Building a LOTE collection at an International School

Most international schools have a sizable student population who speak a language other than English (LOTE), and offer language instruction in either mother tongue or second language at various levels.  The question then is what role the school library plays in building a LOTE collection and how this can be financed and what other options exist.

Both the IBO (International Baccalaureate Organisation) and UNESCO encourage schools and learning communities to provide active support to promote learning and maintenance of mother tongue (Morley, 2006; UNESCO Bangkok, 2007). A school library’s aim should be to ensure that the LOTE collection supports the aims of the school for classroom instruction and external examination, pleasure reading and exposure to the literature of the various cultures of the campus community.

A review of the LOTE collection can be undertaken in the following steps: an overview of the existing collection; information gathering on the language profiles of the school community (students, parents, educators); understanding of the language provision at the school including mother tongue and second language acquisition; reviewing LOTE collections in the community; creating a LOTE collection development policy and other considerations.

Overview of the existing collection

Initially it is important to gain an overview of the school’s existing collection and how that is catalogued.  If our school is anything to go by, there will be reading books, language text books (temporarily as they get loaned out at the start of the school year), and language teaching resources for teachers in the library.  Those are the books we know of.  However, depending on how tightly or loosely the library manages resources, individual language departments or teachers may have anything from vast to tiny collections in their classrooms purchased by departmental budgets (or often the purse of the teacher) which are neither catalogued by the library nor even known of outside of that department.  This will differ from school to school depending on the amount of control the library has over resource budgets, the amount of sharing that goes on and the co-operation between the library and departments.

Even finding out the extent and location of resources can potentially be a political minefield, so proceed with caution and bear in mind what may seem to be an innocent question / request on your side may be misinterpreted on theirs …

Language profile of the school community

Try to understand the language profile of your school community.  Are there any significant language groups within the student, parent or educator body? Think carefully where you get this information from – for example if the school is English medium, parents may put “English” as the mother tongue and the mother tongue as a second language or even omit other languages spoken at home completely in any admissions documents.  Hopefully the school does some kind of census that is separate from the admissions process. Does the Parent Association have language or nationality representatives who can support the library, financially or otherwise?

Understanding school’s language provision

In addition you need to establish how many students follow which language streams in the various sections of the school, and gain an understanding of the various levels. Hopefully language teachers are cooperative and enthusiastic in explaining the needs of their students for books that encourage reading outside and around the curriculum and for pleasure, not just what is required in the classroom.  They should also be able to help with the levelling of materials to ensure a culture of reading is sustained in all languages not just English and students are not frustrated with the complexity of materials available but the library has a range of materials at all difficultly levels. 

Reviewing LOTE collections in the community

In the International / expatriate community, LOTE collections often exist outside of the school.  Need for LOTE resources in a particular language is not necessarily a function of number of L1 (mother tongue) or L2 (second language) speakers.  For example in Singapore, a few sizeable language communities (Korean, Japanese, and to a certain extent Dutch and French) rely on language and culture centres in Singapore sponsored in part by their National Governments, while the Singapore National Library holds Chinese, Malay and Tamil books.   The role of the library would be one of collaboration and directing these populations to the relevant resource, (e.g. through the website and inter-library loans) rather than building up a potentially redundant collection.  If the community has any International schools that focus primarily on one language  (in Singapore this includes the German, French, Dutch, Korean and Japanese schools each with their own library), they could be approached for reciprocal borrowing or interlibrary loan privileges.   Embassy and cultural attaches may be another source of funding or resources.

Creating a LOTE collection development policy

Depending on the size and status of the LOTE collection, it may not be necessary to create a separate LOTE collection development policy (CDP).  LOTE collection issues can be dealt with within the overall CDP.

For example, the library strives to a goal of up to 20 books, excluding textbooks, per student.  LOTE books can be expressed as a meaningful percentage per language of this aim.

Provision should be made for language teachers selecting books with input from parents or native speakers in the college community.  Use can made of various recommendation lists including that of the IB Organisation (IBO) and collaborative lists of the International School Library Networks and language specialist schools.

