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LEARNING ENGLISH IN A
MIDWESTERN URBAN HIGH SCHOOL:
A CASE STUDY OF AN ELL VIETNAMESE STUDENT

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LEARNING ENGLISH IN A MIDWESTERN URBAN HIGH SCHOOL:
A CASE STUDY OF AN ELL VIETNAMESE STUDENT

By

Yanan Fan

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Teacher Education

2006

ABSTRACT

LEARNING ENGLISH IN A MIDWESTERN URBAN HIGH SCHOOL:
A CASE STUDY OF AN ELL VIETNAMESE STUDENT

By
Yanan Fan

The goal of this ethnographic case study is to examine what it means to learn
English within the sociocultural contexts of a mid-sized Midwestern urban high school,
focusing on a Vietnamese teenager. The data set consists of ﬁeldnotes from key
educational sites; interviews of students, teachers, and a ﬁrst language aide; and collected
artifacts (e.g., photocopies of student's written work, class handouts and syllabi,
audio-taped interactions of the student in classrooms, visual images of sites, and site
documents). Based on an inductive analysis of the data set, I asserted that the student's
learning experiences are embedded in and inﬂuenced by the sociopolitical assumptions of
a larger educational system that deﬁnes second-language learning. The student was lost
in the institution's inconsistent vision of literacy while negotiating expectations and
opportunities for participation in varied classrooms with little support and resources. In
the meantime, the student's language proﬁciency, immigrant history, ethnicity, race,
gender, and the model minority rhetoric all ﬁgure into her identity formation in the peer
self-segregation of her school. This study extends the understanding of the complexities
of second language learning, of the challenges adolescent immigrant students face in
secondary schools, and of the cultural construction of the model minority rhetoric. It
also contributes to the methodological discussion on conducting ethnographical studies
by offering a reﬂection of the researcher's own negotiation of her relationship with the

participants, considering issues of membership, reciprocity, and power.

Copyright by
Yanan Fan
2006

ueaeaau

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study examines second language literacy and learning as enacted by
”Thao” and people in the social world of her school. I first thank them for being
willing to share with me their experiences, especially Thao and Mrs. My, two
main participants in the study.

The study has also been my own journey of understanding the
phenomenon of second language literacy as a native Chinese speaking English as
a second language. Many have generously supported my growth along the way.

I thank Anne Haas Dyson for showing me the art and joy of conducting
ethnography and for guiding my steps as a novice researcher. I am grateful to
Lynn Fendler (ﬁiﬂi) for walking me through my confusing ﬁrst year and for
offering consistent intellectual and emotional counsel throughout the course of
my doctoral work. This study would not have been possible without precious
feedback from Avner Segall and Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, who introduced me
a wide range of methodological and sociopolitical issues that informed my
thinking and writing.

I appreciate the support of Ernest Morrell, who encouraged my active
involvement in local high schools, in MSU’s teacher preparation program, and in
scholarly forums to help me articulate my aims. I owe my gratitude also to David

Labaree, Victoria Purcell-Gates, Lynn Paine, Debra Hardison, Chris Wheeler, and

Khanh Van Nguyen, each of whom offered precious suggestions and advice at
different stages of the project.

I have beneﬁted much from the warm collegiality of my fellow graduate
students. Among them, Anne Hooghart has been a long-time friend and mentor.
I would not have found my research site without David McCreight and Kathy
Schoon—Tanis, who introduced me to local high school teachers. Feedback from
group members in TE 991 Advanced Qualitative Seminar (2003-2005, Dyson) also
greatly contributed to the methodological evolution of this study.

I thank Keith Dickson for suggesting my pursuit of a doctorate while I
was still a Master’s student in Beijing and together with Fay, Sam, and Emma for
being our family ever since we arrived in the States.

Finally, I thank my dear husband, Youxin Wang, for his love, support,
and understanding, and our daughter, Fengyi, for her squishy-face smiles and

her joyful company while I wrote this dissertation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................. ix
LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................. x
CHAPTER 1
Introduction ....................................................................................... 1
Statement of Problem ...................................................................... 2
Nature and Purpose of the Study ......................................................... 5
Research Questions ......................................................................... 6
Literature Review ........................................................................... 7
Participating in Contextualized Practices 12
Negotiating Self and Others ........................................................ 16
Conceptual Tools ......................................................................... 20
Overview of Chapters .................................................................... 22
CHAPTER 2
On the Case: Methods and Methodology .................................................... 23
What Can We Know Through Research? .............................................. 25
Method ...................................................................................... 27
The City ............................................................................... 27
The School ........................................................................... 29
The People ............................................................................ 31
Researcher Role ............................................................................ 37
Data Collection ............................................................................ 38
Data Analysis .............................................................................. 42
CHAPTER 3
Grappling with Language Support in Contexts ............................................. 47
The Macro: Shifting Policies in Educating Newcomers .............................. 48
The Micro: Mainstreaming the ELL .................................................... 51
The ESL Class: Serving the “Beginners” ......................................... 51
Temporary Resources: Existing Only In Name ................................. 56
Pass to the Language Aide: Solving All Problems? ............................. 59
Summary .................................................................................... 65
CHAPTER 4
Lost in the Institution: Learning to Write in the Mainstream ............................. 67
In Mainstream Classes: Coping With Different Expectations ...................... 69
“Write Down What I Say!”: Forced Participation in Controlled Dictation .. 69
“Just Write Something”: Fake Participation in Writing for Tokens .......... 74
Guided Participation?: Drafting, Conferencing, and Revising ................ 83
Episode 1: Book Review ..................................................... 84
Episode 2: Five-paragraph Outline .......................................... 95
Summary .................................................................................. 101

CHAPTER 5

A Lonely Social World: Looking for Self and Opportunity for Interaction ........... 104
“A Good Popular Vietnamese Girl” ................................................... 107
The Black Appeal: Embracing Youth Culture ................................. 108

Limited interaction: Segregation from African American Peers 110
A Student with No Friends: Rejecting, and Being Rejected by Asian Peers 1 15

A Divide from Within: Hmong and Vietnamese ........................ 117

Further Away: Divisions within Vietnamese Themselves ............. 120

“I’m Proud Who I Am!” ................................................................ 123

Summary .................................................................................. 126
CHAPTER 6

Negotiating Researcher-Participant Relationships ........................................ 129

The Social Constructions of Self, Others, and Relationships ...................... 130

My Personal History ............................................................... 131

Negotiating Selfand Others................ ...................................... 133

Membership .................................................................. 134

Reciprocity ................................................................... 135

Power ......................................................................... 137

Methodological Decisions .............................................................. 138

On Membership .................................................................... 139

On Reciprocity ..................................................................... 140

On Power ........................................................................... 141

Over Time ................................................................................. 143
CHAPTER 7

Conclusions, Discussion, and Implications ................................................ 146

Summary of Findings ................................................................... 147

Second Language Learning in Broader Contexts ............................. 147

Mainstream Practices and Second Language Learning ....................... 149

Second Language Learning and Identity Negotiations ........................ 151

Theoretical Discussion .................................................................. 152

Literacy, Development, and ESL ................................................ 152

Participating in the Ecological System of Classrooms ........................ 155

Culture ............................................................................... 159

“On the Case” ....................................................................... 161

Limitations of the Study ............................................................... 162

Educational Implications ............................................................... 163

APPENDIX: Conventions Used in the Presentation of Transcripts .................... 169

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................ 170

Table 1.
Table 2.
Table 3.

Table 4.

LIST OF TABLES

Linton Student Ethnicity Breakdown ........................................ 30
Comparison of School Performances ........................................ 31
Evolving Coding Categories and Their Sub-Categories ................... 45

The Teacher-Student One-on-One Conference on the
Book Review Project ............................................................ 86

Figure 1.
Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

LIST OF FIGURES

World Geography Class Handout on Conﬁrcius ............................ 71 .
Thao’s Written Assignment on Confucius ................................... 73

Thao’s Final Book Review Assignment in the 9'h
Grade English ................................................................... 94

Sample Outline of Five-Paragraph
Essay .............................................................................. 97

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

[Many] argue that children should quickly be “taught” English or claim
that they as young children “learned” English easily. What is not very
clear is exactly what the public understands by the terms to teach and to
learn English. . 7

-- Guadelupe Valdés (2001, p.12)

Ninth grader Thao and I are sitting together at a table in the school library
chatting about English. At the age of 15, Thao is much taller than her Vietnamese female
peers. Her straight dark hair is tied neatly behind and it is long enough to reach her waist.
Thao does not smile much, but when we talk, she looks into my eyes and listens. She
immigrated to the Midwestern city of Maple Creek from Vietnam in 1999. Two years
later, I left China and became a graduate student at Michigan State. I am telling Thao
about my frustration at not being able to understand a variety of Englishes, for example,
the Aﬁ‘ican American Vernacular English, a dominant language used at Linton, an urban
high school.

Yanan: But I don’t understand some of their words, like “Yo!” YOUl
taught me that. But there are many other words I don’t
understand.

Thao: Because you Chinese.

Yanan: But you speak Vietnamese. You understand [African American
Vernacular English]?

Thao: Because like, I learn USA in Vietnam. A lot USA stuff. And I
come here already know English. I hang out with black people. I
have ﬁ'iends black stuff. No white people. Black!

Thao not only pointed out the need to learn “a lot USA stuff”, but also

emphasized the importance of “hanging out” with friends — a socialization process that

she believed gave her an edge over me in understanding variation in English. For Thao,

 

' See Appendix for conventions used in the presentation of transcripts.

l

English was always linked to the contexts of “USA” and “black stuff ’, along with her
involvement or participation in these contexts. Thao wisely informed me of a theoretical
base for my exploration into learning English as a second language in the US. This study
took a close look at Thao in her ﬁrst year of high school in order to understand her
learning and participation as contextualized cultural practices in the postindustrial
Midwest.
Statement of Problem

As the immigrant population grows each year2 and as a fast growing number of
English language learners (ELLs) enter into America’s urban classrooms, the ELLs’
experiences in schools and their academic progress have provoked heated discussions as
to the ways of educating a more ethnically and racially heterogeneous student population
and of responding to the rise of cultural, social, and demographic diversities in schools.
English literacy education of immigrant adolescents has become a crucial issue for
educators, policy makers, and the society at large (e.g., Genesee, 1994; Adger, 1996;
Lucas, 1997; Crawford, 1998), yet research that examines secondary-level immigrant
students in mainstream context is disappointedly scarce (Faltis, 1999). Although it may
be easier for teenage ELL students than it is for younger students to learn English as L2
with the support of their L1 (Krashen, 1997), for example, to acquire morphology and

syntax (V aldes, 2001), the greatest challenge facing immigrant adolescents is how to

 

2 Changes in immigration laws from 1965 to 1990 contributed to increased migration from
abroad and generated greater diversity among the newcomers. By March 2002, the Census bureau
estimated that 32.5 million people were foreign-bom. The drastic change in this foreign-bom
population between 1970 and 2002 includes a decrease in Europe-bom US. residents from 62
percent to 15 percent and an increase in Asia-bom US. residents from 9 percent to 25 percent.
The largest foreign born resident group is Latin Americans (especially central Latin Americans),
who also witness a population increase from 19 percent to 52 percent in the United States (Census
2000)

master English as medium of communication in school, while at the same time, learning
academic subject areas (F altis & Wolfe, 1999; Duff, 2001). In terms of the time span of
learning a second language, it may take as long as ﬁve to nine years for secondary age
ELL students to obtain native-like English-speaking levels (Collier, 1989). This timeline
becomes even tighter when these ELL students are also supposed to make progress in
various subject areas while learning academic Englishes — the vocabulary and discourses
that match the disciplinary subjects. Therefore, secondary school age students have,
indeed, much less time but greater challenges than do elementary age students in meeting
all the academic and language requirements for graduation, postsecondary education, or
workplace competition (Chips, 1993; Adger & Peyton, 1999).

The students’ challenges are more critical and complicated when we take a
closer look at the process of leaming in secondary school as situated practices within the
social, cultural, and political contexts of schooling, language education, and immigrant
education. For example, the compartmental nature of secondary school instruction
(Harklau, 1999) may not provide consistent and supportive language learning contexts for
ELL students, who are mainstreamed into regular classes but in need of quality native
language instruction to facilitate decoding the language (Crawford, 1998) and to support
participation in actually using the new language in practices in school. Moreover, the
challenges can be overwhelming when mastering academic content in L2 is combined
with other social challenges. These challenges include making a transition to young
adulthood, balancing the values treasured in home cultures and in the new cultures (Lucas
and Katz, 1996), and developing a sense of self and others within the institution (Harklau,

2000) and with peers (Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1998; Gunderson, 2000).

