The Applied Linguist, School Reform, and Technology: Challenges and Opportunities for the Coming Decade

G. Richard Tucker
Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract:
In this presentation, I propose to describe briefly the rapidly changing demography of the U.S. school population and the implications of these changes for pedagogical practice(s). I will then summarize current research priorities for the language education profession that have recently been articulated by several professional associations and task forces. I will conclude by discussing some of the implications of these suggested research priorities and directions for the work of those concerned with improving the effectiveness of language learning and teaching through the use of innovative technologies.

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHY

As we are all aware, the demography of the United States is changing dramatically and, concomitantly, that of our school systems and of the workplace.¹ (For a review of these issues, see Crandall, 1995.) As a nation, we are becoming markedly more culturally and linguistically diverse. The numbers of foreign-born as a percentage of the total population and the percentage of individuals who typically speak a language other than English at home have increased significantly since 1980. More and more of the entrants to our schools and to our workforce are language minority individuals, and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.

Consider the following observations by Jodi Crandall—a former colleague of mine and scholar well known to many of you:

• During the 1980s more than nine million individuals immigrated to the US—more than at any time in the twentieth century except for the period from 1905-1914;

• Between 1980 and 1990, the Asian-American population more than doubled; the Hispanic-American grew by more than 50%;

• in the five years from 1986-1991, the nation's school-age population grew by approximately 4%; but the percentage of limited-English-proficient youngsters rose by more than 50%; and

• it is estimated that in 1990 approximately 30% of all students were minority along with 12% of all teachers; but that by the year 2,000 approximately 38% of pupils will be minority but only 5% of all teachers will be.

These changes have profound implications for our educational system and for the types of individuals who provide services to our students.

Clearly, as the composition of the American population continues to change, individuals who possess at least some degree of even latent bilingual proficiency will increasingly comprise the pool of prospective students and members of the workforce. However, if present educational practices continue, these individuals will not be encouraged, nor will they even be assisted, to nurture or to maintain their native language skills as they add English to their repertoire. They will comprise a rapidly expanding pool of individuals that Wallace Lambert has characterized as "subtractive bilinguals."

Every indication that we have seen suggests that these trends will be even more prominent when the data from the year 2000 census have been analyzed—regardless of whether one uses the "exact count" or the statistical approximation method.

Language Education for Minority Students

Unfortunately, available data suggest that language minority students (and, in particular, those who are so-called limited-English-proficient youngsters) do not perform as well academically as their language majority counterparts. They often—as a class—do not develop the academic English language skills that they need to participate effectively in educational instruction; they drop out of school in disproportionately higher numbers than their counterparts; if they do remain in school, they are less likely to proceed to colleges or universities (del Pinal, 1995); if they proceed to college or university, they are less likely to study professional subjects such as engineering, medicine, etc.; if they find employment, they are less likely to be retained and more likely to earn lower wages than their counterparts, etc. The outlook is not a positive one. Let's turn for a moment to consider so-called language-majority students.

Language Education for Majority Students

What is the prognosis for developing bilingual language competence in our students? With respect to so-called language majority residents, by all accounts we are not achieving the level of success in foreign or second language teaching programs necessary for them to compete effectively in the commercial world of the 21^st century. Although the absolute number of students enrolled in modern foreign languages at the postsecondary level has increased substantially from 1960 to 1990, enrollments in relative terms have actually fallen from 16.1 per 100 college students in 1960 to 8.5 per 100 in 1990. Nor do American students, for the most part, study abroad. In a typical year, fewer than 3% of American postsecondary students study abroad. In 1998, there were approximately 480,000 international students studying in the United States, but there were only 98,000 American students studying abroad—and the majority of those students were in English-speaking countries!

The picture is equally bleak at the elementary and secondary levels, where it is estimated that fewer than 5% and 38%, respectively, of public school students participate in any foreign language study whatsoever. Furthermore, a majority of the relatively small number of individuals who do have an opportunity for foreign language study achieve disappointingly low levels of proficiency in their target languages (see Branaman & Rhodes, 1997).

We have talked a great deal in professional educational circles in recent years about the effectiveness of so-called foreign language immersion programs and of developmental bilingual education programs—and indeed they are effective; but the truth of the matter is that to date it is estimated that fewer than 50,000 American youngsters participate in one or the other of these types of programs, that is, fewer than one thousandth of one percent of the youngsters enrolled in public schools.

