ESL and Dual Language Programs: Technology, Cognition, and Teaching Techniques

Introduction to Two-Way Dual Language Programs

A two-way dual language program contains Spanish-speaking students and English-speaking students in the same educational environment to provide communicative and academic language development through interactive and cross-cultural settings. Program participation typically begins in kindergarten and continues through the fifth grade. These programs develop bilingualism and biliteracy in all students through instruction of all curriculum areas in both languages.

The instructional distribution of Spanish and English varies by school, with many adopting a 90/10 model. Under this model, instruction in kindergarten is initiated 90 percent of the time in Spanish and 10 percent in English. Spanish instruction is gradually decreased and English increased until reaching a 50/50 ratio by fifth grade. The ultimate goal is bilingualism and biliteracy for all students, equipping them to succeed in an increasingly multilingual world.

Two-way bilingual immersion (TWBI) programs integrate students who are English language learners (ELLs) and English proficient (EP) students for content and literacy instruction in both languages. Some programs allocate equal amounts of time to both languages, whereas others begin with more instruction in the first language and less in English. The theoretical framework of TWBI programs is that they give equal status to both languages, which makes them better at promoting language acquisition and positive interactions among students. ELL students face the challenging task of mastering a new language while also learning subject-area content. Although there have been signs of progress—including higher reading and math scores for ELL students as reported on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—more improvement is needed. English language learners often receive lower grades, are judged by their teachers to have lower academic abilities, and score below their classmates on standardized tests of reading and math.

Technology and Computer-Assisted Language Learning

In recent years, the number of teachers using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has increased markedly, and numerous articles have been written about the role of technology in education. Although the potential of the Internet for educational use has yet to be fully explored and the average school still makes limited use of computers, it is clear that we have entered a new information age in which the links between technology and TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) have already been established. The Internet has brought about a revolution in teachers' perspectives, as the teaching tools offered through the Internet are gradually becoming more reliable.

Nowadays, the Internet is gaining immense popularity in second language teaching, and more and more educators and learners are embracing it. Computer-mediated communication in particular has reshaped the use of computers for language learning. The recent shift to global information-based economies means that students will need to learn how to deal with large amounts of information and be able to communicate across languages and cultures.

The role of the teacher has changed as well. Teachers are no longer the only source of information, but act as facilitators so that students can actively interpret and organize the information they are given, fitting it into prior knowledge. Students have become active participants in learning and are encouraged to be explorers and creators of language rather than passive recipients of it. Integrative CALL stresses these issues and additionally lets learners of a language communicate inexpensively with others across the globe.

In order for ESL technology to work effectively, ESL teachers' encounters with CALL programs should meet the following criteria:

The Relationship Between Language and Thought

New Perspectives on CALL for Second Language Classrooms is a comprehensive resource for teacher trainers, students, and professionals interested in exploring the foundations of successful technology-based teaching and learning. Organized into five parts, the first section, "Introduction to CALL," details the historical evolution of Computer Aided Language Learning as well as current research and trends in the field. The second section, "Perspectives on Classroom CALL," contains articles intended to address the implementation of various aspects of CALL in a second or foreign language classroom. The third section examines institutional considerations necessary for setting up a CALL facility. The fourth section offers guidelines for critically evaluating the effectiveness of materials and websites. The book concludes with final thoughts on what teachers really need to know to be successful in using CALL techniques.

Thought and language are considered distinct yet deeply interconnected aspects of the learning process. Thought is central to language because it helps to maintain unity, continuity, and relevance; language, in turn, is a symbolic system used to refer to thought. Research on memory and recall provides empirical support for these connections.

It has been discovered that language faculty can both be a marginal component of the mind and be momentously implicated in a variety of central cognitive functions, including conscious propositional thinking and reasoning. Thought is very important to language because without the ability to think, language could not be developed—especially in logical form. If people cannot form logic, they cannot think naturally. If the thought process is disrupted, meaning only a few words can be formed, the language is disrupted as well. This indicates that thought and language have a strong relationship that cannot be separated.

Some conceptual and propositional thinking may consist in the formation and manipulation of linguistic representations. In particular, language representations might serve as what renders a given content explicit—what serves to make it generally inferentially available outside of its given cognitive domain, having the potential to interact with a wide range of central cognitive operations. It is not just some conscious thought tokens that constitutively involve natural language representations; certain explicit thoughts, as types, would involve such sentences.

