What doe gesture have to do with language?

Gesturing and Linguistic Meaning

I spent the previous two days in an intensive workshop on the psycholinguistics of gesture. My head hurts. But if I don’t get his sorted out, I will lose the impact of the several info dense presentations. The presenters were from the France, Sweden and South Africa, talk about a multilingual treatment. Interestingly, the audience was all doctoral students here at UWC. None of the faculty in lingu, or edu attended. Don’t know what that means. I had heard that the pre workshop presentation on Monday, made by one of the participants, was perceived by resident faculty as trickery in empirical methods, but that is hearsay. I was blown away by the content and the style of the presenters. So, on to content.

The following information is taken from talks by Marianne Gullberg, Univ of Lund. It is often assumed that when L2 speakers gesture while they speak, it is to fill in for missing L2 words, syntax, etc. According to what I learned in the workshop, this bit of commonly shared “wisdom” is untrue. Gesture is not a filler for language gaps, neither syntax, nor lexemes. Rather, gesture is produced simultaneously with the language output (both L1 and L2), and therefore can facilitate learning if used in conjunction with the language and/or content production. This may be especially true if the teacher is adept at using a conventional set of gestures that the students come to recognize. They may even be specific to a given content area (say, math).

When talk stops, gesture stops. This means that gesture is not, cannot, be a filler. However, when an L2 speaker is struggling, he may use a non-content gesture (hand raised, extended, twirling at wrist) to “keep the floor” so that turn in speaking is not lost while he problem solves internally. But this is characteristically done without eye contact, without engagement with the interlocutor. In contrast, when gesture is used to find a particular word, a word that addressee presumably knows, eye contact is intense, interlocutor may participate in a representational gesture with the speaker as way of verifying the word derived. In addition, conditional or qualifying gestures may be used when the derived, previously missing, word is only an approximation. The conditional gesture demonstrates that the L2 speaker is aware that the word is not an exact match, but will suffice.

Gestures may be “pre-loaded” (such as a lifting and drawing back of an arm at the elbow, “cocked arm”) but will be deployed in alignment (syncopation) with the target word it is intended to elaborate. So gestures are timed with particular targets (words, or phrases). To me, this means that the generation of targeted language bit and the gesture are generated simultaneously. Therefore, gestures are part of the structure of the language system. Only certain things can be regarded as gestures. The physical movements associated with an intended action are not gestures. For example, the physical in picking up a toy are not gestures. Self-regulating behaviors, such as scratching noses, hair, or other self-soothing pats are not gestures. (They may however be meaningful from a psychological perspective, but not as gestures).

Gesture may be conceptualized on a continuum between conventionalized and non-conventionalized. Conventionalized gestures may even stand alone, are perhaps “quotable,” are culture and language specific, and may represent idiomatic expressions. Less conventional gestures are created in flux. They co-occur with the language that they are intended to elaborate, and have no set, independent meaning.

Neill categorizes gesture as iconic, metaphoric, and deictic. Iconic gestures look like what they signal, such as “just a pinch” that is accompanied by index and thumb pinching together. Metaphoric, or more abstract gestures indicate a precision but not an exact pinch, to use the previous example. Diectic gestures are indexical, for example “this, not that” while pointing at the objects. But these three categories are not mutually exclusive (as the double use of “a pinch” indicates). Rather, the categories “scale out” the degree of representativeness of the gesture, or how much the gesture used matched what they are intended to mean (more later on gesturers’ intended meaning). McNeill also points out that some gestures are more temporal, marking the prosody of the spoken language.

Gestures also carry inferential referential meaning for particular spoken words. Here think of a fisherman’s arm and hand gestures when he says “It was [this] big.” Gestures can also function as complete speech acts, even without spoken counterparts. If a “speaker” holds his hand phone to his ear with raised eyebrows and eye contact and a tilt of his head, there is no doubt that he is asking his interlocutor to call him. Gestures may also fill specific syntactic slots. “ Will you ______ the ball?” where the blank is filled by a throwing action, even while the word throw is known, and at hand for the speaker and interlocutor.

One well-worn hypothesis is that when L2 speakers experience difficulty, they recruit gesture to fill the gap created by their “deficit.” This is logical, but not true according to the experimental psycholinguistic data. When the same L2 speaker acquired a certain amount of competence, this gap theory would predict that the speaker would now stop using gesture. This doesn’t happen. In fact, proficient native speakers of any language should not need gesture. But they do use gesture.

So, the research question: Is gesture a linguistic compensation device?

Such a device would need to be;

            A rich semiotic resource (in order to be able to generate the variety of             gestures needed)

            Have expressive power (as the previous examples demonstrated)

            Have a tight link between the language and the device

            Have relevance to the addressee (must be recognizable)

In fact gesture has all these affordances, so it seems reasonable that it would/could be used as a linguistic compensatory device. But it just isn’t so. Here are two more practical questions:

1.     Do gestures replace speech? Apparently not, as there are only gestures when there is speech. Silence means no gestures. There are two instances of gesture during silence: McNeill mentions a “conduit gesture (1985: 354). Kendon (2004) mentions pragmatic gestures. In this latter instance, during silence, there can be a gesture by the struggling speaker, but not to substitute for missing words, but to hold the floor, so that no other speakers step on the talk space currently held by the struggling speaker.

2.     Can gestures be used to solve, assist language problems. Yes, but different language problems elicit different types of gestures than simple word supply. Lexical problems (not knowing the word in the L2) are accompanied by gestures that signal engagement with the interlocutor through intense eye contact and a representational use of gesture that is at times co-constructed and subsequently co-performed for verification of the derived word.

The following information is taken from a talk by Ramonna Kunene, Post Doc UCT, PhD from Univ. of Grenoble. Fluent in Zulu, French. Her dissertation compared gestures that accompany accompany narrative recalls of 2:45 minute videos. Participants were speakers of Zulu and French. Transcribed the verbal and gestural products with software ELAN. Data were analyzed for length and type of clause for spoken language; function of gesture and its relationship to the content on the cartoon episode in video. Gesture annotations included presence of gesture (was there a gesture) established in no audio condition. Then subsequent analysis (with audio) for function, relationship to speech, time placement in the audio sequence, gesture form (mouth, hand). Differences were sought between the dependent variables (on gesture) and independent variables of language, age and gender. Significant differences were found for type of clause, type of gesture for age. No significant differences were found for the independent variable of language.

Overall interpretation of the findings point out different approaches to the task. French speaking participants respond to the retell with a tendency to explain, interpret, comment. Zulz speakers tend to approach the retell with narrativizing. Kunene invoked a Sapir Whorf idea of Zulu culture and language being one of oral tradition that highlight narrative. Whereas French is conditioned by centuries of preference for print, and use of pragmatic language.