Literacy practices among ELL students are all the more pertinent in the
postindustrial Midwest, a region that can be contextually different than other parts of the
country. First, the Midwest is presumably homogeneous when compared with the coastal
states, such as California and New York, where immigrant populations from all over the
world gathered and settled centuries ago. For example, the history of Chinese immigrant
communities in San Francisco, California can be dated back to the nineteenth century
during the Gold Rush years (Chen, 2000), whereas the ﬁrst group of Southeastern
refugees arrived almost a hundred years later in the Midwestern city where this study
took place. However, the Midwest has been undergoing a fast population change over the
past decades. According to Census 2000, the largest percentage increase of Spanish
speakers was in the Midwest, and Asian and Paciﬁc Island-language speakers increased
most rapidly in this region as well (U. S. Census Bureau, 2003). The changing
demographics in the Midwest urges concerted research efforts to understand the
experiences of the immigrant youth in this geographical region that has witnessed drastic
growth of diversity for the past decades.

As a result, the Midwest contexts are less familiar and under-investigated.
Scholarly work that examines English language and literacy development among ELL
school children in this region is rare. Existing studies of ELL literacy took place
primarily in the coastal states (e.g., M011, 1992; Harklau, I994; Faltis & Wolfe, 1999;
Valdes, 2001) where the researchers have situated their work in the long cultural history
of experiences of tightly organized immigrant communities in these regions. For instance,

these experiences have been marked along the legal history of the rise (especially after

the Supreme Court case, Lau v. Nichols, 19743) and the waves of decline (e.g.,
Califomia’s pass of Proposition 2274 as one of those waves) of bilingual education in the
state of California and in the whole country as wells. In the Midwest, however, little has
been done to understand what everyday literacy practices are like for ELL students and
their teachers. Researchers must turn to ethnography (Hancock, 2001) to understand the
students’ perspectives and to explore the challenges and sources of support they have in
literacy practices.
Nature and Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this case study was to examine what it means to learn English
within the complex sociocultural contexts of a mid-sized Midwestern urban high school,
focusing on Thao, a Vietnamese teenager. The study was grounded in a sociocultural
perspective; it examines learning English as a second language as a social practice in
which students negotiate cultural and language borderlines while crossing them with
available resources. Rather than discovering the best practices, I explored the complex
process of language learning while Thao, as a social being, interacted, employed, and
interpreted language opportunities in various school settings. Given the population
changes across the United States and a lack of attention to the literacy education of

secondary-level immigrant students in Midwestern programs, this study attempted to

 

3 In Lau v. Nichols, a Chinese parent took the school board of San Francisco to court, arguing
that the school program did not cater to the needs of non English speaking children. The Supreme
Court unanimously ruled in favor of the Chinese parent.

‘ Proposition 227, otherwise known as the Unz initiative, passed by California voters in 1998,
required that parents initiate the process by which their children were enrolled in bilingual
education classes, thereby taking away the schools’ ability to place students in bilingual classes as
they saw ﬁt. Furthermore, it limited students’ placement in bilingual classrooms for a length of
two years. A controversial law, it has sparked and continues to draw debates over the language
and educational needs of ELL students (Shea, 2001 , p. 4)

5 See Crawford (1995) and Paulston (1981) for detailed history of bilingual education in the US.

5

build on sociocultural theories of learning and literacy and to extend the conversation into
areas of second language learning as situated in a Midwestern urban school context.
Research Questions
The overall research question of this study was, what did learning English mean
as it was socially enacted by diverse participants within Thao’s world in the context of
Linton, her high school. I focused on four groups of sub-questions in order to understand
the sociocultural complexities of learning.
The ﬁrst group dealt with the contextual conditions in which Thao’s learning
took place. I asked:
a.) How did broader contexts — both national and local policy levels - impact
local institutional practices and available resources?
b.) How did multiple layers of institutional practices and resources inﬂuence
Thao’s experiences of language learning? These layers entail the nature,
form, and values of the local available programs for ELL students like
Thao.
The second group of sub-questions focused on the everyday pedagogical
practices in the mainstream classrooms that Thao attended. I asked:
c.) What were the expectations and demands of literacy and learners in these
classrooms?
d.) What kind of institutional support was available for Thao to participate in
varied writing practices?
e.) What were the academic challenges Thao faced in the classrooms?

f.) How did Thao cope with these challenges?

The third group investigated the process of Thao’s identity negotiation in
learning English. I asked:
g.) How did Thao’s identity negotiation unfold?

’9 ‘6

b.) What did it mean to be an “English language learner, a good student,”
“a good Vietnamese girl” as such identity rhetoric was often expected of
Thao by varied participants?
i.) In what manner did identity negotiation reﬂect or create opportunities for
Thao to participate and interact in socially organized activities? (e. g.
Did and how did Thao use cultural stereotypes/assumptions to her
advantage?; How did Thao understand the language of power?; What
strategies did she use to access the language of power?)
The last group of questions aimed at the methodological considerations in
conducting and writing up this ethnographic case study. I asked:
j.) In what manner did power play out in the research itself (e.g.
participants’ varied use of English in the study)?
k.) What was the impact of my relationship with varied study participants on
their expressions, actions, perspectives on the issues under study?
Literature Review
This study was built on the sociocultural conception that language learning is
constructed by individuals and communities in socially organized practices, and that
language is the symbolic tool people use when they participate in these situated cultural

practices and activities. For 9th grader Thao, these symbolic tools included her speech in

both written and spoken forms, as well as the paralinguistic features of her speech, such

as her tones, stresses, and her use of body languages. As the “tool of tools’”, language
(both Thao’s L1, Vietnamese and L2, English) organized and channeled her feeling and
served as both the intra and interpersonal means7 of her social participation. That is,
languages mediated Thao’s learning as it happened in the social interactions between
herself and people around her, and then languages facilitated her appropriation of
meaning with the resources available to her. In short, from a sociocultural perspective, as
people go through the activities of their daily lives — through the interactional situations
and events - they simultaneously negotiate their social role vis-a-vis other people, their
understanding of how the world works, and of how language itself works (Dyson, 1997).
The sociocultural ﬂame is jointly informed by cultural psychology (e.g.,
Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoﬁ‘, 1990; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Cole, 1996; Bruner, 1996) and the
ethnography of communication (e.g., Gumperz, 1971; Hymes, 1972; 1974; 1982; Szwed,
1981; Heath, 1982; Saville-Troike, 1989), both having their roots back in the 19705 when
North America began to witness a growing diversity and ethnical and racial
heterogeneous student populations (M011, 2001). The cultural-historical theory of cultural
activity and symbol development by Russian psychologist Vygotsky has inspired
educational researchers since the publication of Minds in Society (1978). Among all
Vygotsky’s ideas, two were particularly inﬂuential to this study. First, participation is at
the heart of Vygotskian notion of cultural activity. For Vygotsky, learning takes place
through culturally appropriate participation in activities. Vygotsky proposed the
interpsychological plane and the intrapsychological plane to theorize the dynamics that

occur between and within individuals as they participate in activities. That is,

 

6 I borrow the phrase “tool of tools” from Cole, 1996, p.108.
7 The interpsychological plane and the intrapsychological plane in the learning process, as
proposed by Vygotsky (Lee & Smagorinsky, 2000).

8

participation not only involves people using past experience to anticipate recurrent
actions, but also involves them understanding the norms of the activities and the roles of
themselves in relation to other participants. Second, according to Vygotsky, people’s use
of symbolic tools to communicate is fundamental to human development. Speech is one
of the key tools to mediate relations between participants and to regulate their emotions.
People, tools, and cultural construction of tools and artifacts are therefore inseparable.
Vygotsky also accentuates the signiﬁcance of language and its role in enabling
communication and in internalizing communication through inner speech.

The interest in the Vygotskian theory of learning was strengthened by its use
within the ethnography of communication. The ethnography of communication was
developed by Dell Hymes and other researchers in the early 70$. Ethnography of
communication is an anthropological approach that examines the interplay of social
structures and language use. Hymes (1974, 1994) advocates using event, rather than
sentence, as the unit of analysis in the study of relations between people. He argues that
"it is not linguistics, but ethnography, not language, but communication, which must
provide the frame of reference within which the place of language in culture and society
is to be assessed” (1994, p. 11). Therefore, within the social matrix of language learning,
a child is not only acquiring a system of grammar, but also the use of the language and
ways to assess the purposes, places, participants, and channels of communication in a
communicative event. This dual process also provides the child with an opportunity to
build up attitudes and beliefs regarding the elements (topic, speakers, purpose, channel,
etc.) in the event. Hymes states that language acquisition resides in the child’s

communicative competence, the “ability to participate in its society as not only a

speaking, but also a communicating member” (Hymes, 1974, p. 75).

Thus, as in Vygotskian theory, learning happens through participation in cultural
activity. This becomes very relevant for second language learning and teachings. The
classroom, for Hymes, is organized in a series of social events where participants may
come ﬁom all different backgrounds and have their own personal histories. Ethnography
of communication is welcomed in ESL research as it enables researchers to take a closer
look at:

sociocultural processes in language learning, how institutional and societal
pressures are played out in moment-to-moment classroom interaction, and
how to gain a more holistic perspective on teacher-student interactions to aid
teacher training and improve practice. (Watson-Gegeo, 1988, p. 575)

j The sociocultural view of the situatedness of language learning also requires
critical lenses to examine the power relations in people’s use of language. Bakhtin’s
(1986) philosophy of language, namely the dialogic nature of language, complements the
sociocultural landscape in that it highlights the complex world where class, race,
ethnicity, and cultural traditions are situated in the cultural practices of speech and texts
(see Dyson, 1997). Power relations also exist in the broader institutional and
sociopolitical contexts where embedded ideologies, beliefs, and values are reproduced in
local social practices (New London Group, 1996; Barton, 2000; Norton, 2000; Street,
2000; Hawkins, 2004).

Using the sociocultural ﬁamework, researchers have been trying to investigate
the nature of learning and teaching in the contexts of school and community. For

example, in her milestone multi-case, muti-site ethnography on connections between

 

8 See M011 (2001) on connection between Vygotskian theory and ethnography of communication.

10

school and home literacy, Shirley Brice Heath (1983) describes in great detail the
interactions of the townspeople in Roadville, Trackton and Midtown, each having unique
socioeconomic and ethnic demographics. Heath demonstrates that literacy is more than
the ability to read and wirte and that literacy practices are learned through a child's
culture in which social activities, religious activities, family roles, and community's sense
of power relations and language codes all play a part. Therefore, as Heath argues,
children arrive at school with a set of skills and beliefs about language and these skills
and beliefs are not always respected in school. Heath suggests that if schools and teachers
want to expand students’ literacy, they will need to reassess their expectations for literacy
in the classroom and learn to draw upon resources from children’s lives.

Through her ethnography of verbal interactions between students and teacher on
the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon, Susan Philips (1972) develops
the notion of participation structure to describe the conditions for speech use in
classroom settings and she demonstrates that students are more comfortable and willing
to interact in classroom situations where conditions for verbal interaction are similar to
those in their community social settings. Therefore, Philips cautions that teachers should
consider the social conditions that enable students’ verbal participation and ways to
respect students taking the initiative to speak in class. Courtney Cazden (1988) uses IRE
(teacher Initiation, student Response, and teacher Evaluation, see Mehan, 1979) to
describe the “default pattern” of the interaction which constantly puts students on the spot,
creates social distance, and provokes discussions about power and imposition as enacted
in the classroom. Classroom interactions, according to Cazden, are reﬂections of school

as a social organization of participation. School is also a place of enacted human relations

11

and a place of power distribution and imposition.

