Language-rich discussions for English language learners

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Abstract

A study involving 75 Spanish-speaking fifth graders from a school in the Chicago area investigated whether a peer-led, open-format discussion approach, known as Collaborative Reasoning, would accelerate the students’ English language development. Results showed that, after participating in eight discussions over a four-week period, the CR group performed significantly better than the control group on measures of listening and reading comprehension. The CR group produced more coherent narratives in a storytelling task. The reflective essays written by the CR group were longer; contained more diverse vocabulary; and contained a significantly greater number of satisfactory reasons, counterarguments, and uses of text evidence. CR discussions also enhanced students’ interest and engagement in discussions, perceived benefits from discussions, and attitudes toward learning English.

Highlights

► Collaborative Reasoning (CR) improved Spanish speaking ELLs’ language development. ► ELLs developed reasoning skills from CR and wrote better reflective essays. ► The benefits of CR were more consistent for ELLs with higher English proficiency. ► CR enhanced ELLs’ motivation and engagement and English learning attitudes.

Section snippets

Participants

Four fifth-grade classrooms (N = 90), two mainstream classrooms and two sheltered bilingual classrooms, in an elementary school in Illinois participated in the study. The school serves urban low- to middle-SES families. One mainstream and one sheltered bilingual classroom were randomly assigned to implement CR discussions while the other two classrooms served as controls. Of the total of 90 students in these classrooms, 75 (83.3%) were Latina/o and 12 (13.3%) were African Americans, and 3 (3.3%)

Results

Table 1 summarizes performance on the pretest measures of English proficiency. A 2 (CR vs. Control) × 2 (mainstream vs. bilingual) MANOVA showed no significant difference between the CR and the Control groups on the pretests, F (3, 62) = 2.03, p = .11, ηp2=.09. Thus, the two groups can be regarded as comparable in initial English proficiency.

Table 2 displays children's performance on SVT listening, SVT reading, and the cloze test, as well as reliability coefficients (Cronbach's alpha) for each

General discussion

The major finding of this study is that engaging in language-rich Collaborative Reasoning discussions accelerates fifth grade Spanish-speaking English language learners’ oral and written English, as well as their motivation, engagement in discussions, and English learning attitudes. This study extends the previous research on the effects of language-rich classroom discussions for English language learners (e.g., Saunders & Goldenberg, 1999). Despite the short duration of the intervention, only

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this paper was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A080347 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

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