A National Need

Unfortunately, U.S. schools and colleges have been strikingly unsuccessful in expanding (or in conserving) our country's language resources. The majority of our negative experiences to date can be attributed to the glaring lack of expertise in languages other than English and lack of cross-cultural competence on the part of U.S. professionals. Fully two thirds of our gross domestic product is now accounted for by "services." By removing artificial trade barriers, treaties allow U.S. professionals to provide services freely in the signatory nations in exchange for access to U.S. markets by foreign professionals. Providers of services must be able to speak the target language with a high degree of fluency and have basic comprehension of the cultural assumptions and norms of the society in which they are operating. This has not proven problematic for foreign professionals wishing to enter the American marketplace. This requirement has virtually paralyzed our workers wishing to gain access to foreign markets (Brecht & Walton, 1995).

INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING.

As a backdrop for this presentation, I propose to begin by reviewing briefly selected information concerning the ways in which language educators reacted to the wave of immigration to the United States in the early 1900s. (This example is drawn from the field of English as a second language.)

The Formative Years

In the early years of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of newcomers migrated to the United States. A large majority of these individuals were non-English speakers, and it is interesting—and perhaps instructive—to examine briefly the types of services that were made available to these newcomers. Within the context of the so-called Americanization movement, a broad network of ESL classes was developed and offered by industry and by community organizations in many parts of the country. During the period from 1918-1923, there was a great deal of activity. In reviewing government archival records from that period, I was surprised to find so many explicit references to topics of current interest. In 1918, a convention was held in Connecticut that brought together representatives from more than 100 industries in the state to begin to develop standards for English classes. A number of other states reported that they offered summer training programs for teachers who would be called upon to teach English to the "foreign born." A promotional film, The Making of an American, was prepared to encourage newcomers to study English. California established a Council on Immigration to coordinate service provision. By the mid 1920s, state reports began to include information about the development of in-service as well as pre-service training programs. Classes were offered at universities and local schools of education (e.g., the Cleveland School of Education in which teachers could enroll in a 40-hour course covering issues such as the organization and administration of Americanization activities, methods, etc.). In addition, some states such as Delaware required ESL teachers to complete a 30-hour training course, supplemented by in-service training which included monthly conferences, demonstration lessons, inspection of lesson plans, and supervision of classroom instruction.

Statewide and regional conferences were held regularly to discuss problems encountered in ESL classrooms and to generate lists of possible solutions for vexing issues such as pupil classification and placement, class size, number and length of sessions, and curricular matters. Useful resource materials such as the comprehensive handbooks by Goldberger (1919) and Hill (1923) were produced and distributed by the Government Printing Office. Another guide, The Ohio Manual for Teachers (Americanization Bulletin No. 2), was cited as one of the best guides available (Mahoney, 1923). So in summary, we can draw a number of positive inferences about the professionalization of the teaching of English as a foreign or second language during this period. Educators and policy makers then were concerned about many of the same issues that concern us today.

At the same time, however, it is interesting to note that "success" can only be inferred by allusions in reports such as that from South Dakota which called attention to the diminishing need for such classes since "the bulk of the potential students will have been trained over a two- to three-year period." That is, one finds no evidence of systematic research or evaluation accompanying this large-scale program.

Recent Research in Adult Second Language Acquisition

I turn now to a brief review of recent research in the area of adult second language acquisition. I will focus in particular on issues related to language learning and literacy in instructed settings, program design, instructional content, effective practices, and assessment. I want to preface this section by noting that I tend to share the view articulated by Avery (in Burnaford et al., 1996) that "Learning is a messy, mumbled, nonlinear, recursive and sometimes unpredictable process." Therefore research intended to examine, describe, and clarify the process of learning and teaching should be characterized by its systematicity and accessibility to public scrutiny and by a process of systematic inquiry that will yield reliable information permitting valid conceptualization. Furthermore, it often seems to me to be the case that research yields numerous implications but that these frequently result in few direct applications. At least that seems to be the case for educational research conducted in North America.

