Preschool world language learners’ engagement with language: what are the possibilities?

1Preschool world language learners’ engagement with

language: What are the possibilities?

What does development of language awareness among very

young world language learners look like, especially

when they have relatively infrequent exposure to the

language they are learning? Adopting an ‘engagement

with language’ (EWL) perspective (Svalberg, 2012) and

attending closely to classroom discourse, our research

analyses interactional data drawn from several Head

Start preschool classrooms (children aged 3-5) in

order to both establish what sorts of explicit

language awareness such young learners display in

episodes of EWL and to point out what other

opportunities for cultivating language awareness are

latent, but ultimately unexploited, in the classroom

discourse excerpts presented. Our analysis is the

basis for the claim that world language education more

broadly, especially in the case of young learners, can

be enhanced if curriculum and instruction

intentionally focus on developing language awareness

and deepening EWL.

Keywords: language awareness; engagement with

language; young learners; preschool; world language

learning

1 This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Language Awareness in October

2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/ DOI: 10.1080/09658416.2013.804831.

Introduction

World language learning (WLL) at early ages is increasingly

popular in the United States (e.g. Borey & Hegstad, 2011;

Huang, 2009; Seewald, 2012) as it is elsewhere across the

globe (e.g. Butler, 2005; European Commission, 2011;

Martin, 2000). The belief that younger is better when it

comes to the learning of additional languages is shared by

parents, teachers, school administrators, and the language

education profession more broadly for a variety of reasons.

Perhaps most pervasive is the belief that young learners

possess distinct advantages in the process of acquiring

language and that these can be capitalized upon when WLL

begins early. Although empirical studies present

convincing evidence that a young learner does not have

absolute advantages inherent to age (Singleton, 2001), an

earlier start does represent a potentially much longer

sequence of language learning across the lifespan,

therefore holding promise for better ultimate attainment of

language abilities. Longer, more consistent sequences of

instruction over a learner’s lifetime can, as Johnstone

(2009) points out, first take advantage of what young

children do well and later draw on older children’s

strengths and resources in learning. Other language-

related benefits of early WLL that advocates point to are

support of first language literacy and development of

metalinguistic knowledge.

Most early WLL programs, though, do not adopt full or

even partial immersion as an instructional model, and

through much less frequent exposure to the language, aim to

produce only modest linguistic gains in learners

(Johnstone, 2009; Nikolov & Mihaljević Djigunović, 2011).

Rather than functional proficiency with language, these

programs often claim to cultivate positive attitudes, open-

mindedness, a global orientation, or intercultural

competence. Preparing today’s youth for ‘global

citizenship’ (e.g. Byram, 2011) is a goal that many

national governments are seeking to address through WLL;

however, as Woodgate-Jones and Grenfell (2012) explain in

reviewing curricular change underway in the United Kingdom,

policy documents are not always clear in articulating how

these goals are meant to be achieved through instruction.

What concretely teachers can do to foster positive

attitudes or develop intercultural competence in learners

remains largely unspecified. It is indeed in documenting

and examining the complexity of how exactly children engage

with language through WLL and how they do so in various

ways and in various contexts that further research could

contribute productively to clarifying what objectives,

processes, and outcomes are possible.

Research producing much-needed empirical evidence

regarding early WLL programs and practices must be situated

within the broader policy landscape and ideological climate

in which it takes place. We could easily consider the

current swell in support for early WLL in the U.S. as a

categorically positive development, yet sustainability in

early WLL programs has been a chronic challenge (Donato &

Tucker, 2010; Johnstone, 2009). Johnstone (2009) cautions

that surges in early WLL have come in at least three

worldwide waves since the 1960s (the third wave occurring

presently) and that we would do well to draw lessons from

these historical trends, since previous waves have, after

some time, always subsided. Johnstone encourages us to

examine international as well as national policy

environments for language education as we consider the

viability of current approaches and programs; a commitment

at a national level to language education is, he argues, a

major factor in developing programs that last. He also

links sustainability to the way an early WLL program model

corresponds (or not) to intended goals and outcomes:

‘Simply to assume that all will be well just because the

starting age has been lowered is a recipe for confusion’