Acquisition may be a tricky areas where books are either not available locally, are prohibitively expensive or are not shipped to the country.  Provision often needs to be made for the acquisition by teachers, parents or students during home leave and reimbursed by the school.  However, the budget and type of books needs to be vetted in advance so that there is little chance of miscommunication on either the cost or type of books thus acquired.  A LOTE selection profile, such as that created by Caval Languages Direct (Caval. n.d.) can be adapted to fit the school’s needs.

As far as possible, it would be helpful if the library processes and catalogues all books which the school has paid for, irrespective of whether it came from the library budget or not. In this way, the real collection is transparent, searchable and available to the whole community (on request obviously for classroom / department materials) and to avoid duplication in acquisition or under-utilisation of materials.

Cataloguing LOTE materials can be a challenge, particularly if they are not in Latin script.  It is important to still have cataloguing guidelines that are followed to ensure consistency and ease of search and retrieval.  Our school makes use of parent volunteers and teachers who fill the data into a spreadsheet that is then imported into our OPAC system.  Our convention is to have the title details in script, followed by transliteration, followed by translation in English.  Search terms need to be agreed with by the LOTE collection users, such as language teachers and students.

As far as donations are concerned, the library still needs to have a clear policy on what books they accept and in what condition.  Although donated books may be “free”, they are not without cost, including processing and cataloguing cost.

Apart from physical books, it is worthwhile looking at what resources are available online either as eBooks or as other digital resources.  For example BookFlix and TumbleBooks offer materials in Spanish.  Often individual language departments maintain their own lists and links to digital resources, which could be incorporated into a Library Guide and made available to the whole community.

Budget may be a contentious area and often language material discussions occur at administration or department level without the involvement of the library and an expectation may exist that the library will provide LOTE "leisure reading" materials within its overall resource budget perhaps without an explicit discussion on the matter or a breakdown between resources and budget of the various languages.   

Other considerations

International schools are a dynamic environment, and a language group may be dominant for a period of time and then disappear completely due to the investment or disinvestment of multi-national companies in the area.  IB schools face the need to provide for self-taught languages and any changes made by the IBO and the school from time to time. The IBO currently offers 55 languages, which theoretically could be chosen. The IBO introduced changes in its language curriculum in 2011, substantially increasing the number of works that need to be studied in the original language rather than in translation.  This places an additional burden on the library to have sufficient texts in the correct language available on time.

The socio-economic demographic of students with LOTE needs should also be considered. If most of the student body comes from a privileged background where LOTE books are purchased during home leave,  the school could institute donation drives where “outgrown” books are donated to the school.  It would be more equitable to use resources for scholarship students in order to maintain their L1 even if these languages do not form a large part of the communities’ LOTE.

The quality of materials in Southeast Asian languages is generally extremely poor.  The cost of acquiring, processing and cataloguing the materials far exceeds the purchase price and books deteriorate rapidly.  There is considerable scope for moving to digital materials, however the availability, format, access, licensing issues and compatibility will have to be investigated.

Schools, in conjunction with parents, needs to consider language provision for students who plan on returning to a LOTE university after graduation.

Centres of Excellence

A literature review suggests that the centre for excellence and expertise in building LOTE collections is Victoria Australia, (Library and Archives Canada, 2009), in fact the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Multicultural Communities Guidelines for Library services is based on their guidelines  (IFLA, 1996). These guidelines suggest the four steps of; needs identification and continual assessment, service planning for the range of resource and service need, plan implementation and service evaluation.

Some LOTE Digital resources

http://librivox.org/about-listening-to-librivox/

http://www.radiobooks.eu/index.php?lang=EN

http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/language/Dutch

http://albalearning.com

http://www.wdl.org/en/

http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory

http://www.dawcl.com

http://unterm.un.org

Library services

http://www.lote-librariesdirect.com.au/contact/

http://www.caval.edu.au/languagesdirect.html

http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/lotelibrary/index.html

http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/services/multicultural/multicultural_services_public_libraries.html

http://www.reforma.org/content.asp?pl=9&sl=59&contentid=59

http://www.cacaoproject.eu

http://chopac.org/cgi-bin/tools/azorder.pl

http://civicalld.com/our-services/collection-services

References

American Library Association. (2007). How to Serve the World @ your library. Retrieved January 4, 2013, from http://www.ala.org/offices/olos/toolkits/servetheworld/servetheworldhome

