Learning An Additional Language Through Dialogic Inquiry

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Language and Education

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Learning an Additional Language Through Dialogic Inquiry

Mari Haneda & Gordon Wells
a b a b
School of Teaching and Learning , Ohio State University , USA
Department of Education , University of California , Santa Cruz, USA Published online: 19 Dec 2008.
To cite this article: Mari Haneda & Gordon Wells (2008) Learning an Additional Language Through Dialogic Inquiry, Language and Education, 22:2, 114-136, DOI: 10.2167/le730.0 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/le730.0
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Mari Haneda School of Teaching and Learning, Ohio State University, USA Gordon Wells Department of Education, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
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It has been increasingly recognised that classroom discourse plays an important social role as a semiotic mediator of knowledge construction with respect to curriculum content. The assumption is that through active verbal engagement with a topic of interest, students are enabled to master the modes of language use associated with schooling the various genres and registers specic to the different school subjects. In this conceptual position paper, we examine how appropriate these assumptions are in the case of school-aged English as additional language (EAL) learners who are learning English as the language of instruction. In the rst part, we will make the case for the importance of dialogue in learning, both rst and second languages and the need for an inquiry orientation to the curriculum in order to promote dialogic interaction. In the second part, drawing on examples from our research, we will present three instantiations of dialogic inquiry involving EAL learners in elementary and intermediate grades and discuss issues concerning dialogic inquiry and second language learning.
doi: 10.2167/le730.0 Keywords: English as an additional language, dialogue, inquiry, classroom community It has been recognised that classroom discourse plays an important social role as a semiotic mediator of knowledge construction with respect to curriculum content. In particular, it has been argued that knowledge is most effectively constructed through dialogue arising from jointly undertaken inquiry (Beach & Myers, 2001; Guti errez et al., 1999; Rosebery et al., 1992). The assumption is that active verbal engagement with a topic of interest will help students to transition from everyday to scientic concepts and master the modes of language use associated with schooling, that is to say, the various genres and registers specic to the different school subject (Christie & Martin, 1997; Schleppegrell, 2004). Classroom discourse also mediates the construction of identities, both those of successful students and those of students who are deemed to be unsuccessful (Ballenger, 1997; OConnor & Michaels, 1996). In this paper, we are concerned with how appropriate these assumptions are in the case of students learning English as an additional language (EAL), when this is the language of instruction. Under what conditions might effective dialogic interaction be enacted in classrooms involving EAL students and what forms might it take when the majority of students have limited prociency in the
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target language? What characterises effective dialogic interaction with respect to EAL students of varied levels of prociency in the target language? It is these questions that we will try to address in this paper with reference to students who are learning English as the language of instruction. Theories of language learning and use are rather sharply divided according to whether they treat the forms of language (grammar and lexis) as independent of the uses to which language is put (Chomsky, 1972) or whether they approach language in terms of the functions it serves and see knowledge of the formal structure as the result of subsequent reection on the patterns that occur in spontaneous speech (Halliday, 1975; Tomasello, 2003). Certainly, the latter approach seems to accord better with childrens learning of their rst language (L1), since in most cases, the family members from whom they learn have little or no explicit knowledge of the language they use to communicate with each other. According to Krashen (1985), the same is true of untutored second language (L2) learning, although most formal teaching of additional languages tends to place considerable emphasis on the mastery of language form out of the context of meaningful use. This is perhaps understandable when the learners have no occasion to use the additional language outside the classroom, but it makes much less sense when they are learning the language as part of their enculturation into the wider society in which they are growing up. It is this latter situation with which we are concerned on the present occasion. Before they enter school, whatever their home culture, children develop their L1 through engagement in jointly undertaken activities with signicant others in familiar cultural settings, and they learn their L1 as an intrinsic aspect of becoming competent members of their families and local communities. Through the numerous social interactions that make up the patterns of everyday life, they learn how to communicate appropriately with others in a variety of settings, and as they participate competently in routine activities that require the coordination of language and action, they unreectively take over the cultural norms and assumptions that govern life in their immediate communities (Heath, 1983). These early experiences provide plentiful opportunities for exposure to appropriate language modelling by caregivers, other adults, siblings and peers. Indeed, L1 learning occurs not only in a socially supportive environment but also with sufcient repetition for learners to learn their L1 at their own pace. As a result, when their schooling takes place in their L1, by the time they start school, such children already have a rich repertoire of language that is imbued with situated personal meanings. Learners of a second or additional language, on the other hand, do not have comparable early language experiences in the language used at school, even though it is likely that they will have had culturally appropriate experiences in learning the language used in their homes. Thus, for these children, given their later start in learning the language encountered at school, it seems clear in principle that, in order to be successful, it is of the utmost importance that frequent opportunities are provided for them to engage in dialogic interaction in the language of instruction with peers as well as teachers. However, learning an additional language at school can take place under very different conditions. When EAL students are in a class that includes a substantial number of L1 speakers of the language of instruction, it is relatively easy to create conditions for them to
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engage in dialogue with L1 peers. When all the students in the class are learners of the language of instruction, on the other hand, the situation is very different, since there are no L1 peers with whom to interact. A key question, therefore, is whether, in these latter circumstances, it is possible to create conditions for dialogue in the target language, that is to say the language of instruction.