Theoretical Underpinnings

One of the more interesting paradoxes to emerge from this review for me is that the theoretical underpinnings or approaches or at least the so-called "linguistic propositions" which inform or guide a good deal of the current second language acquisition research such as the generative (see Ritchie & Bhatia, 1996) are quite explicit while, according to Schumann (1998) and others, the theories that account for or motivate research that examines individual differences among second language learners are for the most part fragmentary or relatively inexplicit. As a corollary, one might note in particular that much current second language acquisition (SLA) research grounded in universal grammar (UG), which is intended to test specific claims or predictions of current syntactic theory, does not concern itself for the most part with so-called applied language learning or teaching questions.

For researchers working within a UG framework, for example, two major questions seem to have emerged in the past decade: (a) to what extent does the syntactic representation of a second language reflect the parametric settings adopted for the first language and (b) how does this initial representation develop and how is it replaced by target language parameters over time through interaction with other UG principles (Sánchez, personal communication, September, 1998). According to Bayley and Preston (1996), this "hegemony" of the generative influence on much SLA research has tended to inhibit those working within a variationist perspective—or by extension one might argue for those working within a cognitive or sociocultural framework as well.

Selective Review of Recent Research Syntheses

In the following section, I offer a very selective overview of current research directions in adult SLA as reflected in recently published research studies or syntheses. There have been a number of quite informative syntheses published recently. As Shirai (1997) notes, research on second language acquisition has shed some light on the process of how second language competence is attained. As he reports, there has been a good deal of research in recent years on topics such as linguistic universals, markedness, and noun phrase accessibility. And we know, for example, unmarked meanings are easier to acquire in a second language than marked meanings and that learners generally start with unmarked prototypical forms. Shirai suggests, however, that there is a great deal that we do not yet know or, conversely, that much of what we apparently know does not have immediate pedagogical implication and that future research would do well to address the issue of which linguistic features are developmental, variational, or projectional.

Selective Review of Recent Molecular Studies

Likewise, there have been a number of recent studies that examine specific modalities or features of second language learning such as vocabulary (Schmitt, 1998), writing (Gibbons & Lascar, 1998) and reading (Koda, 1998). Some of these studies do have potential short-term impact on adult language and literacy training. Koda (1998) found, for example, in her work with Chinese and Korean learners of English those L2 readers of English from no alphabetic backgrounds may be seriously handicapped and that prior processing experience, task requirements, and learners' metacognitions interact in complex ways to account for procedural variations among L2 learners. She concluded that performance data among L2 readers cannot be explained through simplistic analyses of L1 variables.

Selective Review of Effective Schools Research

In the following section, I review briefly highlights of findings from the so-called "Effective Schools" research (see, for example, August & Hakuta, 1997, chap. 12) with a view toward understanding whether there are generally applicable practices and policies that would be relevant to adult ESL and literacy education. These studies typically focus on practice or process in relation to some type of outcome, normally either student outcomes or nomination. The unit of analysis—despite the nomenclature—is usually the classroom rather than the school. In effective schools, in general, staffs design the learning environment to reflect contextual factors from the communities of their students. In particular when the bulk of the students are non-English speakers, effective schools possess attributes such as the following: a customized learning environment, some use of native language and culture in the instructional process, opportunities for student directed activities, systematic and continual student assessment, and staff development.

Summary Observation

The major point that I want to make on the basis of this brief review of extant research in adult second language education is that we know relatively little about the course, the correlates, or the causes of instructed adult (ESL) second language learning despite more than 75 years of experience with program implementation in many parts of the world.

Such a view has implications for graduate training. I believe we should encourage our students to seek the broadest possible training in qualitative and ethnographic as well as in quantitative techniques and that we should then work to ensure that we all use the tools that are most appropriate for the questions we are asking from among the broad array of techniques and procedures currently available to us. Oftentimes, this is more difficult for seasoned faculty members to do than for our students, which is at least partially attributable to advances in the research field. (For example, when I was a graduate student in experimental psychology, I took the most advanced courses that were then offered in quantitative data analysis at McGill University. Today, our courses for incoming doctoral students in Psychology at Carnegie Mellon begin by assuming that students have already done prerequisite work that is more advanced than that with which I finished my formal training.)

I also believe firmly that we should not encourage the importation of any one relatively restricted research paradigm or tradition but that we should be equipping our students and other individuals with the tools they need to participate as full and equal partners in what Swain (1996) and others have referred to as a recursive "cycle of discovery." Thus, I resist strongly the assertion that one or another methodological framework (or analytical procedure) is uniquely suited for the type of collaborative, action research to which I am referring as one that would be desirable in all adult ESL and literacy education.

