DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 337 059
FL 800 390
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TITLE
PUB DATE
NOTE
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Cumming, Alister; ftnd Others
Learning ESL Literacy among Indo-Canadian Women.
Final Report*
Department of the Secretary of State, nttawa
(Ontario). Multiculturalism Directorate.
Jun 91
49p.
Reports - Research/Technical (143)
EDRS PRICE
DESCRIPTORS
IDENTIFIERS
MF01/PCC2 Plus Postage.
*Adult Literacy? Bilingual Students; Cultural
Differences; ^English (Second Language); "Females;
Immigrants; Minority Groups; Panjabi; *Second
Language Instruction
Canada; * Punjabis
ABSTRACT
Educational issues were studied as related to women
in one visible minority population in the Vancouver area — recent
immigrants from the Punjab state in India. The 10-month demonstration
project involving 13 participants is analyzed in terms of fiv*
research topics; participation in the program, Punjabi-English
biliteracy, classroom instruction and learning, long-term impacts of
ESL literacy acquisition, and public information materials that
affect their use among program participants. An effort was made to
provide culturally relevant instruction and then assess it for its
wider use. Curriculum decisions were made by the instructor in
consultation with students, researchers, and an adv/.sory committee.
Among the findings were that: (1) participation in the program was
influenced by length of residence in Canada, family roles and
support, knowledge of English, expectations for further education or
work, and awareness of Canadian institutions; (2) uses of English and
Punjabi literacy were differentiated according to social action
domains; and (3) learning was affected by language code, self-control
strategies, personal and social knowledge, and social experience.
Appended are a list of the advisory committee and three
Punjabi-English usage charts. Contains approximately 100 references.
(Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education) (LB)
*********************************************************************
* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
* from the original document*
rnlng ESL
I ndo-Ca n
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Final Report
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Submitted to the Multiculturalism Sector, Department of
the Secretary of State of Canada, June 1991
"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE VHIS
MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY
TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
INFORMATION CENTER {ERIC) "
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m«»nt (Jo not <v»ci***f'ty rf»p*«»*nt nt*«c »«!
Of pp»*m>n o< y
Dr. i'ister Cumming
Department of Language Education
University of British Columbia
With Assistance from Jasvinder Gill, Raminder Dosanjh,
and Catherine Ostler-Hovlett
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ERIC
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
Contents
1 Purpose of This Report, and Related
Publications 2
2 Context of the Project 3
2.1 Literacy and Adult Minority Populations . 4
2.2 Women, Literacy, Culture, and Language . . 5
2.3 Local Context 5
3 Approach 6
3.1 Participants 7
3.2 Curriculum 8
3.3 Data Collection and Analyses 8
4 Participation in the Present Program 9
4.1 Length of Residence 9
4.2 Economic Positions 1C
4.3 Family Roles and Support 10
4.4 Future Employment Prospects 12
4.5 English Literacy and Contact with the
Majority Society 12
4.6 Program Supports 13
4.7 Implications for Educational and Social
Policy 14
5 Punjabi-English Biliteracy 16
5.1 Domains of Literate Language Use .... 16
5.2 Attitudes towards the Languages and
Literacy 17
5.3 Gender Roles and Socio-economic
Positions 18
5.4 Status of the Minority and Majority
Languages 18
5.5 Implications for Educational and Social
Policy 19
6 Classroom Instruction and Learning 20
6.1 Language Code 20
6.2 Self-control Strategies and Schemata for
Reading and Writing 22
6.3 Personal Knowledge 24
6.4 Social Knowledge 25
6.5 Social Experience 26
6.6 Implications for Instruction 27
7 Long-term Impacts 28
7.1 Uses of English Literacy 29
7.2 Indicators of Language Acquisition ... 30
7.3 Implications for Instruction and Policy . 30
8 Public Information Documents 31
8.1 Frequently Encountered Text Types ... 32
8.2 Difficult Aspects of Such Texts .... 32
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8.3 Principles for Preparing Appropriate Public
Information Documents 33
Appendix A Advisory Committee 43
Appendix B Frequency of Reading in Punjabi and
English, March 1990 44
Appendix C Frequency of Writing in Punjabi and
English, March 1990 45
Appendix D Frequency of English Literacy Uses at
Beginning of Project, End of Project, and
Four Months Later 46
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X Purpose o £ This Report, an*3
Related Publ icat i ons
This document reports final analyses from the demonstration
project, "Learning ESL Literacy among Indo-Canadian Women",
funded by the Multiculturalism Sector, Department of the
Secretary of State of Canada through a grant to Dr. Alister
Cumming over 1989-90 at the Department of Language Education,
University of British Columbia. An earlier progress report on
the project was submitted to the Secretary of State in October,
1989 outlining the logistical organization of the instructional
program, characteristics of the participants in the instructional
program, and the project's approaches to teaching, curriculum,
and data collection.
The present report describes findings for five questions
(outlined in preliminary form in the 1989 progress report)
central to the research aspects of the project:
1. Participation in the PrAggnt Program. What motivated these
women to participate in the present program of ESL literacy
instruction? What factors facilitate or constrain their
involvement in learning English and literacy formally? How
might these factors be addressed in education or social
policy?
2- Pnniahi-Engi uh Bi \ iteragy. How are participants 1 uses of
literacy differentiated across Punjabi and English? What
are the implications of this differentiation for social and
educational policy?
3. Claasroom Tnfitrcphion and Learning. What kinds Of
knowledge do participants use in classroom settings to
construct the processes of acquiring ESL literacy? What
implications arise for other ESL literacy programs?
4. T.nn^-fprm Tmparr.a. what are the long-term impacts of ESL
literacy acquisition on participants' lives? What changes
are evident in individuals' lives over the 6 month period
of instruction, as could be attributed to improved language
and literacy? Do these impacts warrant investment of
educational resources in this kind of instruction?
5. Pnhl tf? information Documents . What features of existing
instructional and public information materials facilitate
and/or constrain uses of these resources among program
participants? What principles might be proposed to assist
community service workers and educators in preparing
printed materials (e.g., information pamphlets) which are
accessible to individuals with limited ESL literacy?
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Some information related to these research questions has
already appeared in published papers and conference
presentations. Articles on the project to date include:
an account of the project's curriculum rationale (Cumming,
1990a);
analyses of participants* uses of English-Punjabi
bilitcracy and implications for adult literacy curricula
(Cumming, 1991a);
analyses of factors affecting the women's parr icipation in
formal ESL literacy instruction (Cumming & Gill, 1991a);
and
- analyses of participants' classroom learning processes and
long-term achievements in ESL literacy (Cumming & Gill,
1991b) .
Conference presentations of these papers have been made
provincially at the Annual Convention of B.C. Teachers of English
as an Additional Language (B.C. TEAL) in Vancouver in 1989 and in
1990; nationally at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Council on
Multicultural and Inter-cultural Education (CCMIE) <n Ottava in
1990; and internationally at the Annual Meeting of the American
Educational Research Association (AERA) in Chicago in 1991.
Findings from the project are also being synthesized with other
related research to describe problems of adult immigrants to
North America gaining "Access to Literacy" (Cumming, 1991c).
Context o £ the Project
The present project aimed to gather and analyze Information
to understand better educational issues related to the situation
of women among one visible minority population in Vancouver,
Canada — recent immigrants from the Indian state of the Punjab--to
develop and assess appropriate approaches to assist in their
learning of English and of literacy, and to make recommendations
of a more general nature, based on findings in the one case, for
educational and social policy to serve this particular population
in the future. The project took an "action research" approach to
a complex set of socio-educational problems: many local adult
education programs were perceived as inappropriate for Indo-
Catadian women, and their participation in such programs was
evidently constrained (Burnaby, 1989; Cumming, 1991b; Jackson,
1987; Selman, 1979), Indo-Canadian women's access to social
services and work opportunities appeared limited locally
(Jc.ckson, 1987; Perrin, 1980; Thompson, Sanghera & Mroke, 1986)
as> well as generally in Canada (Anderson & Lynam, 1987; Beiser et
al. 1988; Belfiore & Heller, 1988; P. Cumming, Lee, & Oreopoulos,
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1989; Jenkinson et al. f n.d.; Seward & McDade, 1988), and
demographic trends shoved a large, disproportionate population of
immigrant women, a figure almost double that of males, who speak
neither English or French accumulating in B.C. (Cumming, 1991b)
and nationally (Boyd, 1990; Pendakur & Ledoux, 1991; Seward &
McDade, 1988).
•
The "action" taken was to create an educational context
which made significant efforts to provide culturally-relevant
instruction for a small number of Indo-Canadian women then to
assess its processes and outcomes in case study fashion — as a
"demonstration" of possible educational practices and as a means
of revealing situational constraints on their access to literacy.
This approach follows initiatives reported for Hispanophones
(Delgado-Gaitan, 1987; Moll, 1989; Moll & Diaz, 1987), native
Havailans (Au et al., 1986), and Haitians (Auerbach, 1990) in the
U.S. as well as various other minority cultures internationally
(Auerbach, 1989; Skutnabb-Kangas & Cummins, 1988). Particular
concerns in the present project were (a) creating an
instructional environment suitable to the situations and
characteristics of one distinct minority population not usually
served by conventional adult education, (b) documenting
participants' efforts to teach and learn a second language and
literacy concurrently in classroom settings, and (c) assessing
the impact of language and literacy acquisition on participants*
1 i ves .
