The Centrality Of Language In Life

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Chapter 2

Literature Review

2.1 Introduction

Perhaps the extra knot that strangles my voice is rage. I am enraged at the false persona I’m being stuffed into, as into some clumsy and overblown astronaut suit. I’m enraged at my adolescent friends because they can’t see through the guise, can’t recognize the light-footed dancer I really am. They only see this elephantine creature who too often sounds as if she’s making pronouncements (Hoffman, 1989: 119).

This chapter starts with an overview of the centrality of language in people’s lives. It then focuses on the experience of immigration and its impact on the immigrant students and the receiving schools as they slip, cross or pass (Armour, 2003) to an additional language which they need to know in order to be able to live a normal social and accademic life in the new community and the school.

The tools used throughout this exploration were a combination of manual and computer aided searches at the University of Malta. Several databases were consulted such as Academic Search Complete (ASC), JSTOR, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Sage pub and intercultural journals’ websites on the internet. The topic of immigrant students and the language barrier has been analysed among a range of countries. What this review intends to do is to outline the major themes and findings revealed from studies published in English, carried out in different regions of the world mainly United States, Canada, Asia and Europe.

2.2 The Centrality of Language in Life

… language is in us as much as we are in language. (Duranti, 1997: 337)

Whatever people do or think, they use language. It enables people to synchronize the inner with the outer domain; to free their own thoughts, feelings and opinions and to shape with precision events in each other’s brains (Pinker, 1994).

In the myths and religions of many peoples, language is a source of human life and power. To some people of Africa, a newborn child becomes a muntu, a "person" only by the act of learning language. According to this tradition, we all become human because we all know at least one language (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams, 2003: 3). This portrays the power of the word which could be conjured by man. Nothing would live, grow, take proper shape or be freed, unless called forth by the word. Pinker (1994) states that language is so tightly woven into human experience that it is barely possible to imagine life without it. Thus, "having a language is part of what it means to be human" (Pinker, 1994: 404).

Language, "the most massive, complex constellation of ideas we know" (Harrison, 2007: vii), is extremely significant in the transmission and continuity of shared meanings (Butcher, 2008), constitutes part of an individual’s social identity (Harrison, 2007), and is a symbol of one’s existence (Skutnabb-Kangas, Phillipson & Kontra, 2001). This clearly depicts the power inherent in this instrument (Suárez-Orozco, & Suárez-Orozco, 2001; Trujillo, 2005 and Butcher, 2008). As Debi Prasanna Pattanayak (Skutnabb-Kangas & Cummins, 1988: 383) adds, "All languages have the same potential for meeting communicational needs. It is the role and function of a language in society that give it power".

Blommaert’s ethnographic-sociolinguistic approach (1998; 2001; 2005a; 2005b) illustrates that when people move, they move through orders of indexicality, such that what is communicatively appropriate, works well and offers considerable prestige and access in one context may be inappropriate, not work at all or an object of stigmatisation, curbing and threat in another. Blommaert (2008: 43) concludes that such "relocations of referential and indexical meanings attached to signs – a process of re-entextualisation, in Silverstein and Urban’s (1996) terms", cause a "pretextual gap between orders of indexicality valid in the locus of text production and other orders of indexicality valid in the locus of reception and uptake" and, consequently, emanate inequality (Blommaert, 2005, p. 106).

2.2.1 Language diversity - empowerment or disempowerment?

"When you lose a language, you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It’s like dropping a bomb on a museum, the Louvre." (Kenneth Hale, 1995)

Historically, some people were subordinated to the colonizing power. The colonized could only be accepted and "elevated above their jungle status" (Rassool, 2007) by imitating and adopting the superior standards of the dominant culture, with the colonial language being the pinnacle. In this way, colonial people were eroded and stripped of their cultures, social experiences and languages (Rassool, 2004) and left totally naked only to wear the superior standards’ unfitting clothes. Mohanty (2009), maintains that whilst some languages empower and buttress their speakers, others contribute to disempower, marginalise and enslave them.

Language, despite its idiosyncratic constituents, represents an important criterion for distinguishing between in-group and out-group status, thereby bonding people to their cultural group (Miglietta & Tartaglia, 2009). It is "the grassroots displays of ‘groupness’" (Blommaert, 2005), "an indicator of heritage and roots, a symbolic and political force allowing people to proclaim their belonging to a certain group" (Alvarez Beinguer & Davis, 2007: 197), the vehicle for storing and reproducing society’s knowledge as well as a purveyor of culture (Roy-Campbell, 2003). In fact, Tannenbaum’s (2009) research findings reveal some of the participant’s antagonism towards the language representing the majority, for it suppressed and suffocated what for them is beautiful, important, sacred, traditional or national, a signifier in their identity – their native language. Indeed, it is through languages that human communities create cultural identities, build and permeate knowledge (Mitchell, Destino, Karam and ColÓN-MuŇIz, 1999). Language, "an essentially perfect means of expression and communication among every known people" (Sapir, 1949, p.1) enables them to access traditions, myths, histories, wisdom, stories, epic tales, innuendoes, opinions, recipes, and other things that make them human (Duranti, 1997; Harrison, 2007).

Living in a monoethnic, monocultural and monolingual ivory tower has become utopian (Vallen & Stijnen, 1991). Different languages should not be curtailed and represent a threat or an obstacle to the social cohesiveness of the monolingual society (Harrison, 2007) but a tool and a resource. Each language is a library and a repository of human heritage (Wurm, 2001), "an immense edifice of human knowledge, painstakingly assembled over millennia by countless minds" (Harrison, 2007, p. 3) and a nest of what embodies and enriches a nation with its culture, art, music and literature. Nettle and Romaine (2000) assert that this salient criterion of humanity, language, is the source of the accumulated wisdom of all humans. Not only does each language have its own colour, pitch and vein but also its window on the world. Each language is a living museum, a monument to every culture it has been vehicle to (Nettle and Romaine, 2000), a repository of the history of its people, and a marker of identity (Crystal, 2003). Skutnabb-Kangas (2001) argues that unlike new trees that can be planted and habitats that can be restored, murdered languages can never be resurrected. Once a language is lost, so is its heritage. All is simply lost, forever (Wurm, 1991).