(p. 38). Gathering empirical data about what precisely the

possibilities are when it comes to WLL is therefore an

endeavour of local and practical importance for individual

programs but also has broader implications for informing

policy and creating environments more favourable to

maintenance of early WLL programs. Moreover, research that

provides evidence that certain program models, curricula,

and pedagogical practices actually support specific gains

(related to linguistic proficiency, intercultural

competence, positive attitudes toward language learning,

etc.) or that suggests avenues for change, in the case that

links between objectives and outcomes are not found, would

move the field beyond an over-simplified ‘younger is

better’ equation to focus on identifying and building upon

what is most efficient, effective and sustainable in

particular early WLL contexts.

The purpose of our article is to present findings from

an exploratory study of several preschool classrooms

involved in the same WLL program. As noted above, an

instructional environment characterized by only infrequent

exposure to the language is typical of most early WLL

programs, and our findings are therefore potentially

instructive to those working in similar settings.

Moreover, we hope to make a contribution to the empirical

research base with regards to a particular dimension of

early WLL, development of language awareness (LA). Our

research describes the process of developing LA among very

young world language learners while also suggesting how

this awareness might have been pushed further in the

classrooms under study. We approached this task from an

engagement with language (EWL) perspective (Svalberg, 2009;

2012). In what follows, we analyse in detail several

classroom episodes in order to illustrate how very young

children can indeed develop LA through WLL, but we also

claim that even more can be done in terms of curriculum and

pedagogical techniques to more fruitfully engage very young

students in learning a world language. First, though, we

briefly review relevant theory and research related to LA

to set the stage for our own analysis.

Language awareness and engagement with language

Existing reviews of the LA literature (James & Garrett,

1991; Svalberg, 2007) make clear the broad scope of theory,

research and pedagogical applications related to the

construct. We limit our discussion to those formulations

of LA that are most relevant to our research.

Across definitions of LA certain terminology tends to

recur: consciousness, attention, alertness, noticing,

sensitivity, and perception. All of these revolve around

the central notion that LA has to do with explicit

knowledge or an explicit display of knowledge related to

language and/or language use. Garrett and James (2000), for

example, explain that LA refers to ‘explicit knowledge

about language and conscious perception and sensitivity in

language learning, language teaching and language use’ (p.

330). LA is, thus, observable through learners’ talk and

writing about language (i.e. meta-talk, meta-language) but

also through other means for displaying attention and

conveying meaning, such as gaze, gesture, and other

movement. These paralinguistic means for displaying LA are

especially important to consider as we study children

involved in WLL since linguistic capabilities, even in

their first languages, are still developing.

Those interested in LA focus on explicitness because

they are concerned either with the role that explicit

knowledge can play in promoting cognitive processes related

to second language acquisition (Ellis, 2008) or the

potential facilitative effects for development of critical

perspectives and intercultural competence (Byram, 2012) or

cultivation of positive attitudes toward linguistic

diversity (Hélot, 2008). LA in all cases deals with

explicit focus on language forms and functions; but,

especially as theorists and researchers interpret what is

meant by ‘language functions’, perspectives on and

approaches to LA vary quite considerably.

In the broad range of viewpoints on what LA is and the

types of learning it could positively impact, LA has been

examined from both product and process orientations. That

is, LA research ‘may focus on the engagement with language

(EWL) process through which LA is constructed (Svalberg,

2009) or the resulting or pre-existing LA itself in the

form of language and language-related knowledge, beliefs

and attitudes’ (Svalberg, 2012, p. 377). While a product-

orientation provides useful insight into starting and end

points, a process-orientation captures the complexity of

learning and development, in situ, and from multiple

angles. In our own study, we adopted an EWL orientation.

In early WLL settings, an EWL lens allows for close

examination of interactional processes that appear to

foster development of LA, and to imagine other possible

configurations in classroom discourse and interaction that

could push development of LA even further or in different

directions.