Language Development and Cognition: Evidence from Case Studies

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis—which claims that language determines or strongly influences thought—has been a subject of considerable debate. However, language is only one factor that influences cognition and behavior. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis were entirely true, second language learning and translation would be far harder than they actually are. Furthermore, if language were the sole determinant of thought, verbal language would be necessary for all cognition, which is demonstrably false. Children in school are required to take a second language, which indicates that linguistic relativity is not absolute. Weaker versions of the hypothesis—which propose that language influences rather than determines thought—continue to attract scientific attention.

Empirical evidence from clinical cases provides valuable insights into the language-thought relationship. One notable case involved a person with severe language impairment who demonstrated that one does not have to speak fluently in order to think. This person chose to communicate primarily through writing and showed very limited speech ability. When he did speak, it was only in nouns—a pattern that initially seemed to refute the claim that there is a strong relationship between language and thought.

The person's spontaneous written output consisted largely of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. No clauses were present, and phrases were limited to article–noun, adjective–noun, and quantifier–noun combinations. When asked to produce a sentence, he either strung together lists of nouns or created pseudo-grammatical sentences by interspersing content items with grammatical words. Verbs did not occur in his spontaneous spoken and written output, and where they were prompted, the elicited forms were of dubious predicate status. Although noun retrieval was impaired in written output, it was at a higher level than verb retrieval. Despite these severe language limitations, he was able to communicate and had a clear desire to do so. Due to his circumstances, he had difficulty with speech intelligibility, so he preferred to express himself through writing—the only form of communication that made him feel normal.

This condition resulted from a large lesion in his left hemisphere, which caused him to develop severe motor speech disorder (apraxia) as well as a severe language disorder (aphasia). Tests showed that his language was severely impaired, indicating that his performance on sentence comprehension, both spoken and written, was at chance level. There was only a slight chance that he would ever recover from the damage to his language and speech, and this condition affected his ability to live a completely normal life—particularly because he could not comprehend verbs or judge the grammaticality of sentences.

Despite these profound limitations, the case demonstrates an important principle: written messages consisting mostly of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs indicate that verbs are absent in his communication and language. This absence reveals that language and thought do have a strong relationship. The fact that he does not produce sentences but instead strings together words in a random fashion further supports this conclusion. While many patients diagnosed with agrammatic aphasia retain some residual grammatical capacities, this individual had entirely lost that aspect of language. The evidence makes clear that language and thought go together very carefully because they are, in fact, inseparable.

The case of deaf children raised without access to sign language offers additional evidence. Deaf children who were raised in speaking communities but never provided with access to sign language have been subjects for debate due to the mental state their environment created. A person's mental life has strong connections to language and thought development. If a person has a stable educational environment, language and thought can develop properly. This means development can be restructured when given the correct surroundings. Therefore, deaf children can learn language and thought when placed in the right environment, even though some cases show delays.

In the 1800s, William James maintained that at least some language-less deaf individuals were capable of abstract thought of a decidedly subtle kind, both scientific and moral. However, other commentators, including many contemporary scholars, argue that severe retardation will inevitably occur in such cases. The evidence is murky, mostly because what we know about these individuals tends to be anecdotal. However, if research shows that grammar and thought can develop independently to some degree, it does not mean they have nothing to do with one another. Grammar allows for the efficient transmission of information, and individuals without grammar will find it difficult to learn from other people about important aspects of the social and physical world. Grammar must interact with abstract thought, simply because we use grammar to convey our ideas and understand those of others.

Children who have congenital deafness can learn effectively if they receive proper schooling. However, if they do not receive proper schooling, they may face a life without fully developed language. As noted in research on deaf education, words—which have been referred to as the "genes of our cultural heritage"—are denied to deaf children until formal education begins. Even after 12 years of schooling, 30 percent of deaf youth remain functionally illiterate and only 5 percent reach the academic level of tenth grade. With such extreme cultural and educational deprivation, one might logically expect depressed IQ scores if environment were a major determinant of intelligence. Surprisingly, this is not the case, suggesting that language and cognition are related but not entirely dependent on each other.

Conclusion and Future Directions

It must be understood that language is a system of symbols and rules. Symbols represent words or gestures, and refer to the objects or ideas to which they point. Some researchers suggest that effective communication requires symbols to be used systematically. It is apparent that language is the determining force of thought that causes intellectual activity.