A central challenge for English as a Second Language (ESL) students and their teachers is that since it takes considerable time to learn a second language for academic purposes, to learn to use it successfully as a medium of learning content and culture means that ESL students must simultaneously learn language and subject matter knowledge. Arguably, English literature classes, particularly in high school, present one of the greatest challenges for minority language students, as the language demands are commonly complex, figurative and especially demanding of an appropriation of cultural norms. This case study took place in such a context; a high school 'transitional' English literature class. Early in the school year, the teacher designed a unit of work intended to scaffold her ESL students' development of literary interpretation and appreciation of short stories written in English. Her assertion was that by using a visually symbolic representation of the key elements (theme, style, character) of a story, adolescent ESL students can be supported to grow in their interpretation and appreciation of English literature. This may be seen as an ambitious goal as it is acknowledged that this is not easily achieved with native English speaker high school students (Knickerboker and Rycik (2002)).
The paper reports the exploration of the claim. It describes the context, the literacy and literary practices the students and their teacher engaged in, the data collected, and from an analysis of the data the themes, understandings and implications that emerged.
The research site, Lord Byng, is situated on the west side of Vancouver, close to the University of British Columbia. It is a comprehensive school housing some 1200 students in Grades 8-12. Within the student population, there are approximately 200 ESL students about one-third of whom are International Visa students who attend the school on a fee paying basis. The ESL and International students represent twenty-one language groups other than English, the major language groups being Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean.
The participants in the study are: Sondra Marshall, an experienced and highly respected teacher of both English and English as a Second Language; and the ESL students in two 'transitional' English classes. There were fifteen participants in one class and thirteen in the other, comprising a mixture of mostly Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, with a small number of Farsi, Korean, Japanese, Russian and Romanian newcomers. The students ranged from grades 8 to 11, with the vast majority in grade 10. Transitional courses are relatively common within Vancouver high schools; they are designed to offer a bridge between the regular 'mainstream' program in a subject area and the ESL program. The intent is to offer intensive language, content and culture instruction in a subject area so that the student will be able to succeed in the 'mainstream' program the following year. In the context of this study, as Sondra explained it, "The way I teach transitional is as a preparation for English 11 so it is loaded with literature."
Ideally, in order for the students to be eligible for the class, they must have a reading comprehension level within approximately two grades of their age appropriate grade level. This is rarely the case. In the context of this study, students' reading comprehensions scores ranged from grades 5.8 to 8.4. Moreover, the students' oral and written language skills varied considerably by their length of residence in Canada and previous ESL instruction in their home country.
The research claim explored in this case study is: that by using a visually symbolic representation of the key elements (theme, style, character) of a story, adolescent ESL students can be supported to grow in their interpretation and appreciation of English literature, specifically the short story genre. To investigate this claim there were multiple sources of data collection; i) classes were observed over a four week period in November and field notes taken; ii) the teacher and the students who agreed to participate were interviewed. The student interviews were conducted in small groups of 4 or 5 students, usually after school or at a time or their choice, and all interviews were transcribed; iii) students' written reflections were gathered at two different points in the unit; iv) students' self-evaluations were recorded; and v) the teacher's evaluation of and feedback on students' essays were also recorded. In the next section, a description is provided of the multi-modal literacy and literary practices that the teacher designed to enable the ESL students' growth in interpretation and appreciation of literature. In the following sections, we discuss some of the themes that emerged in connection with the research claim that is central to the study.
