excused from the activity that the class was engaged in. Later on in the same lesson, another student mumbled, “I hate this song” to a classmate. Ms. Johnson, overhearing the comment, asked him, “Sergio, should I have to stop because you are being disrespectful?” He responded with “no” but was also sent to the back of the room along with Mauricio, the student to whom his comment had been made and who had grinned slightly at seeing his friend in trouble. Sergio went gladly to the back of the room and smiled at Miguel. Mauricio then commenced to go to the back of the room as well, moving in a crab-like motion, with his body facing upward and his hands and feet both touching the ground, rather than walking in a normal fashion. The teacher said nothing.
Although this was an obvious example of students being reprimanded for their non-compliance to the set expectations of the teacher, each used the occasion as an opportunity to reassert his own unique personality and identity. Throughout my observations I saw many instances where students were able to work within the structure to establish their personhood in this way.
This struggle to establish personhood is an important aspect in understanding the assimilative function of language which Graham refers to in his paper. Just as this need to establish personhood seems to be a primary concern in young children’s responses to the structures imposed on them in school, it also plays an important role in their patterns of linguistic development. Graham (1985) states that, “Unlike adults who have successfully coped with the social environment for many years and who have developed a stable perception of themselves and their relationship to others, children seem to be compelled by a lack of development in these areas to pursue linguistic attachments, first with their parents, and then with their peers” (p. 82).
English Use in the Spanish Classroom
The structure for language use in the Spanish classroom is not as rigid as expectations relating to respectful or “good” behavior. For the most part, failures to use Spanish are not treated as disrespectful or rebellious behavior and do not carry any kind of punishment. On one occasion Ms. Sanchez told me that she actually sympathizes with the children when they use English because she herself, though a NSS, prefers English. In general, Ms. Sanchez’s does not set as rigid a tone in her classroom as the librarian and music teacher do and many of the students told me that she was their favorite teacher. Besides the tone of the classroom, there are other differences between this second grade classroom and other classrooms at Anytown Elementary School as well as other classrooms in the United States in general. For one thing, the very first thing you will see as you enter is a large sign that says ‘Bienvenida!” You will also notice that the books on the easel in the front of the room are all written in Spanish. There are posters on the walls with pictures of things like body parts, all labeled in Spanish. Objects in the room, such as the telephone, have paper strips attached to them with Spanish words written on them. The desks have paper strips along the top of them with the names of the numbers and the letters in the alphabet written in Spanish; even the large mat that in front of the easel contains pictures that have Spanish words written next to them.
Despite her sympathy for students who break into English, you will notice that Ms. Sanchez is speaking in perfectly native Spanish to the children in the class and that she is speaking quite fast. The students at first glance will seem to be understanding her perfectly and responding in Spanish themselves. In fact, it will seem to the casual observer that Spanish truly is the only language being used to communicate in this classroom. This however is not entirely true.
English is in fact used in many different situations in Ms. Sanchez’s classroom. Not only are there daily interruptions that bring English into the classroom—such as a conversation on the phone, an announcement over the intercom, or another teacher or teacher’s aid entering the classroom for the purpose of talking briefly to the teacher—but often Ms. Sanchez herself will choose to use English when talking with the students in particular circumstances. Sometimes these instances are kept very discrete, such as on one occasion when she took a student aside and very quietly questioned her about some uncompleted homework. At other times, however, she chooses to insert important information in English for the benefit of students she feels are not understanding. The following excerpt is just one example of this. Ms. Sanchez is in front of the class explaining a math worksheet that they are working on together:
Ms. Sanchez: Estamos haciendos numeros de dos o tres. Okay, Melissa, we are making numbers from here (points to her worksheet) so they have to be todos numeros. Quien mas sabes?
In this instance the teacher breaks into English for the purpose of clarifying the activity for Melissa, who does not seem to understand. In other instances, however, it is not entirely clear for whom the teacher has broken into English, as the following excerpt taken from the same math activity illustrates:
Ms. Sanchez: A numero dos. Escuchen, ninos, las respuestas van a venire de aqui, the answers are gonna come from here, Okay? Vamos a ver quien sabe numero dos…
Not only will Ms. Sanchez often use English briefly in her classroom instruction, but she often allows students to respond to her in English. Often this will be accompanied by a request to attempt to answer in Spanish, but without any kind of sanctions for using English, as can be seen in the following brief excerpt:
Becca: Sometimes I, like, wanna run away to my friend’s house, they live in Centerville.
Ms. Sanchez: Diga me en Espanol. A la casa de su…
Becca: Amigas. They live in Centerville.
At other times, however, the use of English is not commented on at all. In the following excerpt, for example:
Peter (to the teacher): Mi hermanito, she takes stuff from mine and my brother’s room and says ‘no, it’s mine!’
