McKinsey: 8 Business Technology Trends to Watch

The McKinsey Quarterly's latest edition (20 December, 2007) features an article on "emerging trends...transforming many markets and businesses."
Authors: James M. Manyika, Roger P. Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague.

Article links (free registration required):
McKinsey Quarterly article [text]

McKinsey Quarterly article [audio]

Article summary:

Managing relationships
1. Distributing cocreation
2. Using consumers as innovators
3. Tapping into a world of talent
4. Extracting more value from interactions
Managing capital and assets:
5. Expanding the frontiers of automation
6. Unbundling production from delivery
Leveraging information in new ways:
7. Putting more science into management
8. Making business from information

SLA: Formulating an Effective Dual Language Policy

In decisions about language separation and allocation in a bilingual classroom, there are other ingredients and contexts that must be taken into account before formulating an effective dual language policy.

The aims of the school must be examined carefully, in terms of language preservation and second language competence.  School teachers are language planners, even if subconsciously.  If the children's minority language is to  be preserved, then separation may be a central policy element.  When teachers are more enthusiastic about majority (second language) competence, then different practices and outcomes, in terms of language allocation, will be desired.  Fewer language boundaries may be maintained, since loosening them helps ensure development of the majority language.  

The nature of the students must be considered in any policy regarding language boundaries and concurrent use, with policies and practices adjusted to age and grade level.  If language development is still at an early evolutionary stage, boundary setting is more important.  With older children, whose languages are relative well developed, the concurrent use of two languages may be more viable and desirable.  Older children may have more stability and separation in their language abilities.

Furthermore, this suggests that a static policy with regard to boundaries, and concurrent use within the school is less justifiable than a progressive policy that examines different applications across years and grade levels.  Early separation may be very important.  Later, in high school, a more concurrent use may encourage conceptual clarity, depth of understanding and cognitive development.

For a progressive policy it is necessary to consider different types of classroom communication.  When the teacher speaks more informally and simply to the class, the weaker language may be appropriate.  In practical activities, also, where there is context embedded help, the weaker language may serve well.  Where the cognitive level is higher in transmitting the curriculum, as with more complex, abstract ideas, either the stronger language or a bilingual approach may be needed.  Different types of classroom episodes, such as managerial, instructional and practical activity, constrain or allow comprehensible second language communication and concurrent usage.

Different dimensions of the school need individual discussions related to separation and integration of languages, for example in curriculum, whole school policies, classrooms and lessons.  At what level of organization should separation occur?  Our earlier discussion of language separation by curriculum material and medium of delivery showed that language separation is not a distinct issue from rational concurrent use, but merges into a consideration of integrated use.

Another important factor in deciding language separation issues is class language balance.  If all the children are native speakers of one language, it may be easy to determine a language allocation.  With mixed classes there are differing balances of majority and minority languages.  Who dominates numerically, linguistically and psychologically?  When the balance is tilted against language minority children, a clear separation, with the curriculum balance toward the minority language may be desirable.  Whether the student body is language minority in a subtractive or additive situation should also affect language allocation policies.

Where language minority children are the numerical majority, a slow change, rather that a sharp shift from language separation to concurrent use is advisable.  The minority language often risks perception as less powerful or useful, and lower in status, as children grow older.  Therefore, the minority language must be protected and keep a constant high profile in the school.

School language policy must take into account 'out of school exposure' to the first and second languages.  Sometimes, equal time is advocated to each language within the school, half the curriculum in one, half in the other.  However, if the child is surrounded by the majority language outside the school, on the street, in shops and through the media, then perhaps the separation balance ought to be adjusted toward the minority language in school.  'Out of school' exposure may also make some teachers hesitant about concurrent usage.

Replication and duplication of content threaten bilingual classroom methodology, since some pupils will not concentrate when the same subject matter is repeated in a different language.  However, repetition is sometimes pragmatically necessary.  Where there is a considerable variety of different home and preferred language, a teacher and bilingual assistant may need to repeat instruction in different languages.  There are some multilingual classrooms, in New York, Toronto and London, with a diversity of home languages among the children.  Replication of teaching in two or three languages may be essential for children in the early grades, so that as many as possible can comprehend.  This complicates debates about concurrent use and language boundaries.  One solution is small group learning, as seen in progressive British and North American primary schools.  This may allow establishment of some language boundaries, with different children addressed by bilingual teachers and aides, in their preferred language.

The use of non-repetitive and non-parallel bilingual materials, built in an incremental and well sequenced and structured manner, is valuable, particularly in high schools.  However, the production and availability of materials in many minority languages is difficult to achieve, and funding for such materials may be difficult to secure.

In a concurrent and purposeful use of two classroom languages, as advocated by Jacobson (1990), there is the danger of requiring teachers to manage an unnatural, artificial and highly complex language situation.  Where teachers are expected to manage concurrent use of two languages in a classroom, they are assumed to have a very high level of management skill, monitoring and reflection.  In reality, classrooms are busy, very fluid, often unpredictable places.  Teachers must react to the moment, to individuals who don't understand, with many unpredictable and spontaneous situations.  Students themselves have an important influence on classroom language uses, needing to share understanding (or lack of it) in the most appropriate way.  Classroom management of learning and behavior must be fluent, accepted by students, not abrupt and unpredictable.  Classroom language allocation must fit naturally, predictably, fluently and flexibly into curriculum management.

Funds of Knowledge: Genuine School Communities

Luis Moll (1992) develops valuable ideas for home-school relationships. He argues for the importance of identifying skills, knowledge, expertise and interests that families own, which can serve everyone in the classroom. Parents, grandparents and other community members can supplement teachers, providing what Moll calls funds of knowledge: 'cultural practices and bodies of knowledge and information that households use to survive, to get ahead or to thrive' (Moll, 1992, p.21). Funds of useful knowledge include agricultural information about flowers, plants and trees, seeds, water distribution and management, animal care and veterinary medicine, ranch economy, car and bicycle mechanics, carpentry, masonry, electrical wiring and appliances, fencing, folk remedies, herbal cures and midwifery, archeology, biology and mathematics.

Compare Moll's ideas with two other traditions of home-school relations. One traditional view is that language minority homes lack the social, cultural and intellectual stimulation and resources to enable children to progress well at school. Thus, teachers may have low expectations for school performance, particularly when students come from working class or materially disadvantaged backgrounds.

Another tradition is that effective teachers visit the home, to discuss particular problems with the parents, to enlist their help in schoolwork, and to request they help children with homework. This traditional view assumes that the school knows best and parents are valuable for encouragement they give children to adopt school norms and values.

Moll's (1992) radically different viewpoint about language minority homes is that parents and communities possess important historically developed, accumulated knowledge, abilities, strategies, ideals, ideas, practices and cultural events. These are regarded within a household and community as important to their functioning and well-being. Whether parents are farmers or construction workers, there are prized skills, knowledge and cultural practices worth sharing in the classroom.

If parents, community leaders, workers and artists are included in the learning experiences of children, home notions of culture are represented, valued, and celebrated. Different forms of worthwhile knowledge, experience and expertise are shared in the classroom, raising the self-esteem of children, the language minority group and the community. Hidden talents, oral histories, household skills and latent abilities are discovered and shared. These social, cultural and intellectual resources become important curricular elements.

SOURCE:

Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. (pp. 84, 85)

REFS/FURTHER READING:

Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1990) Literacy for Empowerment: The Role of Parents in Children's Education. New York: Falmer.

Moll, L.C. (1992) Bilingual classroom studies and community analysis. Educational Researcher 21 (2). 20-24.

Moll, L.C. et al. (1992) Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice 31 (2), 132-141.

Multilingual Resources for Children Project (1995) Building Bridges, Multilingual Resources for Children. Clevedon; Multilingual Matters.

Bilingualism and Metalinguistic Awareness

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals:

Young bilinguals sometimes have an enhanced ability to focus on the important content and meaning of language, rather than its external structure or sound. For example, a bilingual child is taught a nursery rhyme. Rather than merely learning the words by rote and concentrating on the rhyme, some young bilingual children seem to focus more (compared with monolinguals) on the meaning and story. Does this mean that bilingual children are less bound by the words, focused more on the core meaning?