2.1 Literacy and Adult Minority Populations
Little systematic research has addressed issues of learning,
instruction or social adaptation among adult immigrant
populations needing to acquire literacy and the majority language
in industrialized countries despite long-standing recognition of
this complex educational situation in Canada, the .'.S., and
Europe (Bell, 1990; D'Anglejan, Renaud, Arseneault, & Lortie,
1984; Hornberger, 1989; Klein & Dittmar, 1979; Penfield, 1986;
Perdue, 1984; Richmond, Kalbach, & Verma, 1980; Wallerstein,
1983; weinstein, 1984). Recent educational inquiry on this topic
has advocated approaches which are sensitive to the local
situations of particular ethnic populations — given ne diversity
of cultural, linguistic, and contextual factors which obtain and
interact in any one circumstance (Auerbach, 1989, 1990; Burnaby,
1989; Dubin, 1989; Giltrow & Colhoun, 1989; Skutnabb-Kangas &
Cummins, 1989).
Moreover, considerable attention has focused on the need to
distinguish relations between language acquisition, literacy
acquisition, and cultural adaptation among such populations —
factors which would appear to vary with other variables such as
cultural values, linguistic differences, institutional
structures, ethnic attitudes, or literacy in the mother tongue
(Bell, 1990; Cumming, 1989; Delgado-Gaitan, 1987; Fishman,
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Riedlerberger, Koling & Steele, 1985; Giltrov & Colhoun, 1989;
Hammond, 1989; Hornberger. 1989; Klassen, 1988; Mastai, 1980;
Sticht, 1988; Wallerstein, 1983; Weinsteln, 1984). Virtually all
of this previous research has charged that general programs of
ESL literacy instruction are inadequate to serve the needs of
many specific immigrant populations (cf. Employment and
Immigration Canada, 1990; Employment and Immigration Advisory
Council, 1991). However, very little of this research has been
able to demonstrate precisely how educational practices or policy
should be organized to resolve this dilemma.
2.2 Women, Literacy, Culture, and Language
For immigrant women, problems of literacy learning, language
acquisition, and cultural adaptation often combine with demands
to maintain household and diverse family responsibilities,
preserve traditional cultural roles, and work to supplement a
family income. Such demands suggest specific needs for adult
education and social services, needs which have largely gone
unacknowledged in policy and research, despite recent efforts to
address these needs in certain case studies (e.g., Rockhill,
1990; van Dijk, 1990), instructional materials (e.g., Barndt,
Cristall & Marino 1982; Warren, 1986), orientation materials
(e.g., Jenkinson et al., n.d.; Thompson, Sanghera & Mroke, 1986),
and more general syntheses of sociological or educational
information (e.g., Boyd, 1990; Stromquist, 1989).
Such efforts have generally pointed toward the distinct
barriers to social participation imposed upon immigrant women who
may have limited literacy and proficiency in the majority
language, who emigrate from societies with cultural values which
differ visibly from the host society, who live within minority
populations with strong tendencies to preserve their ethnic
heritage, religion, and traditions, and who are primarily charged
with responsibilities for child care and household tasks within a
home environment. These factors appear especially critical among
populations in Canada such as first generation Sikh immigrants
from the Punjab, who in Gibson's (1988) terms have arfTO"»"oflated
well to North American society with very little cultural
assimilation , or in Balakrishnan and Kralt's (1987) term have
formed visibly segregated populations within certain Canadian
cities, and for whom limited literacy and traditional cultural
roles among women are prevalent trends in the country of origin
(Rao, 1979; Stromquist, 1989).
2.3 Local Context
The present project addressed the situation of Punjabi women
in Vancouver, Canada, where a large Sikh population from the
Indian state of the Punjab has established itself (numbering
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about 26,000 within the greater Vancouver area; 1986 Census) in
recent decades while retaining many cultural practices and
values. The area of Vancouver selected for the project had a
concentration of over 3,000 people whose mother tongue is
Punjabi, forming about 18% of the total population of 17,000 in
this one sector of the city (City of Vancouver, 1989). This
working-to-middle class neighbourhood has visibly accommodated
the Indian culture, as evidenced by numerous ethnic stores and
services, but is also the site of local ethnic tensions (Cumming,
1991b; Robson & Breems, 1985). Although little direct
information on the composition of the local population is
available, data from local surveys (Cumming, 1991b; Per*. *n, 1980)
and the 1986 census of Canada (Cumming, 1991b; Pendakur > Ledoux,
1991; Seward & McDade, 1988) suggest this Punjabi-Canadian
population could be expected to contain about twice as many women
as men who do not speak English, the majority of whom might have
had only five to twelve years of schooling in India before
immigrating to Canada, have possessed lev distinct occupational
skills, and have landed in Canada over the past decade to enter
"arranged marriages" with husbands already residing in Vancouver.
3 Approach
Bilingual ES^ literacy classes and child care services were
offered free of charge two afternoons per week over six months
(September 1989 to March 1990) to Punjabi-speaking women at a
non-profit agency with an established reputation for community
service in the neighborhood. Eighteen women volunteered at the
start of the program; among them, thirteen women were judged to
form a relatively homogeneous class with limited English
proficiency and limited literacy in their native Punjabi. Five
women were excluded from participation because they had virtually
no English proficiency and very limited literacy in Punjabi or
they were Hindi (rather than Punjabi) speakers. Of the thirteen
volunteers who started the ESL literacy classes, nine continued
for four months, and six completed the duration of the program.
Attrition was due to family relocations, participants taking
full-time empxoyment, and one severe illness.
All participants initially responded to a television
interview with the course instructor (Raminder Dosanjh, herself
an immigrant from the Punjab who usually taught ESL at a local
college) aired in Punjabi on a local multicultural channel,
although newspaper, poster, and radio notices were also used to
publicize the project. Each participant provided informed
consent for the research in response to a tape-recorded and
written protocol describing the project in Punjabi and English.
Community involvement in the project was obtained through an
advisory committee with representatives of thirteen educational
and service agencies working with the adult Indo-Canadian
population in the city (See Appendix A).
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3.1 Participants
The 13 participating women used Punjabi as their dominant
language in almost all home and social situations, were ages 23
to 31, had spent 3 to 13 years in Canada, had completed 9 to 12
iears of school in India, had 1 to 3 children, had husbands
employed as laborers or technicians who had lived in Canada most
or all of their lives, and had annual family incomes of
$19,000-966,000 (including income from family businesses). None
of the women had previously taken formal courses of any kind in
Canada, despite their lengthy periods of residence. Several of
the women held part-time jobs in janitorial, restaurant, packing,
or agricultural work, though none were skilled positions. All of
the women indicated they wished to improve their English literacy
in order to gain more personal independence, interact with the
majority society, and obtain further education or "clean" work
{e.g. clerical or sales jobs). All indicated they had no more
time to devote to English or literacy studies than about six
hours per week of classes because of responsibilities to
immediate and extended families and part-time work. Tht: majority
brought pre-school children to the classes, having no other means
of relieving themselves of child care responsibilities. Two
Punjabi-speaking child care workers were employed over most of
the duration of the project.
Initial assessments showed these women spoke English with
very limited proficiency (X=1.5 on a iscale of 4) (e.g., very
restricted vocabularies, accents which interfered with
comprehension, difficulty maintaining conversations), were able
to write short phrases in English but hardly able to compose
extended texts, and read with limited comprehension in their
mother tongue (3T=46%, s.d.=15.2 on a text recall task, compared
to a sample of 5 Punjabi translators, journalists, and teachers
who scored X=81%, s.d.*4.1). Correlational analysis of the
initial assessments showed a moderate relation between the
women's years of residence in Canada and their ESL proficiency (r.
= .6), indicating those who had resided longer in Canada tended
to have more proficiency in English. But no correspondences
emerged between the women's English proficiency and their
literacy skills in Punjabi (r. =.2), their years of schooling in
India and levels of Punjabi literacy (z. = -.2) nor ESL
proficiency (r. = -.4), nor their Punjabi literacy and period of
residence in Canada (r. = .3).
No claims can be made that these volunteer participants
represented the larger population of Punjabi women immigrants in
Vancouver. But their profiles do suggest these women were
characteristic of the adult female population in Canada which
demographic studies have indicated are especially in need of ESL
literacy education (see Boyd, 1990; Cumming, 1991b; Pendakur &
Ledoux, 1991; Seward & McDade, 1988).
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3.2 Curriculum
Curriculum decisions were determined by the instructor in
consultation with students about their interests and perceived
learning needs, along with some input and feedback from the
researchers and advisory committee. (Cumming [19901 describes the
curriculum rationale in detail.) Units of study focused on
libraries, public health services, banking services, children's
schools, and job search strategies, each forming periods of
approximately one month of content-focused instruction (in a
manner akin to Brinton, Snow & Wesche, 1989's notion of "theme-
based" language teaching). Instruction used aspects of reciprocal
modeling (Brown & Palinscar, 1989) and cooperative Inquiry
(Bereiter & Scardamalla, 1987) in various reading, vriting, and
conversation tasks related to the curriculum themes, including
frequent visits by guest Informants and field experiences. This
approach vas supplemented by more conventional ESL exercises
developed or chosen by the instructor from existing materials.
