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

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 research briefspanish 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 s

7、mall sample sizes 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, 200

8、1). 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 conditions can reduce th

9、e level of language 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 (morro

10、w, 2008), it becomes 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 posit

11、ion to control 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

12、 and model and 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

13、use english. it 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 wou

14、ld then transfer 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 bi

15、lingual instruction 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 facilit

16、ated through social 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 chil

17、dren 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 child says (snow, 1983). these techniques are currently being used in many de

18、velopmentally 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 u

19、sing “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, & camarata, l996). while that study demonstrated modest gains, it attributed a tende

20、ncy in adults 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

21、of more closely 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

22、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, & nerren, 2008). during phase two (this study), trained teachers were expected to integrate the newly learned language stimulation techniques into their regular classroo

23、m teaching. this 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

24、 during five months 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 a

25、nd post assessment 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 anticipate

26、d the null would 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 gro

27、up 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. to confirm fidelity to the treatment, researchers randomly visited treatment classrooms four times during the school year for 20 min

28、utes per visit 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

29、the correlation 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

30、_. (do we need 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 minim

31、um 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 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 wit

32、h 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 fall for comparison. the treatment bilingual teacher (b-esl) left the district and two esl control teachers (esl) left; one of these esl teach

33、ers 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 study the treatment esl classroom (where 32 students received 6 hours of instruction in english daily with parents selecting the esl classroom for

34、 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 students who received only 3 hours of instruction in english daily with parents selecting for the bilingual optioninstruction delivered half o

35、f 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 treatment esl teachers trainedcontrolsesl teachers not trainedn = 5 teachersall esl certifiedall w min.of a year teaching experienceeslesleslesln = 5

36、teachersall esl certifiedall w min.of a year teaching experienceesleslesl eslphase 1teacher trainingdata collection pre/post m/c test of knowldg. lang. techniques b-eslb-esln = 32 studentseslesleslesl n = 12 studentsesleslesl school replaced esl (not esl certified; also brand new teacher)esl phase 2

37、 2008-09 impact on english language development4-yr-old esl studentsdata collectiontrained vs not and r-esl vs bi-esl control groups researcher checklist (fidelity) pre/post woodcock munoz pre/post peabodyb-esln = 22 studentsb-eslresearchers initially made the decision to study the two groups for tw

38、o reasons. first, 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 wit

39、h the increased 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 teache

40、rs classrooms (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,

41、gottshall, & nerran, 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 d

42、aily stipend for 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

43、advanced levels 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

44、 lab school. participants 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 an

45、d as enjoyable 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

46、long?)during phase 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 w

47、ith the teachers 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

48、 the two-day workshop 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 a

49、n 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 this addi

50、tional and helpful information. several revisions were necessary until agreement was gained by the researchers and the expert in the field. questions were then placed randomly in the final text that served as the pre/post assessment instrument. the training appeared successful based on participant p

51、re/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 began. all participants improved; post-test scores revealed substantial gains with a mean of 96% and a smaller range of 80% - 100%.

52、 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 also indicated all participants felt they had benefitted from the training and has increased their understanding of how to support

53、language development in young preschoolers. researchers established reliability of this instrument using cronbachs alpha to check internal consistency (results) and conducted a fishers exact test to demonstrate validity (results). the significant results demonstrated during phase two also provide so

54、me 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 increase in the english language development of the treatment esl classroom groups when compared to two control groupsone similar

55、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 classroom where instruction was delivered in spanish for the other 3 hours of each day. because researchers were able to take more co

56、ntrol 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 demonstrated in ppvt-4 growth index of receptive oral language development of the treatment groups over both control groups (esl and b-esl).

57、 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 response to the treatment. (share data gleaned from scoring rubrics here?)conclusion this study began with a random selection of half

58、 (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 language stimulation techniques to support language development in their esl preschool students. participants then integrated the n

59、ewly 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 receptive oral language ppvt-4 were used to help determine the impact of this training. results demonstrated small but significant g

60、ains in english language development in treatment groups which suggests that for school districts overwhelmed by the dramatically increasing numbers of ells in the early grades who are unable or unwilling to consider the more expensive option of offering bilingual instruction, simple professional de