An illustration comes from Leopold's famous case study (1939-1949) of the German-English development of his daughter Hildegard. Hildegard accepted very early that a word itself and its meaning were loosely connected, there was no absolute or inevitable link between them. Words were just arbitrary labels given to an object or idea. The name was separate from the object or idea itself. Leopold found that his stories to Hildegard were not repeated word for word. Plenty of substitutions and adjustments were made to relay the central points of the story.

(pp. 70, 71)

In a further experiment, Ianco-Worrall (1972) asked the following types of question: 'Suppose you were making up names for things, could you call a cow "dog" or a dog "cow"?' Bilinguals mostly felt that names could be interchangeable. Monolinguals, in comparison, more often said that names for objects, such as cow and dog, could not be interchanged. For bilinguals, names and objects are separate. This seems to result from owning two languages, which give the bilingual child and adult awareness of the free, non-fixed relationship between objects and their labels.

(p. 71)

...

One of the strongest lines of recent research in bilingual psychology studies the apparent ability of bilinguals to reflect upon the nature and functions of language. Simply stated, it appears that bilinguals have a greater awareness of language. This concept is commonly called metalinguistic awareness.

Metalinguistic awareness is the ability to reflect upon and manipulate spoken and written language. Language is inspected and thought about as a system to understand and produce conversations, rather than simply used. Such language awareness may include reflection on the intended meaning, sensitivity to what is implied rather than stated, and an analytical attitude towards language.

Research indicates that bilinguals, accustomed to owning and processing two languages, are better at analyzing them (Bialystok, 1987, 1988). They seem more able to look inwardly on each language and accumulate knowledge about the language itself, better able to regulate, manage and control their language processing.

One important possible outcome of the bilingual's greater metalinguistic awareness at an early age is earlier reading acquisition. Because bilinguals daily process two languages, they may acquire reading readiness skills faster. When this occurs, earlier reading may also relate to higher levels of academic achievement in various areas of the curriculum.

Not all bilinguals will have such metalinguistic awareness advantages. A study by Galambos and Hakuta (1988) found that such awareness is most developed when both languages are proficient at reasonably high levels. The effect of bilingualism on the processing of errors in Spanish sentences was found to vary depending on the level of bilingualism. The more advanced a child was in development of both languages, the better the performance on the test items.

(pp. 71, 72)

Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

SLA: Teaching through the Silent Period

'The good-enough teacher', writes Britzman (1998: 42), 'must also help herself in tolerating the results of her ... own frustration'. That is to say, while some pedagogies may help alleviate silence, and in so doing make the work of the teacher easier, or tolerable, or in some cases possible at all, it is important to remember that alleviating silence may not always be the most useful (or even a possible) immediate objective for the learner. Put differently, when as teachers we consider how best to motivate learners, we must also attend to moments in the learning process when the question of motivation may simply not be relevant - moments that must be worked through. This may be one of the ways in which learner-centred approaches such as those recommended by the learner autonomy model might be useful - if they can help teachers to understand that both speaking and silence belong, ultimately, to the learner.

...

It seems to me that this kind of silence, and more specifically the idea of finding, or deliberately making, this kind of silent period, is a silence that opens up rather than shuts down - a silence that might hint at a way of thinking about learning not only a new language as such, but also other kinds of knowledge. For losses as well as gains area part not only of language learning, but also of the process of acquiring new knowledge or of learning a new theory, either of which can insist upon a psychical movement as well as a conscious intellectual shift into a new theoretical language and the corresponding theoretical milieu. As Eva Hoffman discovered, it is not enough just to learn new words; one must learn the new world as well. And at different times and in different contexts, we all have to do this. Certainly there is a sense in which this book is telling the story of a kind of language learning, for implicit in the work of triangulating several theoretical discourses is the task of making each of them speak to the others. I have attempted to negotiate a kind of conversation between psychoanalytic theory, social theory and SLA research, and in turn to weave that conversation into a dialogue with the narrative texts that seem so compelling - a new theoretical language, a new conversation.

I wonder whether, in this negotiation, this conversation, there might perhaps also be something that hints at some of the larger questions that relate not only to language learning but also to other kinds of learning that may interfere with individuals in profound and even disturbing ways. How do we learn? How do we give voice to our learning? And how do we tolerate learning, what do we do with the problem of articulating learning, when it is just too hard? It is subtle, this kind of educative hint that the concept of silence might provide concerning ways of thinking about learning theory, for example, or about theorising learning. But even so, like the kind of 'education through hinting, about hinting' that Phillips calls psychoanalysis, such hints might act as a hopeful' ...kind of go-between between teaching and seduction, sustaining both a complicity and a difference' (Phillips, 1999: 109) - embodying, in other words, their own conflicts, their own ambivalence, and their own irreconcilable oppositions, but also, as psychoanalysis keeps insisting, their own wishes and desires.

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 124, 125.

I find it fascinating that Granger finishes with a final arc that wonders whether questions of 'silent periods' should only be asked by language teachers, or whether far broader applications for this kind of theory can be formulated within the education community. In a sense, she has taken us back to the womb/childhood to investigate psychoanalytically, but she has also swung the discussion back to how we absorb and finally synthesize challenging theoretical discourses, even when they're in our native language.

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality.  The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

George Steiner.

SLA: Knowing Learners through Autobiography & Memoirs

How - and what - can educators, specifically second-language teachers, come to know about their students and those students' needs? Perhaps, given the complexity of silence in second language acquisition, and the complexity of desire and ambivalence in learners, and the further complexity of the lives and the work of educators, such direct knowledge is not possible. And this gives rise to other questions. How can we learn to live with this lack of direct knowledge? How can education tolerate the partiality of what it can know?

If I am, perhaps, a little less hopeful than Riley (1999: 10) about the possibility of obtaining 'a clear idea' of the language learner's identity from the learner himself or herself, I am nevertheless convinced that, despite or even through silence, ways can be found into relations between teachers and learners that make both relating and learning possible. We may not have a 'clear idea' about a particular learner, but we do have hints.

Some hints can be taken from memoirs and autobiographical writing of the kind examined in this study, and from interpretations of that writing. The first hint might be a very gentle one, the simple reminder that self-writing gives us of the existence in each individual of a multi-layered inner world, and of the importance of tolerating 'the particular peace its author has made between the individuality of his or her subjectivity and the intersubjective and public character of meaning' (Grumet, 1990: 324). For in the complex daily work of education, with its demands and vicissitudes, and its foregrounding of overtly-manifested and readily-observable learning processes as means to perceptible, tangible, quantifiable products of learning, there is a tendency to abstract the learner's - and the teacher's - less visible, subjective and unconscious experiences. This is simply to say that it is quite a difficult thing to remain mindful of the lives of the persons involved in education, to begin to 'recover human feeling and motivation for studies of education that [have] become anonymous and quantitative' (Grumet, 1990: 322).

A second hint that might be taken, from reading and perhaps also from writing autobiography and memoir, is a kind of intimation of relatedness, different from generalisation, but offering the possibility of thinking about shared aspects of experience among, in this case, second-language learners. Not certainty, we must remember, but possibility: not that one individual's learning must, but it might, be a little like another's. Second-language learners in mid-process may not be able to speak about their experience, and there may be ethical reasons not to demand that they do so, but educators might take hints about those silences from the narratives of others. And those hints, once taken, may give us something to ground our intuition and guide our pedagogy, and allow for the possibility that educators can take care without taking control.

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 121, 122.

SLA: Parapraxis - no mistakes!