The outdated melting pot approach or mushy puree of which the national language is seen to be an agent of unification, can only lead to a seething cauldron waiting to erupt (Pryor, 1992). In fact Mead’s famous quotation simply states that:

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place (Mead, 1935: 322).

2.2.2 Language, a divorce from context or a marriage?

In the mid-1960s researchers, notably Hymes, (1974) launched a more social and contextual view of language than that of the Chomskyan paradigm. Whilst Chomsky’s (1976) view of language was a mere formal system governed by a series of rules (Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor, 2006), positing linguistic competence in isolation (Jessner, 2008), Hymes’s ethnographically rooted vision of an anthropology of language, regarded language as the architecture of social behaviour itself (Bloomaert, 2009). This stronger sociolinguistic facet to the Chomskyan psycholinguistic notion of competence (Jessner, 2008) put forth by Hymes, portrays language as deeply situated in social life. It incorporates the sociolinguistic norms of appropriacy (Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor, 2006).

Firth & Wagner (1997) concur with the latter in that they regard language as not only a cognitive phenomenon, but also a social one, acquired and used interactively, in a variety of contexts for myriad practical purposes. Similarly, Larsen-Freeman & Freeman (2008) define language as highly protean as it was created of the users’ worlds, grows in their lives and enables them to know about the world they live in.

2.2.3 Language as a gateway or a resource for school achievement/growth?

When a child who enters a new school system is judged "not to have language" or "not to have enough language," a heavy ball is chained to his feet (Duranti, 1997: 332).

According to Mohanty (2008), language is the enabling factor for access to quality education. Whilst Teekens (2003) and Haddad (2006) point out that all educational activity is linked to language, Larsen-Freeman & Freeman (2008) add that language is the tool that everyone uses in learning and teaching. They furthermore state that in schools, language is a means to an end as well as an end in itself. It is only through competence in the medium of instruction that students can access and learn content at school be it during foreign languages and also in other subjects regarded as non-language such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Science, Business Studies and Physical Education. This clearly shows that whilst for some students, language learning in school is focussed on reaching a level of academic and social proficiency in the language of schooling so that they can have access to the rest of the curriculum, for others, learning language is a companion undertaking to learning non-language school subjects (Freeman cited in Larsen-Freeman & Freeman, 2008). Hence, whilst some children go to school to be educated through the medium of their own language, others have access to the same intellectual baggage yet this is accomplished only through the medium of a language in which they are still developing proficiency. They need to learn a new/additional language to be able to participate in education, something the former children do not have to do (Miklós Kontra, 2002/2003). This disparity on behalf of the children who do not yet master the language of instruction, clearly illustrates Larsen-Freeman & Freeman’s (2008, p. 176) argument that despite language being a creature of schools, unlike other subjects, it is a medium. Furthermore, they assert that whilst other content areas are deictic in that they have a kind of anchoring in school, language is boundless as it has no borders, no frontiers and no confines. It is used by all and all the time be it in court, at school, at home or at the supermarket to buy bread.

This clearly marks language as a precious resource vital for our existence. It can either serve as a potent medium for integration or as a disabling and marginalising factor.

2.2.4 Are schools actively building bridges or passively allowing barriers?

A tribal child’s first steps into school are steps into an alien world – a world she barely understands because, somewhere as she walks into her first classroom, the ties are snapped. Her resources, languages, means of communication, knowledge of her world and her culture are set aside in a system that proudly calls itself human resource development (Mohanty, 2009: 4).

Language and school performance are deeply intertwined. Callahan, Wilkinson, Muller and Frisco (2009) maintain that it is only once the language through which the contents of the curriculum are taught and learned has been adequately mastered, can content area begin. This clearly emphasises the need to specifically cater for students who do not have the language (medium) of instruction as their mother tongue (Haddad, 2006).

Barnard (2009) argues that learners from diverse language backgrounds need to learn how to use an often newly acquired language effectively in order to be able to cope in the mainstream classroom. If schools do not provide the adequate bridges and meet the immigrant students’ particular educational needs, they are simply allowing the barriers. This results in leaving immigrant children unable to fulfil their human potential, hindering them from achieving their pursuit of competitive professions, meaningful employments, and better lives (Contreras, 2002). Contreras (2002) asserts that in America’s schools, there are far too many students particularly immigrant students, being given watered down versions of academic content and who are simply left to fend for themselves to sink or swim. Mitakidou and Tsiakalos (2004) add, that even when promoting the content of curriculum revisions, various stakeholders, often present a veneering reality, what they call "potemkin villages", for despite all the newly added polish and gloss, they still maintain the existent reality condemning thousands of children to a subordinate existence preventing them from fair access and equitable outcomes. These are children who "basically ‘do not exist’ for the authorities" (Mitakidou and Tsiakalos, 2004, p. 134), and are absolutely absent from education policies (Reynolds, 2008). Contreras (2002) elaborates on this issue and points out that immigrant students are not viewed by state policy makers as a distinct group requiring unique remedies. The quality of schooling that immigrant students receive primarily depends on the resources of the local communities in which they inhabit. The situation reviewed, alarmingly presents schools as institutions advocating for a particular milieu, endangering and hindering the capabilities and opportunities of less privileged milieus (Werning, Löser & Urban, 2008).

A two-year qualitative study carried out by Trueba, Jacobs and Kirton (1990) among Hmong students attending an elementary school in Southern California revealed that immigrant and refugee students experienced deep depression, marginalisation and panic. They reported that the students’ traumas emanated from the teachers’ expectations that they perform and show understanding of knowledge in a language still alien to them. The researchers found that the children came to believe that they were deficient, dumb and disabled. Similarly, the results of a study in the United States (Abedi, Herman, Courtney, Leon & Kao, 2004 cited in Abedi, 2004) involving 600 Grade 8 Limited English Proficiency (LEP) and non-LEP students in Maths, revealed that LEP students reported significantly less opportunity to learn than their non-LEP peers and that they assumed a more passive attitude during the classroom activities when compared to their non-LEP peer. When discussing the linguistic situation in most Asian countries, Hannad (2006) adds that since half of the world’s out-of-school children do not speak the language used at school, tens of millions of children have no access to education in their first language. All this indicates that language hinders immigrant students’ understanding of classroom instruction and blur their content understanding. Such factors or barriers, which slow down the discovery of knowledge in the classroom (Heugh, Benson, Bogale, & Yohannes, 2007) may further on, stem erroneous diagnostic information as some researchers’ analysis of school documents revealed (McBrien, 2005; McMillan, 2008) and consequently channel immigrant students towards the wrong paths.

