The Effect of Direct Learning and Self Directed Learning on Bilingual Students - Research Paper Example

? The effects of direct instruction and self-directed learning on bilingual al affiliation Effects of direct instruction and self-directed learning on bilingual students 2.0 Abstract Researchers in their research studies have shown that bilingual students learn in different ways, and they use different teaching resources and instruction. Investigations have indicated that learning materials should be prepared for all kinds of students, all learning strategies and not just the teachers’ style of teaching. The application of these resources poses challenges during the learning process, and it is important to determine the effects of these resources in the learning process. This review seeks to explore studies conducted on the effects of direct instruction and self directed learning on bilingual students. 2.1 Introduction The literature review is from different parts of the world. The researcher starts by giving a brief history review of the effects of direct instruction and self directed learning on bilingual students. He looks at the benefits and drawbacks about direct instruction and self-directed learning for bilingual students. The researcher presents other instructional practices that can be used to best motivate the students. The researcher also showed findings and methodologies of previous studied works from educational journals and the language learner journals. These studies have helped the researchers identify the knowledge gap in the effects of direct instruction and self directed learning on bilingual students. Espin (2007) notes that bilinguals refer to English second language learners, and direct instruction is the teachers’ instructional methods. Lastly self-directed learning is the student individual learning strategies. 2.2 Teachers’ instructional practices Deno (1991) conducted a study to examine the extent at which teachers’ instruction in cognitive reading strategies enhances the bilingual students’ use of cognitive reading strategies. The study investigates the effect of two types of reading strategy. Instructional approaches on bilingual students’ cognitive strategy use in reading English as a second language. The two strategies are; Reciprocal Teaching and Question-Answer Relationships. The two strategies were found to be effective in improving student reading comprehension skills. The frequently used skill for teaching is the Reciprocal Teaching. In this strategy instruction takes place in a cooperative instructional environment in which there is a dialogue between the teacher and students. Instructions take place in four comprehension strategy which are summarizing self-questioning clarifying and predicting. Studies have found that the strategy can successfully be taught to low-achieving students. The Question-Answer Relationships strategy is based on Pearson and Johnson’s (1978) taxonomy of questions. Here, students are taught that answers to the questions could be, text-explicit that is, to get answers from a text when, the answers are stated in a sequence in the text, Secondly text-implicit where, the answers must be drawn from different places in the text. Lastly ‘script-implicit where the answers to the questions depend on the readers’ prior knowledge on the topic of the comprehension. This method has been found to improve students’ knowledge in answering comprehension questions (Whitmore, 1992). Espin (2000) found that the differences in the academic achievement between high and low achieving students is that, the lower-achieving students are not given the opportunity to learn higher-level thinking skills. This lack exposure is based on the assumption that they must learn basic thinking skills before being exposed to high level thinking skills. Like in second language learning these skills are not taught until the student learns the Basic English learning skills. This then explains why some of the learners do not use the various reading strategies. Francis, Rivera, Lesaux, Kieffer, & Rivera, (2006) in their study, found that teachers have problems identifying, instructional design that can be used in teaching the second language learners. In that, most of the students get into the classroom with very limited knowledge in English which makes it difficult to assess individual difference. According to Leki (2003) writing is an important skill that has to be acquired by the bilingual students through the second language learning process. He states that, writing skill is difficult to gauge its progress among the students, and it is a debate in many teaching institutions of English second language education. A comparison conducted by Valdes, Haro, & Echevarriaza (1992) indicated that compared to listening and speaking, writing is frequently much slower to develop among the bilingual students. Standardized writing assessments were conducted to test the bilingual writing skills (Zabala et al., 2007). The importance of writing has been noted in post secondary level, and that students are reacquired to write an assessment test to monitor the development of writing skills. Researchers have conducted research studies on the best method of measuring writing skills, though little efforts have been put in place on development procedures to gauge the creation on these measuring methods. Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, & Kim, (1998) conducted a research on to quantify writing ability and measure writing progress. They found few writing scoring measures that can be used for measuring learners writing progress. According to Gansle (2002) scoring procedures, correct word sequences are some of the difficulties of curriculum based writing. Researchers have investigated letter copying, word copying and sentence copying as writing indicators with bilingual students. They note that Spelling, and handwriting are correlated with writing skill. Similarly, Graham and Harris (2005) found that, proper instruction in spelling and handwriting has resulted in improvement in the quality of writing among bilingual students. Copying words, copying texts and handwriting practices may lack validity in the quality of writing. Passage copying has been used to indicate progress in English second language learning and may be a better strategy used to bilingual adult students. Graham (2005) conducted a study on the third-, fifth-, and seventh-grade English-proficient students. He found that a passage-copying task scored for the bilingual students seemed promising as a Curriculum-based measure in writing indicator for third-grade students, producing alternate-form reliabilities of rs?.84 to .86 and a validity coefficient of r?.66 with the Test of Written Language. He found that Passage copying was not adequate for either the fifth or seventh graders. He also found that Passage, sentence, and letter copying have some face validity with English second language teachers. An activity such as copying tasks, where students read a sentence or passage and transcribe the passage is a method of instruction for ELLs with limited English proficiency. 2.3. Benefits and drawbacks about direct instruction and self-directed learning for bilingual students An individual’s general knowledge of English, including grammar, vocabulary, and discourse patterns is English language proficiency. The oral development in English plays an important role in English language acquisitions. This process of acquisition is complex because the skills are dynamic and difficult to achieve by second language learners (Evelyn, 2003). The development of educational programs was highly contributed by the identification of cognitive learning strategies that help student understand a given comprehension (Berninger, 2001). For example in reading, learners have been trained on various approaches that have helped them know various strategies used to comprehend a given text. Studies on these strategies have found that, if students are trained on the modeled strategies and put them into practice their reading comprehension improves. Various research studies conducted in this area has indicated that, the use of these strategies is influenced by individual difference (Evelyn ,2008). He notes that female students and mature students used a variety of reading strategies. Further research conducted on the strategies used in reading by bilingual students indicated that these bilingual students use different reading strategies than English Monolingual students. Very little research has been conducted that examine the effects of cognitive strategies that bilinguals use in reading text written in second language. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking were theorized tasks that place different demands on students, including in terms of the use of short-term memory. A study conducted by Graham (2005) indicates that when students write, they use their short-term memories to access knowledge about letter production, grammar and syntax, and writing strategies. This use of short-term memory may lead to limits on fluency, as students attend closely to mechanical aspects of writing. In his findings, he states that the bilingual students develop good writing skills, and they can then develop long-term memories for information about content, genre, creativity, and sentence structure. Anyon (2000), in his research, he used the whole language and bilingual education strategies to determine expectations for third graders and learn theoretically and systematically form her students back ground knowledge. The study used collaborative interpretation in which they exchanged individual interpretations of raw field notes obtained form data collection. The study found the critical events that represented how oral and written language, curriculum, and culture were invented within the social conventions within the community. The community is more important to learning than the teaching methods used in instruction learning by bilinguals. He found that the elements of ritual rites, ceremonies, conversation, celebration and play function in creating a place lead to the provision of an effective learning Community. The community was viewed through various frames created through cooperative and service learning projects (Graves, 1992). Some research revealed how cultural background of children’s language and traditions affect their learning in school. Kimberly (2004) Suggested that transformative literacy curriculum could be understood from the intellectual resources in students’ families, known as funds of knowledge and from these studies, and it is clear that the holistic pedagogies and multilingual practices give marginalized children opportunities to discover possibilities beyond those imposed by the Society. Leki (2002) in his research found that classroom instruction for ELLs tends to be whole-group and teacher-centered learning approach. Students in this case benefit most from interactional, learner-centered approaches. In the study, they indentified seven effective instructional practices. These are collaborative learning, multiple representations, culturally responsive instruction, building on prior knowledge, instructional conversation and technology-enriched and cognitively guided instruction. Research on collaborative learning communities found that, they encouraged a strong cooperation and discourse between bilingual students that lead to effective, second language learning (Campbell 2010). Simply put, the study emphasized on group discussion during the learning process. The study found that students’ background knowledge correlated with academic performance in second language learning among bilingual students. 2.4 Other instructional practices can be used to best motivate the students A research study conducted by Rivera & Zehler (1991), cited in Whitmore (2002) indicated that culturally based instruction improved self-confidence and self-esteem for second language learners by identifying knowledge that can be used to transfer classroom knowledge to real life situations as well as exposing students to knowledge about cultural groups and individual differences. Au (2002) states that the difference between culturally responsive instruction and the teachers’ efforts of teaching students in a manner that does not affect their home cultural values are other instructional approach that can be used in the learning process. These practices include actively valuing the students’ home language and culture, providing multicultural and multilingual literature, and being aware of ELLs’ different meanings and uses of literacy. Jiyoung Ryu (2004) stated that parents and the community play an important role in supporting the bilingual students’ adjustments to new environments while their cultural background. He recommended that Korean bilingual teachers should understand the Korean student cultural background. McCutchen (2005) illustrates that effective teachers of ELLs must understand the needs of their students and need to be literate in order to contribute to the needs of their families. His research found that many bilingual students play a major role in their families and society as language brokers helping members of the community by translating documents. He adds that language brokering, both oral and literate, should be recognized formally a very commendable activity and students should be provided with instructional and curriculum relevant to their current needs. Edckson (2001) proposes that bilingual teachers’ aim is to ensure that the students of diverse backgrounds, and with all other English speaking students, is to promote ownership of literacy. The bilingual students must take into account their individual backgrounds, needs, and motivations for becoming literate in English. Research conducted by Meyer (2000) states that, discovering each student main objective of learning is the main reason of overcoming bilingual learning barriers. The ability to hear individual speech sounds in words as they pronounce words is the beginning of beginning reading instruction (August, 2003). The phonetics educates students the relationship between letters and words. It improves on spelling and the act of writing in English among the bilingual students. Second language students may find phonetics pronunciation challenging. In that, some words represented with letters that are pronounced differently. Research indicates that studies reveal that systematic training in phonemic awareness and phonics can improve literacy outcomes for ELL students learning to read in English. They found that poor bilingual readers are likely to benefit from direct and systematic instruction which emphasizes on phonological awareness and is linked English literacy. August (2003) reviews several studies that discuss the importance of vocabulary in second language learning. The study found that high level of English proficiency is positively related to vocabulary learning. Students can also develop through reading speaking and listening to others as they speak. Greene (1998) in his Meta analysis of the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education found that bilingual students taught using some of their native languages perform better in English tests than similar student who are taught only in English. Franzoni (2009) notes that the combination of electronic media with the teachers’ teaching strategies leads to effective teaching and learning process. This literature review has not clearly shown the effects of direct instruction and self-directed learning on bilingual students as they learn English as a second language. However, the review has captured the notion of bilingual students in second language learning, some of the effective strategies that were put in place for effective learning and other applicable instructional methods. More research needs to be carried out on the effects of direct instruction and self-directed learning on bilingual students using different teaching learning methods and strategies. References Anyon, J. (2000). 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