...what in common parlance might be called 'innocent mistakes'. But for psychoanalysis 'there is nothing innocent about forgetting, slips of the tongue, jokes, indeed all forms of parapraxis - those bungled actions that point elsewhere even as they can be observed as interfering with daily life' (Britzman, 1998: 68). Anna Freud explains:

Examining the small mistakes in the everyday life of human beings, such as forgetting, losing, or misplacing things, misreading or mishearing, psychoanalysis succeeded in demonstrating that such errors are always based on an intent of the person who makes them ... Psychoanalytic investigation established that, generally speaking, we forget nothing except what we wish to forget for some good reason or other, though that reason is usually quite unknown to us. (A. Freud, 1974: 81-82)

And Ehrman and Dornyei expand on this noting that, according to the psychoanalytic principle of psychic determinism, 'behaviour is meaningful and not random or accidental ...' and 'individuals ... [unconsciously] give each other messages about their feelings and wishes' (Ehrman & Dornyei, 1998: 11)

(p. 105)

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 105.

SLA: Conflict, Emergency & Multiple Identities in Second Language Learning

Bailey's assessment of this conflict is that Walsleben 'is struggling with the instructor for control of her language-learning experience' (Bailey, 1983: 87). It is unclear who wins this struggle, if indeed it can be said to be 'won' at all. Walsleben is not only exhausted and empty, but she soon becomes silent and absent, bodily as well as linguistically. Ultimately, she leaves the class outright before the end of the course. This struggle between student and teacher takes on some of the colouring of the conflict between inside and outside that, for Freud, emerges from the individual's first judgement: 'I should like to eat this', or 'I should like to spit it out' (Freud, 1925: 439). Here, the 'this' is not only the way the second language is taught, it is the language itself. And the decision of the learner, in this case, is to refuse to eat and to move away from the second-language table, in spite of her previous determination and desire: 'I had spent hours studying Farsi because I want to and was determined to keep progressing ... But suddenly - it do not seem to matter' (Walsleben, 1976: 36; cited in Bailey, 1983: 87).

This conflict between 'taking in' a second language and rejecting it is rooted in the ambivalence of the learner's desire both to learn and to refuse learning that accompanies learning's perpetual state of emergency (Britzman, 1998: 23). It is articulated, within the diary excerpts, in frequent analogies that the diarists make between the relationships of teachers and students and those of parents and children. These analogies also call to mind once again the Freudian concept of the family romance (Freud, 1909), discussed in the previous chapter and entailing, in part, motives of sibling rivalry, among which is a sense in which the child may imagine herself as the product of a clandestine love affair between mother and a man other than her actual father, or alternatively as the only 'legitimate' child among her siblings.

Rebecca Jones, a student of Indonesian, writes that 'a curious form of sibling rivalry developed among [the students]. Dr. Fox ... functioned in the role of the parent with all of the learners acting as children, competing to achieve recognition and attention ...' (1977: 77). For Deborah Plummer, initially, a similar analogy provides a way to think positively about her experience:

The best way I can describe my psychological state in the class is child-like ... I was expected to bring to the class no previous knowledge of the language ... [The teacher] became very much of a parental figure to me, in whom I could place my trust ... [During] class I was an adult who struggled to talk about elementary concrete objects in the most simple, childlike speech. Instead of being frustrated by such a dichotomy, I found it much easier to adopt a childlike identity in the new language ... [This] new identity helped preserve my adult ego and self-confidence. (Plummer, 1976: 5-6; cited in Bailey, 1983: 90)

But Plummer's childlike state is interrupted. Eventually she notices

an abrupt change from the in-class parental figure. In and out of class [the teacher] was a person I highly respected and from whom I sought recognition and approval - as if she were a parent ... I felt that I had lost her recognition, approval and favour. I lost my self-confidence and most of all I lost my childlike feeling. I was an adult ... responsible for my actions and my L2 errors became deflating and wounding . (Plummer, 1976: 8-9; cited in Bailey, 1983: 91)

Plummer's eventual reporting of the satisfactory resolution of her problem further substantiates this idea of her sense of - and her pleasure and unpleasure in - her teacher as a parental figure. She [the teacher] was more sensitive to [Plummer's] needs in class and her subtle attention, unnoticed by others, was very encouraging' (Plummer, 1976: 8-9; cited in Bailey, 1983: 91)

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 62.

TEDTalks: Philippe Starck (2007)

3 Types of Designer:

• The cynical designer - designs as a product for marketing
• The narcissistic design - who only designs for other fantastic designers
• Another kind of designer - tries to make the object for the result, and for the human being who'll use it.

"The big challenge" - lack of production out of "the big image."
Describes as "the supermonkey" and the result of 4.5 billion years of evolution, and that we're at the half-point of this path. "That is our story. That is our beautiful poetry. We are a mutant."
"If we don't integrate the fact that we are a mutant, we completely miss the story. Every generation thinks that we're the final one. We mutate for 4 billion years before, but now, because it's me, we stop!"

The duty of vision: to be in the territory of intelligence. As our angle of vision changes toward our people, the more important you will be important in civilization, and for the story of our mutation.

"God is the answer when we don't know the answer." We see our line of evolution. From far it looks very smooth, but if you take a lens, the [line is very rough]. We have different duties in different parts of the cycle. There are periods of light and shadow, ie. during times of peace a certain type of person can flourish and be acceptable. When barbarians are back forget about [design and art]. You must go back to fight/to battle.

Starck claims that he's ashamed of being a designer during a period of darkness/war.
However, claims that we must finish the story. In perhaps, 50 years, we can leave our children the possibility of creating a new story, a new poetry. He claims that this is why he continues to work, even if it's for a toilet brush.

Silent Period: Liminality in SLA

It may not be the case that all second-language learners undergo a silent period.  Likewise, it may not be that all silences in SLA occur exclusively, or at all, for the reasons I have named.  But I offer this possibility: that the silent period in some second-language learners might be a kind of psychical paralysis, a temporary freezing, a complex combination of an inability to articulate and a lowered self-regard.  And perhaps this possibility offers us a way to imagine silence as symptomatic of the loss, ambivalence and conflict that accompany a transition between two languages, a psychical suspension between two selves.  Silence may thus constitute one response to the encounter between a complicated inside and an incomprehensible and uncomprehending outside.

I conclude... by referring briefly to the concept of liminality, as described by Carolyn Heilbrun in a series of lectures on women figures in English literature.  It seems to speak meaningfully to the idea that stands at the heart of this project:

The word 'limen' means 'threshold', and to be in a state of liminality is to be poised upon uncertain ground, to be leaving one condition or country or self and entering upon another.  But the most salient sign of liminality is its unsteadiness, its lack of clarity about exactly where one belongs and what one should be doing, or wants to be doing. (Heilbrun, 1999: 3)

The self suspended between languages is a liminal self, living unsteadily in two languages and therefore living fully in neither, for whom silence might be not only a symptom of liminality, but also at least a partial answer to the questions about where the self belongs.  Later, when Heilbrun (1999: 37) refers to liminality as a state embodying what Marina Warner (1981: 23) first name 'irreconcilable oppositions' (a quality of ambiguity that allows an individual to 'span opposites'), she might well be speaking of the second-language learner, positioned  on the blurred borderline between first and second languages, unable either to turn back and regain the old self or to move forward, unencumbered, into a new one.  

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. p. 62.

Psychical disruption in language learning.

What if language learning, in the sense that it involves a loss of a former, pre-language self, and by implication second language learning as a transformation from first-language self into second-language self, were considered as a process parallel to those that Freud names mourning and melancholia? In this theoretical model, the lost or disappointing object would be neither a loved person nor an idea as such. Rather, it would be part of an individual's own unconscious - the aspect of the self that is lost either in the transformation from non-speaking to speaking self or, in the case of the shift from first to second language shift, in the movement from one language to the second. Might the learning that provokes the transformation be itself a shattering force? Could the psychical activity of learning (including language learning) insofar as it involves both an encounter between the external and the internal in their various aspects and the consequent loss of some aspect of the internal, invoke a process not unlike mourning and - depending on the degree of the disruption - even approach melancholia?