Classroom-related work on development of LA most often

involves descriptive accounts of curricular efforts,

pedagogical activities, and projects. For example,

projects in South Africa (Janks, 1999; 2001), South America

(Leal, 1998), Europe (Candelier, 2003; Carter, 1990;

Perregaux, De Goumoëns, Jeannot, & De Pietro, 2003), and

Canada (Armand, Maraillet, & Beck, 2004; Dagenais, Walsh,

Armand, & Maraillet, 2008) highlight the range of practical

means through which LA-raising goals have been addressed

and the variety of learning contexts in which LA is viewed

as potentially useful. Among these, only the Canadian

Elodil project describes activities for developing LA in

preschool-aged learners (Armand, 2011). A handful of

studies adopt a process orientation and look to classroom

discourse and interaction in an attempt to analyse how LA

develops (e.g. Dagenais et al., 2008; Razfar & Rumenapp,

2012).

With this frame in place, we hope that our work will

contribute to an understanding of the process of LA

development through EWL, especially when it comes to very

young learners. We also hope to strengthen the view,

within a process orientation that draws on the concept of

EWL, that LA development is a complex, dynamic and

ultimately transformable interaction among classroom

participants.

Research design

Our desire to study the process of LA development through

EWL among very young world language learners led us to

adopt an ecological approach and to employ ethnographic,

discourse-analytic methods. We collected observational

data, in the form of video recordings and fieldnotes, as

the children and teachers from several classrooms

participating in one early WLL program went about their

normal activity. We have spent nearly two years observing

the program, and although we only present four excerpts

from classroom interaction below, drawn from a year’s worth

of data collection (23 site visits and approximately 13.5

total hours of recordings), our analysis is grounded in and

is representative of what we have observed regularly since

the launch of the early WLL program.

Context

The early WLL program we studied is anchored in a

partnership between a network of ten Head Start preschools

and a local university. Head Start is a federally funded,

early education initiative for 3- to 5-year-olds that aims

to enhance school readiness for children from low-income

families. As is the case in broader U.S. society,

linguistic diversity in Head Start is increasing and is

increasingly recognized. The organization ‘continues to

support efforts to improve the cultural and linguistic

responsiveness of its practices’ (Advisory Committee on

Head Start Research and Evaluation, 2012, p. 96), focusing

heavily on finding ways to respect and accommodate home

languages other than English while promoting learning of

both languages. It also seeks new means for bringing

employees’ and the public’s attention to the longstanding

‘multicultural principles of Head Start programs’ (p. 107)

and to develop new strategies and practices to strengthen

these multicultural principles.

The particular classrooms in which our study took

place were all located in a medium-size city of

considerable racial, ethnic and linguistic diversity.

Nearly all of the children enrolled in these classrooms

were African-American as were many of the classroom

teachers and aides. All but one of the classroom teachers

in the network of ten centres was female. Only a few

children spoke a language other than English at home;

however, almost all of the children spoke Black English,

while classroom teachers’ linguistic repertoires included

varieties and styles ranging from Black English to so-

called ‘standard’ varieties of American English.

The Head Start-university partnership arose because a

parent active in the organisation approached a local

university’s school of education to inquire whether

language instruction could be integrated in some way into

Head Start classrooms. Collaboration between a professor

and a Head Start administrator led to creation of a program

in which language teachers in training from the local

university would visit the same Head Start classroom twice

a week for approximately two hours each visit to teach

children Chinese, Korean, or Spanish. The language

teachers in training, called language partners in the

program, were either native speakers or highly proficient

non-native speakers of the language they would teach the

children. Especially because the language partners were

novice teachers, they were supervised and observed

regularly and were offered guidance and support from both

the participating professor and the Head Start classroom

teachers. In their instruction, the language partners were

asked to teach the children vocabulary and basic

communicative routines, to align their content as much as

possible with the thematic instruction already part of the

regular Head Start curriculum, and to find ways for

children to experience a new language through play. In the

program we studied, then, there was no explicit curricular

focus on developing LA in the children nor was there any

focused training of the language partners that provided

techniques for raising LA.