RESEARCH PRIORITIES

Suggestions for Future Collaborative

In the section to follow, I will summarize and discuss the implications of several recently conducted metareviews of research priorities for the field. I note that there have appeared a surprising number of substantive research reviews within the last two years which have ended by offering a purposeful list of priorities for the language education field (see, for example, August & Hakuta, 1997; NCLE, 1998; Tucker, 1998) as well as statements or position papers that have been prepared and broadly disseminated by organizations such as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, the National Network for Early Language Learners, international organization of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and the newly created TESOL International Research Foundation.

Interestingly, almost every review of language education research (and I am using this term quite broadly) decries the lack of longitudinal research or data. Skehan (1998), for example, identifies what he refers to as a serious omission in research activity, the "Most important of these is the lack of any longitudinal research," while Alampresse (1994) notes that there are no major longitudinal studies that yield valid data on the impact of participation in adult ESL programs. This same argument was advanced rather forcefully a number of years ago by Spolsky (1989) and is similar in spirit to the suggestions provided by Clark and Davidson (1993) when they argued for the desirability of designing and implementing what they referred to as a "Research Consolidation Project."

Two additional themes seem to be emerging frequently in recent reviews. The first is a growing concern with the increasing heterogeneity of the young adult student population (Gardner, 1991) in relationship to the population of more typically examined school-aged instructed learners from past years. A second major concern centers around the evolving views of psychometricians with issues of validity and the implications for assessment (see, for example, Chapelle, 1999; McNamara, 1996). In the current view, validity is seen as comprising the extent to which test interpretations and use can be justified, and test developers are increasingly concerned about testing consequences, that is, according to Chapelle, to the "value interpretations made from test scores and the social consequences of test use." I mention this latter area since the search for a useful or appropriate "metric" for assessing adult language attainment or growth will, of necessity, involve to some extent the use of standard tests. And it is fair to say that the field of language assessment and its underlying assumptions is in ferment.

Canadian Immersion Programs

The data revealed among other things that, over time, the immersion youngsters developed significantly greater cognitive flexibility and nonverbal intelligence than their monolingually instructed control counterparts; they developed a broader, more positive, and more charitable view toward other people, values, attitudes, and traditions than their counterparts; and they developed a basic level of bilingual language proficiency that prepared them for a broader array of educational or occupational options than their monolingually educated counterparts. The results of this research (see, for example, Lambert & Tucker, 1982) demonstrated to us that such longitudinal study was absolutely essential for documenting the cumulative benefits associated with the instructed development of bilingual proficiency.

ESL Staff Development Under Realistic Conditions

However, a tracking study that was conducted seven years later revealed a completely different participant profile. On that occasion, an overwhelming majority of the Philippine participants reported that the experience had significantly and positively affected their personal and professional lives. They reflected on the many concrete ways in which they had incorporated material from that summer into their teaching and the ways in which they had sought career paths that enabled them to draw on and amplify their experiences from the summer of 1968. In retrospect, the summer for the vast majority had, over time, become a "defining moment" in their professional lives (see Bruck, Lambert, Tucker & Bowen, 1975). This story could not have been told accurately without this longitudinal perspective.

Head Start and the Values of Early Participation

As the last example, let me mention a current continuing study from a different domain of language education. In the early 1970s, 68 children born and living in poverty were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions at ages 3 and 4: (a) direct instruction (a teacher centered curriculum using the DISTAR approach); (b) traditional nursery school (interactive and collaborative); and (c) a so-called High/Scope curriculum (in which teacher and child planned and initiated collaborative activities based upon a model developed at the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation). A recent report provides data for these participants who have now been tracked for 23 years. Apparently, a high quality innovative preschool program involving interactive and collaborative activities on the part of the students and teachers (High/Scope and Traditional nursery school above) has resulted in persistent long term benefits for participants. For example, the data indicate that participation has led to significantly improved educational and subsequent economic success (which incidentally provides taxpayers a return equal to 716% of their investment in the program), to greater optimism about the future; to a greater awareness of the needs of others as measured by participation in volunteer work, and even to a sharply reduced lifetime arrest rate. The long term prognosis for participants in such programs appears to be definitely more positive than for those who participate in the more traditional programs or those who participate in no program at all.