(p. 50)

What shatters the language learner's relationship with the object that is, or was, the pre-language omnipotent self, or the first language not-quite-omnipotent-but-nevertheless-expressive self, is the learning that a new language, a new means of expression, is called for.  But, as Ehrman and Dornyei (1998: 185) point out, individuals may resist learning, and they may do so through silence, because learning 'requires rejection of one's own deficiency'.  That is to say that hand in hand with learning that one needs a new language goes the inferences that the old language (or the pre-language state), and therefore the former version of the self, which lived either without language or within the first language, are no longer sufficient - are even, somehow, wrong.  This learning - this shattering - echoes an earlier learning, an earlier disruption, namely the realisation of the self's separateness (and the corresponding inadequacy of the unseparated self) from its mother.  And further, much as that earlier realisation marked a kind of loss of the previous self (perceived as united with the mother), the acknowledgement of the need to revise the first-language self to include a second language which it now needs to make itself known - even when there is no loss of the mother tongue as such - is a reminder of the loss of the mother as part of the self.  Thus the self disappoints itself

.

(p. 54)

Thus, despite what is gained by acquiring language, the old longing for omnipotence is not completely repressed: it does not die, and furthermore it is re-awakened, or remembered, or even re-experienced, in the acquisition of a second language.  This is so not only because of the longing for the omnipotence of the previous, pre-language state, but also because, with respect to the L2 environment and relative to that second language, the self that has not yet acquired it is, in effect, without speech.  That is, as the primal unspeaking infant is to the speaking child, so is the self of the first language to its later manifestation as speaker of the second language.  Although the stakes are somewhat different in second language acquisition - the self has already sublimated its omnipotence fantasy - what is paralleled is the reluctant relinquishing of a previous linguistic potency.  And the disappointment of this later disruption recalls the earlier one

.  

(p. 55)

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Language and the process of self-objectification

Ron Harre's work on the importance of discourse in the field of social constructionism begins with a disclaim (Harre, 1993: 3). While not disputing the concept of individual humans as 'artefacts, products of social process', the most important of which are linguistic and otherwise discursive, Harre refuses the assumption that individual action is always and only socially caused. Individuals, according to Harre, 'are built to be capable of autonomous action'. Significantly for this study, that autonomous action includes the social construction of meaning; for Harre 'the meanings of social events are created, not given' (Harre, 1993: 77). Although it is in social contexts that this creative meaning-making takes place, it is individuals who do the creating, and it is through the symbols of language that they do it. Moreover, the symbols could not exist without these individuals - 'there could not be languages and discursive processes unless there were brains buzzing... and vibrations in the air and marks on paper' (Harre, 1993: 204) without the participation of individuals in them.

Standing in partial contrast to Harre is Ian Burkitt (1991), who presents a critique of traditional views that maintain that the individual's self and the world are separate entities in opposition to each other. In Burkitt's conception of the self as social, and of human beings as continually engaged in social relations, there is little space for a view, such as Harre's of the self as autonomous, as capable of acting on the world as well as interacting with it. Burkitt charges Harre with arguing contradictory claims: on one hand, that 'the public and collective order [is] the basis for social and personal being', and on the other hand that 'the social order is...created by the intentional actions of individuals' (Burkitt, 1991: 75).

While he does not suggest that the notion of the individual is altogether false, Burkitt does privilege the claim that individuality is socially based, and that common-sense Western understandings of the individual human being as 'psychological monad' (Burkitt, 1991: 17), whose individuality is established at birth, are erroneous. He further rejects the notion of meaning-making as a function of the individual mind as, at best, incomplete (1991: 84-85), since for him such interpretations fail to take sufficient account of society itself as a creator of meaning. Rather, he holds that personality is created by forces external to the individual, and shaped by power relations, whose' repression [takes] the initiatives and motives for action away from rational control' (1991: 214).

With regard to the question of language as one of these social forces, Burkitt (1991) draws heavily on George Mead's contention (1934) that the means by which we individuals come to know our own experiences is through knowing others' experiences of us, specifically by becoming 'objects to ourselves' - absorbing and adopting others' perceptions of ourselves 'within a social environment or context of experiences and behaviour in which both [we] and they are involved' (Mead, 1934: 138). For Mead, and for Burkitt, it is language - 'communication in the sense of significant symbols... directed not only to others but also to the individual himself' (Mead, 1934: 139) - that permits this process of self-objectification. Burkitt's view of individuality, or the self, as something that develops rather than being present from birth, similarly echoes Mead's contention that 'the self... arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individuals within that process' (Mead, 1934: 199). Neither Mead nor Burkitt orders subjectivity prior to sociality. On the contrary, the conceptualise communicative acts as forming, and informing, 'the capacity for subjective reflection' that becomes self-consciousness (Burkitt, 1991: 34-35). Similarly, Harre's (1993: 4) view of the self as mutable, socially informed 'location, not a substance or an attribute' that comes into being in contexts in which an individual is 'already treated as [a person] by the others of their family and tribe', is reminiscent of Mead's construction of the self-as-object-to-itself.

Discussion concerning the relationship between language, thought and indentity has also located itself in sociolinguistics since the time of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Edward Sapir's (1929: 162) contention that 'the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group' foreshadowed Benjamin Whorf's statement, nearly three decades later, that '... the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions that have to be organised... largely by the linguistic systems in our minds' (Whorf, 1956: 213). These assertions, like those of Mead (1934) and Harre (1993) relating to the social self modelling for the individual self, harmonise with Lev Vygotsky's understanding of 'the true direction of the development of thining [as moving] not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual' (Vygotsky, 1997: 36). Indeed, according to William Frawley and James Lantolf, Vygotsky maintained that 'a human being is from the outset social (i.e. dialogical) and then develops into an individual (ie. monological) entity' (Frawley & Lantolf, 1984: 146). And Lacanian thought, arguably, goes even further with respect to the relationship between language and the self. Lacan's argument, asserts Bruce Fink, is that 'without language there would be no desire as we know it - exhilarating, and yet contorted, contradictory, and loath to be satisfied - nor would there be any subject as such' (Fink, 1996: 76).

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
(pp. 32-34)

Silence in SLA Research: From Personality to Identity

SLA research was born of the science of linguistics, nurtured by a psycholinguistic approach primarily concerned with cognition, and more recently step-parented by sociolinguistic perspectives (Ellis, 1996: 1). Initially occupying itself with the characteristics and properties of learner language, it has moved towards including an examination of issues of affect, but in a sense it seems uncertain about how to proceed. And no wonder - the problem of the identity of the subject is both immeasurably problematic to perceive and perceptibly difficult to measure and analyse. And when we combine the problems of identity, perception, measurement and analysis with the idea of studying, not language as such, but rather silence within language, the difficulty becomes more daunting still. What exactly is lacking, and what can be done about it?

(p.28)

Might we perhaps consider silence s more than just a direct and exclusively linguistic consequence of either a concentration on - or a lack of - comprehension, as Dulay et al. (1982) and Gibbons (1985) would have it? Equally, might silence originate in or be a symptom of something other than, or additional to, the problem of incomplete access to the conventions of the target language, as Harder (1980) seems to suggest?

That is, might there be something at stake, more or other than the reduction of a linguistic role per se, in the process of second language acquisition?

Saville-Troike's (1988) discussion about the lack of interest in private speech within first language acquisition research resonates with my own belief that SLA research is, likewise, insufficiently curious about silence as a part of the second language learning process. Following the view of George Miller, articulated in his introduction to Ruth Weir's Language in the Crib (Weir, 1970: 15), Saville-Troike writes that:

the dominant conception of language learning as critically involving responses to the stimuli and reinforcements of a supportive environment had led a focus on mother-child dyadic interaction, and entailed the assumption that nothing 'interesting' was taking place when a child was alone, and in the dark. (Saville-Troike, 1988: 568)

Saville-Troike proceeds to extend this judgement to SLA reseaerch. Her reasoning bears quoting at some length:

While strictly behaviourist theories are no longer in vogue, the now-dominant conception of language learning as critically involving social/interpersonal interaction has left potentially important ... non-interactive phenomena generally out of researchers' awareness. Further, there has been a tendency in the second language learning field to equate overt production with active learning, and lack of overt production with passivity and disengagement. These conceptual perspectives ... have led to an unconscious assumption that nothing of significance was happening unless learners were talking to others. (Saville-Troike, 1988: 568-69)

As I have indicated, it is my view that 'something of significance' is indeed happening, even when learners are silent.