Background: On the basis of her experiences over the years, together with confirmation from valued colleagues, Sondra was concerned that the majority of ESL students experienced considerable difficulties when faced with the task of interpreting linguistically complex and abstract concepts written in English. These were abilities that she deemed critical to the students' success in the mainstream senior English classroom. She had in the past used traditional graphic organizers to illustrate the key elements in a short story and to try to support her students to engage critically and appreciatively with the texts. However, she deemed that this was not sufficient support for the students' development of the type of 'deep readings' she sought to engage them in with literary texts. Another English teacher in the school had used a Mandala design as a mediating tool to enable her L1-English speaking students to interpret literary texts. In her opinion, the results had been exceptional. She reported anecdotally that her students had produced a higher quality of critical literary essay writing than they had achieved by other more traditional methods and moreover, they had appeared to enjoy the task. As Sondra explained,
I was intrigued by the process, actually not by the process but by the product and concept. For me, I wanted to create an opportunity for the students to demonstrate that they really understood the elements of a short story. They could work with those concepts in a creative way which would synthesize and consolidate their understandings.
As an introduction to the project, Sondra brought to the class a large number of illustrated books and shared, with her students, exquisite representations of mandalas from around the world. Together, they explored the similarities and differences in the construction of the various mandalas and deconstructed the symbols in attempts to interpret what concepts they might each represent individually and as an entire conceptual art piece. These discussions were linguistically and intellectually challenging but engaging for the students. Next, the focus of the unit turned to a simplified black and white template of a mandala. The intent here was to show the students that even the most detailed and intricate of these signifiers conforms to a simple basic pattern structure. Using the 'skeletal' pattern as a prop, the project was explained to the students; they would use one of each of the three rings of the mandalas to represent their analysis of theme, style and characterization, correspondingly. The students were given considerable freedom with respect to the aesthetic creation of the mandalas but their final product constructed in groups of three had to contain an interpretation of a short story according to a strict set of criteria. The outer layer of the mandala was required to contain a minimum of three symbols which illustrated the essence of the characterization intrinsic to the story, plus substantiating quotes from the text, the middle band was required to contain at least two symbols which depicted the elements of style (e.g. foreshadowing, point of view (POV, irony) plus substantiating quotes, and the inner band must hold a single symbol which represented the central universal theme of the short story, plus a quote. Even here the students were given some license though:
I also told them that it didn't absolutely have to be a circle. It could be another shape if they wanted...but...it did have to have those three components and it did have to be integral, they had to be integrated.I asked them to think about colour, shape and size, elaboration and detail. All the parts had to work together. You couldn't just add polkerdots and butterflies just because they thought it looked pretty. Everything had to have meaning. "
Three weeks of class time was allocated to finishing this part of the project. Students worked in self-selected groups of three, with the requisite that there be at least one person in each group who did not share a common mother tongue. This would necessitate that at least for some of the time the students used English as the language of communication. With the teacher's direction, the students chose the short story they wanted to read and interpret from a collection published in the BC Provincially recommended Grade 10 text 'Crossroads'.
In the beginning, the teacher circulated through the groups in class time helping the students to make their selection of a story that appealed to them from the selection of possible texts appropriate to their reading level. On an on-going basis, Sondra would sit down with the students to help them go through the story in some instances page by page to facilitate their comprehension. Later, when called upon she would help to clarify some aspect of the text or help resolve different possible interpretations of a part of the story. Class discussions were lively as the students worked intently on the project, going from texts to visuals trying to agree upon the best symbolic imagery. In addition, students would commonly come to Sondra's class after school for extra help and to confer with her about their ideas. On the completion of the mandalas, they were displayed around the classroom and students took part in a gallery walk where they orally summarized their chosen texts for the other groups and, using the mandala as a scaffold, explained their interpretations. As a culminating task, the students decided in their groups which element of the short story, characterization, style or theme each one would choose as an essay topic. The essays were written as a homework assignment over a one week period. They were marked on a traditional 6.0 point B.C. Provincial writing scale, the criteria for which the students had been given in advance.
The construct of multimodality is by no means new. It is easy to think of examples throughout history (e.g. in the scientific drawings and notes of Leonardo) that demonstrate the deep connections between visual and verbal representations of mental constructs. It is fair to say, though, that in schools, until relatively recently, we have underestimated the potential of building upon the relationship between these two sign systems to develop and strengthen both, while simultaneously developing and deepening students subject matter and cultural knowledge. As texts are becoming increasingly multimodal in their incorporation of images in written language, we need to understand how these dimensions of meaning can be 'translated' back and forth for the enablement and enrichment of the learner. The issues and understandings presented in this section, while particular to this case, seek also to speak to this broader educational imperative.