Incidental findings reported (no doubt related to findings, but I missed the link, so I have the following recorded as somewhat independent findings):

Gesture develops with age.

Zulu speakers tend to use more representational gestures.

Gestures per clause increase with age.

In Zulu, boys make greater use of physical space with larger gestures, and greater number of strokes per gesture.

In use of representational gestures, French speakers plateau at 9-10.

In use of non-representational gestures, French speakers do not plateau.

In Zulu, representational gestures may disambiguate large number of non-indicative shortened forms in an agglutinative language (think pronoun reference).

These findings reminded me of students’ predispositions to summarization tasks in school settings. One of the findings in Brown and Days’ 1980’s research in the development of summarizing abilities is that some participants had difficulty with the task and instead retold in order the events, the steps. It seems that if an oral culture is linguistically grounded in narrativizing experience (like Zulu), those speakers come to the task of summarizing with different language abilities than the French. In the study, the French are characterized as talking ABOUT the film, in abstracted, non-representational way (was the word partege?).  So if parts of the US population, identifiable groups, are more prepared to give narrative accounts, what would that mean about observable “ability” differences in summary as a outcome measure?  I do remember that the younger the participant in the Brown & Day,, the more likely they were to give a temporal narrative instead of abstracted summaries. This reminds me of the comprehension recall where younger students give the and then, and then report. These were/are seen as “deficit” in that research on comprehension. What if these are linguistically driven communication patterns that can be associated with cultural linguistic worlds? 

A final incident in this presentation merits some attention:  Manne, post doc from Sweden, asked about the researchers’ prompts that immediately preceded the recall production. Dr. Kunene used several versions: “What did you see?” and “What happened?” Manne’s point was that the questio that precedes the outcome performance has an impact on what they say. Asking “see” suggests (subtly) that the researches wants a description of the physical space,etc. Whereas, asking to “tell about” may elicit a temporal narrative, or a topic/comment description (depending on the backgrounds). The point is that the way you frame the questio impacts the kind of data you get. So frame in the way you want the data to come in, and make a protocol, and stick to it with all participants. I also learned this new term, questio, as a superordinate term for researcher prompt that elicits a response from participants. He will send me a ref that plays this out more thoroughly.

The following is from another talk by Marianne Gullberg. This one gutted me. I was so exhausted from following the exciting intricacies of this beautiful study, that I needed a nap, but was too excited to stop talking bout through lunch (fortunately with Marianne).

What do gestures reveal about what language learners actually mean?

Up until recently, gestures were thought to indicate what L2 speakers didn’t know or couldn’t do. To set up the paper presentation, Gullberg differentiated children’s and adult’s acquisition of gestures as they relate to oral language use.

For Kids, the most common theory of language acquisition is the innate (nativism) hypothesis. This is the generative approach we have grown up with. That language is a human competence that we are born with, and we only need to hear language to have the competence activated. This is Noam Chomsky’s approach generative transformational grammar.

A second approach that is used here by Gullberg is that language is learned gradually through input (emergentists) hypothesis. It is based on what learners hear, and the frequency of input as well as the semantic complexity of the input. The observed uniformity in language development, despite the documented paucity and diversity in the input provided in different homes, is explained by language consistencies, such as [things] are more frequent topics than [events] and [relations]. Semantically general words used more frequently, but semantically specific words with lower frequency may have more impact because of their specificity.

Time out: while I was listening to frequency vs. salience, I was reminded of Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn Mervis’s work with basic level nouns. This is a compelling theory about the organization of semantic memory, and how it maps or doesn’t map the “real world.” R and M suggest that there is level of representation where words work most efficiently to cover the intended meaning, as it is related to the physical world, and that is called the basic level. In biologic taxonomies, it is a regular use of the category such as dog that is basic. Pet is too general to be efficient to create the concept of “dogness” and Chihuahua is too specific. Pet would be considered the superordinate, Chihuahua would be subordinate, and dog is basic. Other examples of Super, basic, sub: furniture, couch, Chippendale couch; fruit, banana, Caribbean banana; flower, rose, climbing rose. Notice that the subordinate often has a modifier. Rosch cites this as additional evidence that the conditionality of the sub position requires a modifier to establish it, where basic is the very level where modifiers are no longer needed (of course, same with levels above basic).  Rosch makes the case that this is representative of the “real world” and how things are “actually distributed.” This assertion deserves some debate, but the effects of a basic level of linguistic and cognitive representation appear in data. So what does this effect mean? And how is it related to semantically general and semantically specific language as stimulus for language acqusition? Back to Gullberg:

What about adults acquisition of a second language? Here the adult has a language against which the newer language is situated.  So, adults are concerned with

            New forms for old meanings

            Consider looking up an unknown Dutch word in a dictionary. You now have a           

new word (form) for a meaning you already have in L1, right?

Well, not exactly:

Consider the English word on. In Dutch, a bowl on the table is represented in Dutch by the word op. But, a picture on the wall is represented in Dutch as aan.

Therefore, English speakers learning Dutch must experience a re-organization towards the target language, partitioning the earlier more generalized on into two types of on. This is a different task than that if an initial acquisition of a first language.

The separation of what is categorized as boot and shoe differs between English and Spanish. That is bota (boot)and zapato (shoe) somehow conceptualize the differences differently. When I checked this with Richard, my Spanish L1, and English L2 partner, he didn’t see the difference and thought the bota/zapto and boot/shoe relationship was conceptually isomorphic. But, nonetheless… gullberg’s point is that just because an L2 speaker acquires and uses the correct form, they may still be confused as to the correct (precise) meaning differences between the two languages. Gesture can be used to explicate this confusion. What can a look at gestures as a signal of what L2 learners might be intending? Gestures are a vehicle of language specific meaning integrated systems. Gestures are coordinated to deliver the same meaning at the same time as the oral language. Gestures happen at the same time with the information that the speaker considers the most important. Meaning should be revealed in the aligned gestures. But there are differences in cross linguistic uses of gestures, both in form and timing. And these differences in gesture are related to linguistic differences between languages.

What can gestures tell us about how learners form meaning and about the development of meaning. Consider placement verbs – to put something somewhere. Pinker (1989) suggests that put (the conceptual organizing around put). Goldberg has replicated the study here around the world in 29 unrelated languages in their representations of “put.”  In Dutch there is leggen and zetten (put down generally, and to place specifically in an upright position). In German there are legen and stellen. These more specified partitions of “put” signify different conceptual frameworks for the generalized “put,” different semantic models for how to understand putting.

The question that guided the study was:  Do placement gestures differ in crosslinguistics and reflect language specific verb meaning?

