At the school I work at as a dual language coach, I am surrounded by creative teachers who understand that teaching literacy in a dual language program is not the same as in a monolingual program. Here is an example of a lesson two teachers I work with prepared for their students to help them make connections between the sounds the consonant "c" makes in the two languages they are learning:
While lessons like this happen regularly in our school, I have noticed that during the pandemic and in the context of urgency that we were met with when we returned to the building, many teachers are reluctant to plan crosslinguistic connection lessons with a co-teacher.
I recently read The Science of the Bilingual Reading Brain by Alexandra Guilamo, which summarizes the research on literacy skill transfer for multilingual students in dual language settings. Guilamo had previously published "The Science of Reading in Dual Language" in Language Magazine, where she stated:
The only way to attain biliteracy and bilingualism is to leave the typical formula for reading as decoding and linguistic comprehension, or D x C = R, for the formula for developing biliteracy as
oracy + decoding + linguistic comprehension + transfer
O x C x D x T = R2.
(Guilamo, 2021)
Building on this description of the components of literacy in a second language, Guilamo uses her more recent article (2022) to focus on the transfer component of biliteracy. In dual language settings, we use transfer to describe the way multilinguals use knowledge in and about one language to help them solve linguistic problems or reach understanding in another language. For example, imagine a student who already knows that verbs that end in -ing in English serve the same grammatical purpose as those he understands proficiently in Spanish that end in -ando or -iendo, This student is much more prepared to gather meaning from the sentence "We are activating the alarm in the city."
To further this point, Guilamo cites Dijksra et al., 1998, Gottardo et al., 2021, and Schwartz et al., 2007 in defending the idea that cross-linguistic transfer enhances and accelerates reading ability. This understanding is crucial to prioritizing the connections we make between the two languages we teach. I agree with Guilamo's point that in a school like my own, where the students are expected to be bilingual and biliterate in English and Spanish by the time they are promoted to middle school, we cannot afford to miss opportunities to explicitly teach students linguistic transfer skills.
Guilamo begins to tackle the problem at hand in dual language schools: time. I find that the teachers I support feel there is not enough planning time to analyze the linguistic knowledge students already bring to the classroom, nor the time to teach lessons on how to transfer those skills. The feeling is understandable, I myself remember feeling rushed to meet the standards in a monolingual setting. However, I am reminded that we have literacy standards across grade levels asking us to explicitly teach students how to use their background knowledge to make inferences, a form of transfer. In the case of linguistic transfers, we are the ones who have to advocate for this skill to be prioritized.
How can I help teachers understand that taking time to teach students the connections will help accelerate their learning and save time in the future? When will teachers see the payoff and be willing to do it again?
Guilamo argues that engaging in a lesson that connects literacy in a second language to linguistic skills our students already have is identity affirming. They will feel their knowledge and heritage hold value, even if they do not yet have all of the skills needed to express their ideas in the new language. For me, that is reason enough to make time for linguistic transfer lessons, but is it enough for everyone?
Guilamo, A. S. (2022). “The Science of the Bilingual Reading Brain.” Language Magazine. https://www.languagemagazine.com/2022/07/13/the-science-of-the-bilingual-reading-brain/