Ethnographic studies have also reached beyond the wall of schools. In a joint
effort to study language practices among linguistically marginalized immigrants in Great
Britain, a group of researchers and educators (Martin-Jones & Jones, 2000) carried out
projects that investigated various macro social factors, such as speciﬁc historical
processesg, the development of a post-colonial order, international labor migration, the
movement of refugees, minority rights movements, and global changes of a social and
political nature. Among them, for example, Mark Sebba (Chapter 9, Martin-Jones &
Jones, 2000) discusses the social and ideological dynamics in the orthographic practices
of Creole writers who produce a hybrid text that is neither recognized by conventions of
Standard English orthography, nor by those of Creole. The theme, also shared among
other studies in the volume, is that the acquisition and use of language and literacies are
inevitably tied to the uneven power relations between ethnolinguistic groups.
Participating in Contextualized Practices

A sociocultural perspective on language acquisition emphasizes not only the
macro political climate of language education, but also the micro contexts of learning and
pedagogical practices. In North America, researchers have been examining various
contexts in English learning among immigrant and ELL students (Saville-Troike, 1989;
Spolsky, 1990; Kramsch, 1995; Hancock, 2001). These contexts range from broad
educational movements and policies to particular situations in classroom, community, or
home (Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines, 1988; M011 & Whitrnore, 1993; Valdes, 2001). Indeed,

as the literature shows, all layers of contexts interact and intertwine with each other. From

 

9 For example, Saxena traces the religio-political history of South Asian Muslims to understand
their language practices in West London (Martin-Jones, 2000, pp. 275-299).

12

English over the world to English taught in inner-city high school classrooms, the world
of English as both a global language and a local language deserves our attention if we are
to understand the cultural and political implications of what it means to learn English as a
second/foreign language.

Situating English in broader ideological backgrounds, Pennycook (1995) points
out the danger of not problematizing a broad range of social, historical, cultural, and
political relationships behind the language. For Pennycook, English as an international
language is “a language of imperialism and of particular class interests” (p. 39). He
quotes a compelling study conducted by Tollefson (1995) on Southeast Asian refugees’
English learning experiences in the United States. The ﬁndings showed that many
English language programs failed to serve as communities for language socialization,
proﬁciency, and adaptation. Instead, the programs limited English language resources and
opportunities and designated refugee immigrants to low-paying jobs. At the same time,
the dominant English-speaking American society seemed to have little interest in learning
from, or even knowing of, the languages and cultures of the immigrants (Tollefson,
1995). The author maintains that immigrant ELLs were tracked to ﬁnally ﬁll in the social,
economic, and political hierarchy.

At the 4th International Conference on Language and Development, Tollefson
(1999) continued to use observations of Southeast Asian immigrant students’ language
development to discuss the impact of the notion of Standard English on their learning. He
argued that the Standard English ideology often failed to recognize the sociocultural
experiences of their learning English. For instance, some Vietnamese immigrants picked

up a hybrid Vietnamese English produced among the native Vietnamese of the

13

community. In city neighborhoods where immigrant population mingled with African
American population, school age Vietnamese students were powerfully inﬂuenced by the
African American culture — African American Vernacular English (AAVE), hip hop, and
language through other media. Consequently, Tollefson observed that many Vietnamese
students acquired the AAVE, an equally well-developed language, more naturally, yet the
language was not recognized and encouraged by the official school discourse. Standard
English ideology carried political agendas and it missed the communicative, situated
nature of second language learning (Tollefson, 1999).

In an ethnographic study of the lives and experiences of four Mexican middle
school students, Guadalupe Valdez (2001) examines both the policy and the instructional
dilemmas in English language education of immigrant children in California. Setting up
her study against the context of California’s ban of bilingual education in the 19908,
Valdez analyzed students’ use of oral and written languages and the nature of their
participation in various programs, classrooms, and communities. She documented how
access to English and to academic content was denied by the same institutional structures
that were designed to help immigrant students, and how students become frustrated and
choose to not learn in such contexts.

In her three-and-a-half-year ethnographic case studies of second language
learning in high school, Linda Harklau (1994) investigated the effects of tracking on four
Chinese ESL students at a large suburban, racially and linguistically diverse northern
California high school. She asserted that tracking left many ELL students in low-track
mainstream programs, which placed the students in less favorable positions in terms of

their learning;

14

The case study conducted by Gitlin and his colleagues (2003) unravels “how
schooling shapes identity formation, opportunity structures, and educational success” (p.
93) outside the classroom in a middle school that had many ELL students from Mexico,
former Yugoslavia, and other countries. The authors argue that the institutional practices
appeared to include the ELL students within the school wall, but in fact excluded the
students by limiting their opportunities for participation. This contradiction, according to
Gitlin et al., was inﬂuenced by discourses and contexts not only from within the school,
but also from the local White community surrounding the school. Speciﬁcally, the
authors found that what motivated the immigrant students in the middle school and their
parents (e.g., family ties, safety concerns, and wish for economic and academic
opportunities) was different from what motivated the school and the local White
community surrounding the school (e.g., the concerns of local business and fear of
violence). The authors conclude that this discrepancy conﬁned immigrant students to the
margin of school life.

A sociocultural perspective on language acquisition also emphasizes that
language development and social growth go hand-in-hand in micro contexts. Cultural
psychologists believe that people learn as they participate in everyday sociocultural
activities (Brunet, 1996; Cole, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991, Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky,
1978). They critique transmission models of learning often promoted in schools that
assume that teachers are sole disseminators of knowledge and that students are empty
vessels. Among them, Barbra Rogoff (1990) maintains that social interactions between
caregivers and children are essential in children’s learning and development. These

interactions, as Rogoff contends, are part of a process called guided participation in

 

 

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ongoing cultural activities in which children “observe and participate with others in
culturally organized practices” (p. 16), actions that are “repeated, shared with others in a
social group, and invested with normative expectations and with meanings or
signiﬁcances that go beyond the immediate goals of the action” (Miller & Goodnow,
1995, p. 7).

In working with immigrant students, Johnson (1994) asserts that classroom
activities should create opportunities to interact in various participation structures
(Philips, 1972) in order to encourage students’ actively drawing on their cultural and
personal experiences and their linking language with context. Johnson recommends ways
of grouping in an effort to promote second language and literacy development. For
example, teachers can set up compatible pair (e.g., a native speaker and an ELL student;
or two students of different proﬁciency levels) to encourage ELL students to use their
second language with English native speakers. To ensure better participation, Johnson
also recommends that teachers ﬁnd the "underground curriculum" (Dyson, 1989) by
doing ethnographic research on learners’ language performance. In a word, students
should be given multiple opportunities to practice with peers and to build their
understanding and to apply their language and knowledge while participating in
schooling (Walqui, 2000). I
Negotiating Self and Others

The sociocultural view of learning involves the whole person and that person’s
relationships to the activity and to others (Bakhtin, 1986). During this process, identities
are also constructed as learning implies becoming a different person with respect to the

possibilities enabled by the web of relations among participants. As a newcomer moves

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towards full participation in practice, s/he begins to shoulder more and broader
responsibilities within the community with her/his growing knowledge and skills to
tackle difﬁcult tasks, but more signiﬁcantly, s/he gets an increasing sense of identity as a
“master practitioner” (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p.111). In addition, identity is “how a
person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is
constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the
future” (Norton, 2000, p. 5).
As a result, identities are always “ﬂuid, changing, and multiple” (Hawkins,

2004, p. 18) in the power structure of language, race, and class. People draw on the
language and literacy resources available to them as they take on different identities in
different aspects of their lives. Research on identity and second language learning
demonstrates that the negotiation is very complex (Young, 1996, Ricento, 2005). For
instance, Lam (2000) investigated identity in a Chinese student’s practice in a new
literacy dimension of computer network. Lam argues that the student developed a textual
identity in the process of trying to understand how texts are composed and used to
represent and reposition identity in networked computer media. Hawkins’ (2004) account
explicitly describes this trajectory:

The socially situated identities participants in social interaction take on at

any given time are a complex integration of their diverse sociocultural

experience, the sociocultural experiences of others in the interaction, the

structure and ﬂow of language, participation and negotiation in the

interaction, and the larger cultural and institutional setting within which the

interactions take place. (p.18)

17

 

 

Identity is a site of struggles that reﬂect a variety of social situations. This is
especially pertinent to ELL students, because their sociocultural experiences in school are
accompanied by conﬂicts between marginalization and belonging and between
maintaining their cultural identities and assimilation (N ieto, 2000, 2002). In a study of
seven bilingual Puerto Rican college students, Zavala (in Nieto, 2000) explores the nature
of racial and ethnic identity development and the role language plays in their search for
ethnic identity. Whereas the use of Spanish is a way to express their ethnic pride, English
in their student lives is more of a marker showing the beliefs and values of the dominant
culture. Language differences, together with negative social stereotypes and marked
physical features, increase the complexity of identity formation among these Puerto
Rican youngsters. In American public schools, students who were born in another
country, or come from homes in which English is not spoken, are forced to give up their
national identities and home language to be accepted into the academic and mainstream
world. Laurie Olsen's (1997) ethnography of immigrant students’ life in a typical high
school community reveals the tension where language is used to Americanize the
marginalized students and at the same time, to deny their full participation. Olsen points
out the fundamental issues of value in the process of "Americanizing" newcomers — the
values of education in this country, the meaning of diversity, the relations between race
and language, and the understanding of democracy. Using year-long ethnographic case
studies following three US. immigrants who were Turkish, Vietnamese, and Vietnamese
Cantonese respectively in their last year of secondary school and ﬁrst year in a 2-year
community college, Harklau (2000) contrasts how prevalent institutional images, which

the author calls representations, interpret what it means to be an English language learner

in these two settings. Harklau argues that stereotypical identities are created and recreated
in particular social contexts and her ethnographic data shows the students’ various
identities in class curricula and spoken and written interactions. Contending that the
institutional images of ESL student identities are appropriated and recreated by students
and educators in one context and resisted by students in another, Harklau suggests that
representations of students and of their backgrounds, experiences, and needs not only
inform curriculum but also generate signiﬁcant consequences for students' identities and
attitudes toward classroom learning.

Identities also come together with agency. Hawkins (2004) contends that a
sociocultural perspective also examines ways in which individuals “exercise their agency
in forming and reforming their identities” (p. 15). For example, McKay and Wong (1996)
argue that in the crossroads of identities, people are both positioned by relations of power
and resistant to that positioning, “and may even set up a counter discourse which
positions in a powerful rather than marginalized subject position” (p. 579). This argument
is based on their two-year ethnographic study of adolescent Chinese immigrant students
in California, with Foucaultian notion of discourse'oto examine students’ negotiation of
identities and the connections of discourse and power in the language learning setting.
Others tend to link the complicated mix of familial, cultural, and political factors in
schools and classrooms to curriculum and pedagogy to promote language learning (Faltis
& Wolfe, 1999; Verplaetse, 2000; Genishi, 2002). In short, language learning is always

situated in a certain context, and it is the context that allows insights into the cultural and

 

'° A Foucaultian sense of discourse refers to “a set of historically grounded statements that
exhibit regularities in presuppositions, thematic choices, values, etc,; that delimit what can be said
about something, by whom, when, where, and how; and that are underwritten by some form of
institutional authority.” (McKay & Wong, 1996, p. 579)

19

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social dynamic of learning.

Another informative perspective to look at identity and human agency within
structural constrains is the notion of cultural production (Levinson & Holland, 1996),
which views schools as complex sites where pe0ple “actively confront the ideological
and material conditions presented by schooling” (p. 14). Douglas Foley (1996) argues, in
his ethnography on the cultural production of “silent Indian” in school, that as the white
racist discourse presents Mesquakis youth as always silent and non-participatory in an
Iowa high school, Mesquakis students produce their own version of the “silent Indian” by
making it a situational speech style against the white world. Therefore, Foley contends
that producing the “silent Indian” never escapes the larger “ideological struggle between
whites and Indians over cultural representations” (p. 81). Similarly, Meador (2005)
demonstrates how the cultural production of the good student ﬁgures into opportunities
for participation for some Mexican immigrant female students in a southwest middle
school. Whereas these students are not regarded as either popular or athletic according to
the cultural ideal of the good student deﬁned in the local school, they interpret their
ethnicity and use home language and English in different ways to respond to many layers
of oppression imposed on them in terms of language proﬁciency, achievement, gender,
class, and ethnicity. Meador writes that schools are sites where varied cultural
representations are negotiated and contested.

Conceptual Tools

Guided by the sociocultural persepctive, I view literacy, usually in plural forms

(Homberger, 2000), as a particular tool that is taught through and learned within

particular kinds of practices in and out of school. In a way, literacy is situated in social

20

practices “deeply associated with identity and social position” (Street, 2000, p. 23).

A language learner is an active consumer of language, be it a written language
or an oral language, a ﬁrst language or a second language. A language learner is also an
active consumer of available “funds of knowledge” in shared practices participated by
members of cultural communities such as a class or a family (Gonzalez, 2005). A
language learner also develops values and a sense of belonging and identity within the
communities during the process.