Hyp 1:  Language neutral: Dutch=French=German (=action)

Hyp 2:  Language is specific: Dutch, French, German not equal:

                                    Form                                    Timing

Dutch                                   

Movement                        movement                        (on the) verb

Object                                    and object                       

                                    Path/handshape

French

Movement                        movement                        (on the) verb

Smooth motion            path, no handshake           

German

Movement (obj)            movement to goal            (on the) locative

To a goal                         path to a goal                        (“to the floor”)

The table above suggests that there should be differences in the tempo and form of gesture, differentiated by language. Movement refers to the action across the interaction space. path is the actual direction, the movement itself. The object refers to what is to be put. So if it is a bowl, as it was in one of the videos, some speakers (those languages that reference the object as part of put) have gestures that cup the two hands side by side to make a 'bowl"). Locatives are the place where the intended put ends up. Such phrases as on the floor, on the table, in the living room are all locatives. Emphasis in the locatives occurs on the preposition.

Task: First person watches a video with a standardized short video segments of putting an object somewhere. First person who watched tells a second person (who didn’t watch) so second person can draw what was in the video. This is a solid data collection scenario as the teller has a real reason for retelling. The researcher was not interested in the drawing, but in the gestures the reteller deployed while doing the oral retelling. There are participants who are a.) German speaking and learning French as L2; and Dutch speaking and learning French as L2. (Recall the language differences in emphasis for the concept put).

Results: Dutch speakers who are attempting a French put (mettre) have a gesture pattern that preserves the shape of the object and preserves the movement. This signals that the Dutch speaker is preserving the Dutch segmentation of leggen/zetten in the gestures that accompany the generalized French mettre. German speakers who are also attempting a French put (mettre) have a gesture pattern that preserves the timing of the gesture on the locative, not on the verb (as do French speakers). The outcome suggest that L2 speakers of French, with undifferentiated put, may be producing the correct form of put (mettre) but are actually meaning a more specific meaning for put. These differences are language specific.

Why am I here?

Well, this is a hard one to write about. So far, in this research fantasy on codeswitching, I have been living in what might happen, and being generally excited about what I imagined might happen. Today I went to my first classroom. I discovered that this “little project” will not be so easy. First of all, my lack of Xhosa prohibits me from knowing what is going on. I am used to easily slipping into “knowing” without paying my dues. Now, I really don’t know what the instances of codeswitching are about. I also was worried that a general mike would not capture what the teacher was saying. When I listened to the audio file, it does happen that I can understand. But the point is that I felt I was hitting a wall. When Lebone called about scheduling my observation for today, it created a sense of dread. It stayed with me for the rest of the day. In addition, my video for Jenifer’s doctoral class came across at 44:00 minutes plus. So I needed to edit it and, of course, get nervous about doing the media work on my own. Interesting how I have come to rely on doctoral students’ expertise. As it happens, I am able to segment and save parts of the video into smaller segments. So, the point in this is that I am having self-image, self-worth as it applies to my work here. I am not entirely sure what has caused this drop in enthusiasm, but it is worth understanding, hence this entry. I will return to it.

Back from an observation of Lebone’s physical science class with 8^th graders at Thanakulu school across the street. I am across the street, waiting for Labone to meet me for his 8^th grade science class. A group of 4 students struggle up to the front door of the administrative building where I’m sitting. They are carrying a female student. They drop her inside the front door. Another adult comes in from outside. The student is conscious, but seems to pass out when she hits the floor. We are told by the office staff (behind the glass) to take her to the nurses’ room. I grab both of her ankles, and back my way down 3 stairs, and a hallway headed past a series of closed doors that open onto the hallway. The female adult at the head tells me to open the last door on the left (my right). In the room, a large adult woman is sitting at the head of the bed, with her braced leg stretched out on the mattress. I do not notice her reaction to our intrusion. With some effort, the woman with the brace struggles to her feet and vacates the mattress. While we wait, the fainted girl is again lowered to the floor. Her skirt has shifted to her waist and her black tight and underwear are visible. I wait a couple of seconds, and then pull her skirt down. I was hesitant to do this, but when no one else moved to do so, I did. With the mattress now available, we again lift her and swing her inert body to the mattress. The small room is full, the woman with the leg brace, the second adult who helped carry her, and 3 or 4 students who originally helped carry her to the office. Then I am worried about the girl. I go back to the nurses’ room and ask one of the students to check her pulse. I repeat the command with my first 2 first fingers at my neck, and she does so, coming back to me with “yea” and moving her upraised fist from open to closed repeatedly. She also uses a sound in syncopation with her hand. Back in the office, the staff is trying to call an ambulance and the girl’s parents. Several adults walk by with performed expressions, that I read as “what’re ya gonna do?” but without shrugged shoulders. Lebone shows up with a lab coat on.

So, what am I doing here? Right now, I am focused on codeswitching and using the project as a context for interacting with R.C. and my involvement with CPUT. But the efforts so far have been in making such contacts, with CPUT, UCT, and UWC. So now what? I can keep giving talks at UWC. What else is there? Prior to this sense of ennui, I was content to drift along and learn whatever drifted up in front of me. Should I be more pro-active in structuring what I should be learning?

Methods and Questions for Research

It is Tuesday am. After I run the car in for a new windshield and then hike back up Main road, I have a 10:00 am with Professor R. C. We are scheduled to talk about a study I have proposed to observe a science teacher at the school across the street from where I live. A first thought is how efficient it is to conduct research without the encumbrance of IRB. I do think that between the two of us we have covered all the human rights and ethical guidelines. Maybe that is the purpose of the IRB process to make us think of these contingencies. But at USF, the process is so Blakanized that it is a nightmare. One of the main hurdles for doc. students is to learn how to negotiate the IRB submission. Stephanie has been smart in this, doing so with studies prior to her dissertation. Must make this a point. Today, R. and I sort through particulars of the study. After meeting on Monday, I sent a one-page description of the study so that he would have something to show when he negotiated access with the gatekeepers of the school system. He appeared confident that this would not be a problem, as he has “friends” who can help. I am reminded of my relationship with John Hildebrand, the previous research director for Hillsborough County Schools. Not only were my research projects OK’d, but my students’ proposals were given expedited review. So it will be, I hope, with R’s friends.

I expect we will talk about the one pager I submitted. The first time I submitted, he couldn’t open, so I saved with an earlier version of Word and resent, we will see.

Yesterday, R. sent a prospectus for a dissertation study. The proposed study was an authobiographical design of an art education teacher, focusing on her interpretation of selected experiences. I read and commented through track changes. It was a weird experience. I am a big proponent of interpretive work, especially biography, autobiography, and autoethnography. But I am also a fairly stringent methodologist. I don’t fuss about what method, but once chosen it needs to fairly well articulated, have a discernable relationship between the philosophy of inquiry, research questions, types of data, and methods of analysis. Further, I want to be confident that the writer of the study has done wide reading, not only on the impinging literature, but specifically on the methodological literature. So, a chosen method, say, stimulated recall, should be presented in its entirety: genesis, creators, variation, plus/minus of different variations, why the particular version chosen.