Immigrant children are often placed in classes and groups that are not age-appropriate and/or in lower grade levels or educational tracks despite high capabilities (Tochon, 2009; Chamness Miller & Endo, 2004; Torres, 2001; McBrien, 2005; Pryor, 1992; Allen, 2006). The publication by UNICEF (2009: 63) about children in immigrant families shows considerable cases of immigrant students being unfairly channelled. This was found in France where 17% of immigrant children were unfairly tracked; in Germany, due to lower grades in German and Mathematics than their native counterparts, they were guided towards the Hauptschule, the least intensive secondary-track and also in Switzerland, immigrant students in immigrant families were tracked to the basic curriculum in lower secondary school rather than to the advanced curriculum.

Goodwin (2002) maintains that the immigrant children’s equitable education needed, has never been regularly and specifically addressed. Most countries have adopted an unsystematic way, side issue and predominant indifference towards this situation, an absence of adequate provision, implementation and support which according to Kornmann and Klingele (1996) is the main cause of the immigrant children’s disproportionate school failure. Goodwin (2002) advocates for an attitude towards culturally and linguistically different children that is truly accepting and filled with potential.

2.3 Immigration and Education

Luchtenberg (2004) states that migration has become one of the great challenges worldwide. This is due to the increasing numbers of immigrants in all parts in the world. Banks (2004) not only shares a similar opinion but highlights the rapidity and the magnitude with which this is happening. This phenomenon clearly poses unprecedented challenges to many fields including education, often in countries that have viewed themselves as ethnically homogeneous. Such a point is supported by the European Commission (1994: 1) which states that, "cultural and linguistic diversity of the public schools is becoming the norm". Despite this abrupt and maybe somewhat unexpected influx, for which many receiving countries were not prepared, schools have to prepare all their students for their adult participation in society, as immigrant residents or as citizens with the full range of political rights (Luchtenberg and Nieke, 1994).

It is the duty of all receiving countries to cater for all the children who are between 5-16, the compulsory school age. For some students, particularly immigrants, schooling is the golden ascent or the only ticket for a better tomorrow (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Unfortunately in the project carried out by Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001: 133), many of the schools in their project that represent the kinds of schools that are populated by diverse students, were found to be "fields of endangerment" where concerns with survival, not learning, prevail.

2.3.1 On learning a new language

According to Mead (1934, p. 283), when a person learns a new language, he/she "gets a new soul" as one cannot convey a language as a pure abstraction. Inevitably, in some degree, one conveys also the life that lies behind the language of a given community (Bron, 2003). Teekens (2003) argues that various constituents make the classroom a miniature country mainly the teaching that takes place which is national in character. In learning the national language of the receiving country, immigrant students would be nested and provided with the powerful instrument and the valuable resource needed for integration both within the educational system and also in the society of the host country. Equally important is the maintenance of the children’s own language (Hill, 2006). Learning the national language of the adoptive country does not threaten the immigrant students’ unique linguistic and cultural repertoires in favour of the national melting pot (Mohanty, 2008) but expands their horizons (Quinn, 2006) and facilitates their adaptation into the host society (Pulido Barrios, 2008).

This issue, crucial to the successful integration of immigrant students in state schools, is clearly addressed in the Training 2010 Work Programme (C119/4) which highlighted the need to promote equity and social cohesion mainly by addressing educational disadvantage whereby, "education and training systems should aim to ensure that all learners - including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, those with special needs and migrants – complete their education". It also addressed the need for European Member States to, "provide migrants with opportunities to learn the language of the host country" (C119/9).

It is thus the responsibility of the European Member States which have to provide immigrant children with the educational support needed (Di Vietro & Rago, 2009), particularly when they are not proficient in the language of their host country. This will prevent them from being placed at a disadvantage compared with other children (2004/2267(INI)).

2.3.2 Different language provisions in various countries for learning the language of the host country.

According to Pulido Barrios (2008), every European Union member state follows its own methodology regarding language provision and the integration of immigrants. The European Union cannot rule over policies regarding language teaching for immigrant students as such policies are part of the national law. Despite this, in a report on multilingualism (2008), it is stated that every European should learn a "personal adoptive language" which for immigrants:

should in the normal run of events be that of the country in which they have chosen to live. A thorough knowledge of the national language and the culture it carries with it is essential if they are to integrate into the host society and play their part in economic, social, intellectual, artistic and political life (p. 19).

This mission is entrusted to the schools for they have to accompany the immigrant children along their path of integration (Ricucci, 2008), mothering and fathering them in their adoptive country.

An interesting perspective on immigrant students learning the host language is that put forth by Otterup (2004). Citing Viberg (1996) he states that learning such an additional language represents a unique and particular learning process which significantly differs from both first language and foreign language acquisition. Unlike pupils who learn a foreign language, the immigrant students must not only learn a new language at school but also use it as a means of learning other subjects at school and an aid for further cognitive development. These facts necessitate good and efficient tuition in the teaching of the language of the host country and are also the reasons for conceiving new subjects such as the teaching of the language of the host country as a second or additional language (Otterup, 2004). Despite, this regarding the countries’ approaches, Pulido Barrios (2008) points out although that each European country has agreed on a specific methodology for host language teaching but, whilst some countries around Europe have been implementing the same methodology for years, others are still trying to shape it whilst the rest are passively adopting a benign neglect provision.

