Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2016

One of the most challenging issues in all types of content-based instruction is teachers’ perceived lack of pedagogical content knowledge necessary for effective content and language integration. This is linked to a lack of adequate provision for teacher preparation in these programs. This article draws on and adapts work from the wider educational field which updates and respecifies the construct of pedagogical content knowledge. This work is used to conceptualize and provide tools for the empirical analysis of the types of knowledge required for content and language integration in the everyday tasks of teaching in content-based instruction programs. Illustrative analyses from one teacher’s practices are presented. It is argued that the combination of a conceptual, heuristic framework and grounded, situated analysis can provide a foundation for a deeper understanding of content and language integration and tools for the organization of teacher education curricula in content-based instruction programs.

Two types of Mandarin immersion programs for elementary age children are growing in popularity: the early total (90/10) program model and the partial (50/50) model; however, little empirical data exists on student learning in either program type. This paper reports on a multi-year research study of K–5 students who participated in the early total Mandarin immersion program. Findings show achievement in English reading and math that is commensurate with, and at times better than grade-level non-immersion peers’ achievement in the same school, district, and state. There was also evidence of a “math advantage” for the Mandarin immersion learner group both in Grades 3 and 5. Beyond academics, the majority of Grade 5 students demonstrated proficiency in Mandarin at Intermediate levels with listening and speaking skills outpacing character writing and reading. This finding suggests a need to further explore character literacy development to better understand best practice for English-proficient children in the U.S.

Reading skills are among the basic skills acquired during the primary school years, and they play a key role in the acquisition of academic knowledge and later participation in society. Numerous studies have reported that children with a minority language background show deficits in the acquisition of reading skills in mainstream education programs regardless of whether the language tested is the majority language or a foreign language. The present longitudinal study examined minority and majority language children at the end of Grades 3 and 4, who attended a German-English partial immersion primary school, with respect to their English and German reading comprehension and fluency skills. The results did not reveal any differences between the two groups irrespective of the test format and the language being tested. Apparently, immersion primary school programs are also suitable for minority language children, whose L2 German and L3 English reading skills developed age-appropriately.

The study examines early multilingual formulaic speech with a focus on the English classroom. We have followed a discourse-pragmatic approach in the analysis of our data, which comprises transcripts from eight 45-minute sessions. Transcripts from these sessions involved 184 participants from two different age ranges. In this analysis, we have considered formulas produced in three languages: Catalan, Spanish, and English. Our goal is to provide further evidence for the inherent dynamism and complexity of early multilingual pragmatic development, and in so doing, to acknowledge the role of the educational level and the language program adopted in the school. Findings are partly in line with (a) previous studies dealing with the identification of pragmatic functions in the EFL classroom (Llinares & Pastrana, 2013), and (b) the peculiarities of early third language learners (Portolés, 2015). Finally, we tackle the importance of adopting multilingual perspectives in the analyses of multilingual students.

This article reports on a dissertation study that explored the efficacy of language-focused differentiated instruction targeted to facilitate student oral proficiency development. The study took place in a linguistically diverse Grade 3 immersion classroom. Students’ (n = 24) oral proficiency was assessed and focal student language was evaluated at different stages of the study with attention to complexity measures. The teacher and researcher collaboratively designed instructional language supports to promote more complex language production during math and reading classes. Overall, students expanded their language complexity although Spanish home language (SHL) students appeared to benefit less than English home language students. A functional approach to language development was key to the study as students took more risks to meet their communicative needs, thereby expanding their linguistic repertoires. The teacher provided increasingly more complex alternatives for students to integrate into their classroom interactions, particularly for SHL students.