Читать книгу English in Inclusive Multilingual Preschools - Kirsten Birsak de Jersey - Страница 8

This chapter will argue why it is worthwhile to introduce English at the preschool level. To do so it will clarify who qualifies as a young learner, will reflect on the issue of language choice and will summarize the arguments that have been put forward in favour of an early start in language learning.

Young learners

When reviewing international publications on research related to young learners there is an enormous variation from country to country. Ellis (2014) notes that the term young learner is vague but distinguishes between pre- and post- 11- or 12-year-olds because of the enormous differences in children’s “physical, psychological, social, emotional, conceptual and cognitive development” (pp. 75,76) which result in different approaches to language teaching. Pinter (2011) remarks that it “is hard to fit ‘childhood’ into fixed age brackets. … Typically, children start preschool at around the age of 3 and then they move to primary / elementary school around the age of 5 – 7”. She defines preschool children (age 3 – 5) as follows: “No formal learning experiences, no literacy skills, large differences among children with regard to readiness for school” (p. 2). Copland and Garton (2014) in their introduction to a special issue of a journal that focuses on teaching English to young learners define young learner as follows:

The rapid and comprehensive lowering of the age at which English is introduced to children in many countries, together with the spread of preschool English, means it is timely to focus on these younger age groups. … Therefore, for the purposes of this Special Issue, YLs [young learners] are those at pre-primary and primary level, roughly from the age of 3 up to 11 or 12 years old. (p. 224)

While the study that is presented here focuses on the pre-primary level of preschool children aged 3 – 6, some of the research that is reviewed does not always clearly separate these two age groups. Whenever possible, this study will make this distinction.

Language choice

One of the simple facts of life in the present time is that the English language skills of a good proportion of its citizenry are seen as vital if a country is to participate actively in the global economy and to have access to the information and knowledge that provide the basis for both social and economic development. (Burns & Richards, 2009, p. 1)

English has become an international language, not only in the areas of research, businesses, politics, informatics, tourism or advertising but it has also developed to be the lingua franca which people of different nationalities share to communicate with each other in everyday contexts. From an early age English is a language that is also familiar to children. They are often exposed to English through electronic media, games, popular songs, English loanwords or products from the toy industry, for example. These early encounters with the English language are therefore closely associated with their interests, which in turn stimulate their natural curiosity and keenness to explore the language further.

Preschool teachers are generally reluctant to introduce a foreign language as the groups of children in their contexts of work are extremely heterogeneous due to their multicultural and multilingual background (→ chapter 3). This puts preschool teachers in a dilemma: on the one hand, they recognize that English is a lingua franca and therefore has a particular status in language education. Consequently, the teachers are generally open-minded and consider the idea of introducing English in preschool is an appropriate choice. On the other hand, they see the need for their groups of children to learn German as a second language first. This is expressed in the following quote of one of the preschool teachers who participated in the study which is presented here and may be considered to be representative of preschool teachers’ attitudes:

“It’s difficult to say, because of course children are here to learn German, because they need it for school and their lives. They also have to learn English in the [sic] school later on. So, it is also important, I think. What should I say?” (Nadia, 26.03.15: int. 2).1

This idea of the merits of consecutive language learning in preschool (first German – then English), that is also expressed in this preschool teachers’ quote, is a widely spread preconception among teachers as early language acquisition researchers have demonstrated: “Entgegen lange gehegter Vorurteile wissen wir heute, dass Kinder, die von frühester Kindheit an mit zwei (Erst-)Sprachen konfrontiert werden, dadurch nicht überfordert sind. … Offensichtlich ist die Sorge, Kinder durch potentiell widersprüchlichen Input zu verwirren, groß” (Tracy, 2008, p. 125). But the issue of language choice, that is, which potential additional language to offer in preschools if it is offered at all is yet another concern to teachers.

The European Commission (2011b) in their Policy Handbook which promotes foreign language learning (FLL) at the pre-primary level suggests that it is best to offer a foreign language in preschool education, which will be continued in primary school:

The aims of any EFL policy for children in pre-primary education should be to foster intercultural and multilingual education focused on the development of the child’s personal potential. Where appropriate, it could also be to provide an introduction to a particular language that will be taught later on in primary school. (p. 9)

This understanding is also expressed in the Language Education Policy Profile for Austria, which was published by The Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe and Austrian’s Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur (2008b). The report recognises – if with some reservation and referring to the omnipresence of the English language in society – that English is an “inescapable part of their cultural context”:

As in most other Council of Europe member states, the teaching of English dominates to the extent of sometimes seeming to be synonymous with foreign language teaching. With the exception of arrangements that have been made for autochthonous minorities and migrants, whenever discussion focuses on early-start language learning it tends to focus exclusively on English. In Austria as elsewhere the importance that is attached to developing proficiency in English makes it difficult to get a hearing for diversification, and even more difficult to imagine how it might be implemented. But English is so pervasive in international media, especially the Internet, that there is good reason to suppose that young people will learn it not only as a result of the teaching they receive at school but also because it is an inescapable part of their cultural context. (p. 8)

It has been statistically established by the Special Eurobarometer 243 that “English is perceived as the most useful language by citizens in both new and old member states” (European Commission, 2006, p. 31). According to the latest data, 97 % of all Europeans study English as a first foreign language and languages other than English, French or German are rarely studied (European Commission, 2017). Nevertheless, the European Commission in the same year “reiterated the ambition of ‘enhancing the learning of languages, so that more young people will speak at least two European languages in addition to their mother tongue’" (European Commission, 2018, p. 2; italics in original).

This development may seem at first to contradict European education policy’s aspiration of plurilingual education and the diversification of language teaching as their additional long-term goal: “Furthermore, the co-existence of many languages in Europe is a powerful symbol of the European Union's aspiration to be united in diversity, one of the cornerstones of the European project. Languages define personal identities but are also part of a shared inheritance” (p. 2). But on closer scrutiny this is not the case as it is not a question of ‘either – or’, but of ‘both – and’: while early childhood language development obviously needs to focus on the language of instruction (German), and – in the interest of equal chances for all the children – on a foreign language, children’s first language education must not be neglected:

Deutlich größeres Gewicht (als Dialekte oder Nachbarsprachen, zum Beispiel) wird auf die Wertschätzung und Berücksichtigung der Herkunftssprachen und unterschiedlichen Familienkulturen der Kinder gelegt und vielfach betont, dass andere Familiensprachen als Chance und Bereicherung, nicht als Belastung oder Risiko zu betrachten seien. Es wird nahegelegt, die verschiedenen Herkunftssprachen am besten durch Elternbeteiligung einzubinden. (Sambanis, 2016, pp. 174-175)

Considering the roles of different languages in elementary education, in my research project English was selected as the foreign language to be introduced in the inclusive state preschool for its relevance as a commonly shared European language that contributes to mutual understanding of people with diverse heritage languages. At the same time, English would be integrated in a preschool, which is characteristically multicultural and therefore multilingual. Consequently, it would support European language policy recommendations in a context where at the same time all the languages represented by the children are equally respected and important in their own right (→ chapter 6.2.2). In practice, this means that conscious attention is given to valuing the children’s many heritage languages as a principle in the state preschool, which was selected for the research project. Two examples illustrate this preschool’s language policy: when entering the preschool there is a large paper archway greeting everybody with good morning in the various languages of the children and three times a year they have story-day in which different stations are set up throughout the preschool as story-corners. Various mothers, fathers or grandparents who represent the different cultures and languages come to the preschool with their children’s storybooks and share them in one of the stations. The children are free to go from one station to the other to listen to the stories and have contact with the various languages. As I am a native speaker of English, I read English children’s books in one of the stations. During the day, at various opportunities, the preschool teachers engage the children in comparing words and trying to pronounce them, which is an experience that makes both the children and the teachers aware of the diversity of languages and the excitement of getting involved in learning them. It also values children’s language competences and contributes to a good rapport with their teachers. For example, I remember a situation when I could not manage the right pronunciation of a word in Turkish and suddenly I had about ten children around me all trying to teach me. Because of the philosophy to uphold mutual respect for all languages, the teacher education project that is the focus of the study here therefore began by the children telling everybody which other languages they spoke. During the participatory demonstration lessons (→ chapter 5.7.1) the opportunity was taken to encourage children to share their mother tongues and through this the children felt free to join in and share words in their various languages.

Relevance of an early start in English

Early language acquisition research commonly agrees that children tend to approach second or foreign language learning in a natural way showing only little or no anxiety and inhibitions as they are still in the early phases of coming to terms with their first language or languages. They have the ability to acquire languages intuitively and are “more attuned to the phonological system of the new language” (Pinter, 2006, p. 29).2 But this general statement needs to be substantiated with regard to the following specifications. Referring to Pinter (2011) Copland & Garton (2014) note that there are contradictory results of previous studies on the ‘younger is better’ hypothesis. They therefore note that “there is no conclusive evidence for the supposed benefits of early introduction of English into the curriculum” (p. 224). They argue that if early English is offered, success depends on the quality of “age-appropriate teaching” and “learners’ attitudes towards the language and their motivation to learn” (p. 225). In summarizing the state of available research findings, they note that

research-based publications into effective practices for teaching YLs continue to be quite rare. Database searches … still yield very few examples of empirical studies about the effect of pedagogies on early language learning. … It is clear that there remains a lack of classroom-based studies and ‘young learners’ in general remains an under-researched area. (pp. 226, 227)