2.3.3 General approaches to educating immigrant students in the language of the receiving country.

Baker’s (2006) wide continuum of language programmes varying from monolingual forms to bilingual, shows various approaches and provisions in reaching proficiency in Cummins’ (2000) two interacting continua: the Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and the Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). The BICS refers to the conversational aspects of proficiency in the host language of the society and the CALP refers to the oral and written language skills necessary to succeed in the academic context (Cummins, 2000). It can be noted that whilst some language programmes assume that learning a new language is best facilitated when learners are immersed in the new language and given only minimal continuing support in their first language, others suggest that learning in a new language is greatly facilitated by maintaining use and continuing content instruction in the first language during the transition period (Mitchell et al., 1999).

2.3.4 Submersion and Subtractive Teaching

It has been argued that young children do not need any special methodology to learn an additional language. It is believed that a child can acquire the knowledge of the host language without any difficulty after spending some months in a school surrounded by native speakers. Surely, there is an advantage in being immersed in a school where the child can be exposed and maybe start to gradually use the additional language. But the correct knowledge of the host language comes only when it is taught (Pulido Barrios, 2008). This "sink or swim" (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1984), do nothing, or the lack of an approach (Benson 2009) is called submersion.

Thomas and Collier (1997, p. 58) emphasize that, submersion, "is NOT a program model, since it is not in compliance with U.S. federal standards as a result of the Supreme Court decision of Lau v. Nichols." This undifferentiated method denotes a process whereby on immediate entry to school, the language minority, immigrant students are simply thrown and plunged into the deep end and expected to learn to swim in the majority language as quickly as possible without any help. Consequently immigrant children will either sink, struggle or swim (Baker, 2006). Given that in some cases, time spent in non-target language or the students’ first language (L1) is assumed to detract the learners from achieving the goal of mastering academic concepts in the second language (L2), the learners are actively discouraged from using their L1 (Mitchell et al., 1999: 98).

Reading material and subject-matter instruction are only available in the language of instruction or the majority language, which increases insecurity in the learners (Ellis,1994). Benson (2009) continues that such a model exists because of either unintentional (laissez-faire) or intentional (assimilationist) policies, where speakers of non-dominant languages have no choice but to attend schools in languages they do not understand and do not receive any kind of systematic support specifically targeted at learning the language of instruction. In these approaches, there is no kind of accommodation for the child’s needs and no desire to help maintain or develop the students’ L1 (Brizuela & Garcia-Sellers, 1999).

Benson points out that submersion is simply a cruel form of schooling as it forces children to try to make sense of a foreign medium of instruction while devaluing their languages, cultures, identities and overall self-esteem resulting in disproportionately low educational results (Benson 2009: 65). Such a programme or the lack of it, has a subtractive effect on the immigrant children’s mother tongues (Mohanty in Skutnabb-Kangas, 2009). It educates them to submissiveness and continually fosters feelings of unworthiness of both their cultures and their native languages (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988; Skutnabb-Kangas & Dunbar, 2010), enmeshing them in a schooling process supporting melting pot ideologies (Canessa cited in Castro-Vázquez, 2009: 76). These melting pot approaches are viewed as damaging (Pryor, 1992) and profoundly harmful. They often plague the children who have suffered such forms of education throughout their lives (Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar, 2009) as they view the knowledge of the different groups as deficient (Shohamy, 2006). Skutnabb-Kangas (2008) concludes that such assimilationist education is genocidal as it forcibly subracts rather than adds to the children’s linguistic repertoire. Moreover, all this clearly adduces submersion as a springboard on which to project linguisticism - pumping a language as imperial at the expense of others. Mohanty (Skutnabb-Kangas et al., 2009, p. 5) maintains that as the minorities endure the annihilation of their mother tongues, the elites relish the paramountcy of their dominant languages.

2.3.5 Immersion and Additive Teaching

The myth that the target language must be kept pure in instruction endorses the idea that progression in one language may bring about regression in another (de Bot & Makoni, 2005). In focussing solely on one language, students will avoid delaying progress in it, elude mixing different languages (Tingbjörn,1988) and channel all the language-related resources to the target language.

The system of classes d’accueil (welcome classes), used in Quebec since the late 1960s and early 1970s is an intensive full academic year host-language learning bath in French, imperative to entering the mainstream (Allen, 2006; Allen, 2007; Steinbach, 2010). These classes are closed, such that the students who may be enrolled at any time during the year, remain isolated from their unilingual Quebec-born peers (Steinbach, 2010) until they are deemed ready by the accueil teacher and approved by the school administration. This decision is exclusively determined by the students’ performance on a provincial exam of written French, designed for the mainstream (Allen, 2006; Allen, 2007). Failure to do well in this exam, accueil students would be held back for another year until their French was considered adequate.

Two studies carried out with accuiel students (Allen, 2006; Steinbach, 2010), revealed that the French language became something of an enemy to the accuiel students who so desperately wanted to get on with their education and their lives. Because French was used as a gatekeeper to the mainstream, Allen (2007) concludes that some of the accueil students experienced French as excluding and hindering rather than including and facilitating their participation in mainstream education.

This surely highlights the benefits of implementing mainstreamed programmes for immigrant students with carefully devised systems of language support (McKay & Warshauer Freedman, 1991) alongside mother tongue education. By negating immigrant students the opportunity to interact with other children in class, educators are denying them a point of contact with the target language group (Hamilton and Moore, 2004). They are also channeling them to failure, depriving them from any meaningful education, locating them "as students operating at a deficit" (Allen, 2007, p. 168) and fuelling furthermore the difference between second language pupils and other members of the community (The Swann Report: Department of Education and Science, 1985, p. 390).

Thomas and Collier (1997; 2007) concur and refer to this impoverishment as a cognitive slowdown whereby the minority language students fall behind their continually advancing mother tongue native peers in cognitive development. This clearly shows the needed provision to meet the needs of second language learners through integrated provision within the mainstream school even if for newcomers at secondary school level, some form of withdrawal may at first be necessary. Thomas and Collier (1997) propose the peer-equivalent grade-level bilingual schooling because whilst:

the student is making the gains needed with each succeeding year to close the gap in performance on the tests in English, that bilingual student is not getting behind in cognitive and academic development. Once the bilingual students’ average achievement reaches the 50th NCE (the average achievement level of native-English speakers) on the school tests in English, the cognitive and academic work in L1 has kept these students on grade level and they sustain grade-level performance in English even as the academic work gets increasingly complex with each succeeding year in middle and high school.