I use learning, rather than acquisition, to mean the student’s experience in
learning English as a second language and as a medium for socializing and learning
subject matter content in school contexts. Learning happens in cultural practices -

“actions that are repeated, shared with others in a social group, and invested
with normative expectations and with meanings or signiﬁcances that go beyond
the immediate goals of the action. (Miller and Goodnow, 1995, p. 6)

Without ignoring major research areas of second language acquisition (SLA)

(e. g., the characteristics of the language produced by learners, the linguistic environment,
and process of second language acquisition), my notion of learning further suggests
“conscious knowledge gained through teaching (though not necessarily from someone
officially designated a teacher) or certain life experiences that trigger conscious
reﬂection” (Gee, 1996, p. 138). Thus, this deﬁnition allows sociocultural and
sociopolitical analysis of SLA. To be exact, second language learning takes place in
culturally organized and ideologically charged contexts of school and society; therefore,
second language learning entails social dynamics and processes as L2 learners understand
themselves and the world and negotiate power relations through participating, or not

participating, in school activities, and through gaining the available resources and access

21

to survive and thrive in school.
Overview of Chapters

In this chapter, I discussed the nature of this study and situated the study within
the demographic, sociopolitical, and research contexts of ELL literacy experiences. In
Chapter Two, I lay out the methodology of the study. I introduce Thao’s city, school, and
classes, as well as herself and other participants. I also detail the data collection process
and analysis procedures. The ﬁndings are organized into four chapters. Chapter Three
situates the many layers of institutional organizations and practices at Thao’s high school
in the broader contexts of language education policy. In Chapter Four, I illustrate how
Thao interpreted the instructional expectations and how she grappled with various
institutional support to participate in the literacy practices in mainstream classrooms. I
examine Thao’s negotiations of opportunities for interaction and of her identities within
her unofficial peer world in Chapter Five. Before I wrap up the study, I insert a
methodological note in Chapter Six, in which I reﬂect on conducting this ethnographic
case study and on negotiating my researcher roles and complex relationships over time
with Thao and Mrs. My, Thao’s Vietnamese language aide. In the ﬁnal chapter, I reiterate '
the ﬁndings, examine fundamental theoretical issues relevant to this study, and explore

the implications for the educational literature and for classroom practice.

22

CHAPTER 2
ON THE CASE“: METHODS AND METHODOLOGY

Tuesday. It is another gray morning. Before more snow falls on the city, early
birds and school buses ﬁll the streets. Out of the university campus and across the railway
trails, I drive through several city neighborhoods to Linton High School to meet Mrs. My,
3 Vietnamese language aide working there. The school is in the southern part of the city,
where small businesses and residential areas mingle together. I pass by a dollar store, two
gas stations, and a dairy store. When the roads become narrower, bumpier, and noisier, I
know I am not far from the school parking lot.

Congestion is not unusual. In their Chevy, Dodge, or Oldsmobile, parents wait on
the one way parkway to drop their kids at the main entrance. Older kids who drive to
school are less patient to get to the lot. School buses ship in hundreds of students from the
neighborhoods. Many teenagers are seen walking in twos and threes to school. The last
several minutes before the ﬁrst hour bell feel forever. Outside the building, horns and loud
music ﬁ'om the cars add some temporary liveliness to the humid and cold morning air.
Inside, students ﬁnish up breakfast in the cafeteria, stroll to their ﬁrst hour classroom with
buddies, or gather by their lockers waiting for the security officers to yell “Move it! Move
it!”

After all, the hallway belongs to the students — boys and girls in different skin
colors and costumes. In large crowds, they occupy the main lobby, the stairs by the main
entrance and some intersections which join the classroom wing with the gym and the
auditorium. They chat, tease each other, argue, push and shove, sing, and dance. There

are sporadic ﬁghts, of which the security ofﬁcers soon take care.

 

” The phrase is borrowed from Dyson & Genishi (2005).

23

Posters are everywhere, making a grand background of the morning drama.
Many of them are from the school encouraging students to learn, praising those in the
honor roll, and promoting school pride (e. g., “Believe and succeed!”, “Write more, learn
more!”); the rest are students’ postings informing everyone of some upcoming
fundraising, sports, or community activities. They are fun to read on my way to Mrs.
My’s ofﬁce. After saying hi to a couple of students I run across in the hallway — most of
them Hmong and Vietnamese students I have seen at the Asian Students Association
(ASA)12 meetings, I’m at the door to Mrs. My’s ofﬁce.

Mrs. My and I have known each other for more than a year. I was ﬁrst
introduced to her by a senior Linton English teacher with whom I had worked in a
university teacher preparation program. From then on, whenever I went to Linton to,
observe classes with ﬁeld instructors, I dropped by to chat with Mrs. My. She has been a
great resource person to me, an international student who is interested in language
education of immigrant students in a local school like Linton.

I knock then enter the ofﬁce. The noise in the hallway makes it difﬁcult for me
to hear any response from inside the ofﬁce. I ﬁrst pass Mrs. Gutierrez’s empty space.
Mrs. Gutierrez is a Spanish language aide who shares the same office with Mrs. My. She
works at a different high school on Tuesdays. Mrs. My’s desk is close to a small window
at the other end of the room. Behind two ﬁle cabinets, Mrs. My sits at her desk, smiling
in my direction. Beside her is a young girl who looks at me at ﬁrst, then turns to look out
of the window quickly. Her name is Thao, a freshman in Linton. She later becomes my

main informant in my study.

 

'2 A Pseudonym for this student activity group.

24

What Can We Know Through Research?

Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world.

It consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible.

These practices transform the world. They turn the world into a series of

representations, including ﬁeld notes, interviews, conversations, photographs,

recordings, and memos to the self. At this level, qualitative researchers study
things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret,
phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. (Denzin &

Lincoln, 2000, p. 3)

There have long been epistemological discussions on how people access
knowledge and whether there is truth (or a single truth, in some cases) embedded in the
lenses used to look at the world. In order to seek a better understanding of the beliefs and
experiences of my participants, the assumption undergriding this study is that I am not
discovering (nor is it my attempt to discover) the truth and the universal in people’s life;
instead, I make constant decisions about “how to angle [my] vision on places overﬂowing
with potential stories of human experience” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 2). My
participants will inevitably join me in constructing and creating meaning through our
interactions and relationship.

My dissertation project is an ethnographic case study. The purpose is to
understand many layers of institutional and pedagogical practices that inﬂuenced Thao’s
experiences of learning English as a classroom medium and as the subject matter, and as
the symbolic tool in learning and socializing (Dyson, 1989). I aim to examine what it
means to learn English as a social practice in which Thao, as a social being, employed
and interpreted language opportunities in various school settings and with varied

participants, negotiate cultural and language borderlines while crossing them with

available resources.

25

Given my theoretical take on the nature and purpose of my research, the ways in
which this study was carried out were rather cyclical than linear (Guthrie, 1992). That is,
I entered the ﬁeld with a general question regarding the grand phenomena of second
language learning (e.g., I started with the question: What is the nature of learning English
as a second language in this particular site?). It was then the data that led me to some
initial observations. More informed and speciﬁc research questions were derived from
these on-going reﬂections, and so were new directions of inquiry along the way. The
issues of power and ethics were also crucial to and inseparable from the overall process
and discussions. They also added to the critical orientation of my inquiry. To be exact,
every step involved in the study, with my shaping of the ﬁndings in particular, required
me to reﬂect on my roles, biases, and relationships with the participants by asking
questions such as whose voice I was representing, whose study it was, who beneﬁted
from the study, and whether anyone was exploited in one way or another? Did I achieve
“multivocality” (Canagaraj ah, 2005, p. 945) by including multiple perspectives and
voices of varied informants? In short, this study reﬂects not only how I interpreted what I
was shown and told, but why I interpreted in certain ways and what the consequences that
can be drawn from this particular interpretation.

The overall research question (as detailed in Chapter One) was, what did
learning English mean as it was socially enacted by diverse participants within Thao’s
world in the context of Linton, her high school? I further focused on four sub-areas - the
contextual conditions, pedagogical practices, and the student’s identity negotiations - in

order to understand the sociocultural complexities of learning English. In addition, I also

26

explore how I negotiated researcher-participant relationship in conducting the study and
how this negotiation impacted on the ﬁndings of the study.

Method
The City

Each time I was in Mrs. My’s office, I couldn’t help but look out of the window.
Out there and blurred in the morning grayness was downtown Maple Creek’s landmark —
three sky-high smokestacks from an automobile plant, sparkling day and night.

Mrs. My, Thao, and their families lived in a mid-sized Midwestern industrial
city of Maple Creek with a shrinking yet increasingly diverse population of 120,000. For
example, the majority of the children in the local schools are children of color. According
to the district Annual Report (2004-2005), about 36 percent of students are white, 42
percent African American, 16 percent Latino, and 5 percent Asian.

One of the nation’s largest car corporations has several manufacturing plants and
assembly lines around the greater Maple Creek area, providing employment to a large
working class population for more than a century. Joined by railways, the plants are
scattered in the downtown and western parts of the city. New car models of all kinds are
often displayed in front of some plants. There is also a theme park where regular
automobile shows and other local gatherings are held. Whenever there is a parade, there
are cars participating — cars that come right out of Maple Creek’s factories. Nowadays,
the American car industry faces severe market challenges from overseas. Some plants
have to be shut down and workers laid off as the auto company’s strategy to compensate
for their sales deﬁcits. Many Maple Creek residents are descendents of emigrants from
the South and immigrants across the Mexican border, who were attracted by the

increasing job opportunities when the Midwest’s automobile industry was in its heyday.

27

However, the city has lost over 8,000 people for the past two decades; furthermore,
thousands of workers have lost their jobs since 2003 because of the standstill of the city’s
major industry. The chain effects of this regional and national economic failure have
reached every comer of the city and the lives of its residents. Budget cuts have gradually
become taken-for-granted in infrastructure, social welfare, and most importantly, public
education. As many school buildings were closed and K-12 teachers laid off, more people
are driven away from the city.

During recent decades, Maple Creek has witnessed a new wave of incoming
populations. Because of a large refugee settlement agency and the city’s need to replace
its population, it started to resettle political refugees from many parts of the world by
offering themcheap housing and entry-level jobs. Southeast Asian reﬁrgees, the largest
Asian group, were among the ﬁrst groups that came to the greater Maple Creek area”,
which includes the city and a couple of neighboring townships. They are mostly
Vietnamese and Hmong refugees (from Laos and Cambodia); they ﬂed Vietnam and
were allowed to come to the United States under the Ronald Reagan Administration
because they helped the US. in the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. Between 1978
and 1980, Maple Creek received its initial Vietnamese and Hmong reﬁigees. Until the
early 90’s the city continued to accept relatives of these permanently settled refugees who
came to the US. to join their families (Fong, 1998).

The Southeast Asian reﬁigees were followed by refugees from Cuba, the former
Yugoslavia (civil war in 1999), and civil-war haunted Aﬁican countries, such as Sudan,

Somalia, and Nigeria. The most recent refugees are Turks from the western part of

 

'3 Golembiewski, C. (2003, March 16). Maple Creek’s changing face. Maple Creek State
Journal, p. 1A, 8A.

28

Russia. Most refugees escaped their governments’ political persecution or their countries’
civil wars. By 2005, Maple Creek was home to more than 13,000 refugees from 32
countries”.

Concurrently, as Maple Creek hosts one of the state’s major universities, a
growing number of international students and businesses come to join the local diverse
population. Each year, thousands of students ﬁom all over the world enroll in
undergraduate and graduate programs in East Maple Creek University. In all, the city’s
many changing faces reveal that it has never been so diverse as it is today.

The School '

Linton was ﬁrst built in the late 19508 on 60 acres of land in southwest Maple
Creek. It has a history dating back to the mid 1800 when Linton started in a barn15 before
it became part of the public school district. The school grew as it tried to cater to rising
populations and increasing demand for education over the centuries. The contemporary
Linton is a building complex surrounded by a football stadium, a baseball and soccer
ﬁeld, tennis courts and parking lots. Most classrooms are in a three-story building. To its
north are the gym area and an indoor basketball stadium. To its south are the
administration, two auditoriums, and some individual classrooms. Hallways connect all

the structures together, making the complex a sprawling giant in Southwest Maple Creek,

an area with a high concentration of tract housing built in the 19505”.

 

"' Range, S. (2005 , March 29). Combining cultures: Living in US. makes holding on to heritage
a challenge. Maple Creek State Journal. Retrieved on May 5, 2005, online at:
http://www.maplecreekstatejoumal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005503290338&template=pr
intart.

‘5 School history obtained from the school’s website, May 2003.