Why Dialogue Is Essential in Learning Language

When children rst learn language, they listen and talk as an intrinsic part of sharing their interests with family members and of engaging in joint activities, ranging from getting dressed to helping with household tasks. In the process, they learn the forms and patterns of the language of their community and, at the same time, they learn how to make sense of their experience in the same way as those with whom they interact. However, in such everyday conversational exchanges there is no overt teaching about language. As Bakhtin (1986) emphasised, language is not encountered or learned as an abstract system of decontextualised rules and denitions. Rather, language occurs as dialogue. Utterances are constructed and understood in relation to the specic purposes and conditions of the activity in which they occur and in relation to the utterances that both precede and follow. As he puts it, the forms of language and the typical forms of utterances ... enter our experience and our consciousness together, and in close connection with one another (p. 78). Expanding on the dialogic nature of language use, Bakhtin drew attention to what he called its essential responsivity, and to the closely related concept of addressivity. In conversation, the hearer is not passive. When she or he listens to and understands the speakers utterance, she or he takes an active, responsive attitude toward it . . . Sooner or later what is heard and actively understood will nd its response in the subsequent speech or behavior of the listener (pp. 6869). Therefore, for speakers, responsivity works in both directions. Not only are their utterances directed towards someone and shaped in anticipation of that persons uptake and response (addressivity), but they are also responses to preceding utterances, expressing the speakers attitude to them as well as to the topic of the current utterance (responsivity). Thus, any utterance is a link in a very complex organized chain of other utterances (p. 104). But language use is not just an exchange between individuals on a particular occasion. Every conversation presupposes the existence of a community of speaker/listeners who use the resources of language in very much the same manner, selecting ways of talking appropriate for the purpose and participants involved. Bakhtin referred to these ways of talking as speech genres. As he puts it, though imbued with an individual speaker or writers individuality and the subjectivity of her present concerns, every utterance is shaped and developed within a certain generic form (1986: 78), which takes the form it does because previous participants, over many generations, have developed functionally effective ways of talking for the goals, both social and practical, that they are trying to achieve. In fact, the match between situation and speech genre is so close that, by listening to what participants say and how they say it, one can very quickly recognise how they understand the situation and what they are attempting to do together.
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The range of speech genres that are in daily use is numerous, corresponding to the diversity of activity settings in which linguistic communication takes place. Nevertheless, simply by engaging in activities with others, over time children effortlessly learn how to converse appropriately and to produce and comprehend utterances that achieve their intentions. And this is possible because of the dialogic nature of conversation, with its collaborative and co-constructed making of meaning to get things done together.
Language in the Classroom

In some essential respects, language use in the classroom is very similar to its use in the wider community. When students are working collaboratively in groups, they co-construct meaning over successive utterances in order to get things done together. However, the expectation of reciprocity between listener and speaker assumed in Bakhtins work does not apply in all situations, as is the case in most situations where the teacher is interacting with the whole class; here, the teacher typically makes both the rst and the last move in the three-part exchanges (teacher initiates; student responds; teacher follows up) that Lemke (1990) called triadic dialogue. However, further developing Bakhtins thinking about dialogue, Lotman (1988) argued that a text (spoken as well as written) serves two functions. The rst aims to have the listener/reader receive and accept exactly the meaning intended by the speaker/writer, while the second is concerned to elicit a response in the way described by Bakhtin. Of course, both functions always apply to some extent, but they can be thought of as lying at the two ends of a continuum with a range of possible relative emphases on one or the other in between. Lotman characterised the rst function as serving to transmit accepted information, norms and values in the interest of maintaining the stability of a society or organisation. As he pointed out, when this function is emphasised, the text is presented as authoritative and no form of response other than acceptance is expected. In the case of the second function, however, it is precisely the expectation of response that is uppermost. When this function is dominant, a text serves to generate new meanings and so functions as a thinking device (1988: 3637). In what follows, we shall refer to the two different functions as monologic and dialogic, respectively. This distinction is useful when considering the variety of discourse genres that occur in classrooms, for they can be seen as lying on a continuum from monologic to dialogic, according to the kind of roles that the teacher sets up for students to play and the extent of control that he or she exercises as manager of the discourse. In particular, it is the kind of expectations that the teacher sets up for students as responders within the macro-genre of triadic dialogue that most strongly determines the degree of dialogicality of the discourse. Situated towards the monologic end of the continuum is what might be called transmissionary teaching, where the teacher primarily asks closed, known-information questions, expects students to provide the predetermined correct answers, and evaluates their performance. On the other hand, the teacher can enact a genre that is more dialogic by choosing to exercise her authority as a teacher in a different way. For instance, the teacher may ask open-ended questions, inviting
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students to offer their own ideas, opinions or conjectures and encouraging them to respond to each others contributions by adding to, or challenging, what has been said. In any given day, however, it is likely that the same teacher will draw on a range of discourse genres, depending on a variety of factors in the total situation. Of the multiple factors that inuence the choice of discourse genre, one of the most important is the goal of the activity selected (e.g. introduction of a concept, discussion of the results of an experiment, revisiting material already learned). For example, prior to science inquiry, the teacher may choose to give a miniexposition about the specic science concepts involved (a monologic genre). Following that, she may use a more collaborative discourse genre in which she encourages students to explore these concepts. Finally, she may use a question and answer genre (monologic) to recap what has been learned. However, while there are relatively distinct, stable subgenres of triadic dialogue, some more monologic and some more dialogic, discourse is always emergent in the moment as it progresses from one move to the next.