International Baccalaureate Organisation. (2011). Guide for governments and universities on the changes in the Diploma Programme groups 1 and 2. IBO. Retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/recognition/dpchanges/documents/Guide_e.pdf

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. (1996). Multicultural Communities Guideline for Library Services. Retrieved January 4, 2013, from http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s32/pub/guide-e.htm

Kennedy, J., & Charles Sturt University. Centre for Information Studies. (2006). Collection management : a concise introduction. Wagga Wagga, N.S.W.: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.

Library and Archives Canada. (2009). Multicultural Resources and Services - Toolkit - Developing Multicultural Collections. Retrieved January 4, 2013, from http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/multicultural/005007-302-e.html

Morley, K. (2006). Mother Tongue Maintenance - Schools Assisted Self-Taught A1 Languages. Presented at the Global Convention on Language Issues  and Bilingual Education, Singapore. Retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/news/documents/morley2.pdf

Reference & User Services Association. (1997). Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Multilingual Collections and Services. Retrieved January 4, 2013, from http://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidemultilingual

UNESCO Bangkok. (2008). Improving the Quality of Mother Tongue-based Literacy and Learning Case Studies from Asia, Africa and South America. UNESCO Bangkok Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education Asia-Pacific Programme of Education for All (APPEAL). Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001777/177738e.pdf

This work by Nadine Bailey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Language, Bilingualism and Multi-lingualism in the news

I've started curating all the information I can find on the topic of language, language learning, and bilingualism into a Flipboard.  Flipboard is great for reading content on your iPad without any clutter or interference from advertisements and distractions.

There is a lot of information out there (I've found 575 articles in the last year alone), and there is a lot of repetition and there is a lot of nonsense, but plenty of gems as well.  Published "as it comes" and up to the reader to educate themselves and separate the hype from the reality.

Get flipboard here: https://about.flipboard.com/

And follow this board here: https://flipboard.com/section/bilingualism%2C-mother-tongue-%26-language-bxo7KX

Mother Tongue - How to assess your likelihood of success

One of the things I did as part of my research was to summarise the factors that contributed to a family being able to teach and maintain their mother tongue in their children while living / being educated in an English dominant environment.

First I present the table of factors, and then I present myself filling in this table as an exercise in my own home.

Analysis: The theories of MT acquisition and maintenance versus the reality of our situation

