Integration of Language Development Strategies into ESL Preschool Classrooms in Rural East Texas Impact on English Language Development

1、faculty research academy james i. perkins college of education stephen f. austin state university integration of language development strategies into esl preschool classrooms in rural east texas: impact on english language development carolyn davidson abel, ed.d. dottie gottshall, ed.d. jannah nerre

2、n, ph.d. lee payne, ph.d. fully-co-authored draft please do not circulate the 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 de

3、velopment of 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 s

4、ay what they 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 langua

5、ge survey (wmls-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 ano

6、ther control group of children receiving 3 hours of instruction in english daily in a bilingual classroom where instruction was delivered in research brief spanish for the other 3 hours of each day. an analysis of variance (anova) did not demonstrate significant differences for gender (or did), poss

7、ibly due to small sample sizes in this study. conceptual framework it 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

8、(dickinson, 2001). children who 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 condition

9、s can reduce the level of language exposure and stimulation these young children receive, resulting in poor early language development in the first language (hart national reading panel 2000). the training program of five sequential video tapes from educational productions demonstrates how to stimul

10、ate language development in normally developing and language-delayed children who are three, 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 chil

11、d says (snow, 1983). these techniques are currently being used in many developmentally 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 sta

12、rt programs. this training shares some similarities with a recent study using “recasting” 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, it was reco

13、mmended that future studies correct for this problem (tsybina et al, 2006). the training received by the treatment group emphasized the importance of more closely following the childs lead and limiting extensions of the childs language using indirect and less complex language stimulation techniques

14、(abel, gottshall, and nerran, 2008). methodology during phase one of this research, a two-day language development training workshop was provided to a random half of all esl preschool teachers of four-year-olds in a large rural 5-a school district in east texas (abel, gottshall, five parallel teache

15、rs 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 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 fa

16、ll, 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 teachers 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

17、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 replaced 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 stud

18、y the treatment esl classroom (where 32 students received 6 hours of instruction in english daily with parents selecting the esl classroom for its emphasis 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

19、students who received only 3 hours of instruction in english daily with parents selecting for the bilingual optioninstruction delivered half of the day in english and half of the day in spanish. the three groups being studied during phase two are in yellow below. treatment and control groups treatme

20、nt esl teachers trained controls esl teachers not trained n = 5 teachers all esl certified all w min.of a year teaching experience esl esl esl esl n = 5 teachers all esl certified all w min.of a year teaching experience esl esl esl esl phase 1 teacher training data collection pre/post m/c test of kn

21、owldg. lang. techniques b-eslb-esl n = 32 students esl esl esl esl n = 12 students esl esl esl school replaced esl (not esl certified; also brand new teacher) esl phase 2 2008-09 impact on english language development 4-yr-old esl students data collection trained vs not and r- esl vs bi- esl control

22、 groups researcher checklist (fidelity) pre/post woodcock munoz pre/post peabody b-esl n = 22 students b-esl researchers initially made the decision to study the two groups for two reasons. first, the esl directors in this school district had indicated their esl teachers had expressed a desire for l

23、anguage 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 increased numbers of students to be impacted by the training when including the two esl bilingual teachers (b-esl)

24、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 (esl) and whose english was typically more advanced than in the b-esl classrooms. the study phase one and p

25、hase 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, several people across campus with no language background and who were not participating in the study were also

26、 requested to take the assessment as part of a pilot study. adjustments to the test instrument were then made based on this additional and helpful information. several revisions were necessary until agreement was gained by the researchers and the expert in the field. questions were then placed rando

27、mly in the final text that served as the pre/post assessment instrument. the training appeared successful based on participant pre/post test scores and survey responses. pre-test scores ranged from 40% to 95% with a mean of 70% understanding of language stimulation techniques before the training beg

28、an. all participants improved; post-test scores revealed substantial gains with a mean of 96% and a smaller range of 80% - 100%. two participants scored l00%. one participant demonstrated 60% growth moving from a pre-test score of 40% to full knowledge at 100%. feedback from the follow-up survey als

29、o indicated all participants felt they had benefitted from the training and has increased their understanding of how to support language development in young preschoolers. researchers established reliability of this instrument using cronbachs alpha to check internal consistency (results) and conduct

30、ed a fishers exact test to demonstrate validity (results). the significant results demonstrated during phase two also provide some indication of the instruments strength and its ability to hang as a unit. findings the null was rejected at the .05 level of significance (or not) due to a significant i

31、ncrease 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 receiving 3 hours of instruction in english daily in a bilingual clas

32、sroom where instruction was delivered in spanish for the other 3 hours of each day. because researchers were able to take more control over the ppvt-4 assessment by hiring and paying an external trained retired teacher to do the testing, it is felt this explained in part the higher gains demonstrate

33、d in ppvt-4 growth index of receptive oral language development of the treatment groups over both control groups (esl and b-esl). no significance was found for gender which was attributed to small sample size, however, there appeared some effect at the .10 level of confidence in favor of a male resp

34、onse to the treatment. (share data gleaned from scoring rubrics here?) conclusion this study began with a random selection of half (five) of all esl preschool four-year-old teachers in an east texas school district, chosen to participate in a 2-day professional development training to learn simple l

35、anguage stimulation techniques to support language development in their esl preschool students. participants then integrated the newly learned strategies into their daily classroom teaching for a period of five months. pre and post test scores using the oral language cluster of the wmls-r and the re

36、ceptive oral language ppvt-4 were used to help determine the impact of this training. results demonstrated small but significant gains in english language development in treatment groups which suggests that for school districts overwhelmed by the dramatically increasing numbers of ells in the early

37、grades who are unable or unwilling to consider the more expensive option of offering bilingual instruction, simple professional development in these language stimulation techniques offered to general education teachers may provide a viable solution in preparing these children for future reading and

38、academic success. future studies will seek opportunities to extend this study to larger groups and will consider researching the potential it may bring to the new emphasis on esl inclusive classrooms in the local school district where the researchers reside. this research study was conducted with fu

39、nds provided to the perkins college of education faculty research academy by the stephen f. austin state university research development program. dr. lee payne, a member of our research team, is director of the center for applied social research (casre). conclusions expressed in this paper are the r

40、esearchers alone. references august, d., and shanahan, t. (2006). developing literacy in second- language learners: report of the national literacy panel on language- minority children and youth. p.298. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. bohannon, j. n. and bonvillian, j. d. (2000)

41、. theoretical approaches to language acquisition. in j. b. gleason (ed.). the development of language (pp. 254-314). needham heights, ma: allyn & bacon. in tsybina i., girolametto, l., weitzman, e., and greenberg, j. (2006 october). recasts used with preschoolers learning english as their second lan

42、guage. early childhood education journal, 34(2), 178-179. dickinson, d. k. (2001). large group and free-play times: conversational settings supporting language and literacy development. in d. k. dickinson and p. o. tabors (eds.). beginning literacy with language (pp. 223-255). baltimore: brookes. in

43、 slide 3 of kindergarten oral language and vocabulary development: overview. retrieved february 29, 2008 from /cont ent/kinder/slides/k1030001/k1030 010.gif good talking with you series (2007). oh say what they seean introduction to indirect language stimulation technique

44、s. portland, or: educational productions. retrieved february 29, 2008 from /perc/doc uments/indirectlanguagestimulat ion.pdf hadaway, vardell, young (2004). what every teacher should know about english language learners. p.3. allyn & bacon publisher. hart, betty and risley, todd (2003). the early catastroph