'6 Murray, S. (2005, February 2). Real estate agents report a home sales slump for 2004. Maple
Creek State Journal. p. 6D. According to Murray, average list price of Maple Creek is $98,663;
Maple Creek suburbs $212,137; outlying areas $170,773.

29

Linton is like a concert. In the auditorium area, the school’s mariachi band
practices their violins and guitars and saxophones after regular school hours. Juniors and
seniors in the Theater Department are rehearsing Shakespeare “a Mid-Summer's Night
Dreams” on stage. In the gym, basketball players gather for the after school training.
They are surrounded by sports fans who cheer them up to defend their state championship
title in the new season. Out in the ﬁeld, football players are having their training and the
marching band is getting ready for a home coming event.

The “skaters” show off their daring skills of ﬂying up and down the rails and
slopes designed for handicap access a few footsteps away from one of the gates of the
building. While the “prep kids” hang out in the lobby, the “Goth” kids meet under an old
maple tree outside by the parking lot. Many find a library a great place to spend time
outside classrooms; others prefer sitting in the hallway. In the main lobby, the school’s
Viking T-shirts are popular fundraising goods, so are the pizza and Chinese egg rolls.

As one of the city’s three public high schools, Linton serves some 1,700 ninth
through twelfth graders from its ethnically diverse neighborhoods, as shown in Table 1.

Table l. Linton Student Ethnicity Breakdownl7

 

 

Ethnicity Number of students Percentage
Asian/Paciﬁc Islander 88 5.8%
Latino 170 1 1.2%
Native American 7 0.4%
White 668 44.0%
Black 586 38.6%

 

There are mixed feelings towards Linton among the students I chatted with. Some love

the school’s ethnic and cultural diversity; others resent the feeling that they are stuck in

 

‘7 Source obtained from Linton’s Counseling Center, May 2004.

30

an inner city school full of violence, drugs, and drop-outs. Some claim to have friends of
different races; others believe segregation is still the norm.

Linton faces challenges as most urban schools do in terms of students’ academic
performance. According to School Evaluation Services of the State Department of
Education, Linton has the lowest graduation rate (64%) and highest dropout rate (9.9%)
among the three district urban schools during the 2001-2002 school year. The state test
passing rate of Linton is 28% out of a participation rate of 40%. The No Child Left
Behind mandate put Linton on the spot again with its 2004 evaluation that says Linton
did not make adequate yearly progress for the second year in a row”. Table 2 compares
Linton with the two other urban schools (Urban 2 and Urban 3), as well as with a nearby
suburban school, serving a middle and upper-middle class white community.

Table 2. Comparison of School Performances19

 

 

 

Performance Index Linton Urban 2 Urban 3 Suburban

State Tests Passing Rate 27. 7% 46.5% 38.7% 82.9%

State Tests Participation Rate 39.6% 64.8% 66.7% 88.9%

Graduation Rate 64.3% 75.5% 75.7% 97.5%

Dropout Rate 9.9% 7.6% 6.5% 0.6%
The People

In front of me is Thao, a lS-year-old Vietnamese girl in her pink stretching running
suit and high heel leather shoes. Her dark long hair is tied from behind, leaving her big

silver circle earrings easy to spot. When Mrs. My introduces me to her, Thao looks at me

 

'8 Vela, S. & Grasha, K. (2004, November 5). Seven area high schools miss U.S. standard. Maple
Creek State Journal, p. 1A, p. 8A.

‘9 Data obtained from School Evaluation Services at http://ses.standardandpoors.com, September
2004.

31

brieﬂy, says a gentle “Hi”, then grabs and opens her dark pink purse on the table as if
searching for something.

Four years ago, Thao came to the United States to reunite with her parents who
had arrived in the United States 10 years earlier. She shares some of the common
experiences many immigrant teenagers have. For example, she did not speak English
when she ﬁrst arrived; therefore, she has gone through a long period of frustration and
isolation in school. Thanks to one of her middle school teachers and many classmates at a
magnet middle school, she gradually started using the language. By now Thao has fewer
problems understanding and communicating with others. At the same time, as she
proceeds to high school, she faces challenges in acquiring academic English and
mastering some subjects, such as math and science. The freshman year can be stressful
and it is deﬁnitely a tough transition for her in terms of language learning and life
experience. What happens in her school life in the ﬁrst high school year is, at the same
time, of great importance to me. As a researcher, I become a witness to her experience.

It took a long way for me to meet Thao eventually. In my initial design, I planed
to work with at least a handful of recent immigrant students. Having done my pilot study
at Linton the year before, I gradually became familiar with Vietnamese and Hmong
students and staff members (i.e. librarians and main ofﬁce secretaries). I attended the
Asian student weekly meetings back in the time of my pilot study. In order to get my
dissertation project going, I got the permission from the principal and the teacher in
charge of the ASA activities to formally introduce myself and my project. For many ASA
members, I was not only a legitimate member because I am Chinese, but also I am a

student from overseas who wanted to understand high school life of Asian students in

32

their new country. The students kindly accepted me and offered their stories, experiences,
and feelings of learning in school. Ten students, spreading out across all four grade
levels, showed their interest in participating my study and half of them gave me their
parents’ consent signatures right away. Unfortunately, nine of them were born in the
United States and the other one moved to the United States with her parents at the age of
three. Although English is their second language, the process through which and contexts
in which they learned and used English in school may be very different from those of
recent teenage immigrants, who are my main interest. Still, I appreciated their interest
and included them to inform me of their contextualized experience of schooling, learning,
and socializing.

Concurrently with my attending the ASA meetings, I visited Mrs. My on either a
Tuesday or a Thursday when she had her office hours at Linton. Similar to the ASA
situation, Mrs. My and I have known each other from my pilot when my major informant,
a Vietnamese senior student introduced me to Mrs. My. I had also heard about Mrs. My
from mainstream classroom teachers who advised my method class students in their
rooms. Mrs. My and I started to know more about each other through our causal
conversations in her ofﬁce. By the time I designed my dissertation project, Mrs. My
became my major liaison to hook me up with potential Vietnamese ﬁ'eshmen students. At
the end of Spring Semester 2003, Mrs. My offered me a list of students who were going
to be Linton’s freshmen in Fall Semester 2004. They were three boys and one girl, all
been in the US. for about 4 years.

When school started in September 2004, things changed. The three boys, who

had given Mrs. My oral consent when she approached them in their last years of middle

33

school, changed their mind and withdrew. They asked Mrs. My to tell me that they were
too busy and too anxious to participate and that they were overwhelmed as freshmen.
Thao turned out to be the only willing participant at Linton. I have also explored research
possibilities at another nearby urban high school with the help of a fellow graduate
student who teaches science there; however, the pool of students there was even smaller
and participants were difﬁcult to ﬁnd.

Although a case of one student was far from my previous ideal design of a group
of recent immigrants, examining the case of one student was still beneﬁcial and it
entailed knowing the entire school to some extent, “because more than one theoretical
notion may be guiding an analysis, conﬁrmation, fuller speciﬁcation, and contradiction
all may result from one case study” (Vaughan cited in Stake, 2000, p. 448). Thao had a
history shared with members of her community (e.g., Vietnamese peers, language aide in
school, and family) who had their own interpretations of schooling and learning English.
She had regular interlocutors who speak English, or Vietnamese, or both. These people
varied in age group and in relations with Thao. For example, in school, Thao went to
seven different mainstream English speaking teachers. She interacted with Mrs. My in
both languages. She spoke English when talking to the school librarian, her peers, and
counselor. She also had former good-friend classmates in other schools. She even had a
couple of semi-imaginary boyﬁiends to whom she wrote secret love poems in English
and messenger buddies back in Vietnam who sent her Vietnamese greetings.

With that said, potential stories of many other people involved in this case help
angle my vision and offer a rich repertoire of perspectives. Therefore, several people also

took part in the study. First, four teachers agreed to participate. They taught 9th grade

34

English, Algebra, Biology, and Science Fiction respectively. Although all of them
happened to be in their middle age years, these teachers had different genders, ethnic
origins, and teaching backgrounds. The focal teacher, Mrs. Turner, had taught English at
Linton for nine years. She is a White woman always in T-shirts, jeans, and sandals. Her
room was always open to students who dropped by to ﬁnish their lunch, borrow the place
for group meetings, read books from the shelf, or just have a chat with whoever was in
the room. Just as Mrs. Turner attended to her students, she showed great interest in my
study and tried to get me involved in Thao’s work in class whenever possible. From time
to time, she updated me with her observations of Thao and her progress. She played an
active and signiﬁcant role in my study.

In working with all these teachers, I was able to get a spectrum of experiences
and comments concerning their student Thao and the various social and political layers in
their classroom practices (e.g. the teachers’ relationship with the student, their
assumptions of Thao’s learning English, and their ways of teaching under the inﬂuence
from the district, etc.). I also invited Dr. Norman, who had founded and taught Linton’s
ESL program for almost 20 years to participate in this study. Although Thao did not
enroll in the ESL class, Dr. Norman’s perspective also contributed to the frameworks for
interpretation, making Thao’s mainstream class experience more vivid and dynamic.

Second, two part-time language aides at the high school participated, as well.
Mrs. My, an immigrant to this country 20 years ago from Vietnam, had been working in
the School District for the past 12 years. During the time I conducted my project, Mrs.
My worked at Linton two days per week and at a nearby middle school the rest of the

week. When she ﬁrst came to the United States in her late 305, Mrs. My could hardly

35

speak any English. Through hard work and persistent efforts, she learned English in
various work places and ﬁnally got a job in the School District. She taught middle school
math in Vietnam, so she was happy to be back in school helping younger Vietnamese
students. Mrs. My’s experiences in helping with students’ content area learning and her
relationship with classroom teachers provided crucial information for me to understand
Thao, who was the most frequent visitor to Mrs. My’s office. The Spanish language aide,
Mrs. Gutierrez, worked in the same ofﬁce with Mrs. My. In her late 403, Mrs. Gutierrez
was laid-off from her former elementary school, but was later hired by the district as
part-time language aide. She added her comments on the ESL program in general to the
grand picture of the school’s ESL policy.

Third, I interviewed many Linton High students with different backgrounds.
Two senior students were extremely helpful in terms of their high school experiences and
observations of peer socializations. Both of them were in the position of having extended
social circles through their leadership in ASA and yet their different cultural heritage
(one Hong; the other Vietnamese) and gender (one male; the other female) offered
different perspective of learning at Linton. I also talked with many students at the ASA
meeting. Our brief chats also happened along the hallway and in the students’ cafeteria.
To start these chats, I usually introduced myself brieﬂy, then invited them to teach me, an
international student, something about the school and about their lives as students. The
students I talked with were generally nice and willing to share their ideas. Nonetheless, I
had regrets. Because of lack of consent from their parents, I was not able to interview
Thao’s peers, Mary, Taysha, and Nelson, who sat together with Thao and had more

interaction with her than anyone else in the 9‘” Grade English class.

36

Last, I listened to Thao’s counselor, Mr. Pierre, as he was responsible for
designing Thao’s course plan and assessing her overall progress. Mr. Pierre was an
immigrant from a Caribbean country 25 years ago. He offered me not only an ofﬁcial
interpretation of Thao’s academic performance from marking period reports and
statistics, but also his personal comments on Thao’s learning English as a second
language.

Researcher Role

The study integrated my own understanding, beliefs, and values as an English
learner, an educational researcher and a native Chinese. English was a totally foreign
language to me when I had my ﬁrst English class at around 12 years old in middle school
in Beijing, China. The various kinds of challenges in learning English that I had to go
through especially in high school triggered the initial questions: Does the student learn
English through grammar and tests as I did in high school? How does the student practice
spoken English? Does the student learn English well because of the native speakers of
English around her all day long? A pilot study I did with a senior male immigrant student
during the 2003-2004 academic year has helped reshape my initial question. I started to
focus more on the social factors that interact with the student’s learning process, as I
gradually saw him negotiating with various resources in his social world as he learned
English in school. Understanding Thao and her learning is, in a way, unraveling my own
journey as a language learner and instructor. This study provided me with further
opportunities to explore the possibility of language learning as the learning of critical
strategies that allowed speakers of other languages access to the language of power

(Delpit, 1988). In addition, I recognized that my role as a graduate student and an

37

inevitably intrusive researcher at the site impacted Thao and other informants as they
reacted to my observation, questions, or even casual talk in subtle ways. Last, the fact
that I am from China, the country that has so much historical connection and contact with
Thao’s home country, Vietnam, has put me in a more complicated position, which may
have impacted the way Thao responded to my questions, for instance, on her family and
their immigration background. I will discuss how I negotiated the relationships with my
participants and how I understood and handled the complexities informed, namely, by
varied interrelated social factors, among them culture, social status, race, age, gender,
family and nationality. I believe that when the study is based on mutual respect, trust, and
understanding, the process will be informative and constructive to all involved.
Data Collection

Meeting and knowing Thao is part of purposefully drawing together information
about “the conﬁguration of time and space, of people, and of activity in their physical
sites” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p.19). I collected resources about Linton and the district
from newspaper clippings, census information, and school documents (6. g. student
handbook, class syllabi, counseling handouts, student yearbooks). Digital artifacts -
basically visual images of Linton’s classrooms, hallways, hallway posters, library, and
student activities - were also saved. These materials create contexts and content for me to
analyze the dynamics of second language learning in complex classroom practices.