Readings and other literate tasks (such as pamphlets, newspaper
articles, forms, letters) were mostly contributed by
participating students or gathered during field experiences at
relevant institutions. Classes were taught primarily in English,
supplemented by some Punjabi for explanations of terms or
concepts or peer-group identification (much in the same manner as
Guthrie & Guthrie [1987] describe for Chinese-English bilingual
classes ) .
3.3 Data Collection and Analyses
All classes were documented through participant-observation
by one of the researchers (Jaswinder Gill, who is female,
bilingual in Punjabi and English, and a second generation Indo-
Cinadian), producing written records of all classroom events as
direct transcriptions of selected spoken interactions,
observational records made during classes, or reflective accounts
after tutoring groups of the students or teaching occasional
classes. This approach combined methods of classroom observation
(Breen, 1985; Chaudron, 1988) and narrative inquiry (Connelly &
Clandinin, 1990). These data were analyzed impressionistically
to establish generally how students and the instructor
collectively constructed the process of literacy and language
learning .
In addition, all participants were interviewed individually
at the start of the program, at three intervals of two months
over the period of instruction, then again four months after the
period of instruction. These interviews used a fixed schedule of
open-ended questions and self-reports of frequency of reading and
writing a comprehensive range of text types in Punjabi and
English (adapted and extended from Griffiths A Wells, 1983).
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Responses to the interviews were tape-recorded in Punjabi,
transcribed and translated into English, and then coded with a
second coder (97% agreement on a randomly selected 10% of the
data ) .
4 Part i c 1 pat i on in the Present
Program
What prompted these Indo-Canadian women to participate
in the present program of ESL literacy instruction?
What factors facilitate or constrain their involvement
in learning English and literacy formally? How might
these factors be addressed in education or social
policy?
The women's decisions to participate in the classes at this
time related to a complex set of facilitating and constraining
factors including their length of residence in Canada, current
economic positions, family roles and support, knowledge of
English and literacy, expectations for further education or work,
and awareness of educational and other public institutions in
Canada. These factors interacted v^th features of th* ESL
program which was designed particularly for this population: an
instructor from the same ethnolinguistic community and gender,
on-site child care services; use of Punjabi for administrative
and explanatory purposes in the classes; study of topics relevant
to participants' life experiences (e.g. health care services, job
search strategies, children's schools); and an environment of
peers of common gender and backgrounds in their local
neighborhood.
These issues are especially important in view oi remarks
made frequently to the project workers that the Indo-Canadian
female population was among the most difficult "to get to come
out to ESL or literacy classes" and the fact that the present
women had resided in Canada for an average of seven years before
entering formal programs of adult education. As such, we
consider the present thirteen women to represent the "cutting
edge" of larger populations of immigrant women whose
circumstances lie precariously between being able or, not able to
participate in formal education in Canada.
4.1 Length of Residence
At first the baby was too young and I did not really
know too much about Canada. I was busy getting settled
and learning about things, and I was getting used to my
husband and his family.
er|c
A major factor in the women's decisions to participate in
the present program vas their length of residence in Canada.
Unlike the stereotype of the "newcomer" to North America, who
might seek language training shortly after arrival, these women
had lived in Canada for an average of seven years (a range of 1
to 13 years) and almost equivalent periods of marriage. During
this period of initial settlement the women saw their priorities
as organizing a new home life, getting to know a husband and his
family, and raising at least one child to school age. After
having established a sense of security in their home/lives and
family routines, these women then reached a point where they
could begin to consider their personal development, individual
social circumstances, and future opportunities. As for many
women in the developing world, education was perceived to be a
luxury after family and other household priorities had been met
(Rao, 1979; Stromquist, 1989).
4.2 Economic Positions
I told my husband about the other classes, and he said
I should take them. I told him about the fees, but
tuis was not a problem. He doesn't worry too much
about expenses. I have a visa card, and he tells me I
should use it. There are no problems with money or
transportation. I just need to take more classes.
Economic stability also facilitated the women's decisions to
participate in language classes. Their husbands' work was
prospering under a local economic boom, yielding average family
incomes of about $40,000, slightly above the mean for the local
area and the province. All but two of the women's families owned
their own large, well-furnished, modern homes (at an average
value of $250,000) and had one automobile. The two women with
lower family incomes were the only two who had been in Canada
less than five years; they lived in rented basement suites.
Unlike the other eleven women, their husbands had immigrated to
Canada with them and had not yet had time to establish businesses
or well-paving work. At the start of the research, only one of
these women worked on & regular basis, although during the
progress of the program, three of the women took full-time jobs-
out of personal choice rather than economic necessity. Even
though course fees were not charged for the present program, a?l
but two of the women insisted they had sufficient financial
resources to pay fees for other courses.
4.3 Family Roles and Support
My father - in-lav sometimes says that I should take care
of the baby now, then take classes when she Is older.
But my husband doesn't mind. He wants me to study more
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so that A can carry my own weight. It is really up to
me .
Traditional family roles exerted a major influerce on the
women's decisions to participate in the classes as well as their
capacities to study at home or to interact with thr majority
society. All of the women reported that their husbands and
husband's families had greater control over their personal lives
than they had themselves, a conventional situation in the
patriarchal society of their country of origin. Expectations or
commitments to child care, extended families, and visiting
relatives consumed most of the women's time, making studies for
more than two afternoons per week all but impractical. Likewise,
their husbands assumed responsibilities for most family financial
tasks, major purchases, and institutional interactions, further
restricting the extent and quality of interaction that the women
had with the majority society.
Interestingly, the majority of these women (including the
six who completed the program) had husbands who had lived in
Canada or England for more than ten years prior to the women's
immigration, and most of these men had been educated in British
or Canadian schools. Correspondingly, the men's attitudes toward
their wives' personal situations appeared more progressive than
may be typical of more recent Indo-Canadian immigrants. All of
the women said that their husbands supported and assisted them in
their language studies, most wanted their wives to take on more
responsibilities for family businesses or household tasks such as
banking or shopping, and some volunteered to look after their
children if their wives enrolled in evening classes. At the same
time, however, the husbands' familiarity and contacts with
Canadian society implicitly reduced the women's needs to leave
their homes or to interact with English-dominant institutions or
services. Moreover, several of the women noted that their
husbands sometimes teased tr.*sm about the value of their further
education as it was a process conventionally reserved for males.
Two other factors within their home situations may have also
influenced the women's participation in the program. First, only
one of the women actually lived with her extended family (father-
in-law and mother-in-law), a situation which would be
conventional in India and for many immigrant women in Canada.
This situation reduced the obligations that most of the women may
otherwise have had to attend regularly to their husband's family
members. A second factor was that most of the women had children
who were in public school or were about to start. This
circumstance created pressures to communicate with their
children's teachers, incentives from children to read to them or
talk about their school activities, and assistance from the
children with the women's studies in English (see Ghuman [1980)
for similar examples in British contexts). The women's school-
age children proved to be quite fluent in English, regularly
communicating with their fathers and peers in English. Homes with
9
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school-age children had considerably more English reading
material than the homes of women with only younger children.
Arranging suitable child care was the major constraint that
the women reported on their not having attended any kind of
formal education previously in Canada. All of the women with
young children said they were not willing to leave their children
in a day care center or with a baby sitter who was not an
immediate family member (i.e. mother or mother-in-law) while they
attended classes. The program employed two Indo-Canadian child
care workers throughout the duration of the classes, who looked
after six children on average in a room adjoining the women's
classroom. This arrangement apparently satisfied che six
mothers, who saw on-site, culturally-appropriate child care as a
necessary requirement for their continuing participation in the
classes .
4 . 4 Future Employment Prospects
I need to speak enough to get a good job. I want to
find a good job, not doing dirty work as a uanitor or
in a kitchen. If I'm going to work, it has to be worth
my while. I'm not going to leave my children for a
minimum wage job.
The women's personal aspirations for improving their English
literacy were to gain greater individual independence, obtain
meaningful employment, and to further their education through
job-training programs. Most of the women had worked at part-time
laboring jobs in the past, such as packing, dish washing, or
janitorial work. However, none of the women wished to continue
with this kind of "dirty" work at irregular hours, given their
financial security and family priorities. Although the women did
not articulate specific career or vocational goals, they were
aware of the instrumental value of proficiency in the majority
language for career opportunities (Gardner, 1985) as well as the
potential economic advantage of knowing the majority language
(Richmond, Kalbach & Verma, 1983).
4.5 English Literacy and Contact with the Majority
Society
In the stores I can ask for things, things that I would
not ask about before. Now I talk to people in line-
ups. I used to get really shy and say simple things
like yes or no. Before I used to say so little on the
phone. I'd just get a name and a number from the
people calling my husband. Nov I try to get a complete
message and write it down.