EAL Students and Dialogic Interaction

As we described earlier, in the learning of their L1, childrens development takes place most effectively when they have many opportunities to engage in dialogic interaction with those around them. Naturally, there are also occasions when a more monologic function is appropriate, for example when the childs safety is at risk or when he or she is behaving in an unacceptable manner. But as a comparison of children whose language development occurs more or less successfully shows, it is the frequency of dialogic interaction that is the best predictor of rate of development (Wells, 1986). Ideally, therefore, the classroom would also provide many occasions for dialogue, with the teacher fostering it through her or his choice of curricular activities and management of the interaction involved. This would certainly provide excellent opportunities for learning language and also, as Lotman argues, for encouraging thinking and for generating new meanings. Clearly, it is important for all students to develop the discursive competence to participate in a range of classroom discourse genres across the curriculum (Hawkins, 2004). And to do so, they need multiple opportunities to engage actively in using these genres. However, participation in dialogic interaction is particularly benecial for EAL students for a number of reasons. First, as a means of encountering the additional language in use, dialogic interaction provides not only comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985) but also opportunities to learn how to engage in the genres of the different academic disciplines so that they may become academically competent participants (Colombi & Schleppegrell, 2002; Scarcella, 2003; Schleppegrell, 2004). For example, knowing how to appropriately engage in a discussion of literature or of science experiments is an important participatory competence that EAL students need to develop (Gibbons, 1998, 2002; MacSwan & Rolstad, 2003); this goes beyond what Bakhtin called the forms of language (grammar, lexis, phonology). Furthermore, when they are called on to play a major role in the co-construction of curriculum knowledge, EAL students are likely to have opportunities to produce longer and more
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complex contributions as they assume the role of active participants in discussion, leading to the production of comprehensible output (Swain, 1995, 2005). Second, in using their language resources to contribute to the ongoing classroom talk, they simultaneously learn the social and communicative strategies needed to access the academic content (e.g. when to contribute, how to express their ideas clearly using appropriate discourse strategies). As noted by Green and Harker (1988), curriculum is tripartite in nature, posing academic, social and communicative demands. Put differently, EAL students need to learn how to communicate with others in an interpersonally appropriate manner in a particular situation and how to express social relationships, while at the same time learning the academic content (Verplaetse, 2000). In a related vein, when EAL learners are given signicant interactive roles, they become recognised as legitimate members of the classroom community (Cummins, 2000, 2006; Author, in press). Interaction determines the nature of co-membership a student experiences within the group; in other words, students develop their identities as particular kinds of person within the classroom community through the interactive roles they take on or have assigned to them (Gee, 2000). Third, as they contribute to the ongoing construction of knowledge, EAL students are likely to encounter alternative perspectives on the topic under discussion, expressed by students as well as the teacher. Such opportunities to listen to differing perspectives expose them to diverse language models (e.g. different ways of expressing ideas and the language of negotiation, such as agreeing/disagreeing with someone) (Echevarria & Powers, 2006; Warren et al., 2001). That is to say, instead of being exposed mostly to teacher talk, in dialogic interaction EAL students have opportunities to observe and/or engage in the interactive use of language and to experience what Bakhtin (1986) called the interanimation of voices a more heteroglossic use of language. This also creates linguistic redundancy, providing EAL students the repeated language practice needed to develop a high level of communicative competency. Thus, if the goal of L2 learning and teaching is to help EAL students to become competent members of a classroom community, both socially and academically, there is a strong case for engaging them in dialogic interaction as much as possible. In the remainder of this paper, we present and discuss particular cases of EAL students in different classrooms. In each classroom, they experienced a range of discourse genres, some more monologic than others. However, given our purpose here, we shall focus our discussion on instances of the more dialogic genres.
The Need for Inquiry as Orientation to Curriculum

Despite the desirability of engaging students in dialogue, the genres of discourse just discussed tend to occur rather infrequently in most classrooms, as numerous surveys and observational studies have shown (Galton et al., 1999; Nystrand, 1997; Williams, 2003). Unfortunately, this is equally true of classrooms in which second or additional language instruction is taking place (van Lier, 1996). On the other hand, there have been a number of reports in recent years that show that students from the early years of schooling onwards are quite capable of participating effectively in various genres of dialogue, if they
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are given the opportunity, including students learning a second or additional language. A key characteristic of most of these classrooms is the adoption of an inquiry orientation to curriculum, in which students engage in hands-on investigations as part of curriculum units ranging from science (Gallas, 1995; Gibbons, 2002; Palincsar et al., 1998), maths (Cobb, 1995; Lampert et al., 1996), to literature (Davis, 2001; Donoahue, 1998; McMahon et al., 1997). Starting in 1991, the present authors were involved in a collaborative action research project that included an investigation of the relationship between inquiry and dialogue. Over a period of seven years, more than ten teachers voluntarily joined the project, with the objective of exploring ways of creating communities of inquiry in the classroom. When a comparison was made between early and late observations in each teachers participation in the project, it was found that in every case there were signicant changes in the direction of the occurrence of more dialogic interaction (Wells & Mejia Arauz, 2006). And in an earlier report, it was found that the features that characterised dialogue were signicantly more likely to occur in curricular activities that were concerned with planning for, carrying out and interpreting the results of inquiries, in which students had considerable responsibility for choosing the specic topic and the method for their investigations (Nassaji & Wells, 2000). We were not surprised by these ndings concerning the relationship between inquiry and dialogue. For true dialogue to occur, the participants must be interested in the topic, have personal beliefs and opinions about which they care enough to wish to voice them, and believe that the group conclusion will take account of all contributions. These conditions are most likely to arise when a curricular unit has an overall theme which is of interest to all, or at least a majority, of the students, when they work in groups on self-chosen topics under the theme, and the teacher does not assume the role of primary knower with respect to the conclusions to be reached. In addition, the ethos of the classroom community must be such that all students listen respectfully to the contributions of their peers and offer relevant justications for their agreement or disagreement with what others have to say. Stated thus, it is perhaps not surprising that these conditions are rarely met in the prevailing political climate, in which it is scores in tests of factual information rather than understanding of the key concepts and their relationship to the evidence gained through investigation and from personal experience that are given the greatest weight by politicians and educational administrators. Nevertheless, there are many teachers who, with support and encouragement, are willing to try to achieve them in the manner that they feel most effective for the particular students that they teach. This was the case for the teachers in the Developing Inquiring Communities in Education Project (DICEP) that we have just described. Working together as an inquiring community ourselves, we met regularly to discuss the projects in progress of individual members, to explore common ndings, and to prepare presentations of our individual and collective work (Wells, 2001a). What is particularly signicant in the context of this paper is that all the classrooms of these teachers contained students who were learning English as a second or additional language. In most cases, these EAL students were fairly advanced and able to participate in both practical activities and the discussions to which
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these gave rise. However, over the course of the project, there were several new arrivals who spoke no English but who were placed in mainstream classrooms for all or most of each day. In the following section, we will describe some critical events in these students progress in adjusting to the use of English as the language of instruction.