It occurs to me that these methodological needs may be at odds with interpretive methods such as biography, and perhaps especially with autobiography. I remember when Susan was writing her final chapter on the parents of kids who were taught at home through suspension services. She had interviewed and come to know the parents of the “school delinquents.” In fact the parents were her topic and focus of study. Her separate chapters of findings were bios on each of the parents. Very well done. When I asked for some analysis in the final chapter, she balked. She claimed that it would be an injustice to tear apart the people she had created in the writing. She also argued, rightly I think, that to create the narrative meant at least some kind of analysis. Susan’s doctoral cohort had been bathed in critical theory throughout their program, and now Susan was exercising what she had learned. While I sided with her position philosophically, I was also positioned as some kind of quality guardian for dissertation research. As an organized act of inquiry, her dissertation, I maintained had to provide some systematic analysis of the narratives it provided. I think at this point, I would have settled for a cross-case pattern analysis. But it was also possible to do a more trenchant analysis of the subtexts operating in each of her narratives, answering questions about the relationships between Susan (the researcher/writer) and the characters in her narrative (as representations of the persons she actually interviewed). How did she construct them as characters. From a Campbell perspective, how did she decide to make them the “heroes” of her narratives about them. This is where the breaks really ground the project to a halt. She refused to do this work. She claimed on ethical grounds, I think because she was leery of self analysis. But that is an unexamined judgment on my part, call it a hunch. Since I was co-chairing this project with a wise colleague, and as it happened, we both agreed on the missing aspects of Susan’s analysis, the two chairs (both named Jim) tag-teamed Susan. When her opposition to my needs for analysis stopped progress, it was the other Jim’s turn. In the end, we were able to secure very limited introspection on her part. The point of all this is that certain interpretive methods resist the shaping of a mentor. If a researcher, particularly one who is passionate about a project, comes to identify with the research, he or she may be resistant to suggestions for its “improvement.”

After speaking with R. about the work with the “autobiography student” the attention to the project becomes even more complex. I can function as a mentor, making suggestions via track changes, even meet with her about the study. But she cannot know that I will also be an evaluator (“critical reader”) for her study when she finishes it. This is a double role, and wonder how it complicates my involvement with her. On the surface, it doesn’t seem much different than what I do with doc. students at home, where we don’t have outside readers. If the student listens to the feedback as the project evolves, then making the recommended changes should result in passing. I will think about this.

Online Audience and Writers' Response

I am thinking about the commitment to continue writing once a writer has started something - how to make it something that continues to happen. Doing it everyday seems like a compulsion, or even a trap. something an addict does in order to feel better. On my bus trips, I've been pretty regular about pulling out my clipboard and going at it. But Why? I don't have to. To pass the time, to avoid boredom, to avoid people. Yes, all of these work as reasons. In this case, writing is a dodge to avoid something (more) unpleasant. When I sat down today, I had a question of "why do this?" Does anybody really like to write, enjoy it? A colleague has claimed that she needs to write every day. But from what I know, she is like Mark. It appears to be a combination of derived pleasure and shame avoidance. When I started the blog, I imagined my ready audience of readers. Notably, all whom I imagined were in positions that could not (I imagined) pose a threat. Then in a recent email, a student mentioned that she had told this colleague about my blog. I considered the impact, imagined the colleague being impressed by it. Well, sure enough the next time I wrote, that same colleague materialized and I became more careful about my spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Audience, prefigured by the writer, remains an uninvestigated, interesting place to work. Iser is the one who has pioneered this area. It is time to read the Ong that Barbara. sent me as audience is construed as a fiction.

 

So what is audience within digital composing? How has the imagined reader become manifest in teh online, affinity group transactions? These are questions that Kathleen might be able to answer in her dissertation study (if that is what she wants). the big piece of this is that the teacher is always the imagined audience in school based writing (is this really true?) Teachers are the authoritative audience. Like my colleague did for me, the looming constructed teacher must impinge on the very composing processes of classroom writing. But online, no teacher! Do writers then look for authority? Do readers offer corrective feedback, perseverate on accuracy, or do writers imagine that they will? What happens to this virtual relationship when they do so?

 

Here is a chance to look at regularly occuring, self motivated writing that is potentially not supervised by an authority who is contractually obligated to evaluate. So, what flows in to fill the vaccuum left by the vacated teacher? In what ways do writers re-construct and authoritative audience? Or if not, how do writers conceptualize their readers? How do they imagine them physically, rhetorically? Can they read (discern) their responding readers for the things they write, or the way that they write?

A Modest Research Proposal

Today I meet with Dr. Rajendra Chetty, Dean of Research at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Within an hour meeting, we had designed a study that we will coauthor. I will be able to observe a Xhosa language science classroom right across the street from where I'm living. I am having a hard time accpeting that this has happened so quickly. We have follow up meeting on Wednesday to talk more about the project. This evening, after meeting this morning I sent the following one page description.

Why do teachers change their language of instruction in the middle of a lesson?

A project proposal by James R. King and Rajendra Chetty

The linguistic diversity in South African classrooms presents a unique opportunity to learn about teachers’ uses of linguistic affordances in their daily instruction. Often called “code-switching” (Yao, 2011; Wildsmith-Cromarty, 2009), the impetuses for teachers’ choices to switch their language of instruction are relatively unknown. Even the term “code-switching” must represent a set of strategic accommodations that are deployed by teachers in order to scaffold their struggling students. Seen from these perspectives, language shifting by teachers during their instruction is constructed in a productive light. Such has not always been the case.

Part of the complexity of surrounding the negative construal of code-switching comes from another time, when indigenous languages may have had politically motivated lower valuing. In general, the use of indigenous languages during instruction would then be understood as lower quality instruction. Specifically, switching into lower prestige languages (for whatever reason) would also be seen as lower quality instruction. More recently, similar arguments have been made regarding the use of English only. Teachers with limited English and perhaps limited content knowledge (say, science) would conceivably offer both “bad science” and “bad English” (Brock-Utne, 2005; Crouch & Lewin, 2000). Indeed, such beliefs and practices live on through the palimpsestic instantiations of rote language policy.

The proposed project intends to develop insider understanding of a teacher’s repertoire with a category of behavior called “code-switching.” Operationalized as a teacher’s language change during direct, whole class instruction, code-switching will be observed and recorded on digital audio. To these ends, a single, volunteer teacher will host a visiting scholar’s (see vita) observations and audio recordings of language variation during normal instructional sessions. It is estimated that the project will last a total of five weeks. The density of the classroom visits will be negotiated with the teacher, mindful of interruptions, teacher responsibility, and saturation of the information collected. It is also planned to hold infrequent interviews with the teacher. During the interviews, transcribed segments of the teacher’s classroom talk will be presented in a stimulated recall format (Calderhead, 1981; Gass & Mackey, 2000; Lingred, 2002) to elicit the teacher’s recall and understanding of their own actions and talk.