	Theory	Reality - Chinese	Reality - Dutch
Child	Age (start as early as possible with formal MT education)	Both started Chinese immersion in Grade 1 (age 6)	Son started formal Dutch in Grade 5 (age 10)
	Prior & current formal exposure to MT	1 hour per day class in International School	None
	Prior & current informal exposure to MT	Not much – Hong Kong is Cantonese not Mandarin speaking. Daughter did learn characters through observation on the street.	Dutch spoken at home, exposure through paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
	Interest / Motivation	Daughter – High; Son - Low	Daughter not particularly interested, speaks on holiday and to family Son - High
	Aptitude	Daughter – excellent memory which is necessary for amount of memorization necessary Son – difficulties with working memory due to ADHD doesn’t rely on memory for learning	Son – very good ear and pronunciation, has taken well to spelling and grammar as it’s taught in a formal structured way (unlike English)
	Available time	In HK had ample time (27/28 hours a week in class plus a lot of homework) Daughter: in SG 5x 40 minutes a week class time, 90 minutes a week tutoring, 100 minutes a week required homework plus whatever time she has for self-motivated study and reading	5 x 40 minutes a week class time (1x of which is self-study) 1 x 120 minutes after school tutoring. Homework around 60 minutes Daily reading expected 15-20 minutes (doesn’t always happen)
	Access to language role models	Limited to school and tutor and one family friend who we see irregularly	Parents speak Dutch at home to each other, Father speaks Dutch to him, Mother speaks English unless in Dutch context
	Personality / resilience	Very determined, sees events as challenges rather than setbacks, competitive, responds well to reward systems, perfectionist, introverted and shy	Very sociable, extroverted, not scared of making mistakes. Quite emotional, inclined to give up when things get difficult, or need help to keep going
Family	Anticipated period of time abroad	Indefinite	Indefinite
	Plans for tertiary education	Undecided, probably English medium	Considering studying film or photography in Netherlands (early thoughts)
	Availability of language role models / support at home	Mother studied Chinese but level is not sufficient to support high level language and literacy needs practically, only in abstract	Both Mother and father speak Dutch in the home
	Language level of parent(s)	Mother - Low level Father - none	Mother – Fluent speaking reading, listening, written poor Father – Fluent speaking, reading, listening, writing
	Willingness / ability to finance choice	Yes	Yes
	Culture of reading at home	Yes - but needs prompting and encouragement as slow difficult process and access to the right leveled material is difficult.	Yes – when father is home do co-reading as well
	Help from extended family	None, only moral support	Yes – regular phone calls / FaceTime, visits during vacation and go to school with cousins for a few days
School	Language offered at MT level	Yes in theory.  However in practice the amount of time and level is not adequate, plus not enough leveled reading resources and mentoring	None in curriculum until G9. In G7 & G8 offered after school.  His Dutch classes are an exception and privately arranged and funded
	Language community in the school	Yes, however she is not particularly a part of it.	Yes
	MT support after school or other proviso	Yes, 90 minutes private tutoring after school, school provides walk in clinics 2x a week	Only from G7, however he’s not at the level required yet
	Accommodations for MT (reading or writing in MT, creating identity texts)	Yes, in school (since middle school only) and tutor supplements	Yes, but still limited due to level
	Sufficient BML teachers and administrators as role models	Administration & non-language teachers traditionally English / mono-lingual with some exceptions. This is changing a bit.	Administration & non-language teachers traditionally English / mono-lingual with some exceptions. This is changing a bit.
	Access to parents and older children as role models	In principal – but need to tap into this more. No formal structures.	Yes, cultural events organized by Dutch Teacher.
Community	Existence of language community in country	Yes, large Chinese speaking population, however local families are not part of school	Yes, Dutch club and fair sized community with events
	Accessible MT community on-line or through home visits	Possibly – not investigated yet	Yes
	Community based formal language classes	Many tutoring schools that cater to the Chinese curriculum of local schools	Yes
	Community based fun and cultural activities	Not as many as in Hong Kong	Yes through Dutch club and school
	Community pride in the MT	Many classmates in MT group are not very motivated to learn Chinese, within SG community Mandarin is the formal standard Chinese while most families speak a dialect at home	Generally yes, however many Dutch people speak English well and will switch in mixed groups

This work by Nadine Bailey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Research summary on Language

The post below is based on the background research I did for INF538 Value Added-information Services in June 2014.  Please cite me as the author should you wish to quote / use any of this.

Bailey, N. (2014, November 12). Research summary on Language. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://informativeflights.blogspot.sg/2014/11/research-summary-on-language.html

_________________________________________________________________________________

Background Research

This study has presented the typical knowledge management dilemma – there is a considerable amount of information and research, both academic and practical but it is widely dispersed and personal experience is often not documented.

History

Most research into BML (bi- and multi-lingualism) concerns itself with assimilation of immigrants (Fillmore, 2000; Slavin, Madden, Calderon, Chamberlain, & Hennessy, 2011; Slavin et al., 2011; Winter, 1999); maintaining minority (or majority) languages in a dominant language environment (Ball, 2011; Dixon, Zhao, Quiroz, & Shin, 2012) or language immersion or bilingual programmes; (Caldas & Caron-Caldas, 2002; Carder, 2008; Cummins, 1998; Genesee, 2014; Hadi-Tabassum, 2004; Soderman, 2010) aspects of which may or may not be relevant to this study or its population.

