Adult Biliteracy

Humaira Zakaria

Professor Gleason

ENGL C8031

Final Paper

May 11, 2010

Biliteracy and the issues of Basic Adult Education

Immigrants are faced with the issues of having to adapt to a new language so that they better aid their lives in a new environment. Immigrants bring with them their own culture, knowledge and language. But if they do not adapt, or are slowly adapting to the new target language of their new environment they are stigmatized as being illiterate. The process of biliteracy is socially and cognitively fueled based on an individual’s motivation to become literate in another language. Individuals do find ways to compensate so that they may begin the process of second language literacy; but lack of funding for programs necessary for individuals to become English literate is disproportionate to meet the needs of these English language learners.

There is a misconception that the United States is a monolingual English speaking nation. In 2000, the US Census data exemplifies that out of 262, 375, 152 people that data has been collected from, 215, 423, 557 individuals speak strictly English. 46, 951, 595 individuals speak another language (18% of the U.S population). With nearly 47 million people speaking another language other than English indicates that the nation is multilingual but English is still the dominant language (Wiley 11).

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For the majority of immigrants to function within the United States, most will have to adapt to English and become literate on some level. Literacy serves three purposes: literacy as adaptation: literary as a state of grace: Literacy as power. Literacy as adaptation is a belief that “literacy is the key to social and economic access and provides a solution to the functional English problems or individuals” (Wiley 3). For immigrants to have literacy as adaptation means that they can greatly improve their livelihood because more opportunities will be accessible by becoming English literate. Literacy as a state of grace offers “a kind of salvation in which the literate or the literati are considered to have special virtues” (Wiley 4). People who are considered literate are held at a higher esteem than people who are nonliterate. There is a stigma that people who are nonliterate have lower cognitive abilities than people who are literate. With 47 million individuals speaking another language illiteracy is linked to immigrants, minorities, and non English and limited- English speakers who are in poverty. These “illiterates” supposedly spur crime, unemployment and lower the rates of global competitiveness. People will be labeled illiterate and will be attributed to all the negative stereotypes of illiteracy because they do not meet a level set by the expectations of the majority and in “a system of English- only instruction, the student is the target, and illiteracy in English is seen as the result of a personal, rather than systemic failure” (Wiley 99). Lastly, Literacy as power sees literacy as a “critical tool for transforming existing social relations” (Wiley 4). Literacy as power can bridge gaps between people so that a more equal and just society is established.

To become biliterate is a struggle for immigrants, especially ones that lack full

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development of their own native language. There are two dimensions to developing language which are social language and academic language. Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) and Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (social language) are two dimensions of language development.

Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) is formal academic learning. CALP is necessary for a students to succeed in an academic setting. CALP “is considered less contextualized, more abstract, and more cognitively demanding” (Wiley 158). Discourse functions in an academic setting “may also involve complex rhetorical functions, such as responding to requests for specific information… those required to understand and produce coherent, extended oral discourse or written texts” (Wiley 164). To achieve discourse function, there are skills centered approaches to language instruction. Grammar and vocabulary are part of academic instruction that are focused on CALP language skills. Grammar is viewed as necessary because students are mandated to “write formal papers that are grammatically correct and to demonstrate knowledge of formal grammar and word meaning on standardized achievement tests and, ultimately on college admonishing exams” (Wiley 165). But if language exists based on context, grammar can be a decontextualized perspective of language, in which grammar and vocabulary instruction can serve very little purpose for language learning. Formal education also focuses on listening comprehension. Some examples of listening skills based on listening comprehension instruction include but are not limited students having

the ability to

reconstruct or infer situations, goals, participants and procedures… use Zakaria 4

real-world knowledge and experience to work out purposes, goals, settings and procedures… infer links and connections to between events… reconstruct topics and coherent structures from ongoing discourse involving two or more speakers… adjust listening strategies to different kinds of listener purposes or goals… recognize instructional/ learner tasks… (Wiley 173).