Joining the Community: Learning English

Ling-Li arrived in Canada from Mainland China at about the age of eight and was placed in the combined Grades 3 and 4 class of Ms Lee, one of the DICEP teachers, who had herself learned English as an additional language. This class contained a number of other Chinese-Canadian children as well as children from other countries, all of whom were relatively uent in English. Throughout her rst year, Ling-Li attended a class for EAL learners for about an hour of each day, but the remainder of the time was spent in the regular class, where she was, from the beginning, included in all the ongoing activities. In the winter of her rst year, we observed the whole of a curriculum unit on the theme of time and were able to make several observations of Ling-Lis increasing participation (Wells & Chang, 1997). Early in this curriculum unit, the children worked in groups to determine which of several variables affected a pendulums rate of swing. Ling-Li joined several other girls in an experiment to nd out whether weight was a relevant variable. While she rarely spoke, she joined the others in attaching washers to the length of string that formed the pendulum and in counting the number of swings completed in 30 seconds on each trial. At one point, the knot that secured the washers came loose and Ling-Li pointed this out, saying Uh-oh. that not way to tie it on. She then helped another girl to tie it more securely. On another day, she worked with two other girls, Emma and Veronica, to nd out whether rhythmic counting, as they banged two plastic cups together, was an accurate way of measuring time. For this experiment each girl lled an identical bottle with water to the same level and then poured out the contents while the other two girls counted how long it took. Ling-Li, who went rst, took four claps. Emma and Veronica each emptied theirs in a count of three. Emma, also a Chinese-Canadian, who had assumed the role of group leader, paused for a moments reection (In this and all following transcripts, the following conventions apply: [indicates overlapping talk; <> marks a portion of speech that is uncertain; * indicates a word that was inaudible; - indicates a restart or a continuation of a previous utterance;. pauses are indicated by a period for each second; CAPS indicate words spoken with marked stress; ( ) are annotations made by the transriber). Emma: I know, me and Veronica are tied. Do you know why you were slow? (to Ling-Li)
When Ling-Li does not answer, Emma puts the question again in a different form: Emma: What we did . what we did was we . did a method by timing Now, dyou guys think it was a fair match?
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Veronica: Emily: Veronica:
Yeh Do you? (doubtfully) Cos we each did the same . <thing>
Emma is less certain and asks again why Ling-Li lost and then proposes an explanation. Emma: Veronica: Probably she poured it- probably . she poured it slow. Like she goes like this (demonstrating howLing-Li had held her bottle at a ninety degree angle while pouring whereas she and Emma had turned their bottles completely upside down)
While Veronica is speaking, the teacher joins the group to nd out how they are getting on. Emily and Veronica describe what they have been doing, ending with a summary of their recent conversation. The teachers follow-up question prompts Emily into a statement that recognises that, for the test to be fair, the angle of pouring must also be controlled. Teacher: OK, so you- so that is a good observation- you observed . that LingLis count . was more . than both of you . and you gure that its because of the way she poured it . . now, how can you make sure . that its a fair test between all three of you? Well. a fair test- well I dont really think its fair now because . it was fair We put it the same size of the cup by the measuring cup, but I dont think it was fair because we poured it- we turned it right over . and Lily just poured it like this, kind of so I dont think it was fair . (T: Uh-huh) I- I think thats why she . um- . was slow
Emily:
Although Ling-Li did not speak during these interchanges, she clearly understood what was being discussed, because when they carried out a second trial, she held her bottle at the same angle as the other girls and, as a result, emptied her bottle on three claps just like them. As has frequently been observed, in the initial stages of learning an additional language there is typically an extended period in which learners participate by observation and listening with increasing comprehension before they start to speak as is also the case in learning a rst language (Halliday, 1978). Thus, we would argue, these brief vignettes provide clear examples of Ling-Li learning English through participation in meaningful joint activities (Dalton & Tharp, 2002). But a major breakthrough came some weeks later, when the class had carried out a variety of further activities, which included making a time-measurer of their own design. At the end of the unit, the teacher gathered the children together to review and reect on what they had done and what they had learned. After a recapitulation of the various experiments they had carried out, the relation of time measurement to the movements of the earth and sun was discussed, and this led into the issue of time zones. Blanca starts this thread by recounting a conversation with her sister in which they estimated what time it would be in Scotland, from where they had recently immigrated, when it was 10 in the evening in Toronto.
