Children's and Teacher's Bilingual Language Practices in a 4th Grade Classroom
Thomas Destino (UC Riverside)

Background
As soon as they become proficient enough in English, nonnative speakers in US schools are typically transitioned into the academic mainstream through early or late-exit transitional bilingual education programs. Rarely do school programs maintain the use of the students' native language beyond elementary school. Recent research has highlighted the performance of students and programs in terms of English-language proficiency and academic achievement. But what about the extent to which students maintain or lose their ability to function in the native language as they acquire English. Recent research on the topic indicates a rapid shift toward English for nonnative speaking groups while other work indicates a more gradual shift with native Spanish speakers even maintaining high levels of proficiency in the native language. Most recently, researchers have questioned the role schools play in this mixed view on language shift (Pease-Alvarez & Winsler, 1994). The present study responded to this question by investigating the language use practices and beliefs of bilingual students and their teacher in a mainstream fourth grade class in which the teacher had intermediate fluency in the students' native language, Spanish, and used it in her teaching.

Participants, Data Sources and Procedures
The teacher in the study, Mary, has had several years of experience working with English language learners. Twenty-three students participated in the study, all were bilingual Spanish/English speakers, most were born in the US and most had attended school in the same district since kindergarten. The study combined ethnographic and quantitative means of analysis by using interview and classroom-based observations. All students were interviewed about their language use practices at home and in school and about their feelings for and opinions about both languages.

We monitored the language use practices of three case-study students more closely over the course of the school year. Each student was recorded on eight different occasions in 30-second timed observation intervals for the entire school day. Observations were made to determine how much time students spent using English, Spanish, or both inside and outside of the classroom. Students were monitored in a variety of content areas and activities, in a variety of participant structures and with a variety of interlocutors. Mary's language use in various subject areas was also monitored using this same method during the school year.

Results
Student Interviews
Children in Mary's class used more Spanish than English with their parents and, on average, slightly more English with their fathers than with their mothers. Students used more English with their siblings than with their parents and more English with their older siblings than with their younger siblings. Students spoke both languages equally more often with siblings than with their parents. Data indicate that the majority of students spoke a significant amount of Spanish in the home.

Results from the seven-point Likert scale used for interviews regarding students' language use at school reveal that, although students spoke mainly English with Mary, they used fair amounts of Spanish with their school friends. Girls used more Spanish with their friends than did boys. Both boys and girls used more English than Spanish with their classmates, though both used substantial amounts of the native language. Overall, students viewed bilingualism rather favorably. Most boys and girls thought it was very important to be able to speak English and Spanish equally well and not more important to be able to speak one language over the other.

Case Study Observations
The overall finding for classroom language use indicated that children spoke exclusively English 65% of the time, Spanish 19% of the time, and both languages for 13% of the observations.

Language by Interlocutor and Participant Structure
Spanish was rather prevalent when children were with peers and in small groups. Forty-three percent of children's conversations included at least some Spanish (28% Spanish + 15% Both languages). Children usually spoke to themselves in English (86%), only 19% of the children's private speech was in Spanish and only 2% included code switching. The vast majority of the children's speech to Mary was in English (80%, Spanish 5%). Children, however, were also comfortable using the native language in combination with English (15% code switching +5% Spanish). When students spoke to the entire class English prevailed (91%).

Language by Location and Activity
Students spoke the least Spanish in the classroom where 72% of all speech in science class was in English, 81% of speech in math was in English, and 91% in the other subject areas. Students spoke much more Spanish when eating lunch (42%), and when outside for recess (24%) than when in class. Mary's used much more Spanish in math (16%) and science (19%) than in other subject areas (4%).

The language use data by activity indicate that children chose English for academic tasks (72%) whereas Spanish emerged more during play and other activities. In general, with respect to context variables and language use, the students used more Spanish in subject areas in which Mary used more Spanish.

Language Shift
Over the course of the school year, students' language use shifted considerably from a substantial use of Spanish at the beginning of the school year (31% on 1st observation day) to a predominant use of English by the end of the school year (10% Spanish on last observation day). Correspondingly, English language usage began at 42% and finished at 81%. The patterns for the children's use of both languages did not show any particular movement over time. Mary's shift in language use mirrored that of the children. She began the year using considerable Spanish in math class (28%) and by the last observation day she was using very little (7%). The pattern in science is similar, from over 30% to about 10%. Interestingly, despite the fact that Mary made a concerted effort to use Spanish in a variety of contexts in her teaching, both she and the students exhibited a substantial shift toward the use of English over the course of the school year.

Conclusions and Implications
This study contributes to the literature on language shift in the context of schools. Data suggest that bilingual fourth graders use substantial amounts of Spanish both inside and outside of school. Children use Spanish at home with parents more often than with siblings. Despite the use Spanish in school, most children shifted to the predominant use of English with their teacher and when working on content area materials. Although data indicate that both teacher and students used substantial amounts of Spanish at the beginning of the school year, language use practices shifted dramatically to predominantly English by the end of the year. Even in the areas of math and science, subjects in which the teacher explicitly used Spanish for academic purposes, teacher's and students' language use shifted concomitantly to predominantly English by the end of the year.

This study suggests that bilingual speakers do not automatically use the native language when it is part of the sociolinguistics of the classroom. These findings support Pease-Alvarez and Winsler (1994) who state that if teachers expect to maintain the use of students' native language, then the linguistic environment of the classroom cannot be left up to chance. Teachers in settings like Mary's need to redouble their efforts to continue to use the native language for academic purposes even in the face of apparent shift to English. Although shift toward the majority language may be inevitable in the context of schools, research needs to be conducted in settings in which teachers continue to use the native language. Research needs to pay particular attention to L1 use in the content areas in order to determine the influence it may have on students' development of academic competence in two languages.

Reference
Pease-Alvarez, L. & Winsler, A. (1994). Cuando el maestro no habla espanol: Children's bilingual language practices in the classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 28(3), 507-535.