Methods of data collection and analysis

Once data were collected, organized, transcribed, and

translated, we identified what we call EWL episodes in the

transcripts of classroom interaction (see Appendix for

transcription conventions). EWL episodes are comparable to

language-related episodes, since they too are stretches of

interaction in which learners ‘talk about the language they

are producing, question their language use, or correct

themselves or others’ (Swain & Lapkin, 1998, p. 326). Yet,

we found the concept of EWL more fitting to our analysis

since EWL attempts to capture the fine detail of the

process of engagement around language and since it does so

with attention to more than just what learners say. EWL as

an analytic framework invites a nuanced, multi-modal

analysis of LA and how it develops through EWL. We drew

heavily on Svalberg’s (2012) criteria for identifying EWL

(see Figure 1), and through our analysis sought to address

the following research questions:

(1) What does the development of LA look like among

preschool world language learners receiving relatively

infrequent instruction and in a model that did not

intentionally take up LA-raising as an objective?

(2) What evidence is there in classroom interactions that

LA could have been developed further?

[Figure 1 near here]

Analysis and discussion

The aim of our analysis was to describe the nature of young

children’s development of LA by identifying episodes of EWL

and paying special attention to the depth of engagement in

these interactions. Throughout the data, 53 EWL episodes

were identified. Sometimes participants engaged about

particular linguistic forms or functions; at others they

focused on language(s) in general. EWL episodes varied in

their focus and unfolded in different ways in interaction;

in the discussion of analysis that follows, we identify the

trends in our data but also point to evidence of how LA

could have been cultivated more deeply in certain

interactions. We believe this type of analysis to be

useful since it shows quite clearly what very young

language learners are capable of even when curriculum and

pedagogy are not intentionally focused on raising LA, and

it indicates possible future directions for developing such

curricula and pedagogical techniques.

Lexically-focused, teacher-initiated EWL

Most likely because instruction in this early WLL program

often focused on word-learning, instances of translation

and one-word utterances were the most common form of

explicit explanation of language and typified EWL among the

children, their language partners and classroom teachers.

Accounting for approximately 87% of all EWL episodes,

lexically-focused engagement through means of translation,

occurred both from L1 (English) to L2 (Chinese, Korean or

Spanish) and in reverse. Excerpt 1, in which a Chinese

language partner, Mei (all participants referred to by

pseudonym), starts a group lesson by asking how the

children were doing that day, illustrates this very typical

pattern in our data.

Excerpt 1: How do you say hello in Chinese? Who remembers?

01 Mei: so how is everyone doing today? 02 Ss & Ts: good03 Mei: okay so (pause) how do you say hello in Chinese? ((waves her04 hand above her head)) who remembers? 05 S1: 你你06 hello07 Mei: good very good can everyone say that again08 Ss: 你你09 hello

It is reasonable to expect that a language teacher would

start a lesson with learners by saying hello and asking how

they are; yet, rather than speaking in Chinese from the

outset, Mei begins her conversation with the class in

English and then focuses explicit attention onto a

linguistic form, in this case, the word ‘hello’. As a

result, in applying Svalberg’s criteria, we can see that in

this EWL episode, language is most definitely treated as an

object rather than serving as the medium of communication

and the children need not do any noticing of the form on

their own. When Mei asks directly for a translation of the

word from English to Chinese in lines 3-4, and especially

when she adds the question ‘who remembers?,’ there is clear

indication that the EWL is squarely in the realm of

information recall. Cognitively, then, we might

characterize EWL in Excerpt 1 as relatively undemanding.

Affectively, children in this interaction appeared willing

to engage, although in a few of the many translation-based

EWL episodes in our data, we occasionally observed an

individual child resisting or rejecting a translation. The

learners’ behaviour is highly dependent on Mei’s

contributions to the interaction, and therefore not

autonomous. In terms of social dimensions of EWL, the

children do engage verbally; however, their contribution is

minimal to the social interaction and highly reactive. In

sum, this interaction between Mei and the group of

students, and the many others in our data that mirror it

closely, created EWL that highly constrained the depth with

which and ways in which children participated.

Sometimes, lexically-focused, teacher-initiated EWL

episodes were slightly more elaborate. Accompanying their

verbal explanations of language, students on occasion

gestured and moved about. The following excerpt took place

when a Spanish language partner, Megan, and some of the

children in the class were playing a game she invented

called ‘Dora dice’ (Dora says) similar to the game ‘Simon

says’ that many children aged 3-5 are familiar with in the

U.S.

