Session Information
31 SES 06 B, Developing Skills In Writing: Textual, generative, and multilingual perspectives
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper addresses longitudinal cross-language influences in lower-secondary students’ multilingual writing skills in three different languages: Heritage languages (HLs) – Turkish or Russian, in the majority language (ML) – German, as well as in a foreign language (FL) – English.
The growing linguistic diversity in most European regions is reflected in the heterogeneity of students’ language repertoires and language proficiencies. In Germany, 21 percent (17 million) of the German population were reported to have a migration background, representing the largest share of migrants than ever before (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017). In such linguistically diverse settings, the development of language skills may be determined by the status of languages, language prestige and their market value at the global level (Gogolin, 1997; Sierens and Van Avermaet, 2014) and by the variety of personal or familial characteristics at the individual level (Hammer et al., 2014). Thus, the intensive investment into learning the majority and foreign languages is promoted at political and societal levels and is reflected in educational practices across Europe and beyond. On contrast, the constellations for the acquisition of literacy skills in the HLs, which arise in a migration context, are restricted to HL classes at school, language courses organized by diaspora or non-formal predominantly familial learning settings.
Whereas a large body of research is devoted to the multilingual oral language skills or reading, the construct of multilingual writing skills and the relationship among the languages within this construct still needs to be empirically clarified. Previous research on the relationship between students’ writing skills has covered two distinct fields: writing in both languages of bilinguals and writing in majority and foreign languages. The research in both areas has provided first evidence for the positive relation between students’ writing skills in different languages. Thus, writing skills in bilinguals have been shown to correlate in different students’ languages (Cenoz and Gorter, 2011; Danzak, 2011; Usanova, 2019). Furthermore, the interrelation of languages may vary in the different dimensions of writing (Danzak, 2011; Usanova 2019) and may depend on the extent of language skills in both languages of bilinguals (Lanauze and Snow, 1989). Studies on writing skills in ML and FL have also shown their interactive and complex nature (Jude et al., 2008) and found strong association between ML and foreign language writing proficiency (Schoonen et al., 2011). According to the theoretical approaches to bilingual literacy (e. g. Biliteracy Model of Nancy Hornberger; Focus on Multilingualism of Cenoz and Gorter), the complexity of multilingual literacy skills, the interaction between the systems and their dynamics, can be wholly captured only by considering the relationship between all students’ languages in their development (Cenoz and Gorter, 2011, p. 360). By taking this theoretical perspective, the current paper provides the first step in approaching the given multilingual complexity of writing skills by (1) simultaneously accounting for three languages based on (2) longitudinal data. It addresses the following research questions:
- How do multilingual students perform in HL, ML and FL writing over time?
- What are the cross-language relationships of students’ writing skills between the heritage language, the majority language and a school foreign language over time?
Method
We apply the data from the German panel study “Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Perspective (MEZ)” which reveals a unique broadly-based data source for investigating the development of students’ multilingual literacy skills in Germany (Gogolin et al. 2017). The MEZ study is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). It was designed as a longitudinal cohort-sequence study with two starting cohorts (7th resp. 9th graders) and with four waves of data collection within a three-year period (2016 to 2018). The panel comprises of more than 2000 students encompassing students with Russian, Turkish, and monolingual German heritage language background. Due to this design, it is possible to investigate the multilingual language development of students from Germany’s two largest migrant populations and the native reference population during the lower level of secondary schooling and during their transition to higher education or vocational training. Data collection refers to receptive, productive, and general language proficiencies in the majority language German, in the heritage languages Russian resp. Turkish, and in English and French resp. Russian taught at school; controls include non-verbal cognitive ability test data; questionnaire data refers to education and migration biography, SES, language use, motivation, education attitudes, future aspirations and expectations, vocational orientations, and actual transitions. For the statistical analyses to be presented, we used the data on students’ writing skills from the first three waves. The sample consists of 967 students from Russian or Turkish heritage language background. The data were collected by applying equivalent writing tasks for testing students’ writing skills in every language at each wave. In the first step of our analysis, we show results on relationships between HL, ML, and FL. To consider the level of writing skills in HL as a relevant indicator for the relationship between the languages as suggested by previous research, we compare mean levels on writing in German and English of bilinguals with higher HL writing skills to those with lower HL writing skills. In the second step, we obtain sophisticated statistical inference for cross-language interdependencies by using a longitudinal structural equation model (SEM) framework (Little 2013). Therefore, we introduce a longitudinal latent panel model of students’ writing skills in three languages (Klinger et al, 2019; Schnoor, forthcoming 2019).