Since the project is focused on the teacher’s discourse, no underage actors will be involved. Further, the use of stimulated recall allows the teacher member-checking ownership of the emerging information. Finally, any outcomes from this project will be shared with the teacher.

The outcomes from this short project are intended to be a taxonomy of one teacher’s language code-switching repertoire. The educational value of this proposed taxonomy is a clearer understanding of strategic code-switching.

References

Brock-Utne, B. (2005). Language-in-education policies with a special focus on Tanzania and South Africa – insights from research in progress. In A.Ling & P. Martin (Eds.), Decolonialization and globalization: language-in-education policy and practice (pp. 173-201). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, Ltd.

Calderhead, J. (1981). Stimulated recall: a method for research on teaching. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 51, 211-217.

Gass, S. & Mackey, A. (2000). Stimulated recall methodology in second language research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lingred, E. (2002). The effects of stimulated recall on 14-year-olds L1 Swedish and EFL writing and revision. Language Teaching Research, 6, 267-268.

Wildsmith-Cromarty, R. (2009). Multilingualism in South African schools. In M. Torres-Guzman & J. Gomez (Eds.), Global perspectives on multilingualism: unity in diversity (pp. 36-53). New York:  Teachers College Press.

A Garden Route Travel Report

The Garden Route/Safari Trip

For the record, I am writing this with an attitude. I had kept an ongoing, hand written journal of this whole trip and during the last few days of the trip, lost it. So here is a version from memory.

After a week of hitting the tourist sites in and around Cape Town, Mark, Louis, Richard and I hit the road. The plan, as organized by Mark, was to head to Addo Elephant Park, north of Port Elizabeth, as quickly as possible. We drove straight to Knysna, a large coastal city. Actually, Knysna is separated from the ocean by a dune protected bay with an ocean inlet. So the “waterfront’ is actually a large river-fed estuary. The city itself is active, with streets of shops and restaurants. It was just 5:00 pm when we arrived, so everything was closing up. Failing to find a cup of coffee, we headed to the waterfront to find a hotel. Big mistake. The rate for rooms was R1200. We headed away from the water, toward town, and found a nice hotel for R600, breakfast included. The “Grey Wood” was built to look like a mountain lodge, surrounding an above ground swimming pool. We found a restaurant one block away. Since we were off season, we were among a very small group of people, most of whom were there to drink and watch the world cup rugby games.

After a buffet breakfast (with a bird flying in and being netted in a most dramatic way!), we were back on the road. We arrived at Addo in mid-afternoon to discover the Addo Park had no reservation for us. I had a record of confirmation on my laptop, but without Internet, it wasn’t much use to me. The nearest Internet was 7 km away at the orange elephant, a backpackers hostel, which closed at 5:00 pm.  So at 4:35, we again hit the road for the Orange Elephant. We made it, and after reconfiguring settings for IP address, I pulled up the reservation, but NOT for Addo, but the Elephant House. “Oh, that place can cook a good meal” our host at OE said. “You passed it on the your way here.” The four of us, Mark, Louis, Richard and I, piled into the car, and drove up the road a few km to the Elephant House (EH). We were greeted in the parking lot by Pietre, the host and owner. He offered us cordials to change our harried mood, and led us into a peaceful, green courtyard.

EH is a vision. It is made from Pietre’s family efforts over 6 generations. Originally a farm, EH is now an exquisite, stylish, restrained guest haven. It is a series of buildings connected by open verandas that run along all sides of the buildings. Several courtyards are formed by the connected buildings. The main house now offers a dining room, library, and the main kitchen. All sides of the main are extended with covered, fully furnished veranda. Our room was located in the back half of an outbuilding, connected to the main house by a brick path running through a courtyard, with a fountain in the middle. Our room faced away from the property. It has recently been remodeled. At the door entering the room, there is a large bed with crisp, white linens – sheets and duvet – and lots of big white pillows. The furniture is all antique, but sparse, nothing decorative. The bath is divided into a cell with a modern double sink, and a large bathtub. In a separate cell is a room-sized shower lined with 4-inch teak boards, floor, walls and ceiling. The half of the room with the tub and sinks ends in a windowed wall with a 9-pane windowed door that leads to a bricked courtyard and an outdoor shower. To the left, and outside the walled outdoor shower, the brick floor gives way to the pebbled gravel (chinitas) of the outdoor lounge – table and chairs, cushioned daybed, and a chaise lounge. This outdoor parlor is the entry way into the suite. The décor here is a mix of luxury for the body and austere furnishings for the eyes. There are fresh purple irises in a crystal vase, filling the room with the smell of springs I remember from my Michigan youth.

Dinner is served at 7:00 pm in the main house dining room by candlelight. There is a perfectly cooked filet mignon, placed on a bed of scalloped potatoes and steamed vegetable, al dente. This was preceded by blue cheese spread on triangles of toast. Dessert was a caramel sponge cake filled with a caramel syrup and served with whipped crème. We signed up for morning and afternoon/evening safaris the next day (R650 each for each safari).

Morning breakfast was served on the patio off the dining room. A little chilly. We had an English breakfast (scrambled, back bacon, grilled tomato and mushrooms – no beans), toast, yogurt, and muesli. Yes, very full. We left with Xaxambeli in an open-aired Land Rover at 9:00 am. He told us that since we were going to Schotia safari in the afternoon, we would concentrate on elephants in the Addo safari, as they were not part of the Schotia trip. And we did.

Xaxambeli spent the morning stalking elephants through binoculars and by scheming with information from other guides. It was a strategic operation. Instead of elephants we saw warthogs, bok and meerkats. In late morning, we spotted a herd on a rise, their back and heads just visible above the fynbos (heather, low lying scrub brush). Xaxambile parked the Land rover, and we waited as the herd slowly ate their way down from the rise, on their way to cross the road. There was a huge male with tusks, several females, some juveniles and a few infants. All together, about 50 elephants moved slowly toward our vehicle. With cameras, binoculars and bald eyes we “oooo-ed” and “ahhh-ed” as the elephants slowly moved in our direction. But it seemed like all at once, we were surrounded by the herd. The way the ground pitched, the herd was forced to cross the road toward a path on the other side exactly where Xaxambile had parked. They were so close, so huge, so quiet, moving slowly, parting and rejoining to move through the fynbos, parting to stream around our now tiny Land Rover. We watched until the final rump disappeared into the brush on the other side of the road, continuing to listen to their soft hurrumphs and snorts; watching as the adults gently guided the babies on the right path. Xaxambeli drove around the rise, snaked through a pass, and we had to stop. The elephants were grazing along the road and completely blocked any traffic. We watched as the dominant male kept us in his left eye, casually uprooting and eating jade trees, eating trunks 3 inches in diameter. Eventually, Xaxambeli edged the Land Rover around the edge of the herd. The combination of size, quiet, power and gentleness was for me some kind of awe. So close.