These skills based instruction is known as form-focused instruction in which “The Grammar Translation Method and the Audiolingual Method both involve attempts to teach learners grammar” (Ellis 79).

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are language skills needed in social context so that one may interact with other people. Social situations are imbedded with context, and English Language Learners demonstrate BICS in meaningful social context but it is assumed that BICS is less cognitively demanding (Wiley 158).

In Tomás Mario Kalmar’s Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy exemplified the development of BICS of Mexican migrant workers. Within the setting of Cobden Illinois, Mexican migrant workers and locals of Cobden gathered at a local grocery store. The goal of these meetings were mutual; the locals of Cobden wanted to learn some Spanish from the Mexican migrant workers in exchange for teaching them English (Kalmar 4). These encounters between two different groups of people lowered “the language barrier, in the “neutral territory” of the Mexican grocery store, people were, as the Mexicans put it, ganando confianzo: building trust across the social (and legal) gulf that divided locals and migrants” (Kalmar 5). Both Mexican migrant workers and locals

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sang songs and played music together, participated in meals together, played sports with each other, and submerged themselves into each others languages through these various activities.

John Schumann’s acculturation model gives a view into the “role of social factors in L2 acquisition” (Ellis 39). The Migrant workers and the predominately white Anglo workers put little social distance between themselves. Social distance “concerns the extent to which individual learners become members of a target- language group and therefore achieve contact with them” (Ellis 40). Even though these meetings at the local grocery store was informal, it was still a setting where the learning of language took place because the “target language group and the L2 group view each other as socially equal, both groups wish the L2 group to assimilate the target- language group and the L2 group share the same social facilities” (Ellis 40). These people were making meaning out of the social context between each other, the barriers between the two groups came down which made way for more learning to take place.

In Illinois the

Illinois Migrant Council had been conducting Adult Basic Education classes (including English as a Second Language, GED, and Pre- Vocational Education) throughout the state of Illinois… Their stated goal was to help seasonal and migrant farm workers settle out into the mainstream of the U.S. economy… “Illegal aliens” were therefore not eligible to attend (Wiley 15).

The Mexican migrant workers did not have a formal academic setting, in which

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they had instruction on grammar, vocabulary and listening comprehension because their were ill eligible for such services. Their social context set up a basis for them to become English language learners. Through dialogue the Mexican migrant workers were developing their interlanguage. Interlanguage is the “systematic knowledge of an L2 that is independent of both the target language and the learner’s L1” (Ellis 140). They needed a system of communication so that they were able to speak up for their needs, wants and against injustice. The migrant workers believed that they all should “work together to study primery la pronunciación, luego la escritura, first the pronunciation, the the [correct] spelling-system” (Kalmar 23). Spanish is a phonetically based language. English does not sound the way the words are spelled; so the migrant workers established their own hybrid- language to compensate their lack of formal education so that may be able to communicate with the locals of Cobden. Their hybrid- language is not recognizable as Spanish or English when written as text, but it takes Spanish phonetics and applies it to English terms. For example, the migrant workers needed to say that “The law doesn’t protect us.” They all worked together to come up with a Spanish phonemic equivalent to project this sentence, and they settled on “Doló dasn’t protect as” (Kalmar 26). The migrants workers focused on pronunciation for communicative purposes and communicative competence.

The migrant workers believed their problem was that they did not know how to communicate (Kalmar 49), and they created a three column “glossary” to help serve their purpose in communication. They wrote the English terms for one column, the pronunciation column, and the Spanish translation column. The following examples are

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from Kalmar’s Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy excerpted from the migrant worker’s glossary titled The Cobden Glossaries.

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION SPANISH TRANSLATION

I’ll be back Avivac Ahorita Regreso

Come back Camvak Volver

How much Jamach Cuanto

We can’t go Guikent Gou No Podemos Ir

Guilty Guiolty Culpable

Language Lenguech Idioma

(53-55).