In their first written reflection on the use of the mandala as an aid to understanding the short story, twenty-six out of the twenty-eight student participants reported that the visual as a mediating tool had indeed helped their interpretation of their chosen literary text. This finding was corroborated in the analysis of the student interview transcripts where once again all but two students stated that they had found the 'translation' back and forth from verbal to visual considerably improved their understanding and appreciation of the texts. From the data, it appears that working between the two modes explicitly affected the students in the following ways; (i) they engaged in multiple readings of the stories (all but one student reported rereading the texts) and, (ii) they read the texts more intently, thoughtfully, and deeply. The following quotes from the written reflections and oral interviews serve as validations of this assertion. One student explained, "Our group had to read the story several times so that every time we read it there would come up some new ideas or discover some more detail." Another stated, "In order to create symbols for the theme, techniques that the author used and the characters we have to know the story very well. We have to read it over and over and over again." Yet another put it this way:
At first we didn't even know the theme of the story, at first we thought it was a conflict between generations, but actually it is a conflict between cultures Chinese and American and what helped us understand better is being forced to read and reread the story because of having to put together the whole mandala.
With respect to reading thoughtfully and intently to develop 'deep understanding' a students reported, "In order to finish this, you have to really think about the story and you have to think deep." Another explained, "In order to do this work you have to think more deeply. You have to keep thinking about the text and thinking ... how everything is connected." One student put it this way, "The mandala helped me read between the lines about what the story is really trying to tell us. It made me spend time to understand the theme and to read this story over and over again." Another thus, "The symbol and mandala encouraged me to get more amusement out of the story. In the mandala's making I think more deeply than normal time." This was another student's experience, "It made my brain start thinking and opened my eyes. Now I am able to think deep into certain stories, understand the background and totally changed my understanding". One student was keen to convey this message:
You know instead of saying it helped us understand it is more a matter of it FORCED us to understand....because we need to read it and read it and read it again, so we can come up with the symbols....so it is more a matter of it forced us to understand, instead of helped us to understand.... you can't do this if you don't look at things deeper.
Interestingly, a number of the students used the word 'forced' to describe the effect having to represent their understandings visually had upon their level of engagement with the texts. This does not seem to have any negative impact indeed, as can be seen in some of the quotes above, the students reported that they had enjoyed the process very much. This sentiment is reinforced in the following quote below, "Some people don't want to read the story but reading with a purpose like coming up with the mandala makes it much more interesting....is more enjoyable."
This project was, however, unquestionably highly challenging for the students in many regards. Interestingly, though, most of them expressed the opinion that one of the greatest challenges was in fact, after they had a sense that they understood the various elements to the texts, to come up with the appropriate symbols. This they claimed really 'stretched' their thinking and, as we shall see later, potentially their oral language proficiency, as they exchanged and negotiated their ideas in their collaborative group work. The following reflections serve to illustrate and validate the sense that realizing the symbols was cognitively taxing. One girl explained, "It was hard to think of how to do style...we use the clock..to represent flashbacks because that is the device the author use in this text." Another girl explained:
The [scale] for a map represents the distance between her father and her...and the heart in the cage is the means she doesn't want to open her heart....she doesn't want to tell others about her feelings...the thinking up the symbols was the hardest part.
Yet another girl provided this explanation, "This symbol (pointing to a crown?) represents the author writing from the first person...it was hard to think of a symbol."
Hopefully, this sample of student voice also gives some indication of the degree to which the students were invested in this project.
