Indigenous students in bilingual Spanish–English classrooms in New York: a teacher's mediation strategies
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Patricia Velasco
Abstract
US bilingual classrooms were originally created for students who had limited proficiency in English, but who came from homes where reading and writing formed an integral part of their lives. This article explores the challenge of having a growing number of indigenous Mexican students in US bilingual classrooms who do not come from literate backgrounds and whose oral expression is not associated with the academic registers of school. This article documents the role or mediation (or interactional scaffolding) taking place in conversations between a teacher and two indigenous Mexican-Mixteco students who were attending a New York City dual-language, bilingual kindergarten class (Spanish–English). This article sheds light on the complex process that mastering academic language requires and the vital role that teacher–student interactions play in the development and understanding of academic language. These interactions cannot be left to chance; they require thoughtful planning and have to be collectively constructed and practiced.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
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- Book reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Sociolinguistics and some of its concepts: a historian's view
- A critical commentary on the discourse of language rights in the Naivasha language policy in Sudan using habitus as a method
- Mixed language usage in Belarus: the sociostructural background of language choice
- Expressing age salience: three generations' reported events, frequencies, and valences
- “We should keep what makes us different”: youth reflections on Turkish maintenance in Australia
- From trilingualism to monolingualism? Sicilian-Italians in Australia
- Hong Kong and modern diglossia
- Streetwise English and French advertising in multilingual DR Congo: symbolism, modernity, and cosmopolitan identity
- Local and global perspectives on overcoming literacy challenges in South Africa
- Comparative accounts of linguistic fieldwork as ethical exercises
- Instrumental music and Gaelic revitalization in Scotland and Nova Scotia
- Indigenous students in bilingual Spanish–English classrooms in New York: a teacher's mediation strategies
- Book reviews