Perhaps most often, however, the students themselves break out into English despite the fact that they know they are not supposed to. Sometimes Ms. Sanchez is either unaware of these conversations or chooses not to comment on them. The following excerpt took place in a lesson on rocks. Ms. Sanchez has shown the students some samples of different types of rocks and is now looking at the rocks they have brought from home. Meanwhile, two of the students broke off into their own hushed conversation:
Ms. Sanchez: Oh, mira, ella tiene una tambien.
Karina (to teacher): Yo tambien tengo uno!
Peter (to teacher): Yo tengo una en mi casa
Karina (quietly to Jessica): Can I see?
Jessica: I have a huge sandstone. Do you want some? I have tons.
Karina: I think I have one of those.
Jessica: I found it in the mountains
Karina: Cool
In some instances, even though the students have initiated the use of English, Ms. Sanchez will in fact join in using Spanish rather than stifle the conversation. For example:
Miguel: Jeremy, you’re like the 16th!
Jeremy: Sixteenth of what?
Miguel: Of making that, because, there is 14 in the other class, Sanchez makes 15, so you’re 16.
Peter: No, there’s 15 in the other class.
Miguel: You’re the first one in this class.
Peter: It’s 17 including everyone because—
Maria: Nuh-uh, because in the other class, um—
Ms. Sanchez: Quince, por que Raul. Son quince en la otra clase. Raul no cambia aqui.
Children’s Friendshipping Patterns
One thing that these second graders do have in common with other children their age is their need for friends, both at home and school. Despite the rigid structure that is often placed upon them by the adults in their lives, they are constantly busy making friends and connecting with the children around them.
Children’s reasons for selecting certain people as their friends are different than those of adults or even adolescents. Unlike adults and adolescents, children do not seem to be concerned with the idea that good friends should have something in common. Based on my interviews and observations, this seemed to be the case not only in physical appearance, but in linguistic background as well.
In my interviews with the second graders in the Anytown Elementary School English-Spanish dual-immersion program, I asked the students why they had listed various individuals on their sociogram. Some of the responses I received are listed below. With the exception of a few fairly talkative students, most of the responses were quite brief. Additionally, none of the responses mentioned anything about native language or appearance in their responses.
Lindy: Um, Wendy? She’s been my best friend for a long time. She has invited me to two birthday parties and we, uh, love to play on the pool and outside on the playground, and we made up lots of tricks on it and Wendy would, and sometimes at lunch we would, we’d think of animals that started with our name or that rhymed…
Kristy is another one of my best friends. I’ve been to her birthday party once and we like to dress up and dance to music because she has lots of animal costumes and we like to play in the backyard and one time when we were at her birthday party we had a spoon race and we filled up water balloons and we take a bucket, two buckets because there were two teams, we had to take the balloon and put it in on a spoon and run all the way across and put it in the bucket without making it splat, and we got to play in the pool and it was freezing!
Violeta: Um, Anita, I play with her a lot.
She’s a friend at this school that I really like, except I don’t play with her any more, I don’t know why, she like never wants to play with me…I think the reason why we don’t play with each other as much is that we’re not in the same class anymore.
She’s in my class, and, she just, I just like playing with her a lot because she’s more of a new friend to me because I never knew her in kindergarten or second, I mean first grade, and she’s really new to me but I really like her.
Maria: I like to play with him.
She says hello to me.
José: He’s my number one friend because he gave me his marker.
It’s because he, um, he’s my friend because he comes to my house Friday night, every Friday.
She, um, I like her because she always plays with me and stuff.
He’s my new best friend because I like him, he’s the smartest boy in the whole school.
He’s my friend because he um, give me stuff and he plays me.
I like him. He lives close to me, I always go to his house and trade things.
Jessica: Carrie’s my friend, I, um, play with her.
Ben: Um, I like him because I play with him at recess.
I like riding bikes with him.
He goes to church with me.
Becca: I like to spend time with them because we like to play games and I like to invite them to my birthdays.
Jeremy: Um, it just seems to me like we’re best friends and we spend a lot of time together like every recess we play together.
To me, it’s fun to have him as a friend cause he acts really weird, he acts so funny in school.
He’s one of my friends that we eat together a lot and he also plays ball with us.
He’s one of my friends that we play with at recess and we play soccer together and stuff.
Alejandro: I play tag with him.
It seems clear from these excerpts that the second graders in the dual-immersion program do not perceive language or ethnicity as barriers to establishing friendships with other children. This is perhaps why children learning a second language seem to have so much more exposure to the language than adults do. Even in the very early adolescent years, most people seem to begin showing preferences toward friends who share similar linguistic backgrounds and physical appearance. Children, on the other hand, seem more concerned with activities that they are co-participants in, such as playing ball or eating together in the lunch room and more open to socializing with other children from a variety of backgrounds and ethnic groups.
Despite the constant mixing of NSS and NES in their friendshipping patterns, however, the two groups do not seem to participate in spontaneous peer interactions in their L2 to the same degree, nor do they acquire their L2 with the same native-like proficiency.