Granger, Colette A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
(pp. 28-30)

Language and Speech Therapy in a Bilingual Context

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

A bilingual situation adds an extra dimension to the work of language and speech therapists, since a proportion of therapy may be carried out through different languages, concurrently where feasible.

When helping young children, many language and speech therapists work with them in their first language or, in the case of children with no speech at all, in the language their parents speak to them (their potential first language). When children make progress in their first language, the work does not usually have to be repeated when the child encounters a second language at school. The language skills acquired in the first language, such as labeling objects or using verbs, transfer to the second.

Learning a second language does not pose any particular problems for a child with general learning disabilities, although the level achieved in both languages may be lower than that of peers. In fact, the stimulus of acquiring another language, with alternate labels for objects and concepts, seems to help the child progress in both languages. The careful grading of language by the teacher, the repetition of key phrases and vocabulary, the use of visual cues and stimuli, the emphasis on learning through activities, all enable the child to make good progress in the second language alongside the peer group.

The instance where there may be difficulty is when a child has a specific language related disorder. A child who has problems 'tuning into' or processing language may find it difficult to cope with a class where the curriculum is delivered through the medium of a second language. It may not be easy to 'pick up' the second language and the child may be shut out of classroom interaction. A preferable option for such a child might be to attend a school where the curriculum is delivered mainly through the medium of the first language, and the second language is presented only in set periods.

One situation which language and speech therapists encounter is minority language parents who speak the majority language to their children. Sometimes when a child has learning difficulties, parents believe two languages are an extra burden and adopt the useful majority language. This can also happen when the child has not particular problem, but the parents decide from the child's birth to promote the majority language to 'get a good start in life'. The result is that the child is excluded from the interaction between parents and other family and community members.

Since the parents are not native majority language speakers, sometimes the model they offer their child is impoverished and deficient. Thus the child grows up, not advantaged but deprived. A child with learning disabilities is further disadvantaged. It seems preferable, wherever possible, for parents to speak their own language to their child. If acquisition of that first language presents problems, language and speech therapy can help. The second language can be built upon the strong foundations of the first.

Many modern language and speech therapists now refute the suggestion that bilingualism is a burden, even for individuals with congenital or acquired language disabilities. Bilingualism is simply a ;dimension in life, to be taken into account when working with people with different kinds of language disabilities. The ability to speak two languages is a privilege and resource that should be denied to no one.

(pp. 128, 129).

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REF:
Baca, L.M. and Cervantes, H.T. (1998) The Bilingual Special Education Interface (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Bilingualism: Language Delay and Language Disorder

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

Language delay illustrates the erroneous link between bilingualism and developmental problems. Language delay occurs when a child is very late in learning to talk or lags well behind peers in language development. Estimates of language delay in young children vary from 5% to 20% of the child population. Such varying estimates reflect the range in delays from brief and hardly noticeable to more severe.

Language delay may have a variety of causes: partial hearing, deafness, autism, severe subnormality, cerebral palsy, cleft palate and other physical problems or psychological disturbance. In approximately half to two-thirds of all cases, the precise reason remains unknown. Medically normal children with no hearing loss, normal IQ and memory, who are not socially deprived or emotionally disturbed, may be delayed in starting to speak, slow in development or may have problems expressing themselves. In such cases, specialist professional help is needed, from speech therapists, clinical and educational psychologists, counselors and/or doctors.

Parents of bilingual children with such problems should not attribute them to bilingualism. Sometimes, well-meaning professionals suggest this diagnosis, when definite causes remain unknown. Raising children bilingually is sometimes believed to cause language delay, though evidence does not support this position. Raising children bilingually neither increases nor reduces the chance of language disorder or delay.

A key consideration for parents is whether removal of one language will improve, worsen, or have no effect upon language development. Since the cause of the problem may be unknown, intuition and guesswork are often substituted for 'science.' Research in this area is still in its infancy. Confronted with the suggestion of concentrating on one language only, if there is a major diagnosed language delay, parents, teachers and professionals run the risk of accenting the perceived importance of the majority language. In the United States, the advice is often to supply a steady diet of English, the language of school and employment. All too frequently, the majority language reduces the home, minority language, with painful outcomes for the child.

When someone has loved, cared for and played with the child in one language, and then suddenly only uses another language, the child's emotional well being may be hurt. The language used to express love and caring disappears. Simultaneously, and by association, the child may feel the love and care also are not as before. Such a language change is often drastic, with negative after-effects and consequences.

Even when parents and professionals accept that bilingualism does not cause a child's problem, some see monolingualism as a remedy. they reason that removing the 'extra demands' of bilingualism will lighten the child's burden. if the child has a language delay problem, simplifying demands may solve or reduce the problem. The apparent complexity of a bilingual life is relieved. Is this right?

There are many cases where changing from bilingualism to monolingualism will have no effect on the problem. If the child is slow to speak, without an obvious cause, or seems low in self-esteem, dropping one language is unlikely to help. On the contrary, the sudden change in family life may exacerbate the problem, since the stability of language life is disrupted. In most cases, this move is inappropriate. However, it is dangerous to make this advice absolute and unequivocal.

To advise only 'stick with bilingualism' is simplistic and unwise. With language delay, for example, there will be a few family situations where maximal experience in one language is preferable. Where one language is much more secure and better developed than the other, it may be sensible to concentrate on developing the stronger language. If the child only hears one language from one parent, and that parent is often absent, a short-term concentration on the stronger language may help in a language delay period.

This does not mean losing the chance of bilingualism forever. If, or when, language delay disappears, the other language can be reintroduced. If a child with emotional problems detests using a particular language, the family may sensibly decide to accede to the child's preference. Again, once problems have been resolved, the language may be reintroduced, as long as it is immediately associated with pleasurable experiences.

Any temporary move from bilingualism to monolingualism should not be judged the only solution needed. Such a focus is naive and dangerous. Emotional problems may require other rearrangements in the family's pattern of relationships, as discussed with a counselor or psychologist. Language delay may require advice from a speech therapist, including about family language interaction. Temporary monolingualism should only be seen as one component in a package of attempted solutions. However, it is important to reiterate that retaining a bilingual approach, in the great majority of cases will not exacerbate the problem of language delay.

Language Disorder

According to Li Wei, Miller and Dodd (1997), around 5% of all children experience some form of language disorder, including: late speech development, very slow development in language competence, speaking less often and less accurately than normal, inability to produce certain sounds or remember new words, and never achieving the same language competence as peers. Bilingual children are neither more nor less likely to show problems. However, when bilinguals are inaccurate in speaking a second language (as they may be on the learning curve) or when sounds are added from one language to the other (often playful and creative), these are not language disorders.

If the child requires professional assessment and help from a psychologist or speech therapist, this professional must understand the child's bilingual background and the nature of childhood bilingualism. Assessment of the child must be completed in both or all languages, using tests normed on bilinguals, and avoiding comparison with monolinguals in phonology, vocabulary, syntax and fluency.

(pp.126-128)

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REF:
Wei, L., Miller, N. and Dodd, B. (1997) Distinguishing communicative difference from language disorder in bilingual children. Bilingual Family Newsletter 14(1),3-4. (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.)

Bilingualism and Learning Difficulties

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

The previous theme disputed the link between bilingualism and under-achievement in school. The failure of some language minority children to achieve satisfactorily was argued to be potentially the result of a complex equation of factors, none of which was directly linked to bilingualism. These include an educational system that devalues the child's home language and culture and does not build on existing abilities in the home language. The social and economic difficulties that many indigenous and immigrant minorities face were shown to be another possible cause of academic under-achievement.