Rutter (1994) adds that if immigrant children are separated from mainstream classes, the sole source of target language input comes from their teacher and the probabilities of labelling are increased.

For immigrant children in the host society, reality is bilingual. In taking this fact into account, the schools can be facilitating an additive approach towards the students’ linguistic repertoire, that is, adding another "language to the students’ intellectual tool-kit while continuing to develop conceptually and academically" in their L1 (Skutnabb-Kangas, Phillipson, Mohanty & Panda, 2009). Those students who have strong L1 academic and conceptual skills when they start learning another language tend to attain higher levels of the target language academic skills (Cummins, 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas & Dunbar, 2010; Mohanty, 2009; Thomas and Collier, 2007). Furthermore, the length of Mother-tongue medium (MTM) education is more important than any other factor in predicting the educational success of bilingual students, including their competence in the dominant language (Cummins, 2009; Skutnabb-Kangas & Dunbar, 2010). Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar (2010) add that the worst educational results are with students in regular submersion programmes where their mother tongues (MTs) or first languages (L1s) are either not supported at all or where they have only had some mother tongue-as-a-subject instruction. Skutnabb-Kangas (2009) maintains that if teaching is in a language that the immigrant children do not know, for the first 2-3 years they would lack much of the understanding of the teaching that has taken place. This results in pushing immigrant children to drop out of school earlier than their native peers with very limited proficiency and mastery in speaking, reading and writing in both their L1 and also the additional language.

Similarly Cummins (2009) adds that when the school fails to transmit knowledge and develop children’s thinking abilities in their mother tongue, neither the mother tongue nor the target language develop adequately as far as literacy and overall academic skills are concerned. This is furthermore exemplified by Thomas and Collier’s (2002) conclusions of their study of various forms of Spanish-English bilingual education in both urban and rural settings in the United States. Their findings reveal that the strongest predictor of L2 student achievement is the amount of formal L1 schooling. The more L1 grade-level schooling, the higher L2 achievement. Also, they declare that those students schooled bilingually, outperformed those schooled monolingually in academic achievement in all subjects. The former being "feature rich" with enhanced potential to affect student achievement and having an additive bilingual environment whilst the latter are "feature poor," with little or no use to help English language learners (ELLs) to close the achievement gap and having a subtractive language-learning environment (Otterup, 2004). Thomas and Collier (1997: 38) conclude that the deeper the student’s level of L1, the faster the student’s progress and achievement in L2.

All this demonstrates that the more students use their mother tongue in education, the more they perform well across the curriculum and in the target language. Heugh (2002: 29) states that international research indicates that children need at least 12 years of learning their mother tongue or language of their immediate environment (i.e. 12 years from birth). In a multilingual society where a language such as English is highly priced, there is only one reasonable option and this is bilingual education where adequate linguistic development is carried out in L1 whilst the L2 is gradually added. Furthermore, Heugh (2002: 28) believes that any educational policy which in consequence deprives and strips children of their mother tongue during education, "will produce an unnecessarily high rate of emotional and socio-cultural cripples who are retarded in their cognitive development and deficient in terms of psychological stability". Tsui and Tollefson (2003) conclude that the children’s self-perception, esteem, security, and meaningful participation in the educational process, will also be hampered. Thus, while some schools act as abysmal cemeteries in which minority languages are premeditatedly and ruthlessly buried, others act as incubators, providing the right conditions for further growth and educational equality.

2.4 Secondary students - A unique subset of the immigrant students’ population in schools.

Short (2002) explains that, a subset of the immigrant students entering schools, especially those at a later age (Carder, 2008), lack English language skills, have weak literacy skills in the native language, and have also had limited or interrupted formal education. This leads immigrant students towards several grade levels below their age cohorts when placed in schools. Newcomer adolescents face various challenges in their educational experience as at the time they are entering schools, schools are emphasising rigorous, standards-based curricula and high-stakes assessments for all students. Another hurdle is time in the host country. It was found to be positively correlated with students’ language proficiency score, such that newcomers tended to demonstrate lower levels of proficiency relative to their English speaking peers. The age at which immigrant students enter schools was also found to be strongly significant (Carhill et al., 2008). Mark Patkowski’s (cited in Lightbown & Spada, 1993) findings indicate that age of acquisition is highly important in setting limits on the development of native-like masters of a second language. Moreover, secondary newcomer students have less support for language learning, more complex academic content to learn, limited time to learn the language, shorter time to study the required content courses, and catch up with their native English-speaking peers before encountering gate-keeping assessments that have serious repercussions for their future (Carhill et al., 2008; Short, 2002) for they are eventually taking high-stakes tests in a language in which they are not fully proficient (Combs et al., 2005).

Studies have shown that whilst immigrant students can quickly reach peer-appropriate levels in BICS, within two years, the CALP can only be achieved within 4 to 7 years or even more (Cummins, 2000; Mitchell et al., 1999; Chamnes Miller & Endo, 2004; Cummins, 2000; Shohamy, 1999 cited in Cummins, 2000; Song & Róbert, 2010; Heugh, 2002; Carder, 2008). This difference in the length of time is mainly due to the fact that more knowledge of language itself is required in academic situations (Bailey & Butler, 2003; Gibbons, 1998; Johns, 1997 & Schleppegrell, 2001 cited in Carhill et al., 2008).

Another significant point put forth by Cummins (2000) regarding the time needed for immigrant students to reach peer-appropriate levels in the language skills particularly in the academic domain, is that, native speakers are not at a standstill waiting for immigrant students to catch up but are constantly pulling ahead. Every year the native counterparts gain more sophisticated vocabulary and grammatical knowledge and increase their literacy skills. Thus, immigrant students must continuously catch up with a moving target (Cummins, 2000). Thomas and Collier (1997: 35) argue that immigrant students who have received all their schooling entirely through L2 might achieve 6-8 months’ gain each school year as they reach the middle and high school years, relative to the 10-month gain of typical native speakers. Thus, an achievement gap with native speakers becomes wider with each passing year, as typical native speakers advance by making 10 months’ gain in 10 months’ time, to maintain their average score at the 50th NCE across the years. This doubtlessly makes it even more difficult for immigrant students who enter school at a later age. In fact Collier (cited in Song & Róbert, 2010) states that arrivals at age 12-15 experience the greatest difficulty for even after being taught entirely in their additional language, they were projected to require as much as 6 to 8 years in order to reach grade-level proficiency.