It began to rain lightly and we headed back to EH. At 2:00 pm after a half hour of down time, we piled into the car, drove north, past Addo, for a 20 km drive to Schotia Park for an afternoon safari. The four of us were joined by a young German couple who had been coming to South Africa on their vacations for some time. Our guide for this safari was Malcolm, a 50-ish Afrikaans guide. Since this was a small, private game preserve, we immediately saw rhinos, bok, and wildebeests before we stopped for coffee at an old, renovated farm building. In the fading light of the early evening, we saw a pride of adult female lions with their newborns in the distance, climbing a hill. We never did find them, though we followed winding paths through the fynbos. We later saw a juvenile male alone, separated from his brother, according to Malcolm. Later, we heard before we saw, the older patriarch, as he made his way down the hill, and through the trough of the valley. With Malcolm’s narrative to help shape the events, we watched the nervous juvenile male head out the other sided of the valley (kloof). Malcolm reversed us, took a loop that brought us to a ridge that formed the passage way out to the kloof. Just as we parked, the juvenile sauntered up the hill leading into the clearing of the ridge where we sat. Then all of us, including the juvenile male, heard the muffled growl of the king. The juvenile skittered down the opposite side of the ridge into the scrub. Safe in our Land Rover (?), we stayed put. Shortly, the adult came up out of the kloof and into the clearing where we sat. He looked to swaggering, moving his head side to side, issuing muffled throaty grunts. He surveyed the clearing, then stretched out on the grass, and rolled over on his side. Malcolm suggested that we head toward dinner, but on the way, we could check on a small group of giraffe that we had seen earlier, grazing some way up on a hillside. Apparently, they move down the hill as evening approaches. We found them nibbling on acacia trees. Malcolm pointed out that one of the females had just lost a newborn to the lions. She was still swollen with milk. Now it was nearly dark and we headed toward the kiva for dinner.

When we arrived, we had coffees around a hot, bright campfire while we waited for the buffet to be ready. There was shepherd’s pie made with bok, rice, vegetables, and for dessert, caramel pudding cake with schlagg crème (a pattern?). After dinner – coffees, fire and soft acoustic guitar played by a guide from another group. In fact, as I thought about it, each of the guides had helped prepare and serve the buffet, had brought his group their desserts, and cleared our table, and now, while we sat, listened and sipped, was cleaning up after the dinner. The smoothness of this operation tells the tale, a professionally choreographed event. I have mixed feelings here. Of course, I want this event to be a good one [“after all I paid money…”], but I also want it to appear rustic, a first time, to not be “the tourist.” It is a nagging sort of awareness. I wouldn’t come to South Africa without going on a safari, but it does seem like it is SA “tarted up,” produced for my consumption as a tourist. I am much more at ease walking down a path, on my own, without a specially produced event. Glad that I didn’t figure this out until after our guests left. We drove back to EH in the dark.

Breakfast the next morning was in the dining room. The front that brought the “elephant showers” had cooled the temperature over night. We said goodbyes to the staff, and headed back toward the west, but this time with the intent of going slowly and seeing what was on the way. Our first stop was Jeffrey’s Bay. As a group, we were in a different operating mode,that only emerged as we made decisions about what to do next. The first half of our trip had been about getting to a place we had already scheduled, so that the trip became mileage, getting there, and time expended. These formative factors of time, distance and goal were not as concrete as they seem now, but were definitely the rationale for our trip decisions on the way out to Addo. Now the operation was of a different sort. We were in the business of building our vacation step by step. This we proceeded to do. Jeffrey’s Bay was made semi-famous as the “world’s best surfing spot” by a movie I never saw. But there you have it, enough of a tease to get use there. What an interesting place. We are off season, and so is the town. The beach is deserted, the town if Jeffrey’s Bay is deserted. We find a self catering apartment with two bedrooms, two baths for a very reasonable rate. Dinner is one block away at a surprisingly nice Italian restaurant. The next day, we shop at the “factory stores” in particular a Billibong outlet store,that also carries Dakine. A wonderful new all weather coat and some swimwear. I guess it isn’t the sleakness and design of the store, but what it sells. Learn this lesson. On our way out of the downtrodden beach town, we hit the “suburbs.” A new mall sits on the top of a low rise, complete with McDonald’s. But the surrounding area is bare. It is like the Kostner movie Field of Dreams – “build it and they will come.” So here sits this mall and no development to give it context. Louis buys a second safari hat. They look good on him, but the only difference in the second is that it has ventilation. I take advantage of the McDonald’s and have a cheeseburger meal. And it nearly as good as the many I have had in Tampa. I used to feel guilty about eating at Mcdonald’s in Europe. After all, in a country with a different culture and cuisine, take every advantage of it. Yea, yea, I’ve thought that. But also tell myself that this vacation is about pleasure, self indulgence. If it feels good to sleep in, do it. There will be other alters in other cathedrals. Traveling should not be a boot camp operation. So I enjoyed my guilty pleasure. The Coca-Cola is a universal drug. Apart from the fact that it used to contain cocaine (who needs it?). The drink itself, sweet sticky syrup, is a drug. So we continued with a Mikky D buzz west, on N2.

Our next stop was in Plettenburg Bay. I am perhaps influenced by what I read about “Pletts” in the several guidebooks we lug around with us (why kaolin-coated papers for all these books – heavy!). Pletts was definitely more upscale than the towns we had seen. It is described as a “glitzy getaway.” The town sits on a rise, looking down on a beautiful beach. The shops are upscale. We found an inexpensive self catering unit called O’Hanna’s, and had a strange arrangement of rooms. Each of our bedrooms had a skeleton key lock and an audible, electronic alarm that out host disarmed. The kitchen/lounge and the entrance door also had a key and alarm. The rear door, of course, differently keyed, opened onto a small bricked patio with braai. Throw in the key to the back gate (short cut to downtown), and it made for a bunch of keys. For dinner, Mark, Richard and I went for the prawn special at a restaurant down the street.

The next day, after breakfast at O’Hanna’s, we drove back east to Tsitsikama Falls for ziplining. The none cables were stretched across a gorge made by a small, tannic river. Our guides Ryan and Ahmed were great. Ahmed led us on each of the lines, and Ryan stayed behind to help each of us clip on and screech away. Ahmed took my camera at the beginning and photo-videoed our traverses. Ryan kept the performance/performed anxiety up with off-side comments about the low death rate, and the cable security. At the end of the experience, we were able to purchase photos of our trip and videos of our zips, already burned to a CD. This is an amazing bit of visual literacy/commerce.