Spanish Use Among the Students
Looking at the actual use of Spanish within the established friendships among the second graders in the dual-immersion program is perhaps the most telling approach to understanding why, despite the absence of rigid friendshipping preferences along linguistic lines, the NES student in Anytown Elementary School’s Spanish-English program are failing to acquire Spanish with the same native-like proficiency that their NSS peers are acquiring English. The following excerpts will help to illustrate what I am trying to say.
Students are doing independent writing in their journals in Ms. Sanchez’s class. Lindy is asking Karina for help. They are not supposed to be talking, especially not in English.
Lindy(very softly): Um, no se dice, um, ‘keeps.’
Karina: Keeps? Cuanda…
Ms. Sanchez begins to speak to the class for a moment and the rest of Karina’s response gets lost in the noise.
Lindy: What?
Karina: Um,…
Lindy (even more softly): Just write it here.
Karina: No, I like…
Lindy: Please, just write it here.
Karina still doesn’t write it
Lindy (fraustrated now): Pleeease, just write it here!
Karina writes something
Lindy: Thank you.
Jessica and Karina are having a private conversation while working on an art project in Ms. Sanchez’s class.
Jessica: Um, mi y mi hermanos, um, mi, um…
Karina: Hermanos
Jessica: Um, mi hermanos, um…
Karina (losing patience): Ok, just say it in English.
Jessica: Me and my brothers are going ice-skating, do you want to come?
These two excerpts illustrate some of the barriers that the NES in this program face in having spontaneous interactions in Spanish. At times, as in the first excerpt, they themselves discourage interactions, while at other times, as in the second excerpts, the NSS are the ones who discourage the interaction. Both of these examples however were exceptions to the norm because there was actually some acknowledgement of the difference in linguistic backgrounds made between the two speakers. In most cases, linguistic background is not even acknowledged in interactions. It does not appear to be a conscious part of how the children go about interacting.
This fact came out most clearly in the informal interviews. When I ask students what language they or their friends use to communicate during lunch or on the playground, they were often not sure themselves. The following somewhat long excerpt demonstrates this very nicely:
Me: Does Rodrigo ever speak Spanish with you?
Lindy: Oh, yeah.
Me: What does he say to you?
Lindy: Well, usually, one time when I was shorter than this, I was trying to jump to the smaller monkey bars, so he kept trying, so, I was, so we put like wood chips in a pile and I stood on it and jumped and I got it! And I was like, woo-hoo, I did it! And we kept doing it. And then later on, like a few months later I jumped and I caught it without a pile!
Me: Very good.
Lindy: It was fun!
Me: So Rodrigo likes to play with you?
Lindy: Yeah.
Me: And what are some things that he talks to you about in Spanish?
Lindy: Well, oh yeah, he doesn’t really talk to me that much in Spanish but I don’t really understand because he never uses the words I know.
Me: So then, does he talk to you in English when he can see that you don’t understand?
Lindy: No, he never really talks to me in Spanish, but, he help my Spanish words I don’t know.
Me: So if you don’t know a word you can ask him and he’ll help you?
Lindy: Yeah.
In cases where the students were sure, they very consistently reported that they never used Spanish in peer interactions with other students in the class from different linguistic backgrounds. NSS sometimes reported using Spanish with other NSS peers. However even this was not an extremely common occurrence, perhaps partly because the students were rarely in groups where there were no NES present. Several NSS reported that they actually preferred using English and only used Spanish at home or with family members. One student who came to the United States from South America in kindergarten, for example, told me, “Um, I like English more but I speak to my mom and dad more in Spanish.”
There was a definite preference for English in spontaneous peer interactions among all of the second graders in the Spanish-English program at Anytown Elementary School. When Spanish was used by NES’s, it was always in class, and even then was almost always directed toward the teacher and not toward other students. Similarly, Spanish use among the NSS also tended to take place mainly in class, or at home among family members, and was rarely directed toward NES peers.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study was to find out how second graders in a Spanish-English Dual-Immersion program establish friendships and in what language they interact with their peers when they are not in a structured environment. Understanding what is actually taking place among children in programs such as the dual-immersion program at Anytown Elementary School is essential to the study of motivation in children’s second language acquisition.
Graham (1985) stated that, in opposition to adults, “Assimilative motivation is the normal inclination of children who are placed in a second language learning environment and that if there is no peer group available that represents the second language and culture, even children will not acquire native-like competency in the language” (p.80). This study has demonstrated that even in cases where there is a native-speaking peer group that acquisition is dependent on the degree to which children feel a motivation to be accepted as a full-fledged member of the second language group. The NES’s in this setting did not demonstrate this motivation and as a result were not given the necessary access to peer interactions in Spanish to develop the native-like proficiency that their NSS peers are developing in English.
Author’s Note: All names of people and places have been changed in order to protect the identity of those involved in this project.
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