Another unfair assumption made by some people is that bilingualism causes specific learning disabilities. This topic argues that this assumption is usually false. Bilingualism is rarely a cause of learning difficulties.

Bilingual children are often wrongly assessed as having learning difficulties, because basic mistakes are made in assessment and categorization. A child is often tested in the weaker, second language, inaccurately measuring both language and general cognitive development. In Britain and the United States, immigrant students have often been tested through the medium of English, on English proficiency, while their level of competence in Spanish, Bengali, Cantonese or other first language is ignored. This is discussed more fully in 'Assessment and Bilingual Children' (see p. 130)

The result is that, instead of being seen as developing bilinguals, children with a good command of a first language, in the process of acquiring a second, they may be classed as 'of limited English proficiency' (LEP in the United States) or even as having general learning difficulties. Below average test scores in the second language are wrongly define as a 'deficit' or 'disability' that can be remedied by some form of special education.

While learning difficulties occasionally occur within bilingual children, there are a variety of possible causes, almost none of them aligned to bilingualism. Six examples of causes follow, which are similar to the causes of general under-achievement in school.

* Poverty and material deprivation, child neglect and abuse, helplessness and desperation in the home, extended family and community may create personality, attitudinal and learning conditions that render assessment of learning difficulties more probable. Sometimes such assessment will reflect prejudice, misjudgments and misperceptions about the child's home experiences. The learning problem may thus lie in a mismatch between the culture, attitudes, educational expectations and values of the home and school. Different beliefs, culture, knowledge and cognitive approaches may be devalued, with the child labeled as inferior in intelligence, academically incompetent and low in potential.

* The problem may lie in the standard of education, poor teaching methods, non-motivating, even hostile classroom environment, a dearth of suitable teaching materials.

* The school may inhibit or obstruct learning progress. If a child is taught in a second language, while the home language is ignored, then failure and perceived learning difficulties may result. Some Spanish-speaking children in the United States are placed in English-only classrooms on school entry. They must sink or swim in English. Those who sink may be deemed to have a deficiency. When assessed in their weaker second language, rather than their home language, they are labeled as needing special or remedial education. The monolingual school system itself may then be responsible for specific learning difficulties as well as general underachievement. A school that promotes bilingualism would be more likely to ensure learning success for the same child.

* A lack of self-confidence, low self-esteem, fear of failure and high anxiety in the student may lead to apparent learning difficulties.

* Classroom interactions among children cause some failures. When a group of children encourage each other to play around, share a low motivation to succeed, or where there is bullying, hostility and social division rather than cohesion within a classroom, the learning ethos may hinder individual development.

* Failure is also caused by the mismatch between the gradient of learning expected and individual ability. Some children learn to read more slowly than others, still learning well, but after a longer period of time. Less able children can learn two languages within the (unknowable) limits of their ability. Other children experience specific learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, neurological dysfunction, short term memory problems, poor physical coordination, or problems in attention span and motivation. None of these specific learning disabilities are caused by bilingualism. At the same time, bilingual children will not escape being included in this group; bilingual families are no less likely to be affected than other families.

This list, neither exhaustive nor comprehensive, how that there are many possible roots for a child's learning difficulties, while bilingualism has almost nothing to do with any of them, either as a secondary or primary cause. Bilingualism is unlikely to cause learning difficulties.

Almost the only case where bilingualism is associated with learning difficulty is when a bilingual child enters the classroom with neither language sufficiently developed to cope with the higher order language skills demanded by the curriculum. The child has simple conversational skills in two languages, but cannot keep up in either, thus implicating language in learning difficulties. In this case, bilingualism is not the true problem. The problem is insufficient language practice in the home, nursery school and outside world. it is not bilingual deprivation but deprivation in any language. This is a great rarity, but the only genuine connection, though indirect, of bilingualism with learning difficulties.

(pp. 124,125)

Ability Effects

Is it the case that less able children will experience bilingual cognitive advantages, or would such children be better off as monolinguals? Rueda's (1983) research suggests a 'cognitive advantages' link may be found in less able children. Using children of well below average IQ (51-69 IQ points), Rueda compared bilinguals and monolinguals on three tests: a Meaning and Reference Task which examines the stability and meaning of words (the death of a 'flump', an imaginary animal), the Arbitrariness of Language Task (could we call a 'cat' a 'dog'?), and the Non-Physical Nature of Words Task (does the word 'bird' have feathers?). On each task, the bilinguals tended to score significantly higher. Although Rueda found no difference on a Piagetian conservation test, this research indicates that the cognitive advantages linked to bilingualism may not be specific to higher ability children.

If children have below average ability, there is evidence to suggest that they can still acquire two languages within their unknown limits. While well meaning friends, teachers and speech therapists sometimes suggest that only one language should be developed, Canadian research indicates cognitive advantages in bilingualism for these less able students. Just as their development occurs at a slow pace in mathematics, literacy and science, so also with the development of languages. The size of vocabulary and accuracy of grammar may lag behind the average bilingual child. Nevertheless, such children, acquiring two languages early, will usually be able to communicate in both, often as well as they would in one alone.

(p. 126)

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REFS:

Baca, L.M. and Cervantes, H.T. (1998) The Bilingual Special Education Interface (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Harry, B. (1992) Cultural Diversity, Families and the Special Education System: Communication and Empowerment. New York: Teachers College Press.

Explanations of Under-Achievement in Bilinguals

From Colin Baker's The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals

What may explain seeming under-achievement by language minority children when and where this occurs? When first, second or third generation immigrant children appear to fail in the classroom, where is blame popularly placed? When guest works' children, indigenous minorities and distinct ethnic groups are shown to leave school earlier, achieve less in examinations or receive lower grades, what is the cause?

The blame may be attributed to the child's bilingualism, often popularly seen as causing cognitive confusion. The bilingual brain is depicted as two engines working at half throttle, while the monolingual's single, well-tuned engine runs at full throttle. Such an explanation is usually incorrect. Where two languages are well developed, then bilingualism is more likely to bring advantages than disadvantages. Only when a child's two languages are both underdeveloped can 'blame' be attributed to bilingualism. Even then, the blame should be on the societal circumstances that occasionally create underdeveloped languages.

Where under-achievement exists, the reason assigned may be underexposure to the majority language. Failure or below average performance, in the United States and the United Kingdom, is typically attributed to insufficiently developed English language skills for the curriculum. Those who use a minority language at home are sometimes perceived to struggle at school, due to a lack of competence in the dominant tongue. Thus submersion and transitional forms of bilingual education attempt to ensure a fast conversion to the majority language.

However, such a speedy conversion may do more harm than good; it denies the child's home language skills, even denies the child's identity and self-respect. Instead of using existing skills, the 'sink or swim' approach attempts to replace them. The level of English in the curriculum may be too advanced; consequently, the child under-achieves. Further English lessons become the remedy, but not the best solution.

Providing instruction through the medium of the minority language, in two-way, developmental maintenance or heritage language programs may combat under-achievement. When children are allowed to operate in the heritage language in the curriculum, evidence indicates successful results, including fluency in the majority language (Baker, 1996; Cummins, 2000). Thus underexposure to the majority language, though popular, is an incorrect explanation of under-achievement. It fails to note the advantages of instruction in the minority language. It inappropriately seeks an answer in increased majority language instruction, rather than increased minority language education.

Moreover, when bilingual children under-achieve, there may be a mismatch between home and school, based not only on language differences but also dissimilarities in culture, values and beliefs (Delgado-Gaitan & Trueba, 1991). As an extreme, this reflects an assimilationist, imperialist and oppressive majority viewpoint. The child and family are expected to adjust to the school system, rather than expecting a pluralist system to incorporate variety. From such an assimilationist viewpoint, the solution lies in the home adjusting to mainstream language and culture to prepare the child for school. In the past, some educational psychologists and speech therapists advised language minority parents to raise their children in the majority, school language.