The teacher, too, had a very favourable impression of her students' growth in literary interpretation and appreciation through their engagement with this mandala/ literary project. In an interview conducted a short time after the completion and assessment of the work, she reported:
They found it difficult but they found it a very valuable process. They all may have learned tremendous amounts and they may all have learned different things but they can talk to each other about those thing... which I think shows true understanding. They were not just parroting what they thought I wanted to hear. They were actually able to interpret what they had really learned which is so important
And as a possible indicator of the transformative dimensions of the project, she reports:
I have noticed a huge increase in their ability. Now we are deconstructing poems....I was astonished... really astonished with the level of their thinking and their ability to make connections....I was really pleased with how they are able to use the language...it's really neat .. And it wasn't just one or two, it was the entire class.... so there has been a huge shift over this last term....So to get back to your earlier question about why they are able to do that now....well I think they have now had some real grounding and they know what is expected of them.
So, then, from the perspectives of both students and teachers, as voiced in their interview responses and reflections, interpreting /translating across the two modes using a complex visual symbol(s) can support the growth of the ESL students' interpretation and appreciation of English literature. Linking the visual and the verbal, however, took place in a particular context, and the data also strikingly suggests that two integrally interrelated factors appeared to contribute to the students' apparent growth. They are collaborative group work and the use of the first language.
McGee (1996) argues that group conversations about literature build insights and understandings that the individual could not create alone. In the context of collaborative group work, the individual is required not only to share their perceptions but to support and negotiate their opinions with others, which increases levels of reasoning and critical thinking. An analysis of the data collected in this case study supports such a position.
Below are a number of students' insights and comments on working in groups:
For most of us it was better that we worked in a group. Each of us is going to know... understand different parts of the text....so we share and discuss...It makes us go back and read too to make sure we are right in our idea.
Three heads are better than one...talking and arguing the ideas was really helpful to think deep gets lots of different things. It was interesting to hear and to think how did they get that...I don't think that's what it means and talk about that.
Talking in my group gave so many ideas and you had to be ready.....and it was fun to be allowed to be creative and to use your imagination. I have also learned that working as a group needs co-operation in everyone...you have to come prepare to think and argue through....if someone does not done their work does not bring ideas then the rest of the group losses.
We work together, and share and communicate what do we think about this story....you and your partner should work together to find what you know and what are the difficulties and ask for help. In addition, if you have a problem with your symbols, you can ask your other classmates to give you some idea, and talking like that that gives you help that your mandala will be easily understood by others.
For the most part, working in groups also had a strong affective component and facilitated the students' investment in the task, as the following quotes illuminate, " You can have a conversation about which symbol or shape or colour is best without worrying who is wrong....it is less scary." One girl was particularly enthusiastic as she explained:
It was great to show up and know that I have conversations with friends. We talked about the project the whole time. Sometimes I would think of an answer of something I didn't know in class. I would ask them right away. It is funny projects aren't usually like that.
The points to note here are that negotiation was necessary not only for each symbolic representation in each domain (characterization, style, theme,) but that these had to be negotiated collaboratively to form an overall integrated piece. Every aspect of this task was by all accounts intellectually and linguistically challenging for these students with limited English proficiency. However, the support of the group work in the form of harnessing the collective resources, sharing (as well as promoting) responsibility and sheer pleasure the students seemed to experience in working together seemed to act as a complimentary facilitating dimension, so that the students were never overwhelmed or dispirited by the challenges of the task.
The teacher was also impressed by the way the students shared, discussed and negotiated in the groups. Sondra noted:
The other thing I think happened in those small groups is that they would spur each other on. So there are lots of factors why those discussions went so well.... they are so very supportive of each other. I think there were huge amounts of communication. Trying to wrap your mind around the symbols of the mandala and trying to explain it to other people.....that whole thing of putting out ideas, well what about if we did this? Negotiating your way around ideas....around your ideas versus someone else....there was a lot of language expression.