Excerpt 2: Dora dice levántate

01 Megan: ((with her hand up)) okay Dora dice bajen lamano02 Dora says lower your hand03 S1: put your hand down04 Megan: muy bien we’re going to put our hand down bajen la mano05 very good lower your hand06 ((some children ask Megan if they can play with Dora))07 okay you can play with Dora one by one a fewmore times with08 Dora dice okay?09 Dora says10 Ss: okay11 Megan: just a few more times how about levántate 12 stand up 13 do you remember what levántate means?14 stand up15 S1: ((touches his head)) stand stand up ((pointshis finger toward the16 ceiling))17 Megan: stand up ((stands up, students stand up)) muy bien18 very good

[Figure 2 near here]

In this relatively typical example of EWL in the classrooms

we studied, the language partner asks students the meaning

of the word, levántate, to which a little boy in the class

responds with translation from Spanish to English and

physical movement. Standing up and pointing his finger at

the ceiling as he speaks (see Figure 2) seems to move the

utterance from the realm of pure translation into a true

explanation of language and a slightly deeper EWL. In

terms of Svalberg’s criteria, the video data from which

Excerpt 2 and Figure 2 are drawn illustrate definite

alertness in the child, and his focus on a particular

linguistic form (levántate) as an object of attention. That

his reasoning is based in information recall and a reaction

to Megan’s question (rather than an instance of independent

noticing or reflection) would perhaps suggest in Svalberg’s

model that the cognitive dimensions of his EWL were

relatively shallow; however, when studying EWL among very

young children, we should perhaps not be overly concerned

if cognitive aspects of EWL are predominantly, or at least

initially, of the more memory- or imitation-based and

reactive kind. As Nikolov and Mihaljević Djigunović (2011)

point out, the dominant focus in early WLL programs on

practice with vocabulary items or communicative chunks

reflects ‘developmental stages in early language learning

as children gradually shift from prefabricated utterances

to more analysed language use’ (p. 97). Inductive

reasoning about language and more independently emerging

comparisons, questions, and inferences about language are

perhaps more likely to appear at later stages of language

learning.

In further support of the EWL are the little boy’s

affective and social engagements. In this interaction with

Megan and other children, the boy was willing and eager to

participate in the game that the class was playing, and

this seems to have had a positive impact on his willingness

to engage with language and lent decided purpose to his

display of LA. Indeed, showing awareness of the lexical

form ‘levántate’ was central to playing the game. The

language partner’s question was at once part of the game

and a prompt for the children to display their knowledge

about language; in this sense, the little boy’s explanation

through translation and physical movement are highly

dependent on the language partner and more reactive in

nature, as opposed to being more initiating or autonomous.

Yet, the translation is socially meaningful since it

furthers the child’s ability to participate in the game.

Student-initiated EWL

While teacher-initiated EWL was prevalent throughout the

data, student-initiated episodes occurred as well

(approximately 11% of the time). In the following excerpt

from one of the Korean-learning classrooms, the Head Start

classroom teacher, Ms. Lane, was leading a group lesson on

the topic of vegetables. All of the children were sitting

on the floor facing Ms. Lane, while Mina, the Korean

language partner, was at the back of the group, listening

to the teacher’s lesson. In this classroom, Ms. Lane often

incorporated Korean into her lessons by asking Mina for

translations of certain words or phrases, even when Mina

was not the one leading the whole-group activity. In

Excerpt 3, in the midst of the EWL that Ms. Lane sets up,

we see a student initiate his own EWL as he attempts to

contribute to the class’ on-going discussion of vegetables.