We took Mark to Storms River for mountain biking, and then returned to Tsitsikama gorge for lunch at a small local cheese shop, gift shop, and restaurant. An older, post-feminist Afrikaans woman ran this beautiful shop that featured “slow food” in contrast to the fast. Who couldn’t relax in such a space. She and her staff grew the vegetables she served. Her husband grew a tea,that he was attempting to market. Then, back to Storms River to pick up Mark. We drove down the valley road to the beach at Storms River. It appeared to be a second house, get away. Very nice home tucked in the growth, all looking very empty at this time of year. We drove back to Pletts where we had dinner at Le Mer, obvious by the name, a French seafood restaurant. Somehow I missed all that and thought we had sat for an Italian meal. My pasta was not very Italian.

From Pletts, we drove to Montagu the next day. We drove scenic route , elaving the N2 at heidleberg onto 322. For a bit of 322, we were driving in a gravel washboard, and got a cracked wih=ndshield for our trouble. At 324, we headed north on a serpentine road through Tradouws Pass. This was a cliff side road that was blasted into the steep sides of a mountain gorge. It was hard to imagine the little river we saw down below carving this massive, jagged crevice. Every now and then, the switchbacks gave a heart stop view of the valley we had just driven, or that Richard had just driven. (I can’t believe he drove this whole trip. He claims that the stability of the steering wheel helps with the jerking at his back. When someone else drives, he is subject to the swaying without any warning and it causes nerve jolts.) Mark and I had a few girl screams as Richard careened down the 180 degree curves. All of this downward motions carried the four tires too close to the edge of a cliff road, carved from the rock face.

The idea we had with Montagu was to relax in the hot springs. We arrived on Monday, in the late afternoon, with just enough time to check in at the tourist information center. There we booked a chalet at the Avalon Springs Resort, a grand old hotel built next to a hot springs. In the last few years, the Avalon has added several chalet duplexes that climb the mountain side behind the hotel and springs. The impact of the “vacation luxury” décor was staggering. Entrance was into a lounge area with a flat screen 32’ TV, bar equipment, and several pieces of woven lounge furniture. The lounge was separated from the adjoining kitchen by a large grey and brown granite counter. The kitchen was beautiful, with dark wood cabinets, stainless steel appliances (including a dishwasher), granite counters and backsplash. Each of the two bedrooms was en suite, with additional 32” flat screens in each. Off the front of the lounge and facing the hotel, springs, and valley, was large tiled deck with a dining suite and large bricked braai pit with an electric grill. When we were still in the “open all the cupboards” stage of awe, we decided a second night here was needed. We did not know what was going on around us.

The next day we woke up to no water. We were later to find out that the day of our arrival, yesterday, was a day without much electricity. Mark went hiking and mountain biking, Richard wasn’t feeling well, so he slept, and Louis and I went to the pools to “take the cure.” At 4:00 pm I had an appointment for a Swedish massage. But when I tried to re-book our room, it was taken. Since there was a problem with the water supply in the chalet at the higher altitude, all that was available were rooms in the hotel. I say “all” that were left because we had our hearts set on the easy, glitzy, modern luxury of the chalets. The massage was great. At the time, I thought that it was a little too soft, without the deep tissue work that I like. But the next day’s soreness made me grateful that it was only a light one. The new rooms, numbers 6 & 7, turned out to be very luxurious in their own way. Each had a very ornate caramel colored marble bath. Mark & Louis even had two French Provincial chairs in the bath facing the mirrored wall, presumably there for them to apply their make-up. The upholstery was African with a zebra stripe print.

We left Montagu and Avalon springs for Cape Town. This seemed like a long stretch. On the way back to Cape Town from Montagu, we stopped for lunch in Wellington. At a shoe store, the owner carefully asked where we were from and why we were in Wellington. He was kind enough to elaborate that because “Wellington wasn’t on the way to anywhere” they seldom saw visitors. What an interesting guy, now without his name. In the past he had taught languages at an unspecified college. He claimed to 11^th generation Afrikaans. His female ancestor was the second woman to own property. This was in the 1650’s. It reminds me that this “primitive” feeling, looking country has a colonial history parallel to that if the US. South Africa is beautiful. The US is a miracle. Richard found me my first pair of Crocs in the store in size XXXXL. From my perspective, the X’s lose their semiotic punch after two, but whose counting. I love them. While we ate lunch on a second story deck off the front of a restaurant, I was able to watch the people come in and out of stores, parking cars, dragging kids, rushing to beat the universal 5:00 pm closing time. It seemed to me, perhaps influenced by the shoe salesman’s comments, that these were the “natural” South Afrikaans, middle class, unaffected, and did I mention, white. The town along a single stretch of road was isolated and small.

OK, onto Cape Town along the N1. We took Mark & Louis to the airport late afternoon the next day (Wednesday). But on the way, we drove up the mountain in our backyard to have a look at the Rhodes Memorial. Cecil Rhodes, as in Rhodes Scholars, of Rhodesia, with a plan for English settlement from Cape Town to Cairo, left this patch of land to the city of Cape Town (as well as the land for the University of Cape Town). His memorial is flanked with huge granite Doric columns and bronze lions, reportedly his favorite animal. I can see the memorial gazing out from its green mountain lair, above our apartment. True to form, just like he did for our trip up Signal Mountain, Mark had packed sandwiches. He is such a thoughtful one. So we had lunch on the memorial plaza overlooking the city of Cape Town, as it winds around the mountains that bracket it. Then we went for coffees and dessert at the little thatch roofed restaurant behind the memorial.

It was so sad to drop them off after a wonderful 3-week holiday with them. When they first arrived, they stayed at a condo on Kalk’s Bay, south of town on the peninsula. Everytime we drove out to Kalk’s Bay from Mowbray, there were Southern Right’s Whales in the bay. Kalk’s Bay is a small inlet on the False Bay South of Cape Town. The town is a short narrow strip nestled between the bay and the mountain at its back. The only way is up, and the undrive-able, cobblestone streets went just that way, straight up the mountain side. The waterfront hosts a small fishing dock that is in use. So, daily, boats bring in their catch and sell it right there. There is much filleting and fish cleaning going on, with guts and discard fed to the resident seals. They appeared quite tame, I guess used to an easy meal. So used to humans, and even lethargic that tourist ventured in for close ups with their cameras and attendant faces behind the camera. A middle-aged woman leaned into a rather large male seal, only to have it lunge toward her with a loud, sharp bark. She jumped vertically and back, as we all did. I can only imagine her heart ratge and adrenaline levels as mine were sky high. And she was quite bit closer.