It is for similar reasons that Piske (2017) also critically examines the reasons “why the high expectations regarding the outcomes of early foreign language programs many people appear to have had in the beginning have not always been met” (p. 45). Early foreign language education was introduced on the assumption that there is a critical or sensitive period during which children acquire languages more successfully than adolescents or adults (for a summary on research regarding the critical period hypothesis see pp. 45-47). The monocausal explanation of attainment in L2 learning has “led several researchers to ignore the potential influence of variables other than age-related variables on success in L2 Learning” (p. 46). They relate to the quality and amount of exposure to the target language, learners’ opportunities to use the language or teachers’ ability to create motivating learning environments (→ chapter 5.8. for further details). Finally, empirical studies that have been published under the heading of an early start in English have either researched children’s language competence development in primary school settings3 or in bilingual immersive elementary contexts (Piske et al., 2016; Seifert, 2016). Although results from both contexts support the introduction of an early start in English, the contexts that are represented in these empirical research studies differ from the language acquisition context of the multilingual inclusive state preschool which is the focus of the preschool teacher education study that is presented here. Results of these empirical studies can therefore not be directly transferred to this research. No studies have researched children’s English competence development in heterogeneous, non-privileged, inclusive, multi-lingual preschool classrooms to date. This has been criticized by language acquisition researchers and European education policy alike:

One consequence of training kindergarten teachers at secondary level (to date) in Austria has been that Austrian universities and research institutions (with a few exceptions) have occupied themselves little or not at all, with research referring to the kindergarten age group. The same is true, more or less, of the question of how 3 to 6 year olds relate to languages, or deal with various different languages. (Council of Europe, 2008a, p. 87)

Legutke et al. (2009) in their methodology for teaching English in the primary and preschool state that insights resulting from pilots in English language education (p. 140) are limited as research is conducted in exclusive language learning contexts:

[The results] were obtained with a predominantly monolingual group of German children. No pilots have been reported about multi-lingual groups of children, which today have become dominant in many urban and even rural areas. What is missing so far are … programs that consider all children of a given area. In conjunction with these pilots, the impact of factors such as diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, social status, and economic status of parents would have to be researched. (p. 141)

In some studies, that are situated in more privileged contexts, the issue of how to qualify teachers for preschools that “grant learning opportunities to all students, no matter what language and cultural background they have” (p. 141) is not addressed. A case in point is a recent study conducted by Seifert (2016). Her sample is a German-English bilingual elementary nursery school for one- to three-year-old children, which is attached to a university and therefore draws 90 % of its children from parents whose background is academic. As the author critically states herself, this sample hardly qualifies as representing the children currently attending elementary education (pp. 159-160). Other studies that are extensively documented on early language learning education are also located in bilingual acquisition contexts (Steinlein & Piske, 2016). The argument for introducing early English in a multilingual inclusive state preschool therefore cannot be directly derived from existing empirical research studies of documented successes of early English even though existing research in related primary and immersive elementary contexts at least implies that its introduction may be potentially worthwhile. However, a further argument strongly supports its introduction: it is the unquestionable need to provide equal learning opportunities for all the children:

Angesichts der Bildungsverantwortung des Elementarbereichs muss ernsthaft diskutiert werden, ob dem Kontakt mit einer ersten Fremdsprache … nicht selbstverständlich ein Platz zugestanden werden sollte. … Die Nachfrage nach kommerziellen Angeboten und Kindergärten mit bilingualen Programmen, deren Zahl sich in den letzten zehn Jahren verdreifacht haben soll, spiegelt den Elternwunsch. Da dieses Angebot aber nicht allen Kindern zugänglich ist, könnte in einem zentralen Entwicklungsbereich Chancenungleichheit entstehen. (Sambanis, 2016, p. 175)

Finally, yet importantly, it is with the background of my long-term experience and documented best practice examples of teaching English to all the children in the multilingual inclusive preschool that has motivated me to embark on this study (→ chapter 1.2). Its focus will be on the potential to develop preschool teachers’ competences to teach English, also because

many experts have emphasized that focusing on starting age as the key variable is misleading in foreign language contexts. The age factor is not the main issue. There is a lot more to success over time. The quality and quantity of early provision, teachers, programs, and continuity are more important. (Nikolov, 2016, p. 4; see also Nikolov, 2000; Singleton, 2014)

As the qualification of teachers, child-appropriate early language learning programs and the continuity of language programs (for example from preschool to primary education, and from primary education to secondary education) are believed to be just as important to successfully implement early language education as is the age factor, the next chapter will look more closely at the situation of foreign language learning in preschool as seen from the perspectives of education policy (both European and Austrian) and preschool teachers.