At the start of the program, all the women's lives were
remarkably restricted to interactions in Punjabi in their homes
and with their immediate families. All of the vomen were able to
speak and read some English to a very limited extent, i.e. brief
conversational exchanges with restricted vocabularies and
conspicuous accents and grammatical errors. None of the vomen
had any English-speaking friends or regular acquaintances. Only
one woman reported speaking occasionally to a neighbor in
English, the woman who was working said she sometimes spoke to
the security guard or representative of the contracting company
at her janitorial job, and several others said that people
sometimes spoke to them in English on the street about their
babies. Their informal contacts with the majority society,
however, varied considerably from one woman whose husband did all
of the family grocery shop and banking to another who did all of
her family's shopping and her own banking. In terms of mobility,
ten of the women had a driver's license and regular use of a car;
two women obtained their learners' permits during the progress of
the program, an achievement they considered would have a major
impact in reducing their sense of isolation and dependence on
others .
As the women improved their English literacy over the
duration of the program, their self-confidence visibly increased,
reinforcing their commitments to language studies and greater
personal independence. As reported below, the women's frequency
of reading in English, communications with their children's
schools, and use of the telephone in English increased
dramatically from about once per month at the start of the
research to almost daily ten months later. The women's lack of
familiarity with public institutions and services in Canada was a
particularly conspicuous aspect of their limited integration into
the majority society. As the ESL classes introduced the women to
local libraries, public health and employment services, banking
routines, and schooling, their knowledge and use of these
facilities also increased (see section 4 below).
4.6 Program Supports
I feel okay because the teacher knows my language and
customs, and the other women in the class are doing the
same thing as me. I can practice speaking and reading
English, but I can ask questions in Punjabi and get an
answer. Now I am ready to try other classes.
The women's decisions to participate in formal education at
this time were also shaped by several features of the particular
program of ESL literacy instruction provided, features which were
not available in other ESL or literacy programs locally, making
other such programs virtually inaccessible for the vomen. As
noted above, a principal program support was on-site child care
by other Indo-Canadian women. Of equal importance was
- 13 -
ERIC 1
instruction from an experienced teacher who was a member of the
women's ethnic community, cognizant of their social situations,
willing to accommodate their initial, traditional expectations
for teacher-centered instruction, and able to communicate with
them in their mother tongue when necessary or appropriate for
administrative purposes or clarification. All of the women also
remarked that the location of the ESL literacy program in their
neighborhood was another factor which prompted them to attend
these classes.
The content of the curriculum was also perceived to be
relevant to the women's intentions as its major topics were
developed in consultation with participants and involved
orientation and field experiences to local cons mity services
such as libraries, public health, banking and employment services
and children's schools; functional conversation skills and
strategies; and reading of newspaper articles, public information
brochures, and stories linked to the women's personal concerns
and interests. A final program support was the solidarity of
studying with other women in similar circumstances and from
common ethnic backgrounds. In sum, the women considered these
factors to be appropriate to this initial phase of their
participation in education in Canada, although such program
supports obviously served only a "bridging function", a
preliminary step toward more extensive participation in other
forms of adult education and functions within the majority
soci ety.
4.7 Implications for Educational and Social Policy
These analyses indicate that gender and ethnicity are
fundamental considerations to be accounted for in conceptualizing
motivation to learn a second language as well as language program
curricula and policies for adult minority populations. In
particular, more contextually-grounded research is needed to
refine current notions of "motivation" and "accessibility" to
language and literacy instruction, since these notions are
currently formulated in terms which are largely irrelevant to the
situations of immigrant women. For example, theories of
participation in formal adult education (e.g. Tinto, 1975; Stage,
1989) have sought generalizations for majority populations in
reference to their withdrawal from formal programs. Consequently
their data fail to account adequately for minority populations
and not at all for people not already engaged in formal
education .
Likewise, theories of the motivation to study second
languages have been framed largely in reference to the schooling
of majority language children or adolescents, particularly for
the learning of languages not spoken in the local community
(e.g., Gardner, 1985, 1988; D rnyei, 1990), or in reference to
linguistic features appearing in adult immigrants' speech (Klein
9
ERJC
- 14 -
17
& Ditttmar, 1979; Perdue, 1984; Schumann, 1978). Although some
theories have begun to account for the influences of social
milieu, intergroup relations, and ethnic vitality on the language
acquisition of immigrant populations (Bourhis, 1990; Clement &
Kruidenier, 1983; Edwards, 1985; Giles & Byrne, 1982; Richmond,
Kalbach, & Verma, 1983; Schumann, 1978), little documentation
exists to describe how adult immigrants experience these
processes personally, hov these processes vary with specific
cultural groups, or how they relate to educational policies
(Crookes & Schmidt, 1989; Giltrow & Colhoun, 1989; Schmidt,
1983) .
To simply generalize motivational factors for all immigrant
populations alike, as in most current educational policies in
Canada, implies ignoring fundamental factors in the present group
of women's capacities to participate in language education,
particularly their family roles, instrumental motivations for
contact with the majority society and to pursue employment
opportunities, and period of residence needed to establish home
routines, economic stability and settle into North American
society. Similarly, policies for adult language education which
fail to account for these factors in the form of culturally-
appropriate child care, bilingual instruction, and relevant
curricula would effectively prohibit the present group of women
access to such education. Given these constraints, little wonder
that demographics show the immigrant male population in Canada
acquiring the majority language far more rapidly and extensively
compared to the immigrant female population (Boyd, 1990; Cumming,
1991b; Seward & McDade, 1988).
The factors identified above conform to Spanard's (1990, pp.
340-341) summary of affective and situational barriers which
generally prevent access to programs of higher education:
institutional barriers (location, schedules, fees, campus
"friendliness"), situational barriers (job commitments, home
responsibilities, lack of money, lack of child care, and
transportation problems), and psycho-social barriers (attitudes,
beliefs, and values; self-esteem; opinions of others; and past
experiences as a student). However, virtually all of these
barriers take on a unique quality for the present population by
virtue of the women's gender-determined roles within their
families, particular ethnic values, and minority cultural status
in the local community. At the same time, this case study
provides a useful counter-example to certain notions commonly
guiding most educational programing for adult language
instruction: that immigrants' motivation to learn a majority
language occurs in the initial years of settlement, that
opportunities to acquire such a language will occur spontaneously
through informal contact with the majority society, and that
language training should take a generic-skills approach which is
not sensitive to the cultures or situations of specific
populat ions .
5
Pun jabi -Engl ish Bi 1 i teracy
How are participants' uses of literacy differentiated
across Punjabi and English? What are the implications
of this differentiation for social and educational
pol icy?
To a great extent, the women's uses of literacy in English
and Punjabi were differentiated according to the domains of
social interaction in which they usually engaged, although mixing
of the two languages existed in several domains. To understand
this differentiation, one needs to consider not only the women's
uses of literacy in their social routines but also their
attitudes toward both languages, the status of these languages
locally, and the women's gender roles and socio-economic
positions. With these factors in mind, implications for
educational and social policy can be suggested for this one
population, although other combinations of these factors among
other minority language populations probably create different
policy implications for other immigrant groups in Canada (e.g.,
see Giltrow & Colhoun, 1989 's analysis of Mayan-Canadians in
Vancouver; Klassen, 1938's analysis of Hispanophone Canadians in
Toronto; Mastai, 1980's analysis of Israel i-Canadidns in
Vancouver ) .
5.1 Domains of Literate Language Use
Specific information on the women's uses of literacy across
English and Punjabi for particular literate tasks in their daily
lives are displayed for reading tasks in Appendix B and for
writing tasks in Appendix C at the point where the project's
classes finished (March 1990). For comparison over the one-year
period of the research, Appendix D shows how the women's
frequency of using English literacy changed from the start of the
program (September 1989), to the completion of their classes
(March 1990), then four months later (August 1990). Analyses of
these long-term changes depicted in Appendix D are discussed
under section 4 below.
The women most frequently read in English, with the distinct
exception of religious texts which were read in Punjabi. English
reading dominated most personal (e.g. letters), commercial (e.g.
advertisements), and public information (e.g. newspapers)
domains, but the women also read in Punjabi frequently in these
domains and in some instances (e.g. information brochures and
notices) with equal frequency in both languages. In contrast,
their writing was more distinctly situated in English, although
the women wrote much less oft*n than they read. When thpy did
write in Punjabi, it was most];' as letters to family or friends
or as notes to themselves. Th_ir writing in English was mainly
9
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- 16 -
19
formulaic (signatures, forms, lists, notes) except for diaries or
poems which several individuals vrote privately.
ERIC
Overall, the distribution of these uses of biliteracy formed
separate domains for religious purposes and relations vith
immediate and extended family in Punjabi, vhereas the women
performed wider communications most frequently in English and
secondarily in Punjabi. This differentiation conforms to a
framework proposed by Goody (1986) which suggests that literate
uses of language develop and are demarcated in relation to major
social institutions, such as religion., Q&w&ZCS., th&. state , and
the law . Goody's typology can be extended to include the domains
of f ami i y and erinr-at \ nn on the basis of research on uses of
bilingualism in such domains among Hispanophone minorities in the
U.S. and Canada (Fishman, Cooper & Ma, 1971; Klassen, 1988;
Sanchez, 1983).