From the middle of fall semester 2004, I visited Thao two to three times a week
till the end of the year (I took a maternity leave of 7 weeks in April and May). I used to
bring a voice recorder, a notebook, and a note pad with me for each visit. In classrooms, I

paid attention to the physical environment, the mood of communications, and the

38

channels the classes used for interaction (Hymes, 1994). I also tried as much as I could to
quickly jot down anything — words in both English and Chinese, pictures, symbols,
seating maps — that might remind me of these properties, all the while keeping poised. In
a busy day when there was too much for me to write down, I talked to my recorder in the
school parking lot before getting home to type up what had happened. When necessary, I
audiotaped Thao’s interaction with others. I have had permissions from almost all the key
informants in the project”. Voices of other students in the tapes were treated as providing
context for Thao’s verbal and nonverbal interactions.

These quick notes, which later were constructed into ﬁeldnotes, helped
document my observations of general interactional structures and routine activities and
depicted who said what to whom in what situation for what purposes in recurrent
communication events (Hymes, 1994). The audio data supplemented my ﬁeldnotes in
that it documented Thao’s speech and the paralinguistic features of volume, stress, pitch,
intonation, and even pauses, also key elements in describing her learning.

I followed Thao through several instructional units in most of her classes —
Algebra, Biology, and World Geography, 9th grade English, Science Fiction”, though I
spent more time with Thao in the last two classes due to the convenience (i.e.,

scheduling”) and focuses of the classes. My observer role varied from classroom to

 

2° Mrs. My, the Vietnamese language aide, declined being audiotaped in interviews and daily
interactions with Thao. Her preference was fully respected.

2' In order to carry out the project, I processed procedures required by the University Committee
on Research Involving Human Subjects (U CRIHS). I later received consent from Thao and her
parents, Vietnamese language aide, Thao’s counselor, Linton’s ESL instructor, Thao’s 9th grade
English teacher, Science Fiction teacher, Algebra teacher, Biology teacher, Geography teacher,
Linton’s Principal, and the District (through the Principal). The only course that was excluded
was Japanese because of its different instructional focus. '

22 During the year of my data collection, I also co-taught a teacher preparation course as a
graduate assistant. My TE class met on Mondays and Wednesdays, which left me the other three

39

 

classroom. I had a more active role as a participant observer (Erickson, 1986) in 9th
English and Science Fiction because the teachers were more ﬂexible and willing to have
me interact and help with Thao’s work in one way or another. In other classes, I was just
an observer, sitting at a remote spot away from everyone, due to the seating arrangement
and comfort levels of the teachers.

Observations and ﬁeldnotes also covered the time when Thao was not
necessarily in classrooms. There were quite a few occasions that Thao went to the school
library during and/or in between class time. She also spent a lot of time with Mrs. My in
her ofﬁce when Mrs. My had her ofﬁce hours two days per week. In addition, I
sometimes came across Thao in the hallway during lunch hour, while she was waiting,
alone, for her 4th hour teacher to open the classroom door. In sum, my ﬁeldnotes included
descriptions of and reﬂections on what happened to Thao wherever she was in the school
building in order to capture what people did, what languages they used, and what
opportunities Thao had to learn English.

The other major data source is interview transcripts. I conducted several
informal one-on-one interviews with Thao and other participants. Rather than seeking the
right answers, questions were more open-ended, inviting my interviewees to describe
their experiences, explain their perspectives, and comment on some particular events that
had occurred during the study. In talking with Thao, I searched for her personal
information about learning experiences and family background; her opinions on issues

concerning learning English in various situations and subject matters, and her

 

weekdays for ﬁeldwork. Linton had a mixture of block and regular schedule. Thao’s classes were
arranged in a way that morning visits became more relevant (e. g., English classes were in the
mornings). As a result, I met Thao on Tuesday and Thursday mornings in English and Science
Fiction, Friday mornings in Algebra, English, and World Geography.

40

explanations of her work, participation, strategies in learning English. Among the four
prolonged interviews (around 1 hour), emphases were different. The ﬁrst one was a
getting-to-know-you conversation in which I did not give Thao a list of speciﬁc
questions; instead, by asking questions such as “What is it like in a high school?”, “Tell
me more about your classes,” I gave Thao space to choose the topic she would like to talk
more about. The ﬁrst interview was like a rehearsal because Thao was role playing an
interviewee as if she were interviewed on media. She used a high pitch of voice and her
intonation went dramatically high and down. She sounded far from her usual way of
talking. It seemed to be a fun start for Thao. From the second interview, Thao and I
gradually came to know more about each other. More interesting issues emerged from
ﬁeld observation. And she lost her interest in playing the interviewee. We then sat
together for more speciﬁc and probing questions about Thao’s participation in some
events (i.e., writing book reviews, choosing romance books over other genres for pastime
reading). Throughout the interview process, the use of English as a medium in our
conversation was an important issue because it impacted on the way in which Thao and I
positioned ourselves in the conversation and the way any question was asked and then
answered. I will discuss this point more fully in Chapter Six which is my methodological
reﬂections on this study.

Most of Thao’s teachers were interviewed for their perspectives on working with
Thao and ESL students in general. The topics also covered the teachers’ experience in
working at Linton and their teaching philosophy. The teachers also offered their
comments on policy issues in the School District. An interview with Thao’s counselor

gave me a sense of what the institution would say about Thao’s performance. The

41

counselor’s knowledge about Thao came from the grade reports and Thao’s middle
school record, and when he commented on Thao’s studies, he also revealed his own
experience and belief in learning English as a second language as well as his conceptions
of Asian students as a whole at Linton. All the interviews mentioned above offered
multiple viewpoints within the school’s context, which allowed me to understand Thao
and her experience from a sociocultural perspective. By the end of June when I
completed my data collection, I had on my desk over 200 pages of typed ﬁeldnotes and
interview transcripts, photocopies of Thao’s class work (e.g., written assignments, essays,
and class notes), class syllabi, handouts, and assessments, census information on Maple
Creek’s socioeconomic status and reports on the country’s language use and
English-speaking ability issued by the US Census Bureau, a fat folder of school
information, including maps of Linton’s attendance area, maps of the building and
classrooms, district bilingual allocations over the past four years, the school’s overall
academic performance summaries, the school’s ethnicity breakdown, the district pacing
guide, Linton student handbooks, excerpts from the school’s Yearbook. Electronic data
included digital pictures of the school’s physical settings, websites that Thao often
browsed, email correspondence between Thao and me.
Data Analysis

In order to make sense of the raw data, I kept in mind my overall research
question, that is, what is it like for Thao, an ELL immigrant student, to learn English as a
subject matter and medium of instruction at Linton, a Midwestern urban high school.
With the question in mind, I read the ﬁeldnotes line by line multiple times and asking

what is happening in terms of learning English at Linton. My ﬁeldnotes and interview

42

transcripts were all typed out and paginated with a wide margin on the right for the use of
coding. The content page section contained a brief summary of ﬁeldnotes by the day. In a
table, information was arranged chronologically under “ﬁeld note entry number,” “date
and time,” “place,” “participants,” “events,” “artifacts” (written documents, class
handouts, newspaper clippings, email, holiday cards, etc.), “brief observer comments,”
and “page nmnbers.” I put this section at the beginning of the ﬁeld note pages and used it
as an index to locate details in the ﬁeld notes.

In order to organize the content page section, I put preliminary coding categories
ﬁrst on each page of my data. This process gave me an overview of what I had had in my
data and what kinds of events that had happened in a variety of settings and over certain
period of time. By settings, I mean the physical situations of classrooms and Mrs. My’s
ofﬁce, where I observed and documented Thao’s interactions with her teachers, peers,
and myself. After I read the whole data set for a few more times, I was ready to select
events as my units of analysis. My deﬁnition of events, to be exact, language events, is
based on Hymes (1974) and inspired by Dyson & Genishi (2005). I argued that language
events are characterized and organized by particular relations among participants who
share anticipated interactions on particular topics and in certain keys to achieve particular
purposes. In short, language events are activities organized by way of using language
with diverse kinds of participants, with whom Thao constructs her schooling experience.

In this inductive process, I noticed some events contained typical interactional
patterns and routines for each setting, especially in mainstream classrooms. These
patterns and routines were characterized by the speciﬁc setting, participants, channel of

communication, mood, etc. (Hymes, 1994). For example, typical in Thao’s World

43

Geography class was the event in which students sat in individual desks all facing the
teacher who lectured without much physical movement to the student part of the room.
The communication started from the teacher’s oral presentation to the silent students
without much expectation of questions from the students. It ended with a dictation and
students’ written products of the dictation.

After I located these events, I looked across situations, settings, and events in
order to develop thematic data analysis categories. Then, I named them and wrote them
down directly by the text. The preliminary coding categories that I put previously were
replaced, merged, or made as sub-categories of the thematic categories. For instance, the
preliminary coding categories included, if not limited to, Thao’s appearance, grades,
self-esteem, socialization, love story, connection to African American culture, home,
identity, Vietnamese language as Ll, race, gender, English as L2 (and Japanese as L3,
Chinese L4), popular youth culture, reading opportunities, writing opportunities,
participation structures, “the pass,” “the good student,” writing, group work, school
curriculum, opportunities for language learning, opportunities for interaction. As more
inductive analysis was carried out, these initial coding descriptors then merged with each
other or split into more detailed descriptors. For example, “the pass” became a
sub-category of institutional resources and support; “reading opportunities” and “writing
opportunities” became sub-categories of both “pedagogical practices” and “identity and
socialization”; “gender” and “ethnicity” fed into categories such as “identity and
socialization” and “researcher-participant relationships” (See Table 3).

Finally, while still concentrating on reading my ﬁeldnotes and organizing the

coding categories, I selected key events for close study. These episodes were either

representative of the routine practices, or theoretically rich in unraveling the dynamics of

the case. They provided space in which I could use data from multiple sources, including

those that were out directly related to these classroom episodes (e. g., comments ﬁ'om

interview transcripts that informed the events and practices examined). A diversity of

kinds of data and of perspectives on the data provided me with contrasting yet

complementary views of the nature of Thao’s participation in social practices of learning

English in school.

Table 3. Evolving Coding Categories and Their Sub-Categories

 

 

Sample
Maj or Institutional Identity and Researcher-
Coding Resources and Pedagogical Practices S . . . Participant
. ocralization . .
Categori Support Relationship
es
Demographics Participation Race; Gender;
; Language structures; Gender; Age;
policy; Roles of teachers; Ethnicity; Ethnicity;
Language Roles of students; Peer culture; Cultural
program; Role of Thao; Model minority heritages;
Sample Expectations Literacy; rhetoric; . Power; .
Sub- of ELL; Learner; . Opportunity for Recrprocrty;
categori ESL; Reading expectations; interaction; Membership
es Model Writing expectations; Reading Time; etc.
minority Grades; opportunities;
rhetoric; Reading resources; Writing
Second Writing resources; opportunities;
language Curriculum; “Good student”;
support; etc. Opportunity for etc.

interaction; etc.

 

Based on this inductive analytic work, I tentatively developed possible assertions

and reﬁned them by studying the relevant data and also by deliberately search for

disconﬁrming evidence to “test the evidentiary warrant for an assertion” (Erickson, 1986,

45

p. 146). It was a process of developing, articulating, testing, rephrasing, and retesting
assertions. I also tried to bring a critical perspective to bear on the data by examining the
institutional and stereotypical expectations that were imposed on learning and teaching,
and also the possible space for both Thao and the teachers to actively use the power of
language to negotiate learning.

