Language Study as Science: Using L2s as a foundation for L1 linguistics education in a middle grade science class

Kristin Denham

Western Washington University (Bellingham, Washington, USA)

SIG EduLing Conference

25 June 2021

denham@wwu.edu

Foundational foci and collaborators

• Focus on scientific inquiry and scientific methodology (Denham and Pippin 2014, 2018; Honda and O’Neil 1993; Honda 1994; Honda, O’Neil, and Pippin 2010), which may help “struggling students” (Honda, O’Neil and Pippin 2004; Denham 2007)
• Investigation of of various non-English L2s (Ginsburg, Honda, and O’Neil 2011), which may prove important for engaging the students and perhaps for making L1 connections

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The current project, with co-PI David Pippin, builds on this groundwork and has important implications not only for engagement with science and for students’ attitudes towards scientific inquiry – regardless of what kind of classroom they are in – but also for addressing attitudes about language, and especially stigmatized varieties, that can have serious implications for educational opportunities, employment, and even housing (Baugh 2003, Lippi-Green 2011, among others).

The Current Study: Assessing Scientific Inquiry Using Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Practices (with middle school teacher David Pippin)

A four-week unit in middle grade (ages 11-14) involving linguistic analysis and problem-solving. Methodology:

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• Students will take a pre- and post-unit survey about science and about language attitudes.

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• The data we collect will also come from the observation and recording of those observations as the students work on problem-solving tasks, including classroom discussion and collaborative work.

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The hypotheses and corresponding research questions are straightforward but establish a baseline for further research:

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1) Do students develop an understanding of scientific methodology and science as a mode of inquiry through analysis of language data?

2) Do students’ attitudes towards languages and language varieties shift by using the languages of the school as the basis for scientific analysis?

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Language and Science Survey

Part 1 - Demographic Information

Part 2 - Open-ended questions about language (What is language? Why do people study language?)

Part 3 - Likert scale questions about language attitudes

Part 4 - Likert scale questions about multilingualism

Part 5 - Open-ended questions about science (What is science? What is a hypothesis? Why do scientists do experiments?)

Benefits of Linguistics in a Science Class

In addition to the obvious benefit to teaching about the scientific method and scientific inquiry in a science class, there are also other benefits of teaching about language via science:

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• We don’t have to try situate the student tasks within a typical or traditional L1 curriculum (and can avoid the misconceptions, the traditional grammar content, the prescriptive rules and attitudes surrounding them, standardized English)

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• We can more easily use languages other than English (since English is not the focus)

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• We can focus on linguistic features that are not the typical, traditional ones of L1 language study (parts of speech, pronoun usage, subject-verb agreement, etc.)

Engaging in Scientific Inquiry and Scaffolding the Inquiry

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Make a testable hypothesis

Make observations

Revise hypothesis

Collect more data

Formulate research question(s)

Examples of Problem Sets: Scientific Methodology at Work

Two examples illustrate the step-by-step methodology used to introduce students to the scientific method.

The first is a phonological phenomenon of a variety of English of the Boston area, here called New England /r/, where students are guided to hypothesize about when the /r/ is pronounced and when it isn’t.

The second example of a guided problem set examines a word formation process (via reduplication) in Lushootseed, an indigenous Salish language of what is now Washington state.

The Appendix offers two more examples, pluralization in Nicaraguan Creole English and in Spanish.

New England /r/

(Note this is only a portion of the longer problem set on New England /r/.)

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List A: List B:

car run

father bring

card principal

bigger string

cardboard okra

beer approach

court April

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Generate a hypothesis that accounts for New England /r/-dropping. You should start with an If-Then statement.

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If [a set of conditions that you decide], then speakers will drop /r/

—or—

If [a set of conditions that you determine], then speakers will keep /r/.

Lushootseed reduplicative morphology

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(Note this is only a portion of the longer problem set on Lushootseed reduplication.)

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A B

ʔáɬ fast, quickly ʔáɬáɬ hurry up!

d^záq’ fall, topple d^záq’áq’ stagger, totter

čəx̌ split čəx̌əx̌ cracked to pieces

Offer a description of the process that forms the words in B from those in A. “My hypothesis is that in order to make the “out of control” form of a word, you...

Below are a few more words that employ the “out of control” reduplicative affixation process. Do these words, conform to your hypothesis? If not, revise your hypothesis to account for these pairs.

C D

yubil starve yububil tired out, sick

g^wədil sit down g^wədədil sitting for lack of anything else to do

sax^wəb jump, run sax^wax^wəb scurrying about ineffectively

Revised Hypothesis:

Grammatical Themes of the Data Sets in current project

Pluralization: Nicaraguan Creole English, Spanish, Armenian, Haitian Kreyòl, Mandarin

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• plural marked on the head noun, plural marked on a noun phrase (agreement), no marking

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Questions: Japanese, American Sign Language, French, Haitian Kreyòl

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• question particles, double marking, movement, intonation

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Negation: Navajo, French, Japanese, Hawaiian, Haitian Kreyòl

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• multiple negation, negative particle, intonation

Why these aspects of language?

• It has the benefit of opening up discussion of those features that all languages share.
• linguistic universals, linguistic equality, linguistic discrimination

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• Invites exploration of those features in other languages
• the classroom becomes a lab
• the students become the experts

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• Provides a novel entree to investigation of L1 grammar, including the more traditional topics of L1 grammatical study
• Analysis of noun pluralization necessitates learning about lexical category distinctions
• Analysis of negation can lead to discussion of auxiliary vs main verbs, words vs clitics, double negation (prescription)
• Analysis of questions can lead to discussion of utterance types, auxiliary verbs, grammatical functions (subjects and objects)

Returning to Research Questions

Big Question 1: Do students develop an understanding of scientific methodology and science as a mode of inquiry though analysis of language data?