For the migrant workers, setting up this type of glossary for them is comprehensible input. These ELL’s are successful in their hybrid-language system in building a road to literacy in English because they used “situational context to make messages clear… through the negotiation of meaning” (Ellis 47). The migrant workers compensated for the lack of education that was not available to them.

There is a strong need for Adult Basic Education so that BICS and CALP are incorporated to help ELL’s acquire literacy in English. Usually, language education is more readily available for children and adolescents and it fails to address the needs of adults. The main question asked for Basic Adult Education is “why would an adult want to go (back) to school and learn to read and write English?” (Wiley 175). For the following reasons adults want to becomes literate in English. These Adults want to “become more independent: to not have to rely on friends and family to translate…To

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better their own and their families’ economic and educational circumstances… To give something back to the community… To feel like “somebody” and get some respect… To be involved in education for its own sake” (Wiley 176).

Focusing strictly on CALP or BICS may prove ineffective for students over the grand scheme of literacy. Instructors will need to find a way to accommodate these learners by balancing both formal instruction and communicative competence because “learning grammar becomes more meaningful when it is learned in association with common notions and communicative functions. Grammatical forms are dealt with as they are needed in order to express the concepts and functions taught” (Wiley 161). But when there are other programs provided to help aid bilingualism for English language learners, these programs are attacked and labeled as inappropriate because it does not foster English only instruction (Wiley 99). For example, Kalmar had presented The Cobden Glossary to ESL teachers in a workshop. He had circulated the Cobden glossaries to these ESL teachers, and some responded negatively to the hybrid system the migrant workers had used. The teachers responded as if what the migrants workers had wrote is not English, that they could not read it, and the people who wrote the glossary are illiterate and cannot speak or write English, even though the migrants workers “claimed that knowing how to code English speech accurately was more use to them than trying to decode English spelling without being sure how it really sounds” (Kalmar 58). This was a meaningful learning exercise to these migrant workers, but since it did not follow standard academic form, it was ridiculed. Could a hybrid writing practice of L1 and L2 be proposed as legitimate instruction in an ESL classroom? Kalmar suggests that

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a “rapid course for adult learners can afford to put speaking first and writing last. It is presumably easier for an adult to learn to play with new values for letters of a familiar alphabet” (Kalmar 99). Terrence G. Wiley states that when “programs work with learners to develop a curriculum, the curriculum will better reflect the learner’s needs, goals, and interests, and learners can exercise language choices” (176). The ESL instructors needs to focus on and understand

which aspects of instruction reflect the autonomous orientation (focusing on learner characteristics), the social practices orientation (focusing on language in social and cultural contexts), and the ideological orientation (focusing on systemic inequities)… we need to concentrate on explicitly on those practices rather than on levels of proficiency that are not specific to any particular context (Wiley 176).

Wiley also suggests for “language minority children and adults, the native language usually provides the most immediate means for participating in school literacy practices” (178). When students develop their oral language skills in their target language “they can develop academic language skills in the second language, if they have practices parallel activities in their first language” (Wiley 178).

Language diversity is very prominent within The United States. Nearly 47 million people in The U.S. speak another language. Literacy serves as a way for ELL’s to better their lives by having access to opportunities, by having the negative stereotypes lifted off of them, and to create an equal and just environment. A Basic Adult Education program needs to take the students into account and contextualize its curriculum so that students

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can make meaning. Basic Adult Education should not to be treated as form-focused instruction, but it needs to negotiate with the learners of a new language. It is necessary for adults to have literacy programs so that they feel accomplished, more independent, and a contributor to their community.

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Works Cited

Ellis, Rod. Second Language Acquisition. New York: Oxford Press, 1997. Print.

Kalmar, Tomás Mario Kalmar. Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy: Latino Migrants Crossing the Linguistic Border. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. Print.

Wiley, Terrence G. Literacy and Language Diversity in The United States. District of Columbia: Center for Applied Linguistics, 2005. Print.