In the following four ﬁnding chapters, I ﬁrst discuss how the broader contexts,
namely on the state and national levels, impacted on the institutional practices of the
school in educating ELL students like Thao and the language resources available to Thao.
I then examine the nature of the ofﬁcial classroom practices in which Thao directly
interacted and negotiated with the institutional assumptions and expectations of literacy
and of the English language learners. I then explore Thao’s unofﬁcial world in which she
was fighting to negotiate her identities and trying to grab opportunities to be a good
Vietnamese girl. Finally, I include reﬂections of my dynamic relationships developed
with my participants over time, especially with two Vietnamese participants, Thao and
another key informant, Mrs. My. This methodological discussion supplements the
research method itself. It also becomes an integral part of my ﬁndings in this

ethnographic case study.

46

CHAPTER 3
GRAPPLING WITH LANGUAGE SUPPORT IN CONTEXTS

At around 9:45 on a Friday morning, Mrs. Turner, the English teacher, was
setting up a scene for students to create some dialogues on paper. Thao began to ﬁdget
and turned to look at the clock more frequently, as her peers were settling down with the
new writing assignment. Tossed in her hand was a small piece of paper the size of a hand
palm. Thao waved to the teacher and finally was noticed. Mrs. Turner came to Thao’s
desk, read Thao’s piece of paper, and then nodded to her. In the middle of the class
session, Thao dashed out the classroom with her 9th English folder and strode to Mrs.
My’s office.

The piece of paper 'Ihao showed Mrs. Turner was a pass signed by Mrs. My, the
Vietnamese aide, to release her from regular classes for private tutoring on subject matter
contents in Vietnamese. The pass was effective only two days a week when Mrs. My
worked at Linton. “I like Tuesday and Friday! I go to Mrs. Thanh’s (Mrs. My’s first name
as many Vietnamese students would call her)!” Thao’s voice rose and there was a slice of
smile on her cheeks. Thao’s pass was just a small piece of paper; however, embedded in
this pass, are many layers of institutional complexity that were informed by the
ideologies of language education and learning and that were ﬁgured into classroom
practices. Through this pass, it is also crucial to examine what language resources were
actually available to ELL students like Thao.

In this chapter, I answer the following two questions: How did broader (state,
national) contexts impact the institutional practices and Thao’s learning? And how did the
many layers of institutional practices and resources inﬂuence Thao’s experiences of

language learning? I ﬁrst introduce the macro policy shifts in the local and the national

47

with regards to second language education, as well as their impact on the social
organizations within the educational system in Thao’s Midwestern city. I then consider
the nature, form, and values of the programs available at her high school, Linton.
Through these programs, I discuss the underlying assumptions of what language
education was and about who Thao was as a learner.
The Macro: Shifting Policies in Educating Newcomers

From time to time, 'Ihao was nostalgic when recalling her middle school years
before becoming a freshman at Linton. Four years ago, when she came to the US. to
reunite with her parents who had arrived a few years earlier, she went to a magnet middle
school that had a very diverse student population. In an environment in which many
students were recent immigrants, Thao had an unforgettable transition and she was

thankful that many teachers helped her with English.

I have a lot ﬁiend over there. It’s Maria, Marlene ( ). And my favorite teacher is
Ms. Nelly and my principal is Mr. Davidson. And he’s so nice. And I have a lot
friend over there, and we’ll do a lot subject like science and my favorite teacher
in science is Ms. Moore and she always help me when I come here I don’t
speak English. She help me like three year. She very nice and sometimes she
mean too because some people some noise. She’s my best teacher forever. She
always help me when I need help. And now I know English because she help
me. (Thao interview transcripts)

The school, with which I was very familiar since I had been a reading tutor
volunteer there, grew out of an extracurricular ESL program designed to respond to
Maple Creek’s increasing diversity. Its mission was to promote respect and understanding
towards various ethnicities and languages while helping students learn English and
subject matters. Based on my observations, English language teaching and learning were

viewed as involving the active participation of teachers and students in enhancing

understanding of each other’s home languages and life experiences. Mrs. Gutierrez, a

48

former teacher and now the Linton ’8 Spanish interpreter, recalled the liveliness of the

school:
We have kids from all over the world attend this building. We all thought it was
working great, because they have Spanish teachers working with Spanish kids.
Someone that spoke Hmong, someone that spoke Vietnamese.
(Mrs. Gutierrez interview transcripts)

Unfortunately, one year after Thao’s graduation, her beloved middle school was
closed due to the district’s new budget cuts. The school was among the ﬁve downtown
buildings that were closed so that the district could save “a minimum of $500,000 a
year”23. The budget gap resulted from the declining national and regional economy. As
Maple Creek Superintendent pointed out, school district enrollment had decreased
steadily as the automobile companies shut down local assembly plants and laid off
thousands Maple Creek workers. The Maple Creek School District, which suffered most
from such losses and yet had little federal support, had to solve the budget problem
through reconﬁguring its buildings and personnel to maintain its daily operations. ELL
middle school age students, many of them recent immigrants like Thao, were (re)located
to other nearby inner city schools. They were either put to one-class ESL programs, or
left to sink or swim in regular mainstream classes. As for the teachers, some of them were
laid off; some, such as Thao’s favorite former teachers, Ms. Nelly and Mrs. Moore, left
the district for good. Those who kept their jobs, like Garcia who had had a lot of
experience working with migrant and immigrant families, were deeply concerned about
the conditions and demands of their new tasks.

...in the last couple of years what they’ve [the district] done is that they let

them [magnet school students] all go to the home school. And now, it’s like, we
have an ESL program, like what I’m in, and they ship us out and they send us

 

2" Vela, S. (2004, December 10). Five Maple Creek Schools could close. Maple Creek State
Journal, p. 1A.

49

out to these buildings, so some of us have four schools; some of us have two
schools; some have ﬁve schools. But what can you do? I mean, I feel like when

I come here I was playing catch-up, you know, what are they learning today?
And they do this part and then when I come back again. It’s like ok, did you
ﬁnish what you did? Oh, yeah, we’re done with that! I said now what do we do?
So it’s like I’m not giving them 100% help that I know I can give them. I’m
spread out too thin, and because of lack of funds again. I’m not here [at Linton]
full time. (Mrs. Gutierrez interview transcripts)

The change in the social organization of Maple Creek School District, namely
the closing of the magnet school and the relegation of the language staff to peripheral
emergency calls, reﬂected the nationwide ideology of language education towards
children with different home languages. The Unz initiative and the No Child Left Behind
Act (2001) represent that ideology. At the turn of the 21St century in California, Ron
Unz’s proposal to ban bilingual education was passed. Thus, bilingual and multilingual
school children are deprived of the opportunity to consult their bilingual teachers and to
draw upon their home language resources while learning in school (F altis & Wolfe, 1999).
This English-Only initiative, together with a wave of standardization, has been exerting
great impact on bilingual education and English education all over the country. The
underlying political implication is that language education serves as a tool to assimilate
minorities and to maintain the social, economic, and political status quo. Other languages
are marginalized or treated as potential threats. Likewise, the ELL students are viewed
not as active participants who bring “funds of knowledge” (Gonzalez, et a1. 2005) ﬁom
their ﬁrst languages and home to the socially organized learning activities; instead, they
are believed to be aliens going to school to learn what they lacked.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act further pushed the narrower view of

language education and English language learners by relocating resources to the business

of writing, administering, and assessing standardized tests towards more “standar ”

50

English, leaving districts fewer federal funds to maintain programs for language minority
students. Financial support from the local state was scarce as well. Because of
de-industralization, there was a ﬂight from the city schools and from the city thus a
decreasing the tax base. In Thao’s state, there was not even a single program that claimed
to help high school English learners with academic English. Maple Creek School District
had two isolated so-called bilingual/ESL classes in two schools; however, as I will
explain in the sections to come, the classes were far from organized, informed, and
supported. Even though Thao’s former magnet school had been well-known for its
commitment to educating diverse children, it was not able to avoid being closed ﬁve
years after it ﬁrst opened

The domino effects of the English-Only ideology and the district’s
tighter-than-ever ﬁrnding capacity reached every comer of the district schools as well. At
Linton, the available resource programs looked encouraging at ﬁrst sight: There was an
ESL class, a Help Desk, and a university student volunteer program. However, in the
following sections, I consider the institutional assumptions towards the target student
population of these programs, and towards learning English as a second language at
Linton. I‘ argue that all programs fell short of providing adequate guidance and means to
language learning, which complicated Thao’s learning.

The Micro: Mainstreaming the ELL

The ESL Class: Serving the “Begjgners”

For Thao, taking the ESL class was a shameful label. Despite her language need,
Thao did not enroll in Linton’s ESL class, believing that she was not one of those who

were not able to understand or speak any English. “They don’t know English. They go

51

ESL,” Thao commented. She saw many “ESL” students at Mrs. My’s ofﬁce which she
shared with the Spanish interpreter, Mrs. Garcia. Thao knew that they came from Cuba
with no English at all. She already sensed the institutional notion that “ESL” denoted
something special and above all, slow.

The ESL teacher, Dr. Norman classiﬁed his students as “beginner level”, though
they were as diverse as could be. The class was mostly Hispanic, predominantly Cuban
with a few Mexican students. The rest of the class, as Dr. Norman added, was made up of
young men and women from Somali and Bosnia (former Yugoslavia), Haiti, Somalia, and
Nigeria. A middle-aged white English teacher who was, as in his own words, “in the
twilight of his career”, Dr. Norman had been teaching at Linton’s ESL since 1981 after he
obtained a Master’s degree in TESOL. Technically, he created Linton’s ESL when
language demands of thousands of incoming immigrant students with limited English
communication skills began to emerge.

[The school] simply looks at their English language skills. If they are recent
immigrants with just the minimum skills, then I usually get them in my class.

This transitional program was one way to circumvent failure.
(Dr. Norman interview transcripts)

Therefore, according to Dr. Norman, students were recruited based on the length
of time they had been in the country as an immigrant and their linguistic command of
English. Little attention was given to students’ literacy practices in their social life. For
the past two decades, the class has been designed for the “beginner level” ESL students
who could not communicate fully regarding their daily needs and who had difficulty
reading any English texts and understanding ﬂuent, spoken English.

So for this typical ESL, For the student who’s very basic, they need
everything. They need vocabulary. They need grammar structure. They need a

whole list of approaches that help determine what kind of language is
appropriate in what situation. (Dr. Norman interview transcripts)

52

Seeing that many ESL students were judged to be too “basic”, to quote Dr.
Norman, the decision to not enroll, as the Vietnamese aide, Mrs. My, explained, was by
no means an individual decision. According to Mrs. My, some of her students voiced
their unwillingness to take ESL class. For one thing, they tried not to associate
themselves with “beginners” English learners, because they could at least use functional
English in daily life. For the other, because “beginner level” or “zero English” carried the
negative connotation of being incapable and deﬁcient in both language and intelligence,
students took it shameful to be seen in the basement ESL classroom while most students
were upstairs taking regular classes.

Dr. Norman was concerned that “intermediate” students like Thao may not
beneﬁt from the ESL class because the program focused on and cycled around the word
and sentence levels, together with grammar and mechanics. He also referenced Thao’s
Vietnamese ethnicity when estimating her English and her needs, conﬁrming that at least
his ESL classroom was not the right place for Thao.

So for many of the Vietnamese students, that’s the issue right there [when
writing becomes problematic to them]. What they need is a writing class, but

one that’s more geared towards ESL students rather than a regular program
English student. (Dr. Norman interview transcripts)

In Linton’s ESL context, learning a second language tended to be deﬁned
narrowly as language acquisition in which there are speciﬁc steps to follow and content
to be learned (i.e., in the order of listening, speaking, reading, and writing and from
mechanics to words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs). Similarly, there are particular
benchmarks to evaluate and categorize learners, for instance, into the “beginner”,
“intermediate”, and “advanced” levels. Based on a criterion on one’s ability to understand

every-day functional English, the general institutional assumptions of Thao’s

53

performance in academic English categorized her as “intermediate” or non-ESL.
Furthermore, according to both a school counselor and Mrs. My, Vietnamese students as
a whole tended to be more proﬁcient in English than many other ethnic groups (e. g.,
Cuban, Mexican, African, or Eastern Europeans) who came with zero English. Even
though Thao arrived just ﬁve years ago speaking no English, she was still projected to as
one of the no-problem Vietnamese students who had fewer basic English language
problems than her ELL peers from other countries.