Lightbown and Spada (1993), caution that educators and policy makers should be aware that research findings based on samples of younger children should not be uncritically applied to adolescents. Although there have been attempts to understand and address the needs of immigrant students at the elementary level, there has been a lamentable absence of efforts to do so for immigrant students at the secondary school level (Faltis, 1999; Ruiz-de-Velasco & Fix, 2000 all cited in Carhill et al., 2008). This certainly highlights the need to provide academic equity by adopting a more holistic approach through which immigrant secondary students achieve the academic mastery needed in the language of instruction enabling and better equipping them throughout their educational journey.

2.5 Immigrant students in Malta

Students in class, irrespective of their foreign physiognomy, name or mother tongue are like different pieces of glass put together to form a big, colourful glass mosaic, each reflecting light in a unique way. This uniquely kaleidoscopic and prismatic montage is glued by the language of the host country.

Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, p. 3-4) stipulates that all children have the right to education. Primary education has to be made compulsory, available and free to all. Secondary education, including general and vocational education, should also be available and accessible to all. Moreover, the Refugees Act, Act XX of 2000 declares that, "Persons recognised as refugees and those granted humanitarian protection are entitled to have access to state education and training" (Eurydice, 2003/4: 3). Thus, the Maltese educational system must ensure the right of every child residing in Malta who falls within the compulsory school age group (5 to 16 years), to receive education and instruction without any distinction of age, sex, belief, economic means, status or L1 and thus constantly work hard at the "fulfilment of the potential of every person" (For All Children to Succeed, 2005: 30). This includes children of: Maltese citizens, irregular immigrants or "boat people" (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2008, p. 65), EU nationals, non-EU nationals who are legally present in Malta for various purposes, including study, work or family re-unification (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2008, p. 65), non-Maltese nationals, returned migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, foreigners, migrants, immigrants, minorities and children of migrant workers.

Despite the idiosyncratic semantic content and legislative significance of the above mentioned terms, for the purpose of this study, all those children who fall within the compulsory school age group (5 to 16 years) and who do not have Maltese as their mother tongue or their L1, will be the focus of this study. Therefore, the term "immigrant" children and students in this study, will refer to all children of: irregular immigrants or "boat people" (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2008, p. 65), EU nationals, non-EU nationals who are legally present in Malta for various purposes, including study, work or family re-unification (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2008, p. 65), non-Maltese nationals, returned migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, foreigners, migrants, immigrants, minorities and migrant workers since irrespective of which tags are attached to these children, they are still children who are entitled to "the school-based measures contemplated in the legislation, among them support for the learning of any of the official languages" (Eurydice, 2003/4: 3).

In a local study carried out with Non-Maltese Speaking Children in the Primary Classroom, Frendo (2005: 28) states that the right to receive Free State education during the years of compulsory education:

is not restricted to children who are Maltese citizens but also extends to children residing in Malta who are refugees or asylum seekers, children of migrants, returned migrants and recently, children living in Malta who are citizens of other European Union member states.

Every child matters and deserves to have his/her abilities individually cultivated and nurtured (Bertelsmann, 2008).

As illustrated in the table below, the influx of immigrant students in secondary state schools is quite steady. It is also interesting to note that like in other countries mentioned previously, the *highest number of immigrant students (both for the girls and boys), seems to be found in the low achievers’ schools, the Secondary Schools.

Year:

Total nos of students in Malta and Gozo:

Secondary Schools:

(low achievers’ schools)

Junior Lyceum Schools:

(high achievers’ schools)

*Boys

*Girls

Boys

Girls

2006

Boys

85

Girls

109

Total

364

63

63

22

46

2007

Boys

115

Girls

140

Total

255

105

84

10

56

2008

Boys

151

Girls

135

Total

286

119

86

32

49

2009

Boys

179

Girls

131

Total

310

110

88

69

43

2010

Boys

158

Girls

179

Total

337

137

99

21

80

2011

Boys

148

Girls

175

Total

323

109

105

39

70

2012

Boys

161

Girls

165

Total

326

118

88

43

77

2013

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

This upsurge in the secondary state schools of hegemonic multicultural and multilinguistic reality, is definitely challenging (Böhlmark, 2009) the Maltese educational system in that it has to provide and ensure "equality of access to the educational system without discrimination on the grounds of ability, gender, religion, race or socio-cultural and economic background" (NMC, 1999:25). In fact the Eurydice publication (2003/04) on Integrating Immigrant Children into Schools in Europe states that:

Pupils and students have always been accepted by and integrated into Maltese schools, even though no special or specific arrangements were in place. This is partly due to the fact that English is taught in Maltese schools from an early age, most lessons are carried out in English and also because all teachers can communicate in English.

It is envisaged that children who do not understand Maltese or English would be given support in the learning of one of the official languages. The actual form such support would take is still not finalized. (p. 5)

Furthermore the same country report (2003/2004) states that:

Malta has two official languages – Maltese and English. To facilitate the integration of immigrant children into both the school environment and the wider society, these languages will be taught to these pupils. During school hours, pupils will have access to the teaching of the English or Maltese language according to their needs, through a withdrawal system.

The report (2003/2004: 7) concludes that, "Although the relevant legislation is in place the measures for immigrant children are still at the drawing board stage. Their implementation will probably take place by May 2004."

2.5.1 The language provision for immigrant children in Malta

The excerpts above dangerously underestimate the differences of each immigrant child. English as the medium of instruction can pose an unforeseen threat to the quality of education (Teekens, 2003) to those students who unlike others were never exposed to English. This is depicted by Elize’s experience, an 11-year-old girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of the participants in Camilleri’s (2007: 101) local study on immigrant students:

It was very difficult. I didn’t know even to speak English and of course no Maltese too. At least my teacher was speaking French to me because she realised I could speak French. So I speak to her in French.