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While another child was recounting a similar experience in relation to her family in Hong Kong, Ling-Li raised her hand. As the teacher immediately recognised, this was an important moment, as Ling-Li was usually very reticent about speaking in front of the whole class. On this occasion, however, she clearly felt her experience was sufciently important for her to request an opportunity to tell it. In the following extract it can be seen how the teacher shows immediate uptake of Ling-Lis rst contribution and, by providing supportive scaffolding through expanding and extending it, enables her to continue to participate. Ling-Li: When I was in China . my Mum always called me at the night and er- and I- I dont like- I dont er I dont want to wake up and my- my Grandmother say You have to wake up, your mother on- in the phone. So I have to listen to him Thats right . she says- Ling-Li says that when she was in China . wheres China? You show me (to Ling-Li, who points to the position of China on the globe) Er you justThere, Chinas over here . (pointing) and her Mum was in . [Canada [Canada -her Mum called at say two oclock in the afternoon, say now, cos the sun is there two oclock I would say its roughly here . is she still asleep? Yeh Two in the morning, ** Now, its really not as much as Hong Kong, * slightly less, but shes still asleep . so thats why she was telling us her grandmother said Your mum is on the phone, get up! Your Mum is calling you - which means phoning for you - and she says Why does she phone me at night? But is it night for your Mum? [No [No No, its daytime . and say if Ling-Li comes over- the earth moves here and its daytime and Ling-Li calls her Mum (i.e. in China). Ling-Li phones her Mum, would her Mum be awake or asleep? Asleep
Teacher:
Arthur: Teacher: Ling-Li: Teacher:
Children: Blanca: Teacher:
Ling-Li: Children: Teacher:
Ling-Li and Others:
As in learning their L1, what prompts children to take risks in using the linguistic resources they are learning in an additional language is so often the combination of having something they feel it is important to say and an audience who will be interested to hear it. This is what happened here. The teacher had willingly accepted Biancas introduction of a personal experience involving time zones and had encouraged other children to contribute similar experiences. In this collaborative dialogue, Ling-Li felt empowered to join in by offering her experience. But, as the previous extracts show, Ling-Lis ability to speak out on this occasion owed much to her ongoing opportunities to participate in
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meaningful activities with others, in which she was able to contribute on a practical level and at the same time gradually to learn how to talk about these and other matters of shared interest and importance. Signicantly, by the winter of the following year, Ling-Li was a full participant in all classroom activities, speaking English at a level that was almost indistinguishable from that of other children who had been in Canada since before they started school. A few years later, Ms Lee was teaching a class of 12-year-olds in a different school when, again, shortly after the beginning of the school year, a very recent immigrant from China, YaXiang, joined the class. On arrival YaXiang spoke no more than a few words of English but she was a uent reader and writer, as well as speaker, of Mandarin. YaXiang came with an excellent school record and was able to understand much of what her peers were doing in the various activities in which they engaged; she was also quick to contribute non-verbally when she could assist in problem-solving. But what most accelerated her language learning was that she was discovered to be an expert at chess. Other students were keen to take lessons and so YaXiang had multiple opportunities to converse through signs and demonstration as well as through speech about many topics in addition to chess. As in her previous school, Ms Lee involved the class in a variety of inquiryoriented projects, to which YaXiang was well able to contribute from her general knowledge. In addition, when the group she was working with came to prepare a report, she was invited to play a major role in the preparation of labelled diagrams, graphs and other numerical representations. She was also encouraged to write in Mandarin when what she wanted to communicate was beyond her current capabilities in English. Not surprisingly, YaXiang made rapid progress and by the end-of-year presentation that the class made to parents, teachers and other classes, she was up to the level of uency in English of other Chinese-Canadian students. This presentation arose from a science project in which YaXiangs class had collaborated with classes from schools across North America to prepare for a virtual expedition to Mars by designing/creating the various necessities for the trip. While other classes concentrated on developing ways of growing food hydroponically and collecting ice to create a water supply, YaXiangs class had the responsibility for designing and making models of the vehicles that would be needed. This they did with great success. YaXiang worked with a group of other students, all EAL learners, to design and make a scale model of a vehicle to collect ice. Here is a transcript of YaXiangs answers to the questions posed by one of the visitors to the Class Open Day: Visitor: YaXiang: Could you please tell me about what you have made This is our electric car . <it works with the> battery and the solar power This is our camera. It can swivel through 360 degrees . and this [the car] can go fore and back (she demonstrates, using the remote controller) And heres our satellite . that is part of our communication system . and here is our solar panel that is to collect the solar energy . and down here are these *- here are the bathroom, the locker and <the
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Visitor: YaXiang:
air machine> . and we have a tube through here and this is the second oor and here is the rst oor So is there wind on Mars? Yeah . it (the car) doesnt use wind energy but like use the solar energy
YaXiangs remarkable progress in developing oral uency in English undoubtedly owed much to her previous education in China, which had prepared her to understand the content of the curriculum in Ms Lees class. However, this would have beneted her little without the frequent opportunities to work collaboratively on group projects with her peers, in which she was able to contribute from her own understanding of the problems to be solved at rst non-verbally and then, more and more by appropriating and using the oral language of her co-participants. In addition, as in her previous classroom, Ms Lee encouraged an inquiry orientation to learning and included frequent whole-class discussions in which students put forward and debated alternative perspectives on the issues under consideration. These too provided models of the language to be learned from which YaXiang was able to appropriate the genres of academic language relevant to different school subjects, together with the discourse strategies for participating in such discussions. As these two brief cases show, an inquiry-oriented curriculum provides a context with great potential for learning, not only for native speakers, but also for EAL learners. In such a context, the projects being undertaken create opportunities for those who are not yet uent in the language of the classroom to contribute productively in various practical and nonverbal ways; at the same time, the many occasions of dialogue that occur with small groups of peers as well as with the teacher in planning, carrying out, reporting and reecting on the various activities involved provide language learning opportunities very similar to those experienced by children as they learn their L1. This form of learning through immersion is clearly effective in classes where the majority of students are already competent speakers