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1、Faculty Research AcademyJames I. Perkins College of EducationStephen F. Austin State UniversityIntegration of Language Development Strategies into ESL Preschool Classrooms in Rural East Texas: Impact on English Language DevelopmentCarolyn Davidson Abel, Ed.D.Dottie Gottshall, Ed.D.Jannah Nerren, Ph.
2、D.Lee Payne, Ph.D.Fully-Co-authoredDRAFT please do not circulateThe conclusions suggested are only in sample form since we have no data yet.Introduction This study is phase two of a two-part clinical trial to research the impact of language simulation techniques on the English language development o
3、f ESL preschool four-year-old students. The purpose of this phase of the pretest-posttest randomized three-group pilot study was to determine the effect of ESL preschool teacher training in language stimulation techniques as outlined in Educational Productions Good Talking with You: Oh Say What They
4、 See, An Introduction to Indirect Language Stimulation Techniques on their ESL four-year-old students English language development during five months of implementation (hurricane Ike kind of got in the way; do we need another month here?). Impact was measured by the Woodcock Munoz Language Survey (W
5、MLS-R) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4). A significant increase in English language development in treatment ESL classroom groups was demonstrated (or not) as compared to two control groupsone similar ESL classroom receiving 6 hours of instruction in English daily and another control
6、 group of children receiving 3 hours of instruction in English daily in a bilingual classroom where instruction was delivered in Spanish for the other 3 hours of each day. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) did not demonstrate significant differences for gender (or did), possibly due to small sample si
7、zes in this study.Conceptual FrameworkIt is widely known that language supports reading which in turn holds the key to future learning and success in school (National Reading Panel, 2000). Language develops best in a rich environment with many opportunities for practice (Dickinson, 2001). Children w
8、ho do not develop basic language skills by age 3 are most likely to be at risk of failure when they enter kindergarten (Morrow, 2008). English Language Learners (ELLs) and especially the immigrant population often find themselves in situations of poverty; these conditions can reduce the level of lan
9、guage exposure and stimulation these young children receive, resulting in poor early language development in the first language (Hart & Risley, 2003). With over 500 different languages being spoken in todays schools, and preschools reporting the highest enrollments of these ELLs (Morrow, 2008), it b
10、ecomes increasingly difficult to offer instruction in the first language to support even those whose first language is well developed, and there is increased concern for those who are already at risk in the first language when they begin school. While schools are not often in the position to control
11、 for skill level development in the first language, schools can attempt to influence how these children learn English. It is well known among early childhood educators that when young children are exposed to a sensitive nurturing environment, where adults comment on what the child says and model and
12、 extend the language the child uses, language development is facilitated (Morrow, 2008). The present study investigates whether a similar positive impact can be made for Spanish-speaking children when these simple language development techniques are used to encourage them to learn and use English. I
13、t is well known that transfer can occur from a persons first language into the newly acquired language, but it is also now recognized that “reverse transfer may also occur (National Literacy Panel, 2006). This suggests that with proper and early support, ELLs may learn English that would then transf
14、er into the first language. The ultimate impact could be improvement in both languages and most importantly, these young preschoolers would have a jumpstart in English before serious instruction in first grade would beginpossibly a more pragmatic solution for schools unable to offer bilingual instru
15、ction in these early grades where the numbers of speakers of other languages is increasing dramatically.The language stimulation techniques proposed in the training are grounded in social interactionist theories of language acquisition which recognizes that language learning is facilitated through s
16、ocial interactions with mature language users (Bohannon & Bonvillian, 2000; National Reading Panel 2000). The training program of five sequential video tapes from Educational Productions demonstrates how to stimulate language development in normally developing and language-delayed children who are t
17、hree, four, and five years of age. These language stimulation techniques are developmentally appropriate in their use of strategies that relate directly to what the child is interested in and extends what the child says (Snow, 1983). These techniques are currently being used in many developmentally
18、appropriate training labs across the country for regular and language-delayed preschoolers and are recommended by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services for building positive child outcomes for Head Start Programs. This training shares some similarities with a recent study using “recastin
19、g” with ESL students. Recasts are replies to childrens utterances that provide syntactic revisions of statements children make while maintaining the central meaning (Nelson, Welsh, Camarata, Butkovsky, & Camarata, l996). While that study demonstrated modest gains, it attributed a tendency in adults
20、to become overly complex in their responses to childrens attempts at communication to explain the studys disappointing results; it was recommended that future studies correct for this problem (Tsybina et al, 2006). The training received by the treatment group emphasized the importance of more closel
21、y following the childs lead and limiting extensions of the childs language using indirect and less complex language stimulation techniques (Abel, Gottshall, and Nerran, 2008).MethodologyDuring Phase One of this research, a two-day language development training workshop was provided to a random half
22、of all ESL preschool teachers of four-year-olds in a large rural 5-A school district in east Texas (Abel, Gottshall, & Nerren, 2008). During Phase Two (this study), trained teachers were expected to integrate the newly learned language stimulation techniques into their regular classroom teaching. Th
23、is pretest-posttest randomized three-group pilot study used a Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric technique and ANOVA for gender (2x3) to determine the effect of ESL preschool teacher training in language stimulation techniques on their ESL four-year-old students English language development during five m
24、onths of integrating the newly learned strategies into their regular classroom teaching. Impact was measured by the pre and post oral language cluster test on the current and state-endorsed Woodcock Munoz Language Survey (WMLS-R), currently in use in this school district, and the pre and post assess