However, she also made this observation at the end of the project:
You mentioned before about what I'd do differently.... and I have noticed how little attention is paid to preparing the students for the task of undertaking group work. They were put in groups and they were given no language to help them wade through negotiations. How do you let someone know you think that's important, how do you deal with somebody you disagree with, how do you encourage but add a contribution, how do you clarify or disagree without offending. I did no preparation for that and it is so delicate and important. But, when do you do that in my year? I think next term ....ll try to spend more time on that....it is so important but they did manage....they made it work.
It is fair to say then that it was not only the visual to verbal that enabled the ESL students' growth in interpretation of literary texts but this together with the context of the truly collaborative group work in which the activities were undertaken. It is no small coincidence that the two students who did not find the use of the mandalas helpful stated in their interview and reflection that their group did not get along and that if they learned one thing it was to choose your partners more carefully in future. From the analysis of the data one other theme emerged as helping the students in their interpretation and appreciation of the short stories, that was the judicious use of their mother tongue as they sought to understand and overcome the demands of task and text.
While the students were intentionally placed in groups where one group member did not share a mother tongue to deliberately promote the use of English in working through the activities, nevertheless according to both the teacher's and the graduate research assistant's observations as recorded in her field notes, the students appeared to draw upon their first languages to enable their work on the project. Especially in the beginning they often referred to their home language. As Sondra described it, "So I would be going around the class tapping them on the shoulder saying, "Remember English...you have another speaker in your group who does not speak your language." The researcher's field notes gives this account:
The project is framed so that the students are encouraged to speak English as much as possible; regardless students when they are confused about their short story or a part of the assignment, speak in their native language or with other group members or students in the class.
To be clear,this was by no means an 'English Only' classroom, as evidenced by the following quote:
Sometimes, I will say. OK, find someone who speaks your language and have a little mini conversation with them to make sure you understand. Or so and so can you help me out because so and so doesn't understand this concept.
But the imperative to remember to speak English was also clear. Interestingly, in the interviews the students appeared disinclined to declare that they used any language other than English. Perhaps in some cases because of the overt encouragement they had had to use English as much as possible. Other sources of student data do corroborate, however, the adult views about L1 use and purpose; these sources include: the students' self-evaluations, written reflections and a survey conducted in one of the classes on the students' use of their L1's. The following is a summary of those results: of the seventeen students who completed the survey on L1 use and mode, eight reported that they had used their first language in a productive and helpful way, nine felt that they had not used the L1 to a significant degree. Four of these nine were speakers of a less common classroom language (one Russian, one Rumanian, two Farsi speakers). Moreover, those who reported using their L1's stated they used it in face to face talk and in some text-messaging and MSN communications. In particular, their mother tongue appears to have been used when the students were trying to work out complex ideas or when they sought to find the equivalent terms in English for a concept they already possessed in their own culture. The teacher and the research assistant both concurred that the amount of L1 use diminished as the project continued. In their self-evaluation and written reflections, a number of students commented that discussing the project in their L1 with friends and family had proved helpful, these students had earlier reported that English was not the language of communication with friends and family. One girl commented, "My family has helped me to be exactly sure about how to understand. I got information about the Gwangju protest [a key aspect integral to understanding the story] from my parents." Another stated, "To think and talk in my home language help me a lot. " One boy commented, "My friends not in my group help me in my language."
From both formal and informal reports by the students, their mother tongue appears to have been used when they were trying to work out complex ideas or when they sought to find the equivalent terms in English for a concept they already possessed in their own culture. The teacher and the research assistant both concurred that the amount of L1 use diminished as the project continued. While students expressed the benefits of L1 use for cognition, only one student expressed an affective value to the use of the L1, she powerfully stated, "I don't feel stupid when I speak Mandarin. I don't get as frustrated and people take me more seriously when I speak Mandarin. In English, I just don't sound smart."
This comment was made without an interview prompt. In hindsight, this is an area that warranted more discussion with the students during the study
As reported above, as a culminating task the students were required to decide in their groups which of the three elements (characterization, style, theme) each would choose as their topic and then write an essay on the area of their choice. As the table below illustrate, the marks ranged from a low of 2 to a high of 4. Eighteen of the twenty-eight participants received a passing grade in this difficult assignment.