of the language of the classroom and of the wider society around the school. In such a context, EAL learners have multiple occasions to attempt to use the language they are learning for purposes that are signicant for them; they also have multiple models and providers of assistance. The question we address in the next part of this paper is whether a similar context can be provided in a class in which all the students are new to the language of instruction. Creating a community of inquiry among English learners In this section, drawing from the rst Hanedas research (Haneda, 2005, 2008; Wells & Haneda, 2005) in California, we present a case where the classroom community involves only EAL students. Classes consisting solely of EAL students can be found in different settings: immersion, foreign language, ESL and sheltered instructional classes. Out of these possible contexts, the next example is concerned with one particular instantiation: ESL lessons in a Grade 3 transitional bilingual class in California. It differs greatly from the earlier examples of Chinese students in mainstream classes in at least three respects. First, in this example, all the children, whose English prociency ranged from beginning to
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low intermediate, shared the same rst language; they were second- or thirdgeneration Mexican Americans whose home language was Spanish (and two children of migrant Mexican farm workers). Second, whereas in the Toronto examples, the EAL students were immersed in English throughout the day, in this example the medium of instruction was Spanish, with one period of ESL per day. Third, inquiry is interpreted differently in the Toronto and California examples partly because of the depth of the teachers understanding of what is involved in inquiry. In particular, in the Toronto case, the teacher independently designed her own inquiry units, drawing on a variety of sources, whereas in the Californian example the teacher was working from recommended or required published materials. Ms Wilson, a veteran teacher of over 20 years of experience, had already actively participated for eight years in LASERS, a local science professional development project.1 This experience had led her to believe that an additional language is learned best through inquiry work in content areas, particularly science, because science inquiry draws on hands-on activities that provide students with concrete, shared experiences on which they can build through talk and writing, thus connecting language use, action, reasoning, and artifacts in a meaningful way. At the time of this research the practice of teaching English through science inquiry was rmly established in Ms Wilsons ESL lessons. In fact, this was the major context in which English was taught; similarly, it was only in the ESL time that science was taught because, otherwise, in this school science teaching was overwhelmed by the emphasis on basic literacy and maths. As the year progressed, the students became familiar with Ms Wilsons inquiry science routine (the predictexperimentobserveinterpretreect sequence) even though at an elementary level and were able to draw on it as a tool for learning. However, despite her success with teaching English through science inquiry, Ms Wilson had not felt able to bring inquiry to bear in other areas of the curriculum. It seems likely that this was because she equated inquiry with hands-on activities and the science routine described above which is how it had been presented in the professional development provided by LASERS and did not immediately see how it might be applied to other subjects. However, in the weeks preceding this research, she had been planning how she might adopt an inquiry orientation in her social studies lessons, which she would also teach in English. It was in the context of this new departure for her that we made our observations in Ms Wilsons classroom. What we wish to highlight here is the way in which she provided an explicit focus on English language while implementing what she considered to be inquiry in social studies. The unit was based on the California Social Studies Standard (3.1) under the heading of continuity and change, Students describe the areas physical and human geography, and use maps, tables, graphs, photographs and charts to organise information about people, places and environments in a spatial context (California Department of Education, 2000). In designing the unit, she particularly wanted her students to understand the physical features of the local area and develop map-reading skills as well as a basic understanding of the concept of community and the changes that take place in a community over time. She felt that the key to success would be the creation and presentation of engaging activities that became progressively more complex and text-based. She
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also decided to use the third grade English textbook that the school provided for this unit, although with some misgivings, since the level at which the majority of her students were reading in English was at least one level below the third grade level. Ms Wilson started the unit by introducing the words associated with the physical features of the region (e.g. valley, mountain range) and explained the meaning of each word to the students. Following that, she gave an exposition of what a community consists of and then asked the students concrete questions about their personal experiences: Where do you live?; What do your parents do for a living?; Have you visited other places?; What do these places look like? The students responded enthusiastically and Ms Wilson wrote their responses on the blackboard and summarised their contributions in diagrams. In this way, in lieu of the shared experience of a hands-on experiment, she engaged her students in the co-construction of a shared discursive space about their local community. She also explicitly focused on language through mini-grammar lessons that were interspersed throughout the unit (e.g. the appropriate use of tense and of proper and common nouns in referring to the geographic features of the local area) and through a read-aloud of the textbook, with a focus on both decoding and comprehension. Particularly emphasised was the learning of key vocabulary, which was reinforced through the use of numerous pictures (e.g. landforms) and games and charts of new words on the wall. Another strategy that she used often was to work with one group at a time, modelling language and interacting with the students more intensively. A short excerpt of such talk in a small group is provided below, where Ms Wilson was teaching a group of students how to read the symbols used on a large laminated map of the local area. The students walked around the map, touching it and tracing local landmarks with their ngers. Ms Wilson explained that squiggly lines that were close together indicated steep elevation mountains. She then asked the children to locate the Cascade River on the map. In response, by scanning the map with their ngers, the children located the river and traced its course; responding to this action, Ms Wilson explained that the river starts from the mountain, cuts across the city and ows into the ocean. After several minutes of this map-reading activity, in turn 31 one student made a connection between the map and the local area. Once the connection was made, other children started to read the map, relating it to their existing knowledge about the area.2 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 S3: T: S4: T: S1: S2: T: S1: S3: S4: S2: Teacher I one question, are these- Que es esto? ((What is this?)) This is Riverside Road [so thats Riverside = [Oh oh this is Eastville = See theres the high school . yes, all of this is Eastville . all of this all the way out to here now is Eastville I like this (student is pointing to an area on the map) Heres high school Heres the high school um theres the Plaza [Plaza [The Plaza HEY then I must live right here Wheres my house?