Until fairly recently the situation of high socio-economic status (SES) students in international schools is given at best a glancing mention and appears to have been a marginal area amongst researchers, as they are considered to be a privileged elite with more options and choices and greater economic means than immigrant or minority students (Ball, 2011; Carder, 2006; de Mejía, 2002). There are calls for “celebrating diversity” in the classroom, (Stauft, 2011) mentions of international food fairs, the involvement of the Parents’ Association and ensuring that the school conveys the message to parents on the importance of maintaining MT  (Hayim-Bambe, 2011), while most research looks into integration and scaffolding to English.  

Bilingualism

Researchers distinguish between three types of bilingualism. Simultaneous bilingualism - exposure to two languages from birth; early successive bilingualism - first exposure aged 1 - 3 years; and second language bilingualism - first exposure aged  4 - 10 years. There is considerable debate as to what exactly the “critical” ages are for successful language learning. As Kirsten Winter pointed out “Language learning is a continuum and bilingualism is not a perfect status to be achieved.” (Winter, 1999, p. 88).  Typical language learners cycle through alternating stages of passive (receptive) and productive (expressive) skills, usually in the order of listening, speaking, reading and then writing.

Figure 1: Continuum of language learning

Initially children learn phoneme production, syntactic competence and build vocabulary while phonological awareness then helps to develop literacy skills. The ability to understand both the ‘microstructure’ of sentences and a ‘macrostructure’ of the relationship between ideas results in language comprehension (Beech, 1994).

An important distinction is made between the surface skill of listening and speaking, which is usually acquired within two years (BICS - Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills), and the literacy skills of reading and writing at an abstract academic level (CALP - Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency), a targeted five to seven year process - as will be discussed later under “concerns” (Cummins, 1998). Due to transferability, concepts learnt and established in one language are more easily learnt in another language but only if a child has achieved CALP (Cummins, 1998; Dixon, Zhao, Shin, et al., 2012; Shoebottom, n.d.).

Figure 2: Elements of CALP

Factors Impacting Acquisition

Researchers agree on a number of factors which impact on the successful acquisition and retention of a second or subsequent language in the BML population. These relate to the student, family, school and the community or society.

Student

A child’s language learning aptitude is a mixture of cognitive and personality factors (Ehrman & Leaver, 2003; Stauft, 2011).  Cognitive factors include learning style and strategy while personality factors include “motivation, self-efficacy and affective self-management” (Hayim-Bambe, 2011, p. 59). Low motivation, low self-esteem, and high anxiety result in a 'mental block' and impede language acquisition (Krashen, 1982). Extroverts tend to monitor their language use less than introverts, perfectionists and children who lack self-confidence.  Moving beyond individual differences, considerable research has been done on the strategies that so-called “Good Language Learners” (GLL) employ, particularly in the field of second-language acquisition (Abhakorn, 2008; Griffiths, 2008; E. Le Pichon, de Swart, Vorstman, & van den Bergh, 2010; Emmanuelle Le Pichon, De Swart, Vorstman, & Van Den Bergh, 2013; Wang, 2013).  These competencies, which improve with age, include directed attention, control of emotions, anticipation, mime, cooperation, imitation, clarification and asking for assistance, can arguably be taught or encouraged in a learning environment by teachers or parents.

Research often attempts to identify critical periods or ages of language acquisition, with inconclusive results, as motivation and meta-cognitive skills can be confounding variables since older students have better developed meta-cognitive skills (Barac & Bialystok, 2011; Beech, 1994; Bowden, Steinhauer, Sanz, & Ullman, 2013; Cummins, 1998, 2003; Genesee, 2014; Granena & Long, 2013; Emmanuelle Le Pichon et al., 2013; MacSwan & Pray, 2005; Saito, 2013).  Less has been written about the socio-psychological aspects, including the impact of the teenage years where adolescents disengage from the family and identify with their peer group in an attempt to construct an identity outside of the family, which may or may not include their cultural/linguistic identity as a bilingual. Ensuring ample venue or context based immersion in the MT with access to meaningful peer relationships (particularly during vacation time) can help with the maintenance of the MT in this period (Caldas & Caron-Caldas, 2002).

Family

A large vocabulary in any language contributes to overall “oral proficiency, word reading ability, reading comprehension, and school achievement”(Dixon, Zhao, Quiroz, et al., 2012, p. 542). Vocabulary is influenced by the parent’s level of education, access to and availability of resources, and the quality and quantity of parent-child interactions, including shared reading, frequency of story telling and conversations.