Within this framework, the present women's uses of Puniahi
1 \ tprary can be said to apply mainly to the home and religious
domains along with some uses for commerce. Their Engl tffh
\ \ ti»rary was reserved for commercial and educational domains
along with some family interactions (e.g. in reference to their
children's schools). It is worth noting, however, that at the
start of this project these women had almost no literate
interactions with the state or the legal systems, no prior
interactions with educational systems in Canada (except
indirectly through their children), and surprisingly few
commercial literate interactions in either language. This
pattern reveals a distinct social isolation — embodied in the
women's limited literacy and English proficiency but reflecting
their general confinement to household and family domains of
activity.
5.2 Attitudes towards the Languages and Literacy
An original Intention of the project was to alternate
instruction in English and Punjabi on separate days to assess the
transfer of literacy learning across languages. However, it
quickly became apparent that the participating women v nted to
focus their studies on acquiring literacy in English by
practicing spoken English during the classes; they had little
interest in developing their Punjabi literacy beyond its present
state. Consequently, plans for Punjabi literacy instruction were
abandoned, although spoken Punjabi was used to facilitate
specific instructional tasks in about 10% of class time
throughout the project (much in the same manner as Guthrie & Pung
Guthrie [19871 document for a Chinese bilingual classroom in
California—see section 3 below).
initial interviews with the 18 women who initially
registered for the instructional program made clear that their
main intentions for improving their literacy and English were to
- 17 -
* 20
interact more extensively with the English-speaking population in
Vancouver, to perform specific tasks independently in English
(e.g. banking, major purchases, interact with their children's
schools), and either to obtain employment requiring more English
literacy (i.e. not menial labor) or to enter English-medium
training programs which would enable them to upgrade their
employment qualifications. All felt that their existing Punjabi
literacy based on their schooling in India (ranging from 9 to 12
years) was sufficient for their present life circumstances. In
regards English literacy, the women expressed far more interest
in improving their reading and functional conversational
vocabulary rather than writing.
All the women stated their desire to move out of life
routines in which they were essentially bound to their homes and
family obligations, routines which occurred almost exclusively in
Punjabi. Acquiring greater literacy in English was perceived to
be a means to achieve this goal. Developing greater Punjabi
literacy, conversely, would have implied elaborating the very
social roles of housebound wives and mothers that these women
wished to move away from. In this regard, the acquisition of
English literacy held a social esteem distinct from Punjabi
literacy, and English was associated with the domain of
education, making equation of the two languages as objects of
instruction all but impractical.
5.3 Gender Roles and Socio-economic Positions
Much of the women's interest in developing their English
literacy can be attributed to their situations as mothers who had
raised at least one child to school age, who after numerous years
in Canada felt they were now settled in this country, and whose
husbands had worked themselves into comfortable earning positions
in established jobs. Having reached their mid 20s and early :10s
and established a successful family life, these women wished to
develop their English literacy as a means of gaining greater
personal independence. The women reported they felt that their
lack of English literacy restricted their capacities to partake
in family financial tasks (which were mostly performed by their
husbands), to communicate with their children's schools, to
obtain employment which did not involve "unclean" manual labor,
and to know hoy to make use of available social services (such as
they studied in the classes, e.g. health care units, libraries,
employment centres, and community support groups).
5.4 Status of the Minority and Majority Languages
The women's attitudes about learning literacy in English and
Punjabi were also shaped by the status of these languages locally
and in their society of origin. English not only represented the
9
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- 18 -
21
language of business, work, higher education, and wider societal
interaction locally; it fulfills such diglossic functions in many
domains in India as well. In addition, the integrity of these
women's Punjabi was well -ma inta ined within their home
environments and local neighbourhood, a situation somewhat akin
to the well-established, minority status of Punjabi and Sikh
culture in India. As Gibson (1988) puts it for Sikh Punjabi
populations in California, North American English language and
society can be accommodated without assimilation. Or in Cummins
& Swain's (1986) terms, developing biliteracy in English was
perceived to be *rM* m rather than snhfrantive for these women
as the loss of Punjabi literacy was not implicated in this
situation — although it may have been for subsequent generations
in Canada (Pendakur, 1990). In these respects, the position of
first generation Indo-Canadians in Vancouver probably differs
substantively from other minority language groups who seldom use
English for communication in their society of origin (e.g.
Spanish, Japanese) or for whom print literacy in the native
language is not prevalent in the native society (e.g. Hmong,
Athapaskans ) .
i.i ImpU@iUen§ let Educational and Social polley
The foregoing analyses suggest several implications for
educational and social policy. As numerous previous studies have
concluded for other populations, limited literacy and proficiency
in a majority language can greatly restrict the participation of
immigrant adults in domains of social activity beyond their home
and family domains, a problem which is greatly exacerbated for
immigrant women with children and other family responsibilities.
To promote such individuals' interactions with fundamental social
domains like as social, legal, and educational systems,
translation of documents into the native languages of immigrants
is probably necessary, at least to facilitate orientation to and
initial understanding of the organization of these domains and
available services in Canada. Over the longer term, however,
educational provisions to promote acquisition of literacy in the
majority language are also needed to foster fuller understanding
and social participation which is not restricted by language
barriers .
Several recommendations to enhance the quality of such
education arise from these analyses. First, these analyses
suggest the importance of adult ESL curricula which teach to
relevant domains of literacy such as commercial interactions,
employment opportunities, social services, and educational
systems. Second, although literacy in the mother tongue may be
an important determinant for acquiring second language literacy
(Cumraing, 1989; Cumming, Rebuffot & Ledwell, 1989), and may be a
relevant educational goal for populations like Hispanophone North
Americans to maintain contacts with their native cultures
(Delgado-Gaitan, 1987; Klassen, 1988; Moll & Diaz, 1987),
- 19 -
o >
acquisition of literacy in the mother tongue may also be
perceived as an irrelevant (even constraining) goal alongside
literacy instruction '.n the majority language for other
populations, particularly women wishing to gain greater access to
the majority society and thus greater personal independence.
Curriculum decisions about the language of Instruction in ESL
literacy programs need to be made in reference to such complex
socio-1 inguistic factors, rather than simply stated as general
policies regardless of cultural background and gender.
S CXasssrroom I nstruct i on and
Lear n i ng
What kinds of knowledge do participants use in
classroom settings to construct the processes of
acquiring ESL literacy? What implications arise for
other ESL literacy programs?
Documentation of the six months of classroom interaction
shoved the focus of participants* attention alternating between
five general aspects of knowledge: language code; self-control
strategies and schematic representations for text production and
comprehension; personal knowledge; social knowledge; and social
experience. Most literate tasks performed in the classes visibly
combined several of these aspects of knowledge in recurring
routines vhile shifting attention between each aspect of
knowledge depending on instructional, situational or learning
emphases, Individual knowledge lacks, or personal interests.
These five kinds of knowledge represent a broad, impressionistic
account of the aspects of language and literacy which the present
students and instructors cooperatively choose to concentrate on
as their means of learning. As such, these five aspects may
represent basic elements of literate knowledge in a second
language and culture, but their qualities were probably
influenced in unique ways by the common cultural background of
the participating students and teacher as well as the innovative
curr iculum.
6.1 Language Code
Considerable attention in the classes focused directly on
the language code of English (and sometimes Punjabi),
particularly for the identification and comprehension of
unfamiliar vocabulary. Students' queries about readings usually
highlighted particular words or phrases they did not know,
although some attention was also devoted to other aspects of the
language code such as syntactic or morphological patterns or
spelling. The instructor and students frequently collaborated in
questioning routines about the meaning of words or phrases aimed
at comprehension of a text, as in the following sequence
- 20 -
23
reviewing a permission letter to attend a school concert brought
home by one of the women's children. The mother brought the
letter into the classes because she was unable to understand it,
e.g., originally thinking that her child was going to perform a
concert rather than attend one. Students liad b*en asked to
prepare comprehension questions for one another in opj of their
first efforts at Brown & Palincsar's (1989) technique of
reciprocal modeling:
Instructor: What does attend mean?
Student 1: To perform.
Instructor: To perform or watch?
Student 2: To watch.
Student 3: That students are going to watch.
Student 4: Who is going to attend?
Several students: The students.
Instructor: Who is going to perform?
Several students: The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Student 5: What will they do at the Orpheum Theatre?
Student 6: The students will be attending this concert.
Student 5: What is the total cost of attending?
Student 6: The total cost is S5.00.
Instructor: Is that right?
Students scan text, not responding.
Student 1: Do you think this show is expensive?
Student 6: What?
Student 1: Do you think this show is expensive?
Student 6: This show is worthwhile. (reading
inappropriately from text)
Student 1: Do you think this show is expensive?
Student 6: Excuse me?
Student 1 explains in Punjabi, emphasizing that $2.50
is very cheap.
- 21 -
24
Student 7: What does subsidize mean?
Students are silent as they scan the text.
Instructor: [Student 1] should know the answer. She
looked it up in the dictionary.
Student 1: Subsidize means to pay something.
Instructor: To pay.
Student 1: Part of. To pay part of the fee.
Subsidize means to pay part of the fee.
Instructor: How do you say it in Punjabi?
Student 1 explains in Punjabi.