Excerpt 3: Bread in Korean is 빵

01 Ms. Lane: alright now I want you to tell me- Ms. Ms. Mina do you know 02 any can you give us some names for vegetables? (pause)

03 broccoli?04 Mina: um broccoli is just broccoli05 Ms. Lane: oh you call it broccoli?06 Mina: yeah07 Ms. Lane: oh they call broccoli broccoli just like we do you go to Korea 08 you can say I want broccoli and they’ll giveyou broccoli like we09 do okay what about cabbage? 10 Mina: cabbage uh (pause) 你你你11 cabbage12 Ms. Lane: 你你你 你你你 that’s cabbage you like cabbage? 13 cabbage cabbage14 ((unintelligible)) I do so we like 你你你15 cabbage16 S1: ((turns to Mina to ask privately how tosay bread in Korean))17 Ms. Lane: we need to find out today from Mr. Jerome what’s our vegetables 18 so we can say it in En- in Korean ((two students put their hands 19 up)) go ahead S2 ((S2 leaves))20 S3: what’s cabbage?21 Ms. Lane: 你你你 你你你 that’s cabbage22 cabbage cabbage23 Mina: ((answers S1)) 你24 bread25 S1: Ms. Lane?26 Ms. Lane: ((looks at S1 who has stood up and raised his hand)) yes27 S1: bread in Korean is 你28 bread29 Ms. Lane: ((looks confused)) pardon me? vegetables we’re talking about30 vegetables ((turns to Mina)) what’s vegetables in Korean?31 Mina: 你你32 vegetable

Quite apparent in this excerpt is the nature of the EWL

that the Head Start classroom teacher establishes. This is

an EWL that is focused narrowly on lexicon and that

interactionally involves translation from English to

Korean, from Ms. Lane’s requests for particular words to

Mina’s responses. The student shifts the interaction by

initiating his own EWL (see Figure 3), asking Mina for a

word, gaining permission to speak from his teacher, and

then standing up to loudly state ‘bread in Korean is 你’

(line 27).

[Figure 3 near here]

Drawing on Svalberg’s criteria, we may note that the

child is alert and has clearly noticed that translation of

food-related words is going on between Ms. Lane and Mina.

His attention is focused on language-as-object, but the EWL

is meaningful in the sense that he seeks out the Korean

word for something he truly wants to add to the on-going

discussion. (Incidentally, this element of meaningfulness

is not included in Svalberg’s criteria for identifying EWL

although it could prove relevant across cognitive,

affective and social dimensions of EWL). The student’s

information-seeking behaviour points to more reflective and

proactive engagement than Excerpts 1 and 2 show, and is

perhaps, as a result, cognitively deeper than the many

teacher-initiated, translation-based interactions we

analysed. Affectively, the little boy is very willing to

engage with language and to share his contribution with the

group. His EWL is purposeful and his behaviour highly

autonomous. Socially, the child is interacting with both

the language partner and his classroom teacher as he

engages with language. This is a scaffolded social

interaction, as the child asks Mina for help; however, the

little boy comes across more as a leader than a follower

since he initiates the EWL around the word ‘bread’ in

Korean.

This excerpt further illustrates issues of EWL that

have to do not just with language form or function but also

with the activity of language learning itself. The little

boy’s way of requesting a translation from Mina and then

formulating his contribution to the class’ discussion as an

equation in which ‘X in A language is Y in B language’ points

to his underlying understanding of what language is and

what language learning involves. Students in all of the

classes we studied were regularly and consistently engaged

in learning the strategy of translation as central to the

activity of language learning, and teachers and language

partners routinely modelled such practices. Such

socialization through EWL produced a common format for

demonstrating one's LA. This kind of approach, however,

need not be the only strategy young learners develop

through their WLL.

Script-focused, student-initiated EWL

While most interactions in the WLL program we studied

focused on oral language and on lexicon, they sometimes

took up other modes and other formal features of language,

including writing and pronunciation (only 6% of the time).

In one of the Korean-learning classrooms, the language

partner often wrote in Korean script as she also orally

taught new words to the children. For instance, she

incorporated activities where students attached Korean-

medium labels to classroom objects such as doors, chairs,

and books. In Excerpt 4, writing systems are at the heart

of an interaction between a little girl and Mina, when the

child asks Mina to write both of their names on a piece of

paper.

Excerpt 4: How spell your regular name?