For the teacher, while she felt the students had made progress, it was problematic to assess the extent of the students' developmental growth in their essay writing. The assessment was complicated by the fact that the subject matter particularly for those students who had chosen theme and style was considerably more difficult than their previous assigned writing on describing a character. As she puts it:
the notion of theme was a really hard notion for a student to catch in that first term. They are definitely getting there but it was at least in arms- length reach for them. The character was o.k. but theme was more difficult and style was even more difficult.
She did state however, "Yes, they did get out of it what I had hoped. Their learning was much richer than I ever expected. And I would definitely do it again with some amendments."
The students were more confident in their view that their writing had improved because of the activities they had engaged in during the project.One commented:
I got a higher mark because I felt like this essay was better organized because I thought through my ideas so much more (Interview) But with the essays once we had gone through the mandala it gave us something to really write with because we had done so much layered thinking going through the essay.
In response to an interview question about improvement in writiing abilities, a student reponded, "Yes, definitely because we had looked at so many different things for the mandala going through all that visua stuff....I somehow remembered it in my essay." Another stated, "So doing the mandala really helped my essay because I can make the connections and my understanding of the text was so much better...so of course that's going to improve my mark."
Two students gave negative responses. One stated, "There's not much difference [in my mark] because really I am going to brain storm anyway....in an essay...but I wouldn't have to come up with a whole mandala first." The other negative response was very interesting:
....this didn't really help because the most important thing was how you organize your ideas. But with this essay we were forced to think so deep that makes it hard to get your ideas on paper...too many ideas.. too many connections makes it harder to write so ..maybe some students lost marks on the essay structure because they had too many ideas to focus together.
On the whole, however, from interview and reflection data the students reported that they perceived that their writing had improved and that they were feeling more confident in their increased proficiency in writing English mainstream essays. They were virtually unanimous in the claim that they had more ideas and 'deep understandings' to write from than ever before.
To summarize, then, Sondra, the focal teacher in this case study, wanted to explore the claim that by using a visually symbolic representation of the key elements (theme, style, character) of a story, there would be growth in the adolescent ESL students' interpretation and appreciation of English literature. As mentioned above, this may be seen as an ambitious goal as it is acknowledged that this is not easily achieved with native English speaker high school students (Knickerboker and Rycik (2002). The analysis of the data strongly suggests that this claim has merit and that a multi-modal (visual/verbal) interpretation affords the ESL students a 'deep reading' of a literary text. Moreover, not only does this multi-modal work enable ESL students' development of traditional academic literacy, it also promotes for them an extended concept of literacy, one that links visual and verbal as is being increasingly advocated by distinguished scholars (Kress and van Leuwen, Unsworth, 2002). However, it would be oversimplifying the case for multi-modality to discuss it outside of the context of the situation in which it occurred. This teacher skilfully designed the unit so that while rigorous standards were set, and the students were highly challenged intellectually and linguistically, they were also well supported, not only by multiple symbolic representations of meaning but also by the positive collaborative engagement of the group members. In addition, the pedagogical design acknowledged and built on the students' cultural and linguistic capital (prior knowledge). At the beginning of this paper it was reported that, all too frequently, ESL students as a population experience extremely high drop out rates and failure to graduate. For too many students, trivialized and isolated language learning exercises and/or 'watered down' content, inappropriate for the ESL students' grade levels, academic needs, identity investment or intellectual potential remain the norm in classroom across the English-speaking world. This study demonstrates that this need not be so, even in demanding areas such as English. A pedagogy designed to: construct an image of students with limited English proficiency as intellectually and linguistically able, employ a variety of mediating tools, engage students' hearts and minds, and, lastly, hone and harness the cultural, social and intellectual capital that they bring to the classroom through critical dialogue, has the potential to enable all students to realize their potential for academic success.