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Big Question 2: Do students’ attitudes towards languages and language varieties shift after engaging in linguistic problem-solving, and if so, how?

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Data collection via

• the pre- and post-unit survey
• student problem-solving work

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Future Research Directions and Questions

• How does students’ knowledge of linguistic concepts they’ve acquired during this unit reveal itself in other areas/classes, including L1 grammar?
• What are the underlying metaconcepts (such as valency, predication, modification, or complementation) that students acquire? (Lipman 2003; van Rijt, de Swart, Wijnands, and Coppen 2019; van Rijt, Wijnands, and Coppen 2020) And how are those then used elsewhere?
• Can this kind of approach in a science class help us re-envision an L1 grammar class, when freed from the expectations of what such a class is supposed to be or has been? (Lobeck, this conference; Denham 2020)
• What are the best ways to introduce other teachers to such an approach? (van Rijt, Wijnands, and Coppen 2020)
• What are the (social? academic? linguistic?) benefits to using the students’ home languages as the objects of study? And how might we structure research to get at this, beyond a language attitude survey?

Isn’t it incumbent on all of us to engage in discussions about social justice and equity and their relationship to language, even if our particular course goals are not focused on that?

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Dank u

References

Adams, J and Lim, F. V. 2020. Towards a functional literacy approach to teach the language of science in the Singapore classroom. Pedagogical Linguistics 1:2, 125-148.

Baugh, J. 2003. Linguistic Profiling. In Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas by Sinfree Makoni, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha F. Ball, Arthur K. Spears. London, New York: Routledge.

Denham, K. 2020. Positioning students as linguistic and social experts: Teaching grammar and linguistics in the United States. L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature 20, 1- 16. https://doi.org/10.17239/L1ESLL-2020.20.03.02

Denham, K. and D. Pippin. 2019. Sustained Linguistic Inquiry as a Means of Confronting Language Ideology and Linguistic Prejudice. In Teachers’ and Linguists’ Perspectives: Practical Strategies for Teaching Language Variation and Language Ideologies, edited by Michelle Devereaux and Chris Palmer, London, New York: Routledge.

Denham, K. and D. Pippin. 2014. Voices of the Pacific Northwest: Language and Life along the Columbia and throughout Cascadia from the 18th Century to the Present. Middle school social studies curriculum. https://www.voicesofthepnw.net/

Devereaux, M., Palmer, C., and Thompson, V. 2021. Pandialectal Learning: Teaching Global Englishes in a 10^th-grade English Class. American Speech, Vol. 96, No. 2, May 2021, 235-252.

Ginsburg, D., Honda, M., and O’Neil, W. 2011. Looking Beyond English: Linguistic Inquiry for English Language Learners. Language an Linguistics Compass 5.5: 249-264. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2011.00271.x

Honda, M. 1994. Linguistic Inquiry in the Science Classroom: “It is science, but it's not like a science problem in a book.” MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, No. 6. Cambridge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.

Honda, M. and W. O’Neil. 1993. Triggering science-forming capacity through linguistic inquiry. In The View from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds.), 229-255. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

Honda, M. and O’Neil. W. 2008. Thinking Linguistically: A scientific approach to language. New York: Wiley Blackwell.

Honda, M., O’Neil, W., & Pippin, D. 2010. On promoting linguistics literacy: Bringing language science to the English classroom. In K. Denham and A. Lobeck (Eds.), Linguistics at School: language awareness in primary and secondary education. 175-188. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Lipman, M. 2003. Thinking in Education. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.

Lippi-Green, R. 2011. English with an accent: language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States, 2nd edition. London, New York: Routledge.

van Rijt, J., Wijnands, A. & Coppen, P-A. 2020. How secondary school students may benefit from linguistic metaconcepts to reason about L1 grammatical problems, Language and Education, 34:3, 231-248, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2019.1690503

Van Rijt, J., P. De Swart, A. Wijnands, and P.-A. Coppen. 2019. “When Students Tackle Grammatical Problems: Exploring Linguistic Reasoning with Linguistic Metaconcepts in L1 Grammar Education.” Linguistics and Education 52: 78–88. doi:10.1016/j.linged.2019.06.004.

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Appendix: Sample Problem Sets on Pluralization

Nicaragua Creole English, also known as Mískito Coast Creole, is a language of the coastal Nicaraguan region of Mosquito Coast on the Caribbean Sea; its approximately 20,000 speakers are spread over a number of small villages.

Use the data below to create a hypothesis for the formation of plurals in Nicaraguan English. (When is -dem used and when is it not?)

Group 1

a. The boat-dem de in the river. ‘the boats are in the river’

b. I did see Ronald book-dem. ‘I saw Ronald’s books.’

Group 2

c. “On the first day of Christmas, my true love send to me two turtledove, four calling bird, five golden ring…”

d. Is many dog in Bluefields? ‘there are many dogs in Bluefields’

e. These dog de in the street ‘these dogs are in the street’

Appendix: Sample Problem Sets on Pluralization

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Develop a hypothesis for the formation of plural nouns in Spanish. To construct your theory, you’ll want to follow the following steps:

1. Identify the spoken forms of the regular ending, or morpheme.
2. Analyze the conditions under which the different endings are used.
3. Develop your ideas into one hypothesis statement using an If-then or To do + conditions structure.

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