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Excerpted from One Child, Two Languages: A Guide for Early Childhood Educators of Children Learning English as a Second Language, Second Edition By Patton O. Tabors, Ed.D. Communication and Organization 89

If a program does not have access to parent liaisons, it will be necessary to develop relationships with community members who can act as translators. Public schools, churches, community agencies, community newspapers, and even local grocery stores are good places to ask about translation services. These same community resources may also be a good place to seek out cultural information as well. Frequently, individuals identify themselves as cultural representatives and make themselves available to discuss the cultural differences that they have noticed between their home culture and the culture in their new community. If one of the parents in a classroom assumes such a role, it can make the teacher’s job much easier. As the same Head Start teacher quoted previously told me, "Like Peilan . . . she’s great at answering questions. She has been the life-saver in this room because . . . in the beginning of the year she didn’t understand as much, but now she can translate back and forth between Mandarin and English — and that’s just been wonderful.

The CD-ROM and Appendix A contain a sample questionnaire that can be adapted and/or translated for use in a variety of situations. Questions can be added or dropped, depending on the particular information that is needed. In deciding what information to ask for, teachers should think about its usefulness in the early childhood education context.

COMMUNICATING WITH SECOND-LANGUAGE–LEARNING CHILDREN

By collecting the kind of information that is requested in the sample questionnaire, teachers will have a better idea of the backgrounds of the children who are coming into or are already in their classrooms. But this information will be only a starting point when it comes to actually communicating with a child who knows little or no English. This section discusses ideas about how to communicate with second-language–learning children in ways that will help them understand and begin to use English.

Starting with What the Children Know

A common practice for the teachers I interviewed was for them to ask parents of children whose home language was not English to provide a few important words in their home language, so that the teachers could do some low-level communicating with the children in the first few weeks in the classroom. Words for listen, bathroom, and eat were very useful in this early period in the classrooms and helped the teachers and children feel connected. At the same time, by asking the parents to provide these phrases, teachers also deliver the message that they value the home language and are open to finding out more about how the home language sounds and is used. A handy technique for collecting these words is to have parents tape-record them so that teachers can listen to them and practice them by playing them over and over. These tapes can also be played for the children in the classroom so that everyone can learn words in another language. Furthermore, these tapes could also contain comforting messages from home that could be played for children with separation difficulties.

Starting Slowly

One of the features of the English-language classroom that I observed was that the teachers did not make immediate efforts to communicate with the second-language learners beyond a welcoming smile and greeting. In fact, they gave the second-language learners a lot of time to become familiar with the classroom situation before approaching them with questions or directives in English. Several times in the first few weeks of school, Marion even referred to Byong-sun in the third person (e.g., "Let’s give Byong-sun a chance," "Let’s show Byong-sun how to pick this up"), including him by using his name without actually directing her speech to him. This approach established the fact that Byong-sun was being considered part of the group but that specific responses would not be required of him. By setting up such a low-demand situation, the teachers gave the second-language learners time to start the adjustment process in this new cultural and linguistic setting.

After the first month, however, the teachers switched to less complicated language in an attempt to help the children begin to understand English. This reminded me of how adults in American culture speak to infants as though infants can comprehend sophisticated speech until the infants are old enough to actually start acquiring receptive abilities, at which time adults begin to simplify their speech to get their messages across. This is not to say, however, that teachers should not be responsive to communicative efforts made by the second-language learners. In fact, the rule in the study classroom seemed to be to always respond, even if the message from the child was not understandable. Just like the teacher mentioned previously who engaged in bilingual discourse with the Chinese brothers in Saville-Troike’s (1987) study, the adults in the study classroom tried to guess the topic of the message and responded accordingly.

Buttressing Communication

When the teachers in the study classroom started the process of communicating with the second-language learners in their classroom, they frequently "doubled the message" by using words along with some type of gesture, action, or directed gaze. For example, one morning two Japanese sisters, Kumiko and Kaori, arrived with a paper bag full of vegetables. They approached Rosa, who pointed to the bag and asked, "What’s in there?" Kumiko opened the bag and showed Rosa what was inside. Rosa said, "How about feeding Ponytails [the guinea pig]?" and she walked to the guinea pig cage, gesturing for the sisters to follow. At the guinea pig cage, Kumiko began taking the vegetables out of the bag and handing them to Kaori to put in the cage. Rosa named each vegetable as it was put in the cage, "Another carrot, and lettuce."

On another occasion, after watching Leandro wander around the room for a while with a painting he had made, I said to him, "Do you want to put it in your cubby?" He started to go to the cubby area, then he stopped and touched the paint on the picture. It was still wet. He showed me this, so I said, "Shall I hang it up?" indicating the line strung up to dry paintings. He brought the picture to me, I hung it up, and he went to the block area. In this example, Leandro used nonverbal communication to indicate what the problem was with my first suggestion. My response about hanging the picture on the line was reinforced by indicating the location that I was talking about because this was a special arrangement for hanging up pictures and I was not sure that Leandro would understand what I was saying.