Although attention in this sequence focused on the meaning
of individual words in English, as well as practice of question
and answer patterns, the students and instructor alike appeared
to use this focus to build up a piece-meal interpretation of the
text. In van Dijk & Kintsch's (1983) terms, the participates
frequently attended to vprhafctm representations of individual
words while trying to construct pmpns^innai representations of
ideas in the text as well as an overall situational
representation of the text's purpose and context (see Cumming,
Rebuff ot & Ledvell [1989] for related findings on individuals
reading in a different second language context). At the same
time, participants appeared to be rehearsing simple patterns of
verbal interaction and to be using their common mother tongue as
a supportive means of reference and verification.
6.2 Self-control Strategies and Schemata for Reading and
Writing
At other times, attention focused less on the language code
and more on self-control strategies and schematic representations
for interpreting or producing texts, i.e., skills more
conventionally associated with textual literacy. All students
had a basic facility with the script of English, could write
simple letters or descriptions, and decode the language while
reading; but most lacked higher-order skills for planning, self-
monitoring, knowledge integration, or forming schematic
representations of texts (e.g., as described in Bereiter &
Scardamalla, 1987; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). In group readings,
for instance, Jaswinder's tutoring prompted several students to
structure more global interpretations of an information pamphlet
explaining the functions of the Vancouver Public Health Unit:
I work with the first group on the first paragraph.
This is by far the simplest part of the pamphlet, and
- 22 -
right away it is obvious that the students are starting
at the level of individual words, e.g. what does this
mean? I ask the students to use diagrams to help them,
but they are not sure where to start. I offer a few
leading questions, e.g. who works in the health unit?
One student reads out the names of the personnel,
although she doesn't know a few of the terms, e.g.
speech pathologist, therapist, nutritionist. I mention
that it is important to get the main idea about the
personnel structure of the Health Unit. I ask her to
draw a box with the Health Unit in the center and to
add all the people who work there. I tell her to add
only the ones that she and her partner know. They are
able to write 5 or 6 familiar terms. With the
remainder, I encourage them to guess what they could
be. Slowly, with probing questions, they are able to
come up with 3 or 4 more (nutritionist, speech
pathologist, therapist). They seem to be able to guess
by the context and decoding the roots of the words.
Once this is done, I ask them to guess what the word
"network" is in the paragraph. one student labels the
diagram "network" and says, "this is a network, a group
of people and services". We go through the same
procedure with the second paragraph on the services
offered at the Health Unit. The students draw a
diagram of this then try to guess the meanings of new
words. After they finish the second paragraph, thf»
instructor asks them to put the diagram on the
blackboard and explain what the pamphlet says. They
seem to do this quite well. The other groups had
gotten bogged down with vocabulary again.
A focus on self-control strategies often occurred while
students were writing extended texts. The two following
sequences again show Jaswinder working with individual students
while they composed brief reports on a field trip they had taken
to the local public health unit. In the first sequence,
attention focuses on students' knowledge to plan and elaborate
details in a manner appropriate to a formal written register.
The second sequence focuses on strategies for monitoring and
diagnosing one's own written text. In both sequences, the
personal tutoring and questioning follows the sort of
"apprenticeship" approach which Rogoff (1?90) suggests
characterizes much language and literacy acquisition in
childhood .
Two students have difficulty elaborating on a topic. I
have to ask a lot of questions to get them to think in
this vay. For example, Student 2 has written, "The
Health Unit program for seniors". I ask what kind of
programs. She responds, "homemaker and special
classes". I ask what kind of classes. She says,
"about health care". I ask, what else? She says there
vert others but she can't remember. After a few
9
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- 23 -
seconds she says that they have a program at the
community centre for Indian seniors. Each time I ask
her to note thess dovn for her outline. We go through
this with each topic and eventually she expands her
outline. At this point it is obvious that this kind of
writing is new for both students. They don't have a
conceptual framework of what a l sport should be, what
to include, or how to organize it.
One student finishes her draft of the report early and
asks me to go over it with her. My main impression is
that she has made a coherent report but there are many
simple spelling and agreement errors. She reads each
sentence to me then looks to me to see if there are any
errors. I ask her to look herself, but rarely is she
able to pinpoint any errors. Then I isolate the phrase
where I think an error is. Almost invariably she is
able to point to and correct the error herself. Once
it is isolated it is fine, but she doesn't seem able to
identify it herself in her own writing.
6.3 Personal Knowledge
Other aspects of the classroom instruction and learning
involved associating knowledge in written texts with knowledge
that the students already possessed personally. The
participating women were, of course, individually knowledgeable,
but little of this knowledge was situated in reference to reading
or writing. For example, they were unaccustomed to using writing
to document and assess their experiences or to use reading as a
means for obtaining and analyzing information. As shown in the
following discussion around a newspaper article on arranged
marriages among the local Sikh population, the learners sometimes
found themselves unable to understand phrases while reading that
they otherwise knew from personal experience. Moreover, much of
their process of gaining literacy in these situations appeared to
involve learning how to talk about their ideas and experiences in
relation to written passages (see Wells, 1S90):
Instructor: Do you have any questions about that?
Student 1: Green light? What does green light mean?
Instructor: At a street corner, what color are the
traffic lights? What does the red light mean?
Student 1: Stop.
Instructor: And the green light.
Student 1: To go.
ERIC
- 24 -
27
Instructor: And here, who is going to decide on the
marriage? Who will give the green light?
Student 1: The father will decide.
Str3ent 2: To shop around?
Student 3: The father will look around for a wife.
Instructor: What do you think about this sentence? How
do you feel. I have some strong feelings. How about
you?
Student 1: it is okay.
Student 2: It sounds a bit strange, (in Punjabi)
Student 3: He is saying he has no respect for women.
( in Punjabi )
Instructor: It makes women sound like something you
buy in a shop. It is like buying and selling.
Student 4: He wants to find a woman to walk behind the
man. Like in a wedding. (In L un jabi ) He wants a
"servant" to his sons. (In Punjabi) He doesn't care
about the woman.
6.4 Social Knowledge
Considerable attention also focused on knowledge of social
institutions and practices associated with them, demonstrating
the extent to which language and literacy are organized in
relation to specific cultural domains (Goody, 1986; Street, 1984;
see also Auerbach, 1989; Klassen, 1988; Weinstein, 1984). Like
other immigrants to a new society, and despite their relatively
lengthy residence in Canada, these Indo-Canadian women were
unfamiliar with many of the literate practices, assumptions, and
values organized around common public institutions in Vancouver.
This was evident in virtually all of the field experiences
organized for the classes, which took the women to seemingly
commonplace agencies relevant to their lives but in which they
had never before been. The two following accounts record
Jaswinder's surprise at the extent of this unf ami 1 iar ity, first
in regard to public schools uhen in regard to literate practices
associated with obtaining employment:
The instructor vent over the idea of a field trip to a
school. I was surprised by how little any of them knew
about schools in Canada. Only two of them had ever
been inside of one, and they had only been to parent-
teacher conferences once with their husbands. They did
ERIC
- 25 -
28
not know what classrooms looked like nor what different
things could be found in a school. They were all keen
on the idea of visiting a school and being able to see
a class. They decided it would be best to do this in
pa i r s .
While talking with a few students after class I thought
they would be interested in having their own resumes
prepared. But this was not a priority for them. In
fact during the class, they had paid little attention
to the instructor's description of the model resume.
No one took notes and most doodled or looked outside.
I think this was jumping too far ahead for them. They
were not sure of the purpose or necessity for a resume.
None had ever seen one before or been asked to produce
one. At this point they have difficulties even filling
out the basic application forms for jobs. For example,
they did not know what to put for categories like
health, hobbies, or what to include from their own
lives. It's a question of knowing the value and
relevance of these for a work situation. J
6.5 Social Experience
An additional aspect of learning literacy in the second
language and culture appeared to be experiential, actually
performing literate tasks in relevant situations. For the most
part, supportive, individual coaching was required to develop
this aspect of knowledge as students independently engaged in
tasks they had not previously conducted or for which they were
unaware of certain implicit "rules" of appropriateness. This
kind of learning necessarily had to occur outside the classroom
in locations like banks, employment centers, and social service
agencies because of the great number of unpredictable, associated
circumstances and the need for individuals to integrate and
practice relevant actions individually:
After the library tour, students go up to the counter
in groups of threes to get their cards. Most of the
students are eventually able to r ill out the simple
application form for the librar card. Some have
problems with words like "initial" and "signature".
Some have considerable difficulty with the section on
date of birth because they are asked to put "the month
and day". Most enter the appropriate information but
not in the appropriate places, i.e., in the boxes.
Some write above the boxes and some underneath. I try
to help by pointing out where they should locate their
writing. It is clear that few of the students have ever
filled out a form of this type.
ERIC
- 26 -
2U
6.6 Implication! for Instruction
The accounts above expose the complexity of knowledge types
and integration processes fundamental to literacy acquisition, a
complexity which is seldom so visible among student populations
that already possess knowledge of the language code, certain
higher order skills for writing and reading, customs of talking
about personal experiences in reference to texts, familiarity
with local social institutions and practices, and experience
using literacy in routine situations. A major dilemma for
instruction was creating learning tasks that would integrate each
kind of knowledge in a coherent, holistic way, given that the
participating women needed to acquire most of this linguistic,
literate, and cultural knowledge concurrently.