Parent’s level of education influences language aspirations and is often correlated with a positive view of bilingualism, ensuring the quantity and quality of resources and amount of support provided to children (Lopez, 2005, cited in Dixon et al., 2012). Whether the child was born in the home country, and the length of time they lived there, impacts on the level of language maintenance.  Many children in the international school environment were born in a third country (neither the home nor resident country).

In looking at the role of parental involvement it is important to acknowledge and cater for the diversity of families within an International school (Sears, 2011). Table 1 below is based on Sears’ analysis of the types of families, their views on the role of English versus MT and what types of maintenance effort can be expected, with advice to the school.  Caution should be exercised in interpreting these generalisations, since within a family siblings may be different depending on their linguistic and birth country history, and the existence of a strong national curriculum may influence choices.

Table 1: Families and Languages

School

The International school context results in a number of issues that complicate MT provision, including the multicultural and multilingual nature of the student population, resulting in ‘fictive monolingualism’ and the transience of both the student and teacher population, with the resultant socio-psychological implications on learning (Caldas & Caron-Caldas, 2002; Hacohen, 2012; Hornberger, 2003). However, where the “cultural capital” of the school included valuing language diversity in its environment and teaching practise, students had an increased sense of belonging, higher levels of reading literacy and they scored significantly higher academically. Continued development of ability in two or more languages on a daily basis resulted in a deeper understanding of language across contexts. Best practice includes a well structured MT program with at least some inclusion in the school timetable and fee structure, inclusion of other subject matter in MT lessons, support for English acquisition through a daily ESL/EAL program, a socio-culturally supportive environment, better awareness and training for subject teachers, affirmation of students’ identity as bi- or multi-lingual and collaboration with parents, while block scheduling was not optimal for language learning (Carder, 2014; IBO, 2011; Tramonte & Willms, 2010; Vienna International School, 2006; Wallinger, 2000).  Research in heritage language (HL) teaching and learning indicates that macro-approaches and other specific strategies that build on learners’ existing language skills could be leveraged to improve reading and writing abilities, increase motivation and participation and validate students’ identity although specific teacher training for HL is recommended (Lee-Smith, 2011; Wu & Chang, 2010).

Figure 3: Success of MT based education policies

Source: (Ball, 2011, p. 46)

In her work for UNESCO, Ball suggested a number of policy dimensions that enhance the success of an educational policy. These are depicted in Figure 3above. 

Literacy is seen as crucial for development of CALP. External and internal factors affect literacy motivation in language learning.  Factors in schools include classroom environment, appropriate text availability and teachers. Collaboration among teachers and in the school-home nexus can enhance the perception of reading and writing as a pleasurable activity outside of the learning context. Although research generally favours intrinsic motivation, in the case of language learners, extrinsic motivation including recognition, grades, social acceptance, competition, rewards related to reading and compliance can play a role in creating a positive association with and nurturing literacy while not negatively impacting on intrinsic motivation (Fong, 2007). A well equipped library, organisation of international book fairs, other tongue events, culture clubs, reading hours with older to younger / parents to students a language buddy system and national days at school are other ways literacy can be focused on (Brewster, 2011; Krashen, 2004).

Community and Society

The support of a locally based language community, including faith and cultural communities had a positive impact which could mitigate socio-economic status (SES) factors and enhance learning through beliefs and practises, classes and cultural and religious activities (Dixon, Zhao, Quiroz, et al., 2012). Finally the availability of and access to learning resources, complementary schooling, books and other materials impacted on acquiring and maintaining language(Scheele, Leseman, & Mayo, 2010)