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40 41 42 43 44 45
S3: T: S3: T: S2: T:
46 47
S3: T: S2: T: S3: T:
48 49 50 51
Mines en by x Park Hospital The hospital, except thats not really the hospital anymore I know, Teacher The hospital is out by the airport now More over [here [This map is- When this map was made that was the hospital but now| the hospital is- . lets see Airport Boulevard (teacher and students are looking for hospital) Yeah, see heres Freedom Road is rightTeacher, am I- if- if I am in Pinker Lake where would I live Pinker Lake is up here . so look look at all this . see this part with all these lines and over here theres more lines and all around [these [Those are all the Santa Anna Mountains Not all of them . these are not the mountains. These are like hills Hills And see this part is FLAT because it doesnt have a lot of wavy lines . and then this whole area is also very at because it also doesnt have lot of wavy lines
As in her science lessons, Ms Wilson provided scaffolding to small groups, since she believed that these EAL students needed more intensive linguistic support than the whole class discussion could afford. What we would like to draw attention to here is the frequency of Ms Wilsons uptake of the students contributions (e.g. turns 32, 35, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51). By uptake we refer to teachers responses to students contribution that acknowledge and build on them or invite the same or different students to do so; according to Nystrand and his colleagues (2002), teacher uptake can be interpreted as one of the main features of dialogic interaction. Also noticeable in this excerpt is the extent to which there was overlapping talk between the teacher and the children, which points to a positive and collaborative classroom ethos. In addition to this activity, Ms Wilson had the students colour a copy of a local topographical map according to its geographical features (e.g. blue for water, yellow for mountain). She also had them use that to guide their making of relief maps of the local area, using our and water dough, and then colour them to show the same features. In addition, she took them around the school and asked them to identify those physical features of the surrounding area that they could see (e.g. pointing to the mountain range). Thus, she made the abstract task of map reading very tactile and concrete for her students. She also made efforts to make the history component of the unit experiencebased by focusing on changes in the local community. In the process, the students encountered more new vocabulary (e.g. historians, primary sources) and learned the difference in use between the present and past tense as they recounted and compared events in their own lives. Ms Wilson appealed to many visual aids to make learning concrete. For example, when discussing the changes that had taken place in the community over the years, she compared large laminated maps of past and contemporary Eastville. She had the students, in groups, compare old and recent photographs of the same local landmarks and describe the differences between them, using the language structures on which they were focusing. After the students had gained condence in describing small sets of
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pictures, she then spread out many more pictures of the local area (old and new) on ve tables and asked the students to visit each table and discuss the pictures. Using both Spanish and English, the children participated in this activity with great excitement. This history segment concluded with a eld trip to the local historical museum, where the students had the opportunity to listen to docents who explained the local history; they also saw many enlarged archived photographs, and visited the replicas of an old school house and a store, where they were allowed to touch historical artifacts and play with them. It was observed that even reluctant readers were striving to decode the explanatory notes related to various artifacts in order to understand what they were. On the way to and from the museum, Ms Wilson took different routes and gave the students a historical tour of Eastville. At the completion of the unit, Ms Wilson remarked that she had never seen her students so eager to learn social studies and was impressed by the extent to which they seemed to have understood the materials presented. She also added that she would not go back to her old approach of working primarily from the mandated textbook. At the same time it needs to be pointed out that the key to the effectiveness of this unit at least in part was the sense of community that had been developed in the classroom over the course of the academic year and the trust and rapport that the teacher had established with the students. Without such trust the students would not have felt the ability to participate in a completely different kind of social studies unit for fear of making linguistic mistakes. What also characterised this community was the way in which Ms Wilson was able to contexualise the curricular content in terms of the students life experiences in order to make learning meaningful for them. Furthermore, her explicit focus on English language through vocabulary activities, grammar lessons and small group instruction created not only comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985) but also opportunities to connect language form with its meaning in context (Swain, 2000). In these ways, together with the inclusion of a variety of multimodal experiences, created through tactile activities, visual aids, tours of the local area and a eld trip, their learning both of English and of the curricular content were strengthened (Echevarria et al., 2004; Hentz & Lucas, 1993). Thus, from this account of Ms Wilsons class, it can be argued that even in the absence of native-speaker peer models it is possible for teachers to create meaningful instructional contexts for EAL students to learn the target language through inquiry-oriented dialogue with their teacher and their EAL peers. Comparing the three cases In this section we wish to consider the three examples together, pointing out what they have in common and how they differ. There are some important similarities shared by the three cases, notably the teachers inquiry orientation and their commitment to dialogic interaction. Both teachers involved their EAL students in practical activities that they were initially able to carry out largely independently of the language of instruction; then, as they gained some personal experiences with respect to the selected topic, more language was introduced.
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Considering science to be a particularly promising subject area in which to apprentice their EAL students to language as well as to disciplinary activities, they subsequently built on the condence developed through science inquiry to embark on inquiries in other subjects, such as maths and social studies. In a related vein, in classroom interaction, the teachers made an effort to: (1) connect the curricular topics to the students lives so as to make learning personally relevant and meaningful, and (2) take up and build on the students contributions, leading to positive social and intellectual learning environments (Gibbons, 2002; Nystrand, 1997). Thus, common to all three cases was the positive classroom climate: students were not afraid to make linguistic errors as they knew that their attempts to contribute were valued. Taken together, these three cases show that dialogic interaction is benecial for EAL students. In addition, in all three cases, the students appeared to develop positive identities in English, particularly in the case of the two Chinese girls, as they become full participants in their classroom communities. However, there were also salient differences between the rst two and last examples. First, the context in which the learning of English as an additional language took place differed: individual EAL students joining an existing community of English-procient peers versus creating a learning community among EAL students. The advantage of the former, as the two Chinese EAL learners rapid progress in English demonstrates, is that with appropriate teacher guidance, an existing inquiry-oriented community allows novice EAL learners to participate in community practices as legitimate peripheral participants (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in initially attenuated ways. They encounter many utterances, or language models, from peers and the teacher in relation to the specic purposes and conditions of the activities in which they participate. In this way L2 learning becomes connected to particular activities and their associated actions and talk; it is through repeated exposure to such meaningful language use that novice EAL students are able to appropriate the target language rather quickly. On the other hand, when a class consists solely of EAL students, the situation is clearly different. In Ms Wilsons class, all the students shared the same L1 and the majority of them were low English-procient, creating a situation in which there were no English-procient oldtimers to guide novices. What they could do as a group was therefore likely to be more limited than in the former immersion situation. However, Ms Wilsons example gives some hope as to the extent to which EAL students can engage in learning of the subject matter content in an additional language with thoughtful scaffolding provided by the teacher. Another difference concerns the way in which inquiry was enacted in the Toronto and Californian examples. At the time of research, teachers in the Metro Toronto school board were not burdened by the mandated curriculum standards, as was the case in California at the time Ms Wilsons class was observed. The teacher in the Toronto examples was able to design her own curricular units using textbooks and materials of her own choice. In conjunction with the fact that the majority of her students were procient in English to a considerable degree, Ms Lee was able to let her students choose subtopics of their own interest when carrying out their experiments or projects in relation to an overall theme. In contrast, in Ms Wilsons case, because there was an enormous pressure to
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cover the mandated curriculum, it was the teacher who made those decisions. Thus, the particular sociopolitical contexts under which the teachers worked appeared to inuence both the ways in which they enacted their inquiry units and the extent to which students could select their own inquiry topics. Another salient difference is related to who the students were. In the case of XaYiang, the middle school EAL student in the second example, she had been recognised as a high academic achiever in China and was highly literate in her rst language. In comparison, the majority of Ms Wilsons students were born and raised in the United States within Hispanic communities, where Spanish was the language of communication until the children entered school. These children were simultaneously developing literacy in Spanish and English rather than building on preexisting literate knowledge. As Ms Wilsons inquiry units were carried out in English (in which her students were developing both spoken and written prociency), it was not surprising that she took a more teachercentered approach. While the three examples were closely tied to the particular sociopolitical milieu and specic population of the students in each case, it can be said that an inquiry approach creates abundant opportunities for EAL students (and native English-speaking students) to engage in the learning of the subject matter through dialogic interaction. Ms Wilsons example also points to the importance of an explicit focus on the target language for EAL students, who are at early stages of English language development, through contextualised grammar lessons, vocabulary exercises and activities that encourage the use of the language structures and vocabulary being learned in relation to a particular curricular topic.