Alternatively, where practicable, the school system should be flexible enough to incorporate the home language and culture. A home-school mismatch can be positive addressed by 'strong forms' of bilingual education for minorities. By two-way, developmental maintenance and heritage language programs, by a multicultural classroom approach with respect for the child's value systems, culture and religious beliefs, the inclusion of parents in running the school and in partnership in their child's education, the mismatch can become a merger.

(pp. 120,121)

Section on socioeconomic factors omitted due to my current focus on international school environments.

This raises another issue. Under-achievement is not simply related to one or several causes. The equation of under-achievement is complex, involving a number of factors, which interact in complicated ways. Umbrella labels, such as 'socioeconomic status' must be broken down into more definable predictors of under-achievement, such as the parents' attitude about education. Home factors interact with school factors and provide an enormous number of different routes to varying degrees of school success. The recipes of success and failure are many, with varies, interacting ingredients. However, socioeconomic and sociocultural features are important in most equations of under-achievement.

Part of the equation is the type of school the child atttends. This topic has highlighted the different outcomes in 'strong' forms of bilingual education, compared with 'weak'. The same child will learn more in programs using the heritage language for instruction than in programs which replace the home language as soon as possible. Therefore, under-achievement in a language minority child or group calls for scrutiny of the whole school. A system that suppresses the home language is likely to explain part of individual and ethnic group under-achievement. It tends to deny the language and cognitive achievements of children, their identity and self-esteem.

'Type of school' is a broad heading, under which a range of quality can exist, from poor to superior. Where under-achievement occurs, it is too simple to blame the type of school, rather than digging deeper and locating more specific causes. Baker (1996), Cummins (2000) and Hornberger (1991) have listed attributes that must be examined in assessing the quality of any educational system serving language minority children. Such factors include the supply, ethnic origins and bilingualism of teachers, classroom balance of minority and majority students, use and sequencing of languages across the curriculum over different grades, and reward systems for enriching the minority language and culture.

Under-achievement may be due to real learning difficulties. It is important to make a distinction. Too often, bilingual children are labeled with learning difficulties, while the causes of problems may be less in the child and more in the school or educational system. A subtractive, assimilative system typically creates negative attitudes and low motivation. In the 'sink or swim' approach, 'sinking' reflects an unsympathetic system and insensitive teaching, rather than individual learning problems. Apart from system and school generated problems, there will be children who are bilingual and have genuine learning difficulties (Cummins, 1984). Distinguishing between the real and the apparent, the system-generated and the remediable problems of the individual highlights alternatives. When under-achievement exists, do we blame the victim, blame the teacher and the school, or blame the system? When assessment tests and examinations show relatively low performance of language minority individuals and groups, will prejudices be confirmed or can we use such assessment to reveal deficiencies in the architecture of the school system and curriculum design? Under-achievement tends to be blamed on the child and the language minority group, while the explanation often lies in factors outside the individual.

A particular case of under-achievement is when students drop-out of schools. Stephen Krashen (1999) provides evidence to show that bilingual education is not the cause of dropping-out in United States schools, but it may be the cure. Latino students do have higher dropout rates (e.g. 30% of Latino students are classified as drop-outs compared to 8.6% of non-Latino whites and 12.1% of non-Latino blacks). Krashen's (1999) review of evidence suggest that those who had experienced bilingual education were significantly less likely to drop-out.

There are factors (other than bilingual education) related to dropping-out such as socio-economic class, recency of immigration, family environment, and the presence of print at home. It is estimated that 40% of Latino children are more likely to have parents who did not complete High School. When these factors are controlled statistically, the drop-out rate among Latinos is the same (or virtually the same) as for other groups. Since 'strong' forms of bilingual schooling tend to produce higher standards of academic English and performance across the curriculum, then such schools become part of the cure for dropping-out.

(pp.122,123)

SOURCE:
Baker, Colin (2000) The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An Introduction for Professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

REFS:
Baca, L.M. and Cervantes, H.T. (1998) The Bilingual Special Education Interface (3rd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cummins, J. (1984) Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Harry, B. (1992) Cultural Diversity, Families and the Special Education System: Communication and Empowerment. New York: Teachers College Press.

Krashen, S.D. (1999) Condemned Without a Trial: Bogus Arguments Against Bilingual Education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

How Wikipedia's Collaborative Systems Work

TEDTalks: Jimmy Wales, Oxford, July 2005


The goal of Wikipedia/Wikimedia is to get a free encyclopedia to everyone on the planet. At the time of Wales's presentation, Wikipedia amounted to over 2 million articles in a variety of languages. Only around 1/3 of traffic to the site is directed at the English section of the encyclopedia. The foundation only has one paid employee, the lead software developer, and the rest of the work is done by volunteers. The main cost is around $5000/month in bandwidth.


"Why isn't it all rubbish?" (ie. given a completely chaotic model).
"Most people understand the need for neutrality."
"How do we manage the quality control?"
Wales states that social policies and elements of the software contribute to this.

It's a social concept of co-operation... anytime there's a controversial issue, Wikipedia should not take a stand on it, we should merely report what reputable parties have said about it.

Neutral Point of View policy:
* NPOV - Neutral Point of View
* NPOV is a social concept of co-operation, avoids some philosophical issues
* Diverse political, religious, cultural backgrounds
* Kept together by our "NPOV" policy

Real-time peer review: every time a change is made, the changes are fed into IRC and RSS feeds that peers have on their personal 'watch lists.' Therefore, someone will notice the change very quickly, and if it doesn't conform to policy then the page will be reverted.

Edits by anonymous users only account for approximately 18% of the edits on the website. The vast majority of the edits on the website are made by a fairly dedicated, close-knit community of around 600-1000 people who are in constant communication.

The software tools support close monitoring of encyclopedia entries, such as 'page history,' which highlights page modifications in red. A social method that grew up in the community is the "Votes for Deletion" page, which creates a forum for the community to dialogue on issues for clarification.

The wikipedia governance model is a very confusing but workable mix of consensus... we try not to vote on the content of articles, because the majority view is not necessarily neutral; some amount of democracy - all of the administrations - these are the people who have the ability to delete pages - that doesn't mean they have the right to delete pages - they still have to follow all of the rules - but they're elected by the community. Sometimes random trolls on the Internet accuse me of hand-picking the administrators to bias the content of the encyclopedia. I always laugh at this, because I have no idea how they're elected, actually. There's a certain amount of aristocracy... Rick Cave's voice would carry a lot more weight than someone we don't know. And then there's monarchy, and that's my role in the community... I don't like the term 'benevolent dictator'... it isn't appropriate, but there's a need still for a certain amount of monarchy. Sometimes we need to make a decision quick and we don't want to get bogged down too heavily in formal decision making processes... we won't allow our openness and freedom to undermine the quality of the content. So as long as people trust me in my role, then that's a valid place for me. Because of the free licencing, if I do a bad job, the volunteers are more than happy to take and leave - I can't tell anyone what to do.

So the final point here is to understand that we are not fanatical web anarchists. We're very flexible about the social methodology, because ultimately the passion of the community is for the quality of the work, not necessarily for the process that we use to generate it.

During a subsequent Q&A it was suggested to Wales that a lot of biased textbooks are being used in schools, and he was asked whether or not Wikipedia is being employed by teachers and schools.

There's a media storyline about Wikipedia which I think is false. It builds on the storyline of bloggers versus newspapers, and the storyline is that there's this crazy thing, Wikipedia, but academics hate it and teachers hate it, and that turns out to not be true... I think there's going to be huge impacts, and we actually have a project...the Wikibooks projects, which is an effort to create textbooks in all the languages... part of that is to fulfill our mission of giving an encyclopedia to every single person on the planet... I think that we're really going to see... freely licensed textbooks are the next big thing in education.