While languages associated with upward mobility and high SES thrive, languages considered to have a lower SES risk being neglected or suppressed by dominant or higher SES language (Gulf News, 2013; Srivastava, 2012). The profile of parents’ language use at home as well as peer pressure in the adolescent years impacts on children’s language use, in this context parents may speak just the MT, the MT plus English, just English or a third “common” language – irrespective of what their MT may be or a combination of these depending on the context, while at school, English dominates (Caldas, 2006; Dixon, Zhao, Quiroz, et al., 2012; Scheele et al., 2010). In this respect, the languages Hindi and Mandarin form a special case.  They are considered to be higher status languages than other Chinese “dialects” and Indian languages, and also serve as a “common” language in those populations. If parents are not proficient in these languages, or have a lower vocabulary, they are less likely to use them at home, which in turn impacts on the child’s language proficiency (Dixon, Zhao, Quiroz, et al., 2012; Saravanan, 2001; Srivastava, 2012; Wei & Hua, 2010). Amongst Chinese diaspora the dominant view was “to qualify as Chinese, one must know the language, and to know the language means to be able to read and write the written characters” (Wei & Hua, 2010, p. 159). While: “Young Indians with high SES and high educational achievement generally changed their primary language to English” (Saravanan, 2007 cited in Dixon et al., 2012, p. 558).

The final factor is the function attributed to that language by society.  In Singapore, the government “has assigned different functions to English and the ethnic languages. While ethnic languages constitute cultural identity, intra-ethnic communication, and ethnic solidarity, English is promoted for interethnic communication, national unity, and to facilitate science learning, higher education, and economic advancement” (Bokhorst-Heng, 1999, cited in Dixon et al., 2012, p. 547).  The question is whether international schools similarly assign these functions to language.

Concerns

Although the value of BML has become more widely accepted and most parents and educators appreciate and encourage the process, a number of concerns have rightly been voiced on the process and efficacy of reaching the goal of a BML child. In the first instance, the quality of the productive language - oral and or written skills - of one or all of the child’s languages may not develop to a sufficiently high level for academic or employment purposes  (Cummins, 1998). 

Figure 4: Context / cognition matrix

Source: (Carder, 2014, p. 72)

As Figure 4 shows, there is a significant difference between cognitively demanding and undemanding tasks, and the ability to use language in a context reduced environment (Carder, 2014). Secondly, studies have shown that speech and language problems that underlie both or all languages may be misinterpreted as natural delays in learning English and children from a BML background compared to monolingual children with the same problem, are often referred much later, or not at all, for help (Winter, 1999). Related to this, other research has found that behavioural or emotional problems may result from language problems including speech disorder, isolated expressive disorder, mixed receptive-expressive high level language disorder, specific language impairment and other language disorders and delays. They emphasize the importance of fully assessing language skills in these BML populations (Grizzle & Simms, 2009; Toppelberg, Medrano, Morgens, & Nieto-Castañon, 2002).

Figure 5: The "thin ice" of BICS vs. dual-iceberg of CALP

Source: (Carder, 2014 p.72)

Then there is the “drop-out” risk.  Literature distinguishes between early-exit bilingual education which is seen as “subtractive” and late exit or “additive” bilingual education (Ball, 2011; Cummins, 1998).  Subtractive bilingualism is where children do not develop language beyond the BICS stage due to suppression by the dominant school or societal language and their MT cannot be used to leverage learning in the school or societal language.  These children run the risk of not having high, abstract and academic level in any language which impacts negatively on their academic proficiency.

Another problem can be misguided parental interference and effort. Research has found that parents mainly rely on their own experiences in language learning in making choices for their children, referring to a combination of popular literature and expert advice to justify these decisions. BML families tend to form “family language policies” on home communication.  Parents’ efforts could be better supported, their uncertainties addressed and misconceptions clarified as few parents were properly aware of the challenges, issues, consistency and effort of raising BML children, nor of the fact that children raised in bilingual homes often become active users of only one language depending on the context (Caldas & Caron-Caldas, 2002; King & Fogle, 2006).

References:

Abhakorn, J. (2008). The Implications of Learner Strategies for Second or Foreign Language Teaching. ARECLS, 5, 186–204.

Ball, J. (2011). Enhancing learning of children from diverse language backgrounds: mother tongue-based bilingual or multilingual education in the early years. UNESCO Education Sector.

Barac, R., & Bialystok, E. (2011). Cognitive development of bilingual children. Language Teaching, 44(01), 36–54. doi:10.1017/S0261444810000339

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