Out of many, one: challenges in teaching multilingual Kenyan primary students in English

Hsieh, Ching-Ni; Ionescu, Marcel; Ho, Te-Wei

doi:10.1080/07908318.2017.1378670

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Use of the invariant tag in Kenyan EMC classrooms can also be seen as an example of "safe talk" strategies (Chick, 1996;Weber, 2008) that teachers develop in response to language restrictions and varying levels of proficiency in English (Hsieh, Ionescu, & Ho, 2018). Using isn't it helps the teacher to maintain classroom norms and to monitor student behavior and compliance with monolingual language policy, consistent with Bernstein's notion of regulative discourse.…”

Section: Isn't It As a Regulative Feature In Classroom Discoursementioning

confidence: 94%

“Her sentence is correct, isn't it?”: Regulative discourse in English medium classrooms

Kiramba

Smith

2019

Teaching and Teacher Education

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Research on discourse in African classrooms has shown the predominance of teacher centered instructional practices. Teacher centered discourse patterns have been blamed for student passivity and disengagement in knowledge production. In this article, we investigate teachers' use of the invariant tag isn't it in Kenyan primary classrooms during ELA and math lessons. Using Bernstein's pedagogical device theory, we submit that the tag plays a regulative function in classroom discourse. Based on our findings, we argue for greater attention to teachers' language choices and discuss implications for classroom discourse practice and research. The invariant tag isn't it is a common linguistic feature in World Englishes, including Kenyan English. Teachers across Kenya are familiar with use of isn't it in and outside the context of schooling. We examined use of isn't it in discourse in English medium classrooms. Teachers' use of the invariant tag isn't it regulated classroom discourse and limited dialogue

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Section: Isn't It As a Regulative Feature In Classroom Discoursementioning

confidence: 94%

“Her sentence is correct, isn't it?”: Regulative discourse in English medium classrooms

Kiramba

Smith

2019

Teaching and Teacher Education

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“…Two examples that report national assessment projects provide additional details into YLs’ development: one in a European (Csapó & Nikolov, 2009; Nikolov, 2009) and another one in an African context (Hsieh, Ionescu, & Ho, 2017). In Hungary, YLs’ proficiency was assessed on nationally representative samples of about ten thousand participants in years 6 and 8 in 2000 and in 2002 to measure their levels of FL proficiency, analyze how their language skills changed after two years, and what roles individual differences and variables of provision (number of weekly classes and years of FL learning) played.…”

Section: Assessment Of Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing young learners’ foreign language abilities

Nikolov

Timpe‐Laughlin

2020

Lang. Teach.

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Abstract Given the exponential growth in the popularity of early foreign language programs, coupled with an emphasis of evidence-based instruction, assessing young learners’ (YLs) foreign language abilities has moved to center stage. This article canvasses how the field of assessing young learners of foreign languages has evolved over the past two decades. The review offers insights into how and why the field has developed, how constructs have been defined and operationalized, what language proficiency frameworks have been used, why children were assessed, what aspects of their foreign language proficiency have been assessed, who was involved in the assessment, and how the results have been used. By surveying trends in foreign language (FL) and content-based language learning programs involving children between the ages of 3 and 14, the article highlights research into assessment of and for learning, and critically discusses areas such as large-scale assessments and proficiency examinations, comparative and experimental studies, the impact of assessment, teachers’ beliefs and assessment practices, young learners’ test-taking strategies, age-appropriate tasks, alternative and technology-mediated assessment, as well as game-based assessments. The final section of the article highlights where more research is needed, thus outlining potential future directions for the field.

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“…Despite the potential instructional value of subscores, however, few previous investigations of subscores addressed language tests specifically designed for young learners. Research on assessments of young learners' language proficiency has become quite active in the recent years (Wolf & Butler, 2017), and as a standardized assessment of young EFL learners' English proficiency, the TOEFL Primary tests have been studied in terms of their theoretical and empirical properties (Cho et al, 2016;Hsieh et al, 2018;Lee & Winke, 2018;Zu, Moulder, & Morgan, 2017). In addition, the added-value of subscores from the TOEFL Primary Reading and Listening sections have been examined using Haberman's (2008) method (Papageorgiou & Choi, 2018), based on data collected from several operational administrations mostly in South American and Asian countries.…”

Section: Subscores In Language Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pilot data were originally collected in 2016 and used to evaluate the feasibility of using the TOEFL Primary test (Step 2) as a part of Kenya's national English education curriculum. The original purposes and background of the pilot administrations are detailed elsewhere (Hsieh et al, 2018).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating subscore uses across multiple levels: A case of reading and listening subscores for young EFL learners

Choi

Papageorgiou

2019

Language Testing

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Stakeholders of language tests are often interested in subscores. However, reporting a subscore is not always justified; a subscore should provide reliable and distinct information to be worth reporting. When a subscore is used for decisions across multiple levels (e.g., individual test takers and schools), it needs to be justified for its reliability and distinctiveness at every relevant level. In this study, we examined whether reporting seven Reading and Listening subscores of the TOEFL Primary® test, a standardized English proficiency test for young English as a foreign language learners, could be justified for reporting at individual and school levels. We analyzed data collected in pilot administrations, in which 4776 students from 51 schools participated. We employed the classical test theory (CTT) based approaches of Haberman (2008) and Haberman, Sinharay, and Puhan (2009) for the individual and school-level investigations, respectively. We also supplemented the CTT-based approaches with a factor analytic approach for the individual level analysis and a multilevel modeling approach for the school-level analysis. The results differed across the two levels: we found little support for reporting the subscores at the individual level, but strong evidence supporting the added-value of the school-level subscores when the sample size for each school exceeds 50.

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Out of many, one: challenges in teaching multilingual Kenyan primary students in English

Cited by 10 publications

References 14 publications

“Her sentence is correct, isn't it?”: Regulative discourse in English medium classrooms

“Her sentence is correct, isn't it?”: Regulative discourse in English medium classrooms

Assessing young learners’ foreign language abilities

Evaluating subscore uses across multiple levels: A case of reading and listening subscores for young EFL learners

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