Smarter fuels for developing nations

TEDTalks: Amy Smith, Feb 2006

The number one killer of children under the age of 5 is the inhalation from indoor cooking fires. A lot of effort has been put into looking for alternatives to charcoal as cooking fuels. The use of wood charcoal not only creates health risks due to inhalation of heavy smoke, but also leads to environmental degradation, in terms of destabilisation of hillsides due to the heavy use of wood. Smith works through examples of MIT studies in Haiti. Bagas, a waste resource from sugar cane is processed and combined with a sticky paste derived from casava to create brickettes for cooking.

In India the most commonly used cooking fuel is cow dung, which creates very smoky fires (ie. heavy impact on health). The locally available sources of biomass were wheat and rice straw, with small amounts of cow manure as a binder. After studying optimal pressures for compression of the brickettes, a low cost press was developed for use in Haiti.

Thus, the use of agricultural waste as cooking fuels, as opposed to wood, can be not only healthier, but also environmentally sustainable. Another example was the use of corn cobs, which form ready-made charcoal briquettes.

This is also one of the incredibly rare situations where you also have economic benefits. People can make their own cooking fuel from waste products. They can generate income from this. They can save the money they were going to spend on charcoal, and they can produce excess and sell it in the market to people who aren't making their own. It's extremely rare that you don't have trade-offs between health and economics, or environment and economics.

She suggests that people below the poverty line need to be able to make new, genuine 'value' products, and that we need to work with them to give them resources and tools so that they can solve their own problems.

Our (uniquely correct) worldview?

Regardless of when or where we live, we inevitably perceive ourselves as the Middle Kingdom, and either we smile condescendingly at the mythmaking of other cultures or we go to war with them to force upon them our (uniquely correct) worldview. And if we are better at crafting weapons, we are generally able to persuade those we have physically conquered of the superiority of our myths over theirs.

Glad, John. (2008) "Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century." Hermitage, Schuylkill Haven. p.8

...and although John Glad's book/extended paper on eugenics commences in an innocuous fashion, and gently argues its way around the politics of eugenics, I must explicitly state that there are elements of his book that I don't agree with. Despite the fact that he begins the book with a seemingly sociologically sensitive statement, by the time we reach the final stretch of his argument we read, "Abortion should be actively promoted, since it often serves as the last and even only resort for many low-IQ mothers who fail to practice contraception." (p.79). So much of his argument hinges upon the concept of IQ as a measure of the right to survive. It disturbs me that we still have people who measure intelligence and potential in a number. Read with caution.

Steven Pinker: Race is skin-deep

Race is, quite literally, skin-deep, but to the extent that perceivers generalize from external to internal differences, nature has duped them into thinking that race is important. The X-ray vision of the molecular geneticist reveals the unity of our species.

And so does the X-ray vision of the cognitive scientist. "Not speaking the same language" is a virtual synonym for incommensurability, but to a psycholinguist, it is a superficial difference. Knowing about the ubiquity of complex language across individuals and cultures and the single mental design underlying them all, no speech seems foreign to me, even when I cannot understand a word. The banter among New Guinean Highlanders in the film of their first contact with the rest of the world, the motions of a sign language interpreter, the prattle of little girls in a Tokyo playground - I imagine seeing through the rhythms to the structures underneath, and sense that we all have the same minds.

Pinker, Steven. (1994) "The Language Instinct." HarperCollins, New York. p. 430

Brains - it's size that counts?

At the level of the whole brain, the remark that there has been selection for bigger brains is, to be sure, common in writings about human evolution (especially from paleoanthropologists). Given that premise, one might naturally think that all kinds of computational abilities might come as a by-product. But if you think about it for a minute, you should quickly see that the premise has it backwards. Why would evolution ever have selected for sheer bigness of brain, that bulbous, metabolically greedy organ? A large-brained creature is sentenced to a life that combines all the disadvantages of balancing a watermelon on a broomstick, running in place in a down jacket, and, for women, passing a large kidney stone every few years. Any selection on brain size itself would surely have favored the pinhead. Selection for more powerful computational abilities (language, perception, reasoning, and so on) must have given us a big brain as a by-product, not the other way around!

Pinker, Steven. (1994) "The Language Instinct." HarperCollins, New York. p. 363

What kids learn in virtual worlds

I am drawing these quotes from Doug Thomas, Annenberg School of Communication, who is cited by Stefanie Olsen in a special feature of CNet's news.com:

Knowledge is changing. It (used to be that it) was a set of facts, now it's not so much a 'what' but a 'where,' in which kids learn how to find information," Thomas said. "That's going to be the single most important skill--the ability to adapt to change.

It's strange that we need experts to point this out to us. The ability and willingness to be flexible is much more far-reaching than just this kind of tech-flex, though.

He added: "I wouldn't be worried if they're engaged and playing these games, I'd be more worried if they're not."

Again, it's stating the obvious, but we need voices like Thomas's to state what seems to be so broadly missed by so many: exclusion leads to lack of competence in a broad set of social skills. When we look at any kind of media literacy, isn't it safer and more socially responsible to actively get involved and teach kids how to be literate within these media? This is not just "digital literacy" in terms of being able to functionally navigate software, but the deeper literacy of being able to deconstruct texts at a philosophical and psychological level.

If you're a parent, I would be much less concerned about things like online predators or violence, then I would be about the conflation between consumption and consumerism and citizenship (in virtual worlds).

I predict that this last statement may raise the ire of some advocates, but it's being extreme in order to make a point. On the one hand we fear the issues that the popular media makes so blatant and so explicit, however, the popular media is quite often not so interested in making us wise, responsible consumers and citizens, because then the shareholders couldn't exploit us as much. Consumption of new media has a profound effect on molding the citizenry. Access to, and knowledge of, specific digital resources could become components of caste and class in this century.

Link to source article

A Martian's-eye-view of language

Chomsky's claim that from a Martian's-eye-view all humans speak a single language is based on the discovery that the same symbol-manipulating machinery, without exception, underlies the world's languages. Linguists have long known that the basic design features of language are found everywhere. Many were documented in 1960 by the non-Chomskyan linguist C. F. Hockett in a comparison between human languages and animal communication systems (Hockett was not acquainted with Martian). Languages use the mouth-to-ear channel as long as the users have intact hearing (manual and facial gestures, of course, are the substitute channel used by the deaf). A common grammatical code, neutral between production and comprehension, allows speakers to produce any linguistic message they can understand, and vice versa. Words have stable meanings, linked to them by arbitrary convention. Speech sounds are treated discontinuously; a sound that is acoustically halfway between bat and pat does not meaning something halfway between batting and patting. Languages can convey meanings that are abstract and remote in time or space from the speaker. Linguistic forms are infinite in number, because they are created by a discrete combinatorial system. Languages all show a duality of patterning in which one rule system is used to order phonemes within morphemes, independent of meaning, and another is used to order morphemes within words and phrases, specifying their meaning.

Pinker, Steven. (1994) "The Language Instinct." HarperCollins, New York. p. 237

Hobbes: What it is to lay down a right

What it is to lay down a Right
To Lay Downe a mans Right to any thing, is to Devest himselfe
of the Liberty, of hindring another of the benefit of his own
Right to the same. For he that renounceth, or passeth away his Right,
giveth not to any other man a Right which he had not before;
because there is nothing to which every man had not Right by Nature:
but onely standeth out of his way, that he may enjoy his own
originall Right, without hindrance from him; not without hindrance
from another. So that the effect which redoundeth to one man,
by another mans defect of Right, is but so much diminution of
impediments to the use of his own Right originall.

Thomas Hobbes, "The Leviathan." Chapter XIV

Learning is caused by complexity in the mind

From Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct:

The idea that the human mind is designed to use abstract variables and data structures used to be, and in some circles still is, a shocking and revolutionary claim, because the structures have no direct counterpart in the child's experience. Some of the organization of grammar would have to be there from the start, part of the language-learning mechanism that allows children to make sense out of all of the noises they hear from their parents. The details of syntax have figured prominently in the history of psychology, because they are a case where complexity in the mind is not caused by learning; learning is caused by complexity in the mind. And that was real news.

Pinker, Steven (1994) "The Language Instinct." Harper Collins, New York. p.125