CSET IV: WORLD LANGUAGES

Use the table below to answer the question that follows.

Which line of the table accurately matches a court case or legislation with a description of its effect on bilingual education in California?

• Line 1

• Line 2

• Line 3

• Line 4

Answer explanation

Lau v. Nichols (1974) was a landmark federal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the right of students whose primary language is not English to have equal access to the core curriculum. The court decision stressed that students whose primary language is not English do not gain equal access to the curriculum simply by being supplied with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum as native English speakers. Language programs for students not proficient in English were necessary to provide these students with equal educational opportunities.

A bilingual education student who has had six years of previous schooling in his home country has been placed in the fifth grade in a California school. Which of the following effects will the student's previous education most likely have on his English language development?

• Social Skills the student learned in the educational system of his home country will lower his affective filters in the new learning environment and facilitate his acquisition of English.

• The student's primary-language skills will hinder second-language acquisition because they take up cognitive resources the student needs for learning English.

• The linguistic concepts and learning strategies the student has already learned in the educational system of his home country will enhance and support his English language development.

• Divergent educational approaches between the two educational systems will require that the student undergo an extended period of school orientation before beginning to study English.

Answer explanation

Since this student has most likely already developed an understanding of the functions and purposes of language in his primary language, he will be able to transfer this understanding to English. The student does not need to relearn concepts related to language and literacy, but can apply his knowledge of these concepts to English.

Which of the following best describes the primary advantage of creating culturally relevant content lessons within a bilingual education setting?

• Students will be more likely to pay attention in class and to complete their assignments on time.

• Students will be more likely to grasp new concepts that are grounded in their day-to-day life experiences.

• Students will be more likely to transfer linguistic knowledge from their primary language to the target language.

• Students will be more likely to explore classroom topics further at home or in the community.

Answer explanation

Students who actively engage in their learning are able to recognize a connection between what they know and what they are learning. Including culturally relevant lessons, experiences, and materials in content-area instruction promotes students' ability to connect their prior knowledge with new knowledge and to grasp new concepts. Culturally relevant content lessons also promote student content-area learning by helping motivate students and lowering students' affective filter.

The family of a bilingual education student is almost entirely monolingual, using the primary language for most everyday communication. During a conversation with the student's teacher, family members express concern that their limited proficiency in the target language is hindering their child's development in that language and ask for suggestions for ways in which they can help their child learn the target language. The teacher could best respond to the family members by encouraging them to:

• use the primary language as much as possible when interacting with the child, as that will help the child's overall language development.

• have the child serve as a translator for family members, as that will help the child learn the major differences between the two languages.

• ask the child to tutor family members in the target language, as that will help reinforce the child's understanding of the language.

• speak to the child in the primary language but require the child to respond in the target language, as that will help the child learn how to switch between languages.

Answer explanation

Encouraging parents to use the primary language when interacting with their children will promote students' overall language development because knowledge of the primary language helps build students' understanding of the nature of language. Building students' proficiency in the primary language also provides students with a linguistic foundation on which they can draw while learning a target language. Students who have a strong foundation in their primary language can use metalinguistic strategies when learning a target language.

An elementary school bilingual education teacher coordinates a monthly reading group with the other bilingual education teachers at the school to discuss current research and methodology for bilingual education. This activity shows that the teacher is aware of the importance of:

• preparing teachers at the school to conduct their own research on new ideas for bilingual education.

• reflecting actively on teaching practices and considering a variety of viewpoints when planning bilingual education instruction.

• identifying problematic areas of bilingual education at the school that need to be addressed by all teachers.

• implementing the newest techniques and strategies for bilingual education at their schools.

Answer explanation

Students benefit from teachers who discuss current research, each other's viewpoints, and bilingual education methodology. Teachers who have opportunities to consider a variety of viewpoints when planning and modifying instruction are able to consider differing needs and perspectives of students. In addition, teachers who have an understanding of current research related to bilingual education can apply this research to classroom instruction.

Which of the following small-group activities would best help bilingual education students synthesize the information they gain through reading a passage in their primary language?

• talking about their expectations of what they will find out in the passage before they begin reading.

• highlighting any unfamiliar vocabulary and expressions they find in the passage and discussing their possible meanings.

• answering a series of questions about the information that was presented in the passage.

• creating graphic organizers showing the connections between different ideas they encountered in the passage.

Answer explanation

Graphic organizers provide students with a visual means of organizing information, demonstrating their comprehension of content-area materials, and identifying connections among various main concepts. In addition, through small-group interaction in the primary language, students can discuss the main concepts of the passage and also help each other evaluate the information that they have just read.

Students in a bilingual education class interact regularly with students from other bilingual education classes throughout the country through the use of moderated target-language Internet forum. The moderator of the forum poses an opinion question and the students work in small groups to compose and post their answers. The students interacts with other students on the forum, debating and discussing their opinions. This activity will best promote the students' target-language literacy development by:

• allowing them to compare their target-lauguage abilities with the abilities of other students.

• providing them with an opportunity to practice communicating in different language registers.

• giving them a chance to use the language in a meaningful and purposeful manner.

• helping the use technological tools such as spell-checking software to verify their language usage.

Answer explanation

Using language in a meaningful and purposeful manner provides motivating contextualization in which language skills can develop. The target language is acquired through a natural process in which students are engaged in an activity that promotes language development. The target language is embedded within an understandable and meaningful context that focuses on the Internet forum activity rather than on the language in isolation. Students use the target language to accomplish a specific task and have increased language proficiency as a result of these interactions.

During a unit on electricity, a bilingual education teacher asks students to discuss types of electronic equipment they use at home or have seen used in the community. This activity is most likely to promote students' learning by:

• helping them understand the relationship between culture and language.

• focusing their attention on learning new vocabulary words used by their classmates.

• raising their awareness of the differences and similarities between their various home cultures.

• helping them create connections between previous knowledge and experiences and new content.

Answer explanation

An effective way to make content-area topics more relevant to students is to discuss their role in students' everyday lives. Teacher can use this discussion to determine what students already know about a topic before proceeding to new material. By tapping into students' background knowledge and experiences, teachers also help students discover meaningful connections that enhance and reinforce the learning of new content-area materials.

Which of the following statements best describes an advantage of using observational assessment in a bilingual education setting?

• Teachers can devote time to focusing on students' language skill development during the school year.

• Students rely less on formal primary- and target- language interactions with the teacher.

• Teachers can track development of students' primary and target languages in varying contexts.

• Students' affective filters are raised when teachers evaluate them informally.

Answer explanation

Observational assessment is often used to document a student's academic behaviors in the classroom. As an informal measurement, observational assessment captures behaviors in authentic situations, providing the teacher with a high degree of flexibility to track and evaluate student learning experiences in varying contexts. This assessment allows the teacher to document growth and change that might not be visible on a more structured or formal evaluation.

A bilingual education teacher has found a primary-language text that is written at an appropriate level of difficulty but that contains some vocabulary words that may be unfamiliar to students because the text reflects a different dialect than the dialects used by the students. Which of the following strategies would best help students successfully read this text?

• guiding students to use context cues to understand unfamiliar words they encounter in the text.

• simplifying the content of the text to remove as many of the potentially unfamiliar words as possible.

• giving students a glossary of the words and asking them to look up the meanings of any unfamiliar words they encounter in the text.

• replacing the potentially unfamiliar vocabulary words with words that are used in the standard form of the language.

Answer explanation

Students are able to grasp the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary words more quickly and thoroughly when they are able to see and use the words in context rather than learn the words in isolation. Guiding students to use context cues as a strategy for understanding unfamiliar words also helps promote the development of students' overall reading comprehension skills.