After the worst fish and chips I’ve ever tasted, we returned to the seals who were now off shift and rolling in the water making the most of the sunset. We needed to leave in order to make it to Pietre-Dirk Uys in Desparate First Ladies, at UCT’s Baxter Theater down the street from our apartment in Mowbray.

Learning from Diversity

In teaching about literacy and diversity…

This morning, I finished a lesson on emergent literacy with a large group of undergraduates. I had begun the lesson two weeks earlier. In the previous lesson I started by reading two predictable books, Eric Carle’s “Slowly, Slowly, Slowly,” said the Sloth and Who Flung Dung by Ben Redlich. As I read, I invited participation, engaged prediction and then talked about print/picture match, repetitive text, one line per page, and pointed at the individual words as I read. I shared a Keynote that presented the Language Experience Approach, Reading Miscue Analysis, and Reading Recovery. Then I ran out of time.

For the follow up lesson, I read Come to the Circus by Damian Harvey and Sally Denton. This was another predictable, emergent reading book that I read in a way similar to the previous two predictable books. I reviewed the Keynote slides on LEA, and showed a 15-minute video of an ALL teacher in the writing segment. In the video, the teacher elicited a single sentence “story” and then assisted the first grade student in rendering his idea into print through shared writing. The student in the video used self monitoring and self correction on several occasions. He used serial order to generate the next word in the sentence he was trying to write. The teacher used strategy talk to reinforce the student. The teacher used Elkonian boxes to help the student hear the sounds in the words of his sentence three times. She then cut up the sentence that she had written on a sentence strip and had the student arrange the sentences parts two times. During the re-arrangement, she had two opportunities to reinforce the student’s use of self-correction behaviors. While the video played, I did a “talk over” to highlight the productive teaching points for the students.

The final activity for the lesson was small group work. Each group was assembled so that at least one group member knew a language not known by at least one other group member. The student who knew the additional language was to teach those who did not know it. The teacher in the group elicited a simple story that could be written as a predictable book. The story, dictated by the student in his/her own language, was written by the teacher in the new language. Then the teacher taught the student to read the story in the new language. Each group produced a simple, six-page stapled book, with a single line of text on each page and a picture that represented the key vocabulary on each page.

After thinking about the activity, I was reminded of the Learning to Read pamphlets written in non-alphabetic code so that parents could get an idea of how it is for kids when they are trying to learn to read. But in this case, the story was one that the dictating student valued, knew. And while each of the dictating students already knew how to read, and knew letters, the writing in a new language simulated young readers trying to figure out code in their own languages.

Reflecting on the activity, I am pleased with how well it went. Even with such a large group, everybody was engaged in their small groups.  The two instructors for the course were very complimentary that the lesson had made an impact on the students and that it had application to their studies. In fact, several students commented during the lesson that there were ways they would use the techniques they had learned. One student came up after the first lesson to compare what she was doing with her four year old and what we had covered in the Keynote. During the follow-up lesson, one undergraduate student planned to use the dictation technique (LEA) with her eighteen-year-old illiterate brother. I came to realize that the one of the factors that made the activity work was the linguistic diversity that was represented in the lives of the students. Without any systematic data collection, I was able to observe the use of Afrikaans, Xhosa, Swahili, Chinese and English. The only language used by all (as lingua franca) was English. Therefore, within the class was a real need and purpose to use emergent literacy as a way to transfer a message across languages.

It was not a complete success. Even with the modeling of several predictable books, and verbal descriptions of what made them work, some groups did not understand the need to present one line of text per page with illustrations that supported the print. Also, I did not have samples of less effective books, with too much text on a page, or with less supportive pictures. Even so, the groups took off. Several of the students brought me the books they had made to read together.

So, what I learned is that it is easier to teach about linguistic diversity when there is linguistic diversity among the students. I had an ideal set up to create a highly functioning ELL teaching context. English functioned as a transactional language that carried the functional load of teachers’ preparation. But at any point, there is the affordance of multiple languages to make a point, to practice a strategy.

My day was made later, after the class. I was working on my laptop in my office when I was interrupted by a soft knock on my doorframe. I looked up to see a smallish, well-groomed, attractive young man. His name is Malusi Ntoyapi. He was finishing his BA, and then will pursue a teaching certification in his fifth year. He came to tell me how much he enjoyed the classes. And then proceeded to inform me on the various aspects of emergent literacy in a multilingual culture. As I listened, I heard thematic reasoning on book sharing, on emergent writing, the significance of scribbling from the perspective of the child, on the fallacy of insisting on accuracy in spelling, on the advantages of being read to. I interrupted at some point, as he was on a religious roll. I told Malusi that I believed the same things about emergent literacy, and that the beliefs we shared were supported by research. Then he really took off, that I should visit the Sea Point Library to watch the multilingual book sharing, and described the interpretive literacy teaching behaviors used by the librarian there. Again, interrupted, I asked “How did you learn all this?” He told me he was involved in an early literacy training project at UCT called PRAESA. I could have fallen out of my chair.

I had come across PRAESA in the Internet searching I had done prior to leaving Florida. It is a multi-focused, early literacy project that tries to inculcate literacy practices in language and culture groups that are not used to literacy. One of the projects that I read about was creating children’s books in Xhosa. The plan was to record tales told in Xhosa communities and then try to create children’s books. The interesting part of this research was the analysis of publishing limits, run sizes, and potential markets for published books. I had never considered the economics involved in the “good will” toward publishing for children. Malusi finally dropped a name: Xolisa Guzula at PRAESA, and told me to “Google her” if I was interested. I did. She has been very active in the development of training materials and her own literature. Apparently, she has also been very effective in developing literacy acolytes.  Malusi asked me about the feasibility of careers that worked with emergent and family literacy. I mentioned our PhD program. I felt like I was recruiting, but didn’t know what else to say. When I asked what he had planned for himself, he mentioned intermediate grade teaching. This didn’t make sense with his passion for emergent literacy. Who knows.

These experiences make me wonder about what we are doing in our teacher training in the name of ESOL. Can the undergraduates understand how language diversity functions in classrooms? From a US perspective, a monolingual one, a second language is seen as a disability. Here EVERYONE speaks at least two, usually three languages. And outside of the prestige question for English and the oppression associated with Afrikaans, language diversity is an apport, appearing magically when it is needed and then fading away. Everyday uses of multiple languages is unremarkable. To me, a monolingual, THAT is remarkable. They appear to code switch with ease. Languages are a necessary tool to get what one wants, socially, professionally, intimately.  I still am not clear on the language of instruction issue. Mastin at UCT made some interesting comments in his address at RASA. I need to talk with him. I also get two more chances on Monday. At 10:00 am I talk with Prof. Caroline Kerfoot in teacher preparation at UWC, and at 3:00 I talk with Rasandra Chetty, the Dean of Research at CPUT. He is also interested in literacy research.