92 The Teacher’s Role

One of the teachers I interviewed referred to this as using "body language" to help a second-language–learning child understand. I call this technique buttressing communication, because the additional information delivered by a gesture, an action, or a directed gaze adds another dimension that helps the child tune in to exactly what is being talked about, making it easier to get the message. Another technique that is used successfully when communicating with second-language–learning children involves using repetition. Saying the same thing more than once gives a child more than one opportunity to catch on to what is being said. If the repetition involves a single item, it may also provide an opportunity for the child to actually learn the word. For example, one morning at the drawing table, the following sequence occurred in rapid succession: Marion to Jennifer: "See how Sook-whan did her hand?" Rosa to Poram: "Are you going to cut out your hand?" Marion to Miguel: "Do you want to trace your hand, too?" Frequently, the teachers also emphasized the words as they said them and put them at or near the end of the sentence for better comprehension.

Talking About the Here and Now

One major feature of successful communication with second-language learners is that it is grounded in the here and now. Talking about what is right there gives the second-language learner a chance to narrow the field of what the conversation is about and focus on a more restricted number of options for response as well. As second-language learners begin to use their productive abilities, the context in which the conversation is held also helps the teacher understand what the child is talking about.

For example, one day, outside on the playground, I was sitting on a large rubber tire when Poram came to sit down next to me. Quickly, Poram discovered that the tire had writing all around it (Firestone and so forth). She and I started to name the letters and numbers. Poram had little difficulty with any of the letters, except the ones that were upside down, because of where we were sitting on the tire. Noticing that there was a problem, Poram gestured to me that the letters were in a strange position. I told her "upside down," and she repeated it. The next time she had the same problem, she said, "Upside down." She also stumbled over the number 8. After I told her what it was, Poram was able to identify it correctly later.

In this example, the fact that we were sharing the same physical space and could refer to the same information on the tire helped to make this a successful communicative experience for both of us, including my being able to provide some missing vocabulary items for Poram.

Once children begin to demonstrate their developing capabilities with their new language, teachers can use communicative opportunities as ways of helping children expand and extend their language skills. In this technique, it is necessary to start with what a child already knows and work from there. For example, one morning when I sat down at a table where children were working with playdough, Sook-whan held up a round piece of playdough to me and said, "Cookie." I replied, "Is this a chocolate-chip cookie? May I eat it?" Sook-whan nodded, and I pretended to eat the cookie. I then told Sook-whan, "That’s a good cookie." Later, Sook-whan held up a cube-shaped piece of playdough and said, "Chocolate." We followed the same procedure as before as I pretended to eat the piece of chocolate and commented on how good it was. This play routine used Sook-whan’s original utterance as a starting point and then developed parallel verbal constructions to extend and expand her linguistic knowledge. This turned out to be successful both as communication and as play.

Upping the Ante

One of the difficult judgment calls that teachers have to make when communicating with second-language learners is when to be more insistent that the children get beyond the nonverbal techniques that they have developed and actually use language to get their point across. To push the process along, it is often necessary for a teacher to up the ante, insisting on verbal communication, for example, before complying with a request. This was demonstrated one day when Miguel approached Marion with a suspender that had come loose. The following interaction occurred:
Marion: "You’re trying to tell me something."
Miguel: [No reply.]
Marion: "Do you want me to do something?"
Miguel: [No reply.]
Marion: "Do you want me to do something with your suspender? Put it on my nose?" [Starts to do so.]
Miguel: "Red." [Showing her his pants.]
Marion: "Yes, red . . . red what?"
Marion: "Do you want me to attach this to your red pants?"

Fine-Tuning

I found myself in just this same situation one day with Leandro. As I was leaving the art table, Leandro walked by, stopped in front of me, and pointed to his untied shoelace. I said, "What do you need?" He paused for a moment and said, "Please do my shoes." I said enthusiastically, "All right!" letting him know how pleased I was at his linguistic accomplishment.

Communication and Organization

Successful communication with second-language learners requires a lot of fine-tuning on the part of teachers. For example, after lunch one day in early November, I found Leandro alone in the block area looking at a book. He had a pair of plastic glasses with him that he had been wearing off and on all day. I picked them up and said, "I like your glasses. Are they yours or do they belong here at school?" This complicated question did not get a reply. Then I said, "Do these come from school?" and Leandro shook his head and said, "House." Then I said, "Are they from Halloween?" And he said, "Yes." Slightly later, Leandro spotted a piece of candy in my pocket. He asked, "What’s this?" I replied, "Candy," and he repeated, "Candy." I said, "Sally gave it to me." He said, "Halloween?" I answered, "Yes." By realizing that my first question was perhaps too complicated for Leandro to answer and by rephrasing it to make it simpler, I made it possible for Leandro to understand what I was asking. I then took a chance that he would know the term Halloween, as there had been a lot of talk about Halloween in the classroom. He not only knew what I was talking about but demonstrated how much he knew by turning the conversation around later and using the term to ask me a question. By fine-tuning my initiation, I was able to prolong a conversation that turned out to be very successful.

Combining Techniques for Communicating with Second-Language Learners

Although these techniques for communicating with second-language learners have been presented individually, they rarely appear separately from each other. In any attempt to communicate with second-language learners, teachers combine techniques and keep trying until they find out what works in any given situation.