Elize continues to relate that help sometimes was given by a classmate, and sometimes by a teacher or a support teacher/Learning Support Assistant (LSA):

It’s a bit hard. I manage English … but Maths and Maltese are difficult. Sometimes someone helps me at school … sometimes a child and sometimes a teacher [or support teacher/LSA].

Camilleri (2007: 103) adds that Elize wished she had some more help. This surely highlights the need for an explicit policy and not a sometimes type policy whereby students are simply thrown in regular classes, relying on the subjective beneficence of the assigned subject or class teacher to be given any kind of support.

In Eurydice (2009) it was pointed out that unlike other countries, Malta is still not offering any kind of promotion in communication between schools and immigrant families. The reason being that, "such policies may be defined in the near future owing to an increase in the number of immigrant pupils" (Eurydice, 2009: 8). All this inconsistency may be due to the fact that, "Malta is still taking its first steps towards realising and accepting its new role of an immigration country" (Amore, 2005: 20).

Sammut (2004: 66) in her research carried out with returned migrants in [1] Gozitan secondary schools, says that:

Despite their difficulties, no special provisions are made to help returned migrants learn Maltese as a second language. As research has shown, a centralized, bureaucratic educational system like that of Malta does not adequately cater for the individual needs of the learner (Marsh, 1997; Sultana, 1997; Bezzina, 1996). It is therefore no surprise that the school often turned a blind eye to returned migrants’ diverse needs, leaving them feeling ‘overlooked’ and ‘ignored’.

This is aptly observed by a participant in Sammut’s (2004: 66) study, Linda, a 23-year-old who came from England at the age of 13:

Linda: I don’t really want to say that the English system is better than here but as I said, the school I was in before, we had a lot of Italian people and whenever there was somebody that wasn’t understanding something he’d actually be taken out of the lesson and be given special tutoring. But here it was like you’re a minority, if you don’t understand it’s your problem you know and they’d just carry on. And fair enough, I don’t want to be the person to pull back the others back but you shouldn’t have to go through four years in a school and not understand anything… the fact that they didn’t focus on the problems I had, I don’t blame them, I don’t look back and say I hate them but I do wish they had tried to understand more the fact that I was suffering too, that I was being ignored.

Zahra and Zahra (1996) concur with the above and state that there is no organised way by which immigrant students are introduced into the local educational system.

Frendo’s research findings (2005: 90) similarly reveal, that in the two state primary schools, despite the teachers’ opinion that immigrant students need extra help, the majority of the teachers in both schools said that there was no support system to facilitate the integration of new pupils especially non-Maltese speaking pupils. Moreover, in one of the schools, a member of the school administration stated that remedial classes in Maltese and/or in English at school were only given sometimes and if the class teacher observed that the children were not catching up with their work. These findings portray a dangerous situation with regard to immigrant students, especially when keeping in mind comments like those expressed by one of the interviewees in Mifsud’s (2005) research who states that:

I try to translate from Maltese to English but then compared to the majority, because I have 25 students, [referring to the number of students in all], where the majority understands in Maltese, the most I emphasise mostly Maltese …. Most of the day I use Maltese. (p. 49)

Again, this poses additional questions regarding the way the immigrant students’ needs are being met in Malta’s educational system. A teacher participating in Frendo’s (2005: 116) study complained that, "They just give you the pupils and that’s all".

The research conducted so far in Malta, indicates that immigrant students in Malta are simply left to cope and pick up English, Maltese, both or none of them, as best they can, if they can. Changes are made so abruptly in the immigrant children’s lives that their whole life is suddenly convulsed (Zahra & Zahra, 1996: 113). According to Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar (2010) such sink-or-swim programmes, ensure that immigrant children are significantly disadvantaged and guarantee that their participation at school is neither full nor on equal footing to their native counterparts.

Another perturbing reaction is that many immigrant students indicate that they were ‘advised’ to repeat a year or placed in a low-ability class, resulting in the students feeling they have been treated unfairly and not given an equal opportunity to succeed (Zahra & Zahra, 1996; Sammut, 2004; Frendo, 2005 and Calleja et al. 2010). This is exemplified both from the previously illustrated educational statistics 2006-2010, and also by Oliver’s experience, a 22-year-old participant in Sammut’s research (2004) who came from Canada at the age of 15. Oliver was placed in a 5B class (and not the top stream A) because of lack of proficiency in Maltese:

They were kids li ma ridux, qishom (that didn’t seem to want to learn). I was put with them because of the only reason that I didn’t know Maltese. It wasn’t fair to me. It wasn’t fair that just because I didn’t know Maltese I couldn’t be in A. I was good in Maths, English, Physics, everything pretty much. (p. 111)

This clearly poses another setback to the immigrant students. In placing immigrant students in lower streams, (and in Frendo’s research (in school B) the students she interviewed were in the lowest stream of all), teachers revealed that, because Maltese children in such streams are less proficient in English, during most of the time the teachers have to speak in Maltese, if not the majority of students (who are Maltese) would not understand (Frendo, 2005). Consequently, not only do immigrant children have to face being tracked to levels which are below their potential (most of the times and without even being properly assessed (Frendo, 2005)), but also left to learn in a medium of a language which is completely alien to them. This according to Skutnabb-Kangas and Dunbar (2010, p. 48), is the mostly common and disastrous method used, for educating immigrant children.