Additional Language Learning and Dialogic Inquiry: Some Implications

In the light of the three examples given, we would like to consider some pedagogical implications. First, we wish to reiterate the point that we made earlier, namely that dialogic inquiry in its different manifestations has the potential of affording EAL students (and all students) the opportunity to use language for purposes of signicance to them in the co-construction of curriculum knowledge and also in the establishment and maintenance of the social relationships that enables the development of resilient identities (Wang et al., 1994; Waxman et al., 2002). Inquiry provides students with incentives for learning through the taking up of intellectual challenges and the resulting opportunities for meaningful interaction about the information and experience gained in the process. It also fosters the making of connections among action, talk and associated text. In this context we would emphasise that, in addition to action and talk, teachers should make efforts to incorporate relevant reading and writing activities into the inquiry processes (Palincsar et al., 1998; Varelas et al., 2004); such literacy activities reinforce students understanding of concepts and push them to strive to express their ideas in a linguistically precise manner, assisted by appropriate scaffolding from teachers. Although the three cases reported here started with a focus on science inquiry, we wish to stress that dialogic inquiry is applicable in other curricular areas. In
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fact, we take the view that inquiry is not a method or routinised activity conned to a particular school subject, but rather a stance towards learning and teaching right across the curriculum (Alexander, 2006; Wells, 2001b). Nevertheless, it has to be recognised that the ways in which this stance can be achieved may be constrained by the different sociopolitical contexts in which teachers work and also by teachers condence in the breadth of their knowledge in different curricular areas. However, as Turkanis (2001) points out, a teachers unashamed admission that she or he does not know the answer to a students question can be a great start to a collaborative inquiry. For many teachers it may initially be daunting to consider incorporating dialogic inquiry into their classroom practices, particularly where there is an excessive focus on obtaining gains on standardised test scores, as is the case in much of the United States. However, dialogic inquiry and its key elements, such as promoting students intellectual curiosity, agentive participation and interactive use of language, can be introduced in small steps. For example, consider maths. In one classroom that we know of, the basis for student inquiry was created by displaying architectural designs for different kinds of houses on the classroom wall. Using these as a stimulating resource, the teacher designed a wide range of mathematical activities, from drawing diagrams of the classroom that required measuring its dimensions and calculating its area, to students designing their own ideal homes that required them to consider many features, from the shape and size of the rooms to the amount of hardwood ooring needed for particular parts of the house, and so on. In contrast, Rosebery et al. (1992) recount how EAL students complaints about the quality of the water from the drinking fountain close to their classroom led to a systematic investigation of water quality in all the school fountains and a report with recommendations for action addressed to the school principal. In both these cases, the signicance to the students of the topics with which they were concerned gave them a strong incentive to learn and use the language needed to achieve their goals. Once teachers feel comfortable with an inquiry-oriented approach, they can then develop activities that extend beyond the school. In the case of Ms Wilsons unit on community, she could easily extend it to include a component in which her students become ethnographers of their own community (Eagan-Roberton & Bloome, 1998; Heath, 1983). They could survey the kinds of stores found in different areas of the town and locate public facilities, such as libraries and schools (Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005); using Spanish or English, the students could also interview family and community members to learn more about their community and its history, carry out library or internet-based research on the same topic and produce a culminating project reporting their research. In this way learning would become more student-directed, drawing on their existing knowledge, skills and life experiences (Gonzalez et al., 2005). Important to emphasise, though, is that the adoption of the approach we have been advocating requires teachers, particularly teachers who have EAL students in their care, to consider the act of teaching in what may be a new light. That is to say, it assumes that teaching of a language (rst or additional) entails creating a language-using community in which students are drawn into taking part in activities that are or become of importance to them and
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are not afraid to express their ideas in whatever ways they are able, even if this involves linguistic errors in the target language or codeswitching between different languages. Indeed, in some circumstances, it may be benecial for students to discuss with others what they want to say in their rst language and then work together to reformulate their intended contribution in the target language (Turnbull & Arnett, 2002). In conclusion, based on our experiences, we suggest that if we really want to ensure that EAL students have the same opportunities as their L1 peers to succeed academically and to become productive and fullled members of the wider society beyond school, there is a need to focus on the creation of classroom communities that value meaningful dialogic inquiry, since this is one of the most effective ways to enable all students to make progress in achieving their full potential. It is also, as Dewey (1966) pointed out, the best way to create and sustain a democratic society. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to M. Haneda, School of Teaching and Learning, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210-1172, USA (haneda1@osu.edu). Notes
1. The name of the project was LASERS, which stands for language acquisition through science enquiry in rural schools. 2. The following additional transcription conventions were used: (()) is a translation of a Spanish utterance; = marks a continuation of an utterance. Note that T stands for the teacher and S for a student.
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This article was downloaded by: [Sultan Qaboos University] On: 18 December 2013, At: 07:20 Publisher: Routledge

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