As a consequence, instruction and student performance in the
classes tended to focus on only one or two of the relevant kinds
of knowledge, neglecting others. This tendency seemed to reduce
the complexity of learning into teachable or learnable units so
they could be attended to, practiced, and consolidated. However,
this process would often result in students merely displaying
knowledge they already possessed, rehearsing simple question and
answer routines, or engaging in other behaviors typical of
traditional, teacher-centered Instruction. In part, such
behaviors seemed to follow from expectations for traditional
classroom activity that participants transferred from their prior
experiences in India, and thus were culturally-relevant. But the
present documentation showed Instruction to be more culturally-
relevant tc participants' immediate situations and learning
purposes in instances when it attempted simultaneously to provide
language explanation and practice, foster new literacy skills,
build on personal knowledge, familiarize participants with
relevant social institutions, and support them through tasks in
real life situations.
Analyses of the processes of classroom instruction
documented in this project provide a preliminary, impressionistic
account of the complex aspects of knowledge addressed in
instruction for adult ESL literacy: acquisition of the language
code, self-control strategies and schematic representations for
reading and writing, situating personal knowledge in reference to
texts, social knowledge of institutional and cultural practices,
and experiential knowledge performing literate tasks in relevant
contexts (cf. Hornberger, 1989). Addressing all of these aspects
of knowledge holistically poses a major challenge for
instruction, even when they are approached through what Wells
(1990, p. 398) calls a "transactional construction of
understanding" between an instructor and learners. Above and
beyond the need to treat literacy acquisition as "situated
cognition" (Collins, Brown & Newman, 1989) emerges the problem of
promoting individual learners' access to and integration of an
extremely diverse range of linguistic, intellectual, cultural and
- 27 -
ERIC 30
experiential knowledge (cf. Prawat, 1^89) — and doing so in a
manner which preserves their integral complexity while allowing
each component to be attended to and practiced sufficiently to
foster relevant learning.
Use of a micro-computer at the project site provided a
telling example of how the women's emerging knowledge of ESL
literacy needed to be approached in the sort of apprenticeship
manner described in excerpts above. The computer proved most
useful for purposeful tasks such as preparing individual resumes
during the unit on job-search strategies. At first (as described
above), the women saw little value in resumes or computer skills
at all, since the social need for this kind of personal
documentation and technical skill was not within their previous
experience. And the computer technology posed considerable
technical barriers for the women, as well as for the instructor
in that only one student could work on the machine at a time.
Consequently, students met individually during and after classes
with Jaswinder, who first had each woman prepare a handwritten
resume according to a format prescribed in classes. Then
Jaswinder typed these into the computer, alongside the individual
student-author , making refinements to the content and language,
while questioning the person about personal details. As the
completed resume was produced, the women took considerable
interest and pride in the document, and eventually it became a
discernable product of their integration of personal, cognitive,
social, linguistic, and institutionally-relevant aspects of
literacy. However, only a few students were willing or able to
devote additional time to making further use of this medium; but
when they did, it was apparent that a very considerable amount of
individual coaching, interactive modeling, and practice was
needed to support this kind of complex learning--an investment of
time and effort for student and instructor alike which vent well
beyond the six hours per week of time allocated for classes.
7 Loricj — term I mpacts
What are the long-term impacts of ESL literacy
acquisition on participants' lives? What changes are
evident in individuals' lives over the 6 month period
of instruction, as could be attributed to improved
language and literacy? Do these impacts warrant
investment of educational resources in this kind of
instruction?
Over the ten months of the project, the women's uses of
English literacy in their daily lives increased distinctly,
particularly in reading and other communications with
educational, commercial, and social-service domains, as the women
came to interact more with certain institutions in the dominant
9
ERJC
- 28 -
31
society. These impacts were traced by comparing the women's
frequencies of using English and literacy in their daily lives as
reported in interview data (in reference to a comprehensive range
of text types, reading and writing functions, and social
situations) collected at two-month intervals over the period of
instruction then four months after the classes were completed.
7.1 Uses of English Literacy
Appendix D shows the detailed data on uses of English
literacy grouped, for ease of reference, into general categories
of reading, writing, language uses in the community, and language
uses at home. Group means are reported for three intervals:
beginning of the classes, end of the classes, and four months
after the classes were completed.
These data show the women's reading in English increased
from about once per month at the start of the classes to several
times per week at the end of the classes. Interestingly, after
the period of instruction, this rate increased to almost daily
for reading newspapers and other information sources such as
advertising flyers, public notices, and mail, although the
women's reading for pleasure and to study English dropped off
considerably after the classes ended. Their uses of writing in
English increased from a monthly to weekly frequency during the
period of instruction, but this increase was mostly related to
homework exercises and was not sustained after classes ended —
with the exception of completing forms and signatures (mostly for
commercial transactions or employment applications). No
increases in uses of Punjabi literacy were recorded, although the
women maintained regular uses of written Punjabi for religious
purposes, to communicate with relatives, and in reference to
local, Punjabi-language commercial and media materials.
The women's uses of English in the community increased
substantially in several domains. The most distinct increase was
in regards interactions with their children's schools, which
occurred less than once per month at the start o£ the classes,
increased to weekly during the period of instruction, then was
reported to occur several times per week later on. A nearly
comparable increase related to the women's uses of telephone
communications in English, which increased to almost daily,
although most of this communication involved taking messages for
their husbands' businesses, since the women initiated their own
calls only about once per week. Over the same period of time,
the majority of women became regular users of their local library
and public health unit. They reported using English more
frequently in their daily routines, but they said their uses of
English for shopping and banking functions did not change
appreciably from a rate of several times per week over this
per iod .
- 29 -
7.2 Indicators of Language Acquisition
Analyses were also conducted on written texts that the six
women who completed the classes produced at the beginning and end
points of the instruction. Composing, however, was not a major
emphasis of the instruction as the women perceived it to have
little functional value for their current social situations. The
compositions chosen for comparison were descriptive narratives of
personal experiences: (a) an account of how they came to Canada
written in late September, 1990 (X number of words = 592) and (b)
an account of their experiences in the ESL literacy classes
written in late March, 1991 (X number of words = 418). As
indicators of language acquisition, analyses were conducted on
the women's uses of seven morphemes in these texts, following
procedures used in numerous previous studies of second language
acquisition (Ellis, 1986; Peyton, 1989).
For the two texts assessed, the women's uses of past tense
markers improved from 23% to 52% accuracy, uses of regular
plurals improved from 33% to 75% accuracy, and uses of articles
improved from 50% to 79% accuracy. Uses of copula "be" decreased
in accuracy from 80% to 64% but these structures appeared very
infrequently in the later text. The three other morphemes,
progressive "-ing", progressive auxiliary "be", and third person
agreement, did not occur with enough frequency in either of the
texts to warrant calculations (because most of the writing was
phrased in the past tense and first person). Counts of words per
T-Units in these same texts showed an overall increase from 6.8
to 7.6 words/T-Unit , indicating the women's control of written
syntax tended to increase slightly over the six months of
instruction .
7.3 Implications for Instruction and Policy
These findings indicate that the short duration of
culturally-relevant English literacy instruction provided for
these Immigrant women had discernible impacts on their capacities
to participate in certain fundamental domains in the majority
society, to read more frequently for information in English, and
to write with improved accuracy and control in English. The
present findings are the only ones t.iat we are aware of providing
specific evidence of the effects of ESL literacy instruction on
adult immigrants in North America. The general significance of
the findings, however, must be tempered by the modest changes
documented in the women's social uses of English and literacy and
by consideration of the very small number of people who
participated in this case study project, all of one gender,
culture, and neighborhood.
ERIC
- 30 -
Of particular concern for educational policy is the extent
to which such a limited amount of instruction appeared to
contribute directly to the women's increased interactions with
their children's schools, reading for information in English, and
uses of such public facilities as libraries and health units.
The general value of the kind of instruction provided would
appear to be as a necessary "bridging" step from non-
participation in the majority society toward more formal kinds of
adult language, vocational, or academic education, potentially
leading to fuller social participation and personal independence.
8 Publ Ic Information Documents*
What features of existing instructional and public
information materials facilitate and constrain uses of
these resources among program participants? What
principles might be proposed to assist community
service workers and educators in preparing printed
materials (e.g., information pamphlets) which are
accessible to individuals with limited ESL literacy
skills?
Throughout the period of instruction, efforts were made to
utilize public information documents wherever possible as reading
materials related to the themes studied in the program's
curriculum, as supplements to field and guest visits, and as
teaching materials. The participating women consistently found
these documents very difficult to comprehend, even in the cases
of documents prepared to be easily readable, for adults with
limited language proficiency, or for women seeking work in Canada
(e.g. EIC, 1989). Indeed, the majority of the women reported
during interviews that these reading tasks were the classroom
activities with which they had the greatest difficulty (i.e.,
unlike newspaper articles, stories, writing tasks, etc.).
Substantive reasons for these difficulties are documented
above (section 3) as the five aspects of literate knowledge which
the women were in the process of acquiring and integrating.
Public information documents typically presented a highly
condensed form of written information which required each of
these kinds of literate knowledge to be utilized concurrently to
facilitate comprehension. Because of these complex socio-
cognitive demands, this form o£ communication posed a visible
barrier to the present women's understanding the significant
information coded in this medium. Such difficulties also emerged
with pamphlets and other documents which had been translated into
Punjabi, suggesting that their literate characteristics (rather
than the language code per se ) were the source of comprehension
difficulties, and that translation of such documents into non-
ERIC
- 31 -
34
official languages may have limited value for populations without
high levels of literacy.