Expected Outcomes
The results provide first insights into the complex structure of migrant students’ language development in their heritage language, German and English over an 18-month period. The findings reveal that students with better developed writing skills in their HLs tend to perform significantly better in ML and FL writing than those with less developed HL writing skills. The difference between the groups remains significant even after controlling for cognitive abilities, socioeconomic status, parents’ educational background, gender, grade, and school type. In the second part, we present the analysis on cross-linguistic influences in the process of multilingual development of writing skills by estimating cross-lagged effects between languages at each wave. Considering the given differences in the acquisition context of HL, ML, and FL, we expect the stronger interdependencies between the school languages (German and English) than between heritage languages (Russian and Turkish) and both other languages (German and English). The results of this paper should contribute to the research on bilinguals which argues for the development of HL competencies as they may represent an additional resource and a basis for ML acquisition (Bialystok, 2013; Bialystok and Poarch, 2014; Cummins, 2013; Leseman et al., 2009; Verhoeven et al., 2012). Furthermore, this paper aims to advance theoretical and empirical perspectives on multilingual writing skills. It contributes to the clarity of the concept surrounding the relationship between the languages in a multilingual repertoire. Such clarity may empower educators to respond to linguistic diversity at school in line with the growing body of research which calls for integrating migrant languages into the given educational settings by providing the possibilities for students to learn and to apply their heritage languages in regular curricular (Sierens and Van Avermaet, 2014; Duarte, 2018; Duarte and Günther-Van der Meij, 2018).
References
Bialystok, E. (2002). Acquisition of Literacy in Bilingual Children: A Framework for Research. Language Learning, 52(1), 159-199. Bialystok, E., & Poarch, G. (2014). Language experience changes language and cognitive ability. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft ZfE, 17(3), 433-446. Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2011). Focus on multilingualism: A study of trilingual writing. Modern Language Journal, 95, 356-369. Danzak, R. L. (2011). The integration of lexical, syntactic, and discourse features in bilingual adolescents' writing: An exploratory approach. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 42(4), 491-505. doi:10.1044/0161-1461(2011/10-0063) Duarte, J. (2018). Translanguaging in the context of mainstream multilingual education. International Journal of Multilingualism. doi:10.1080/14790718.2018.1512607 Duarte, J., & Günther-van der Meij, M. (2018). A holistic model for multilingualism in education. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 5(2), 24-43. Gogolin, I. (1997). „Arrangements” als Hindernis & Potential für Veränderung der schulischen sprachlichen Bildung. In I. Gogolin & U. Neumann (Eds.), Großstadt Grundschule. Eine Fallstudie über sprachliche und kulturelle Pluralität als Bedingung der Grundschularbeit (pp. 311 – 344). Münster. New York. Hammer, C. S., Hoff, E., Uchikoshi, Y., Gillanders, C., Castro, D., & Sandilos, L. E. (2014). The language and literacy development of young dual language learners: A critical review. Early Child Res Q, 29(4), 715-733. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.05.008 Klinger, T., Usanova, I., & Gogolin, I. (forthcoming 2019). Entwicklung rezeptiver und produktiver schriftsprachlicher Fähigkeiten im Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft ZfE. Little, Todd D. (2013). Longitudinal structural equation modeling. NY: Guilford Press. Sierens, S., & Van Avermaet, P. (2014). Language diversity in education: Evolving from multilingual education to functional multilingual learning. In D. Little, C. Leung, & P. Van Avermaet (Eds.), Managing diversity in education: Language, policies, pedagogies (pp. 204–222). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Schnoor, Birger (forthcoming 2019). Soziale Herkunft und Bildungssprache. Intergenerationale Humankapitalinvestitionen in Familien deutscher, türkischer und vietnamesischer Herkunft in Deutschland. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Schoonen, R., Gelderen, A. V., Stoel, R. D., Hulstijn, J., & Glopper, K. D. (2011). Modeling the Development of L1 and EFL Writing Proficiency of Secondary School Students. Language Learning, 61(1), 31-79. doi:doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00590.x Statistisches Bundesamt. (2017). Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit. Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund. Ergebnisse des Mikrozensus 2015. Series 1. Vol. 2.2. Usanova, I. (2019). Biscriptuality. Writing skills among German-Russian adolescents. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.