These results, and indeed those from each of the studies referred to above, would not necessarily be obvious on the basis of limited cross-sectional research. But indeed the results are important, and the cumulative story that can be told is important. Such results, when available, have demonstrably profound policy implications. To take but one example, a program of French-immersion education which began in one school in one community in the Province of Quebec has spread to become a natural and viable educational option for students in all 10 Canadian provinces and in many of the states of Australia and the United States. As Carey (1997) noted "one of the most successful educational examples of language planning for unity has been the French immersion programs across Canada."

Recommendations for Action

In the extant reviews and position papers, there are repeated calls for longitudinal studies of all kinds in the language education domain. In addition, there are numerous suggestions that we need to understand more clearly phenomena such as the critical role of "literacy" in the development of the cognitive academic language skills needed for effective participation in instruction and the various aspects of the development and transfer of native language literacy skills (particularly for speakers of noncognate, less commonly taught languages) since they provide the underpinnings for effective development of cognitive academic language abilities in English. In additional, numerous groups (e.g., TESOL and the TESOL International Research Foundation) favor encouraging theoretically motivated research relevant to various instructional issues (e.g., studies on the validation [in the senses described above] of developmentally sensitive measures of language proficiency, the value of cultivating metalinguistic awareness, and the usefulness of language strategy training).

These priorities also seem congruent with those explicitly articulated in the report of a specialist panel of the U.S. National Academy of Science (see August & Hakuta, 1997) in which it is recommended that funders and policy makers consider examining their needs within the general framework offered by four principles.

• Principle 1

Give priority to important topics to which insufficient attention has been paid, but for which there already exist promising theories and research methodologies;

• Principle 2

Give priority to addressing gaps in population coverage such as certain age or language groups;

• Principle 3

Give priority to legitimate questions that are of strong interest to well defined constituencies;

• Principle 4

Give priority to building the nation's capacity to conduct high quality research on English-language learners.

ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY

On a personal note, my own involvement in TEL (technology-enhanced learning), albeit somewhat sporadic, stems from the early 1980s when I was head of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC. A wealthy Indonesian entrepreneur (the then head of Pertamina) had a vision. He believed that the downtime experienced by workers on oil rigs could be used more productively by providing them with self-access materials designed to enable them to improve their language, literacy, numeracy, and other foundation skills. But I had another concern. On the basis of our experience, I came away with two impressions that continue to influence my thinking today. (1) Many groups (entrepreneurial business people, specialists from AID and the World Bank, and others) were willing to underwrite the cost of program development; no one [at that time] was willing to fund research—either short term or preferably longitudinal—to examine the effectiveness of this type of instructed second language learning and teaching in relationship to the more traditional classroom-based delivery. (2) Access to the technological innovation was severely restricted to a small "privileged" class of individuals (e.g., individuals working on a Pertamina oil rig in the Celebes Sea and individuals studying a foreign language in the Central Intelligence Agency language school).

Future Directions

By way of conclusion, let me note that the United States continues to receive over a million immigrants, legal and illegal, each year and that the foreign born is the fastest growing segment of the population. The most accurate prediction we can make is that this trend, evident in a number of other industrialized nations as well, will continue for the foreseeable future together with an increase in the number of native born individuals who will speak English as a second language.

Likewise, a recent study commissioned by the British Council on the future of the English language (Graddol, 1997) underscores the need for all individuals to develop bilingual proficiency in order to be able to participate effectively in our increasingly global society.

This situation poses challenges and opportunities for the applied linguist to craft a truly applied research agenda that can examine longitudinally, and from multiple perspectives, some of the perplexing questions that persist. For example (from NCLE, 1998), What is the role of native language oral and literate proficiencies in the acquisition of ESL? What instructional sequences and approaches work best? … With whom? How can technology be effectively utilized? What is the relationship between staff training and program quality and learner attainment? What immediate and long-term impact can be expected from various types of adult ESL programs? Which extant assessment instruments can reliably document change in learner proficiency at which levels?

Hopefully, during the decade ahead—with support from various public and private philanthropic sources—collaborative groups of researchers, educators, policy makers and administrators will begin to ask questions such as those identified above and gradually begin to aggregate relevant qualitative and quantitative data to shed light on the issues.