It is evident, that very few teachers are able to make adaptations to suit and cater for the individual needs of immigrant students. This is either due to large syllabi, mounting pressures to do well in the national-based end-of-year examinations or due to large classes, leaving them with little time if at all, to devote to immigrant students (Frendo, 2005; Mifsud, 2005; Zahra & Zahra, 1996). Moreover, according to Frendo (2005) there seems to be no formal language policy which specifically caters for the support and integration of immigrant children in our schools. This is substantiated in some of the teachers’ replies in Mifsud’s (2005) study:

as a method as such, we do not make miracles … (p. 48)

as a teacher I do not find time to dedicate to this student so that I can stay beside him and explain to him each and every single word (p. 49)

..I’d wish [referring to making some adaptations in order to help the immigrants] but … teaching a year 6 class is a race towards exams, there’s no time, no!... (p. 49)

…there’s the need of a lot of resources. The teacher cannot create all the resources. The teacher has to buy everything herself … our school, to say so, does not provide these resources … (p. 49)

…funds! … At least they allot us Lm50, and you can buy books…Funds! (p. 49)

This seems to show that the lack of resources, funds, training, formal provisions and an explicit policy in the Education Act of Malta (1988) Article 3 with regards to language provision for immigrant students, presents teachers and also administrators with a daily struggle to adequately deal with the immigrant students’ diverse needs. Marguerat (2004 cited in Mifsud, 2005: 50) states that unfortunately the problem is that, "we seem to think … that these people have lesser rights than we have ..". Sammut (2004) in her synthesis of the local situation asserts that it is a highly bureaucratic and selective educational system thriving:

by picking and choosing those students who, on account of their ‘difference’ pose a hindrance to the progress of the ‘normal’ achieving pupil (Bartolo, 2001; Rotin, 1997; Sultana, 1992a). Returned migrants who do not speak Maltese well and whose academic abilities cannot be determined by the traditional means of assessment pose a threat to the smooth running of the system. Since the school cannot cater for their individual needs, returned migrants must be weeded out of the system, along with low-achievers or children with special needs. (p. 77)

Mifsud (2005) adds that such classroom teaching-learning processes, illustrate the unfairness towards immigrant students as learning should be meaningful and relevant to all, irrespective of their countries of origin and L1s. She adds that immigrant students have the right to learn just as the native-Maltese peers have, after all the education of students must necessarily foster proficiency in languages of functional significance (Mohanty in Skutnabb-Kangas & Heugh, 2011). For the immigrant students residing in Malta, this involves continuing to develop competence in their L1, in English and in Maltese, a trilingual situation.

2.5.2 Immigrant students in Malta’s bilingual situation

Some would simply claim that immigrant students in Malta can do well in a bilingual situation where they can continue to develop their mother tongue and also learn English, the language for international communication, higher levels of education and the economy (Heugh, 2002). However, as previous research has revealed, in Malta’s state schools much is carried out in Maltese, starting from the school assemblies (Frendo, 2005). Also, Linda, the previously cited participant in Sammut’s (2004) study, argues that:

Well, in the Maltese culture, everyone speaks Maltese. You can’t sit there and babble in English and tell them how you feel. You do feel different. As much as you don’t want to be, as much as you want to get on with the other people, you are different. (p. 48)

Frendo (2005) also shows that Maltese was seen as one of the crucial factors which influenced how easily the children integrated.

Despite the National Minimum Curriculum’s (Ministry of Education, 1999: 82) recommendation to use English as the medium of instruction in subjects such as, English, Mathematics, Environmental Studies (Geography), Physical Education and Sport, Computer Studies, Expressive Arts, Technology and Design and Co-ordinated Science and to code switch in cases where English poses great pedagogical problems, English still is the language of most of the examinations, the language of almost all textbooks used in schools and also the medium of all reading and writing activities in the Maltese classrooms (Camilleri, 1996; 1997; Camilleri Grima, 2002).

Given that most of the immigrant students are found in lower streams, and in these streams, the Maltese speaking peers have problems in understanding English, teachers very often use Maltese as revealed in Camilleri’s study of bilingualism in education in Malta (Camilleri, 1993). According to Camilleri (1996) this code-switching enabled the teachers in her study to succeed in giving lessons.

This stresses the immigrant students’ difficult learning experience with language of instruction being one of the main predictors in their educational failure, exclusion and marginalization. Indeed, a study carried out by Zahra and Zahra (1996) about children of returned migrants, reveals that some children felt completely left out and disadvantaged that the teaching of so many subjects was carried out in what was for them was a foreign language (Maltese):

Sometimes the language gets in the way. Maltese – I don’t understand it at all – I understand quite a bit but not all so sometimes I have to tell the teachers I’m not understanding but, apart from this, I feel like the rest (Girl, 13 years, Area Secondary: UK). (p. 89)

They sort of forget about me when talking Maltese but other than that it’s OK … I speak Maltese now – not fluently – but I’m getting there (Girl, 13 years, Area Secondary: Canada). (p. 89)

Similarly in Mifsud’s research (2005) on immigrant students, one of the teachers about immigrant students in class said:

…they find themselves as real strangers in class … they have to be very patient in order to stay all day long listening without understanding anything. (p. 47-48)

Thus, as also highlighted in Camilleri (2007) and Sammut’s (2004) studies respectively, one of the immigrant students’ initial and greatest problems is the Maltese language barrier. Tesfai, an Ethiopian 15-year-old boy in Camilleri’s research with young immigrants states that, "The first thing which really got to me was that I did not know Maltese". Such an impediment not only hinders communication with the immigrant students’ native peers, makes it difficult to establish friendships, triggers rapid and strong feelings of estrangement but also prevents them from participating fully in the classroom which in turn hampers their success in academics (Mohanty, 2008). It can thus be argued that not knowing Maltese in Malta can place immigrant students at a particular disadvantage, and if this situation is not improved, these children can become disempowered. This is turn can lead to a continued downward spiral of disempowerment, educationally, economically, socially and politically.

2.5.3 Providing the adequate language beacons

It is not enough for immigrant children to just sit in the classroom. Callahan et al. (2009) emphasize that, the focus for immigrant students must shift from simply keeping them in the classroom to ensuring that the time spent there prepares them for the world outside of school. Immigrant children have the right to be enabled to acquire the receiving country’s language which can help them access educational and social opportunities (McEachron & Bhatti, 2005). The fatally flawed assumption (Quinn, 2006) that integration will look after itself, that it will happen automatically or that immigrant students will simply pick up the language of instruction as best they could (Kerr & Desforges, cited in Sammut, 2004; Murakami, 2008) is the very reason why education in these situations is failing to act as a force to include immigrants. These gaps in educational attainment are likely to accentuate the immigrants’ social exclusion (Green Paper, 2008 on Migration and Mobility: 7; Bron: 2003; Cabau-Lampa, 1999; Harrison, 2007) rather than their integration with lack of language support being one of the main inhibitors. According to Heugh (2002), when there is an ailment that requires treatment, the symptoms need to be carefully exa