8.1 Frequently Encountered Text Types
Most of the public information documents introduced in the
classes would appear mundane and commonplace to educated, native
Canadians. The text types posing difficulties included:
information pamphlets (about community or social services,
government programs, agencies, institutions, political
campaigns, etc . ) ,
form letters (permission or information letters from
schools to parents, employers' letters to employees or
prospective employees, advertising letters, comme :ial
letters, etc . )
~ application forms (for employment, library registration,
health services, school registration, driver's
registration, banking services, etc.)
orientation manuals (for appliances, government services,
job-search strategies, health or safety procedures, local
s i tes, etc . )
8.2 Difficult Aspects of Such Texts
An ERIC search of research on document readability showed
most recent studies to be concerned with textual features of
printed documents, using "readability formulas" of sentence
complexity and vocabulary frequency linked to specific grade-
level criteria. Although this conventional approach yields
information related to some of the difficulties encountered by
participants with printed documents in the present project, a
broader approach to this issue is necessary, as suggested decades
ago by authors such as George Orwell or Robert Graves and
elaborated more recently in information-processing models of
reading and text use (e.g. Waite, 1982; Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983)
or by advocates of "clear writing" (e.g. Battison & Goswami,
1981) or "considerate texts" (e.g. Armbruster & Anderson, 1988).
However, reading processes vary considerably on the basis,
not just of texts themselves, but also with the knowledge of
readers, social contexts, and social purposes for which texts are
used. In particular, recent studies have demonstrated that
document readability needs to be assessed in relation to spgpiHc
social uses of written texts, for example, in contexts such as
school letters written to parents (Mavrogenes, 1988), people's
uses of social service information (Walmsley & Allington, 1982),
9
ERIC
- 32 -
35
driver's handbooks (Palmer, 1986), or policies at specific work
sites ( Archambeault & Archarobeault , 1983). Difficulties in
reading texts cannot be presumed simply to arise from
characteristics of printed materials in a general way, but rather
from a complex interaction of factors in the use of texts in
particular social contexts.
Intensive and longitudinal observation of the women in the
present project indicated that they had so many pervasive
problems comprehending virtually every kind of printed document
they encountered or they brought into the classes that specific
difficulties were hard to isolate, except generally in reference
to the five aspects of literate knowledge outlined above in
section 3 of this report: difficulties with the language code,
self-control strategies and schematic representations for reading
and writing, situating personal knowledge in reference to texts,
social knowledge of institutional and cultural practices, and
experiential knowledge performing literate tasks in relevant
contexts. The sheer quantity and complexity of these
comprehension difficulties, in fact, would suggest that
alternative media, such as video tapes, picture stories, or
personal tutorials could present more accessible ways of
conveying important public information to this population than
the conventional use of printed pamphlets, form letters, or
orientation manuals .
8.3 Principles for Preparing Appropriate Public
Information Documents
Nonetheless, data from the present project and other related
research on text processing suggest principles which could be
used to enhance public information documents for populations with
limited literacy, proficiency in English, and knowledge of
cultural institutions and practices in Canada:
1. f*m\ 1 iar \ *-y with thft language Cflflfi i use point-form or
telegraphic phrases presented in distinct categories;
retain very simple sentences structures (in active voice,
identifying subjects, verbs, and objects clearly in
sentences); avoid all technical, specialized, or erudite
terminology; avoid all idiomatic expressions; aim at about
a grade 3 readability level but appeal to adult ideas and
interests; refer consistently to visual images and
schematic charts; provide glossaries of all specialized
terms, using mulitingual translations and ordinary examples
2. self-pnnt:rol st-rat-pg 1 ; guide readers through documents,
providing step-by-step instructions, checklists, flow-
charts, and summary points at frequent intervals; pose
comprehension questions or true/false summary statements
about main concepts, and provide answer keys; ask readers
to pose key questions themselves; relate all information
9
ERJC
- 33 -
3ti
directly to ordinary experiences of uninformed readers (and
account for cultural variations in these experiences)
3. schematic rpprpspntat \ nns ? use charts, diagrams, pictures
to depict all information appearing in verbal text — to the
point of intentional redundancy; provide a preliminary
outline of the structure of the overall information in the
document; indicate clearly the purpose of the document in
terms of what a reader should do with it, when, where, with
whom, and why; highlight key concepts
4. situating perRona! knowledge la t&i prenre tn. t&xts.: write
from the perspective of uninformed users of the document;
provide choices for readers with more or less knowledge of
the topic; refer to ordinary personal experiences; make use
of background knowledge of topics that readers already
have; engage readers in sequential procedures while
reading, like ticking off checklists or summarizing own
ideas; do not presume that readers were brought up in
Canada — account for cultural values, perspectives and
differences
5. social Knowledge Q± institutional and. cultural practices :
do not presume that readers know anyth \ ng about the
institution or situation; explain clearly the social
purpose, functions of services or individuals, and
relations of the document to relevant activities; make
available people to explain the document on site through
public tours, demonstrations, or to answer questions by
phone; make comparisons to related situations or practices
in other parts of the world
6. experiential knowledge performing literate tasks la
rel pyant QttntftXla ; provide guided tours, public
demonstrations, video-tape or in-person tutorials in
reference to the document; incorporate readers' background
knowledge through checklists, step-by-step sequences,
questions, or summaries; refer to schematic charts or
demonstrations throughout; help people to practice the
ideas documented, not just read about them
9
ERIC
- 34 -
37
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45
Append ix A
Advisory C o mm i -fctee
Adult Literacy Contact Centre, Adult Basic Education
Association of B.C. -- Mary Carlisle
Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies
of B.C. — Diane Kage
Association of Neighbourhood Houses of Greater Vancouver —
Barbara Downs
Columbia College, ESL Program — David Jackson
India Manila society -- Raminder Dosanjh
- MOSAIC, Service for Non-English Speaking Residents
Michael Murphy
Multicultural Health Program, Vancouver Board of Health —
Guninder Mumick
Orientation Adjustment Services for Immigrants Society
(OASIS) -- Harbans Grewall
Vancouver Community College, ESL Program Robert Caldwell
- Vancouver SATH — Sadhu Binning (Dept. of Asian Studies,
UBC)
Vancouver School Board, Career & Community Education
Services — Judy Roth
Vancouver Social Planning Committee William Smiley
Vancouver Society for Immigrant Women -- Katun Sadigqi
9
ERIC
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4fi
t
Appendix B
Frequency of Reaaing in Punjabi
an d Engl ish, March 19 9 O
It
5«»
4
3«-
2--
T 11 I
1*jT— of f tat* Kui
Puijafct ■ ft* I It*
Frequency scale:
I=never ; 2=less than once per month;
3 a once per month; 4*once per week;
6 «da I ly .
A : letters and postcards
B: notes and cards
C: newspapers
0: magazines
E: TV and theater programs
F: recipes
G: flyers
H : advert 1 semen ts
I : catalogues
J: directions
K: signs
5*=three times per week;
Li forms
M: Information pamphlets
Hi notices
0: menus
P: pr Ice tags and tickets
Q: telephone books
R: dictionaries
S : poems and nursery rhymes
T: novels and stories
U: religious scriptures
V: children's books (read to kids)
ERLC
- 44 -
47
•
Appe nd i >c
Frequency of
51 n<3 En<g X
Writing in Pun j
i s h „ Mc=* rch 1 9 9 O
abi
eonth; 4»onoe per S-three Uses per veek; 6-daily. P
audience: tf-oni versal ; C-colieagues, faaily, friends; S-»elf
Uls signatures
U2: slogans ft notices
U3: fores
U4: notes fi acssages
CI; notes * aesseges
C2: postcards
C3: veil calenders
Si: lists
32: engagement diary
S3: plans
Si: notes
US: letters
U6;nevsletters
U?; reports
U8: poeas
C4: letters
C5: stories
C6: poeas
S5: personal diary
SS: stories
S7: poeas
I
S3 S4 US U6
Ty*«e of Texts Written
I a English
U7
C4
cs
t r
SS S6
i
S7
BEST COPY AVAILABLF 45 4 y
Append i x E>
Frequency o £ English Literacy
Uses ^ t Beginning o £
Project, End o £ E> r o j
Four Months
c: t ^ and
Frequency scale: l»never; 2»less than once per eonth;
3«once per eonth; 4-once per veek; 5«three tlees per veek;
€ -dally*
Reading la English ^
Rl: reading newspapers
R2s reading for information
R3: reading in one's spare tise
vripiriq in Engl 1 ah
vis Silling in basic fores
V2: writ * in one's spare tiee
Lai ter
Cl: using the library
C2: using the health onlt
C3: taking telephone aessages
C4: malting phone calls
C5s interacting in children's school life
C6: daily routines
C7t shopping and hanking
Hi: reading sail
H2: studying English at hose
CI G2 d
Um* of tmmlimh Literacy
Se*t.l«9 m *Uj»,299S ■ Au#.i990
ERIC
- 46 -
4 J*
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