01 S1: now can I write your name how what’s your name? 02 ((gets a piece of paper and puts it on the table)) 03 Mina: oh my my name? 04 S1: in Korean05 Mina: in Korean06 S1: yep 07 Mina: ((S1 leans forward as Mina writes her name)) Min (pause)08 (pause) I have square in my name that’s weird ((points to a part 09 of her name)) Min (pause) A (pause)10 S1: you got that in your name11 Mina: Mina that’s my name12 S1: how spell your regular name? 13 Mina: my regular name? this is my regular name14 S1: ((stares at Mina for a while))15 Mina: Mina16 S1: ((takes Mina’s pencil)) I’m gonna sh- I showyou how I write my 17 first name ((unintelligible))18 Ms. Lane: do you remember her name (pause) Mina19 S1: Mina ((writes her own name on the paper, under Mina’s name, 20 then taps on Mina’s arm who is looking at other children)) look it21 ((spells name letter by letter))22 Mina: [S1’s name]23 S1: can you write can you write my name in Korean?24 Mina: sure 25 S1: S ((starts to spell out her name for Mina using English alphabet))26 Mina: ((writes S1’s name in Korean on paper)) oh 你你你 你你 that’s

27 student’s name28 that’s your name29 S1: how you spell her name? ((points at the Korean person filming))30 Mina: her name? ((turns to the Korean researcher)) what’s your name? 31 ((turns to S1)) ask her name ((quietly)) askher name what’s your32 name? ((whispers in S1’s ear)) say 你你你33 name34 S1: 你你你35 name36 Mina: 你你你?37 what is38 S1: 你你你?39 what is40 Mina: 你你你41 name42 S1: 你你你43 name44 Mina: 你你你?45 what is46 S1: 你你你?47 what is48 Jung: Jung49 Mina: Jung I see Jung ((writes the name on thepaper))50 S1: in Korean now ((smiles at Mina))51 Mina: yeah that’s Korean

Throughout this interaction, the student and Mina

engage in a kind of negotiation about writing systems and

this occurs at multiple levels. On one level, we see the

little girl display her awareness that Korean has a writing

system distinct from English (line 4) since she specifies

that Mina should write her name ‘in Korean’ after the

broader request in line 1 (‘what’s your name’). She again

displays this awareness in line 23 when she asks Mina to

write her name on paper ‘in Korean’. As she begins to

spell her own name aloud, though, she uses the English

alphabet, and a new opportunity arises for negotiation of

what a writing system and spelling are. Mina remarks ‘oh’

(line 26) and then ‘spells out’ the child’s name as she

writes it down in Korean characters; this act of ‘spelling’

though occurs in Korean fashion, focusing on syllable

structure rather than saying a sequence of letters, as the

phonetic system in Korean is influenced by syllable

patterns. The final segment of the interaction involving

the little girl’s interest in knowing how to write down the

researcher’s name (lines 29-51) is further evidence that

she was becoming adept with recognizing the existence of

English and Korean as distinct writing systems, and she

makes a particularly proud display of her awareness in line

50, smiling at Mina and commenting ‘in Korean now’.

Development of LA through EWL shifted in this episode

from exclusive attention to formal features of writing

systems to their relative values. In line 8, Mina draws

the little girl’s attention to a particular feature of the

Korean script, the square shape of one of the characters in

her name, which Mina characterizes as ‘weird’. Mina seems

to possibly be speaking for the little girl, formulating

what she thinks the little girl might say about the

character because it’s different from English script. This

characterization appears to focus the child’s attention on

evaluating the written form since she questions in line 10

‘you got that in your name’; she too seems oriented to the

‘weirdness’ of the square-shaped character. An exchange

then ensues, during which the student asks Mina to write

her ‘regular’ name, an apparent request for Mina to write

her name not with Korean script but using the English

alphabet. To this Mina responds that what is written in

Korean is her ‘regular’ name. The little girl, after some

silent consideration appears to accept this proposition,

volunteers to show Mina how her own name is written and

proceeds to write it out using English script on the piece

of paper. This stretch of interaction was one that

suggested to us the strong possibility for developing LA in

much deeper ways through early WLL. Beyond awareness of

forms and their linguistic and communicative functions, EWL

could possibly foster more critical LA rooted in

exploration of and possible negotiation of the values we

ascribe to language.