25、ment of receptive language development on the widely used and most current version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4). More control was gained over this latter assessment as researchers hired and paid an external trained retired teacher to do the testing. It was anticipated the null wou
26、ld be rejected at the .05 level of significance due to a significant increase in the English language development of the treatment ESL classroom groups when compared to two control groupsone similar ESL classroom receiving 6 hours of instruction in English daily and another control group of children
27、 receiving 3 hours of instruction in English daily in a bilingual classroom where instruction was delivered in Spanish for the other 3 hours of each day. To confirm fidelity to the treatment, researchers randomly visited treatment classrooms four times during the school year for 20 minutes per visit
28、 using a researcher-constructed scoring rubric. Because it was not feasible to have multiple researchers visit treatment classrooms to establish inner rater reliability of the instrument, the three researchers were able to establish internal consistency (to what degree) by calculating the correlatio
29、n coefficient following simultaneous visits to three classrooms at the university campus school where they were able to observe a limited but significantly sufficient number (higher the better) of the language stimulation techniques being used by classroom teachers in grades _, _, and _. (do we need
30、 to visit 3?)ParticipantsPhase One involved a randomly selected treatment group of five teachers who received the training; five parallel teachers remained as controls. A survey given at the beginning of the study noted all treatment and control teachers were ESL certified, had a minimum of one year
31、 of teaching experience in this district, and spoke little to no Spanish. All classrooms have a aide in the room who speaks Spanish. By early fall, attrition reduced group sizes and necessitated a change in the focus of Phase Two of this study. The chart below shows the study began with 4 ESL teache
32、rs and 1 Bilingual teacher that received the training. The column to the right shows the parallel control groups that were to be studied in the fall for comparison. The treatment bilingual teacher (B-ESL) left the district and two ESL control teachers (ESL) left; one of these ESL teachers was replac
33、ed by the district but her survey revealed she was not ESL certified and this would be her first year in the classroom. Phase Two would now study the treatment ESL classroom (where 32 students received 6 hours of instruction in English daily with parents selecting the ESL classroom for its emphasis
34、on English) as compared to control ESL classrooms (same with only 12 students) and as compared to the control Bilingual classroom (B-ESL) of 22 students who received only 3 hours of instruction in English daily with parents selecting for the bilingual optioninstruction delivered half of the day in E
35、nglish and half of the day in Spanish. The three groups being studied during Phase Two are in yellow below.Treatment and Control Groups Treatment ESL Teachers TRAINEDControlsESL Teachers NOT trainedPhase 1TEACHER TRAININGData Collection Pre/Post M/C Test of Knowldg. Lang. Techniques N = 5 teachersAl
36、l ESL certifiedAll w min.of a year teaching experienceESLESLESLESLN = 5 teachersAll ESL certifiedAll w min.of a year teaching experienceESLESLESL ESLB-ESLB-ESLPhase 2 2008-09 IMPACT on English Language Development4-yr-old ESL studentsData Collectiontrained vs not AND R-ESL vs Bi-ESL control groups R
37、esearcher Checklist (fidelity) Pre/post Woodcock Munoz Pre/post PeabodyN = 32 StudentsESLESLESLESL N = 12 StudentsESLESLESL school replaced ESL (not ESL certified; also brand new teacher)ESL B-ESLN = 22 StudentsB-ESLResearchers initially made the decision to study the two groups for two reasons. Fir
38、st, the ESL directors in this school district had indicated their ESL teachers had expressed a desire for language training and desired to have as many participate as possible. Second, researchers decided multiple interesting analyses would be possible during Phase Two of the study with the increase
39、d numbers of students to be impacted by the training when including the two ESL bilingual teachers (B-ESL) whose classroom sizes averaged around 30 low-level English Language Learners (ELLs) as opposed to the typical smaller number of 8 ELLs per classroom in each of the four ESL teachers classrooms
40、(ESL) and whose English was typically more advanced than in the B-ESL classrooms. The Study Phase One and Phase Two During Phase One, the research team provided a two-day workshop for the randomly-selected five ESL preschool teacher participants in language development training (Abel, Gottshall, & N
41、erran, 2008). This included viewing, discussing, practicing, and mastering skills from five sequential training videos that demonstrated and discussed Language Stimulation Techniques from the program, Good Talking With You, produced by Educational Productions. Participants received a daily stipend f
42、or their time and gas, and breakfast and lunch were provided on both days. Specific skills taught began with the first level of parallel talk that encourages those first words from children by improving their receptive language using the technique of “saying what the child sees.” More advanced level
43、s demonstrated how to draw the child into conversation by using and extending the childs words, modeling and encouraging conversation with other children at the level of language they are using, and supporting all attempts to communicate. The two-day training was held in the university lab school. P
44、articipants discussed techniques with each other first and then moved into the classroom to observe and then hone their language development skills with children exhibiting various levels of language development. Every effort was made to keep the training sessions as non-threatening and as enjoyable
45、 and supportive as possible. A mnemonic was included in the training notebook, and updated based upon participant feedback, to help remind participants of the training essentials and to facilitate integration of the training into their ESL preschool classrooms in the coming year. (too long?)During P
46、hase Two, teachers in the treatment group began integrating language stimulation techniques into their daily instruction. A scoring rubric created by the researchers that was determined to be reliable and valid was used to check fidelity to the treatment. One researcher most familiar with the teache
47、rs visited the treatment classrooms for 20 minutes each on four random occasions to determine the extent of the integration of the training into the treatment classrooms. More?Assessment A multiple choice Pre and Post Test, developed by the researchers, was given to participants during the two-day w
48、orkshop of instruction during Phase One to determine knowledge of language stimulation techniques mastered before and following the training. Prior to the training, researchers attempted to establish face and content validity by asking each researcher independently of each other plus an expert in language stimulation techniques to take the test; several people across campus with no language background and who were not participating in the study were also requested to take the assessment as part of a pilot study. Adjustments to the test instrument were then made based on t