If we apply Svalberg’s criteria in analysing Excerpt

4, it is quite apparent that the little girl is alert and

attentive to features of language. She is very focused on

language as an object, but in a sense that is different

from more lexically-focused EWL episodes that are analysed

above. She considers whole languages and their writing

systems, as opposed to one particular feature, such as a

lexical item. In reviewing the video recording of this

interaction, there are quite clear instances of the child

reflecting on language. The longer pause in line 14 and

the child’s expression are surface indicators of seemingly

deeper reflection. The interaction is also highly

analytical, as the little girl compares English and Korean

writing systems and asks questions. Cognitively, this

interaction is comparatively richer than those analysed

above, if we interpret a broader range of reflective,

critical and analytical displays as signs of deeper

cognitive engagement. From affective and social points of

view, the little girl is quite eager to engage, she does so

purposefully and independently, and she acts as a leader

rather than a follower at various moments of the

interaction. The initiative she takes to engage with

language is apparent in the first line of the excerpt,

where she draws Mina into an interaction around writing,

and at other moments when she keeps the interaction going

by offering to show Mina how she writes her own name (lines

16-17) and in expressing curiosity about the researcher’s

name (line 29).

Conclusion

Through our analysis, we were able to gain several

insights. First, our data establishes that LA through EWL

is definitely possible even among very young language

learners and even in an instructional model that only

provided limited time for language learning. Second, there

were clear patterns in EWL episodes, with interactions

around language dominated by a focus on lexicon, involving

mostly translation, and being largely teacher-initiated.

These patterns seem to correspond to the pedagogical

approach in place in the program. Most importantly, in

reviewing our data, we came to the conclusion that the

patterns we identified could most certainly be shifted to

yield richer EWL, in our context and likely in others.

Such a transformation could occur pedagogically and/or

curricularly along any one of the dimensions outlined in

Svalberg’s model or through some combination of these

aspects.

For instance, in the program we studied, attention is

currently being focused on revising pedagogical approach

such that there is an intentional focus on raising LA

through EWL (with plans to also focus on cultivating

critical LA in the future). Drawing from existing

curricula, but adapting goals and activities for the very

young learner, efforts are underway to train language

partners to more intentionally draw attention to language

forms and functions, to do so in ways that are motivating

to children, and to go beyond mere information recall to

include comparison and reflection (drawing from the

cognitive dimensions of EWL that Svalberg proposes).

Training also encourages language partners to invite

learners to share their personal experiences with and

perspectives on languages and to do so through visual and

gestural modes in addition to the verbal. Drawing from

affective and social dimensions of Svalberg’s framework,

these modifications are aimed at fostering more interactive

encounters, in which children advance their perceptions and

understandings more autonomously. We anticipate that

prompting the language partners to consciously attend to

enhancing EWL will shift the nature of interactions in the

program. We intend on researching the impact of these

changes as well as the ways in which the language partners

design instruction and develop their approach to raising LA

through EWL over time.

We found Svalberg’s framework for identifying EWL to

be highly practical and flexible in capturing the process

of learners’ interactions with language. The model might

be further developed to include questions about the

meaningfulness of the engagement and to more explicitly

acknowledge the role of non-verbal modes that support

displays of awareness and facilitate EWL (gesture,

movement, drawing, etc.). Further classroom-based research

in a range of classroom contexts that have explicit goals

of raising LA would likely benefit from using Svalberg’s

model and would nuance our understanding of what is

possible in various learning environments when particular

dimensions of the framework are emphasized in instruction.

Beyond study of processes that foster LA through EWL, it

would also be valuable to research awareness about the

activity of language learning that learners develop through

their interactions.

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Appendix. Transcription conventions

S = student; Ss = multiple students

Ts = Head Start classroom teachers

(pause)

((transcriber’s note))

translation

? rising intonation

- cut off speech

Figure 1. Svalberg’s (2012) criteria for identifying

engagement with language (EWL).

Figure 2. Pointing upward during ‘Dora dice’.

Figure 3. Student initiating his own EWL.