An ordinary class should further illustrate how the ESL class worked on
students’ “mastery of sentence patterns... [and] the formation of a habit” (Zamel, 1976
cited in Rodby, 1992, p.7). On a typical Tuesday morning, students sat in rows and
columns facing the board. After a silent 30 minute newspaper reading routine, Dr.
Norman started the regular grammar reviews. As usual, he was carefully dressed and well
groomed. His perfectly-ironed trousers and white shirt, his tie in dark solemn colors, and
his clear and stem voice brought an air of authority to the class.

Our review activity is looking at the tense, looking at how to ask questions.
Somebody says “it’s very easy”, but some of them are a little more
challenging. So pay particular attention to the activity today. That’s what I
ask you to do.

Dr. Norman gave four examples that led to four different grammar exercises for
the worksheet time. One required using abbreviated forms to give both positive and
negative answers. For example, after Dr. Norman read the question “did Rachel help her
sister yesterday?” a Sudanese boy was called upon. “Yes, she did,” the student answered
in a low voice. “Who can answer this question by raising his hand?” Dr. Norman called

another student to give a negative answer. “No, she didn’t,” a Mexican girl answered.

“Good! Remember you should write a comma after Yes or No. Without this comma, you

54

have a double negative.” Most students were looking at Dr. Norman without making any
sound. Pattern drills followed. These exercises included substituting parts in sentences,
for instance, by changing the tense. “Sheila went to the grocery store yesterday.” Dr.
Norman read the sentence on board loudly and clearly, “You can put it into ‘Sheila WILL
go to the grocery store tomorrow. Or Sheila IS GOING TO go to the grocery store
tomorrow.” He quickly jotted down the two sentences on the board. A black boy was
shouting out answers to the next example and was immediately cut off by Dr. Norman.
“Uh! Please raise your hands. You don’t remember? What is it?” Dr. Norman pointed to
the big posters of bullet-pointed classroom rules. “Three here!” (“Always raise your hand
if any question”) Just blurt things out from your big old mouth?” Some students giggled
and there was a slice of smile on Dr. Norman’s face, too. He called Muhammad instead,
“Alright, Muhammad! I don’t want a question, I want a statement!”

Ten minutes later, a four-page assignment of similar exercises were given to the
students to ﬁnish in the time remained. “This is all good practice. This is all reviews of
things we learned in class.” Dr. Norman’s voice echoed in the room. Towards “good
practice”, Dr. Norman preferred all forms of repetition. For example, mechanical writing
without composition would enhance language learning. Therefore, grammar drill
exercises for basic vocabulary recognition, sentence formation, and tense were the most
common writing tasks in ESL class.

I think it’s especially helpful for younger students to write a little bit every
day, even just copying sentences. It’s good to hone up their penmanship.
Having them re-read the sentences a few times. Those kinds of things are
helpful because it enhances their writing and reinforces what they have just

read because they have that hands-on experience with it. (Dr. Norman
interview transcripts)

Literacy in Linton’s ESL class equaled the behaviorist notion of language

55

acquisition (See Diaz-Rico & Weed, 1995, Valdes, 2001), which emphasizes the
relatively static meaning of the linguistic components to be memorized and studied as
building blocks. As a result, classroom practices were organized overwhelmingly around
repetitive grammar, word, and sentence patterns. The students, who were labeled solely
by their linguistic knowledge of English, were assumed to be passive receivers of
information, rules, and knowledge from teacher, the authority. Classroom participation
was one-way and teacher-led without any leeway for meaning making. Such a class,
though designed to transition ELL students to mainstream classrooms, would fall short of
providing Thao with nurturing opportunities to use and produce English in socially
organized interactions. In addition, the institutional assumptions of ESL learners as empty
heads lacking English linguistic input and ability to use English properly stigmatized
Thao and drove her away. She ended up having to feel her way into the mainstream.
Temporag Resources: Existing Only In Name

ELL Students like Thao could ﬁnd other helpful venues to seek language support
at Linton, as some staff members and participating teachers suggested. Many of these
institutional resources originated from the counseling center which had both staff .
members who could speak languages other than English and two volunteer programs for
ESL students — an after-school Help Desk and a volunteer network tied to the nearby
university’s college of education. Learning English and being an English learner were
perceived as a minor problem, easily ﬁxed just by people’s kindheartedness. As it turned
out, such vague assumption resulted in confusion as to what and how to help and who
were able to help. Thus, the resources were loosely organized, temporary, and superﬁcial.

The institutional assumptions towards the Vietnamese students as a no-problem group

56

also reverberated.

The language. personnel basically referred to counselor Pierre, a middle-aged
Haitian immigrant whose ﬁrst language was French. Dr. Norman remembered having his
French speaking students from Aﬁica consult with Mr. Pierre when need arose. However,
Mr. Pierre’s help was limited to the French speaking students and was above all brief
because “his real function is to be a counselor,” said Dr. Norman. Mr. Pierre agreed that
due to his responsibilities to schedule students’ classes and resolving discipline problems
in the whole 9th grade, he rarely had time to make regular contact with the ELL students,
let alone commitment. Little did he know about ways to assist students to learn English.
“I don’t speak perfect English myself.” Pierre sounded serious.

Mr. Pierre was in favor of total irrnnersion as a means for ELL students to
acquire English in a timely manner. Going over Thao’s grades in the ﬁrst marking period,
Mr. Pierre was satisﬁed with Thao’s overall performance. Even though Thao had one A,
two Cs, two Ds, and an E, Mr. Pierre believed that Thao’s GPA was well above a passing
grade of 1.0; therefore, she was “doing ﬁne” and there was no need to worry about her
academic progress.

[T]he kids are pretty young, uh, between 14 and 17 years old. So most of
the kids have the ability to learn English as their second language pretty
quick. And after two or three months, they started being immersed into the
culture and then get some English speaking ability. That allowed the teacher
of ESL, uh, to be released to be teaching something else. You know, so

therefore, these kids can move off to a good situation in regular class.
(Mr. Pierre interview transcripts)

The second resource was two volunteer programs sponsored by Linton’s
counseling center. The ﬁrst group of tutors was from the nearby university. They were
usually paired up by the students’ counselors and they met their tutees in the after school

hours on a regular basis. Dr. Norman suggested Thao should be working with college

57

students who were able to write good essays themselves so that they could teach Thao to
write from smaller pieces, such as paragraphs, to longer essays. In Dr. Norman’s opinion,
the key for Thao to improve was time, native speaker feedback, and repetitions, despite
the fact that these native speakers might not know how to teach writing and that the
mainstream teachers might lack time and energy to take care of Thao’s writing. My
excitement to meet the college volunteers was quickly dismissed after learning from a
young female white counselor that Linton had not had them for almost two semesters.
The school used to recruit volunteers through an Upward Bound Program; however,
during my project, not enough people showed up. On the record was only one male
English speaking student who was willing to coach baseball.

The last resort seemed to the after-school Help Desk, which focused on helping
students with their assignments. There was no speciﬁc information as to who exactly
these tutors or teachers were, but students could stop by the cafeteria to check if someone
was there who might help. The Help Desk turned out to be empty each time I waited
there during the after school hours when Thao had long gone home in her school bus.

From ﬁrst sight, the language and academic support for ELL students at Linton
looked encouraging, especially when these institutional resources appeared to be
well-known among staff and ESL personnel. Unfortunately, Thao, as an ELL learner, had
no access to such information. Furthermore, these resources were either too personal and
limited to be counted as effective support, like in the case of Mr. Pierre, the French
speaking counselor, or heavily dependent on the availability of volunteers in the two
other help programs. In short, the resources had official names yet lack of ofﬁcial

organization and management. It was diﬁ'icult to trace what kind of literacy support these

58

programs were supposed to offer to ELL students, how learning English as a second
language at Linton was understood in relation to mastering subject matter contents, and
who was capable of giving students effective feedback towards their academic English.
One thing was obvious: the support came from people’s goodwill to help by using their
native languages, with English in particular; yet without strong institutional and
theoretical guidance, such support was doomed to become a lip service.

Pass to the Langgage Aide: Solving All Problems?

Taking the role of a bilingual teacher, Mrs. My, the Vietnamese aide at Linton,
became all the more legitimate language support for Thao. Hired by the school district
and working part-time at Linton, Mrs. My was regarded as the panacea to all Thao’s
problems because of My’s bilingual advantage and former teaching experiences. Mrs. My
equated language learning and learning subject matters, because the two processes
happened at the same time and because her students often had difﬁculty decoding the
technical language. Mrs. My saw Thao as a learner who was weak in subject areas,
especially math and science. Her learning of academic English would be as natural as her
picking up spoken English, as Mrs. My projected. My’s understanding of her
responsibility and strength in tutoring Thao was also inﬂuenced by her own immigrant
background and English practices. Shown in the scene at the beginning of this chapter,
Mrs. My was given considerable power to pull Thao out of any class, yet would her pass
and the tutoring sessions offer Thao strong language support?

Mrs. My’s office at Linton is a twenty-square meters room connected to a
regular sized classroom which held Linton’s special education program. The ofﬁce stood

at the crossroad of hallways in all direction. The student cafeteria, the stairs, the staff

59

elevator, the bathrooms, and access to the building gate could all be seen from Mrs. My’s
office door. Except for the special education classroom, Mrs. My’s office was away from
all general classes, which were in the quieter classroom wing to the east. There was no
official sign at the door. If looking closely, one could see a piece of paper as small as a
sticky note with handwriting. “Mrs. My, oﬁice hour, Tuesday and Friday”.

Mrs. My shared the office with Mrs. Garcia. Two bookshelves and a big piece of
brown cardboard divided the room into two areas. They had a telephone that only
received internal calls. Mrs. Garcia’s space was close to the door and Mrs. My’s other
half had a window with a view of an enclosed backyard with a few picnic chairs. Two
long tables and Mrs. My’s own desk took up the most space in her area. On one table,
there were two old-generation computers that were linked to the Internet; on the other
table, there were two Algebra textbooks for the 9th and 10th grades, the daily Maple Creek
State Journal, and a chess board. Vietnamese-English dictionaries, books in Vietnamese,
and English short stories were piled on Mrs. My’s desk. On the wall behind her chair
were a school calendar, block schedules, teachers’ rooms and schedules, and a few
drawings by students.

Twenty years ago at the age of forty, Mrs. My immigrated to the US. with her
husband and four children. Before being able to work in the American schools, she
walked to several part-time job sites everyday to earn some money and practice English.
A former high school math teacher in Vietnam, Mrs. My was eager to go back to school
and work with students. Ten years after she settled in Maple Creek, she was ﬁnally hired
by the school district’s English Language Learner Program as a language aide, or an

“interpreter” as school staff would call her, as the need for home language resource staff

60

rose with the growing number of normative English-speaking students.

Originally a liaison between schools and the Vietnamese families, Mrs. My soon
found herself tutoring students who dropped by with questions about their classes. She
told me that her former teaching experiences, her knowledge of the subjects, and her ﬁrst
language became precious resources for her students to improve their understanding of
school subject matters. The district, as a response, validated Mrs. My’s efforts, even
though she was not a certiﬁed teacher in the US. According to Mrs. My, the district
needed a language aide so much that they would hire anyone who was willing.

Over the years, the district had not provided any professional development
opportimities to support Mrs. My’s job working with ELL learners in the multilingual,
multicultural school settings. However, Mrs. My, together with her colleagues (e. g.,
Spanish aide Mrs. Garcia), was given much heavier work loads in the past several years
when the district was continuously tightening the budget and laying off teachers. The
need for language support personnel, however, grew enormously with incoming students
with diverse language, ethnic, and sociocultural backgrounds. Despite the low morale and
rumors among aides that the whole ELL program might be the next to be cut, Mrs. My
dutifully commuted between the two schools at which she worked - Linton High and a
nearby middle school, tutoring at least twenty recent Vietnamese immigrant students
from grade 6 through 12.

Mrs. My decided to tutor Thao in private sessions after a discussion with the
counselor soon after Thao started high school. The criteria for students to receive Mrs.
My’s tutoring, though not in any explicitly written form, were based on the length of time

a student had been in the US, grade reports, and evaluations of the student’s overall

61

performance made by the student’ middle school teachers. Although I was not able to
observe the tutoring sessions (I will elaborate more in Chapter 6 on the possible reasons),
Mrs. My expressed her worries about Thao’s sliding math and science scores, but insisted
that it was because Thao was “too careless” and “lazy to remember all the information”.
Mrs. My refused to make connections to Thao’s English because she believed Thao who
assured her she had no problems in any classes but math and science.
In the mainstream classrooms, almost all the teachers pointed out that Thao’s

English was the key to her schooling. For example, Mr. Skokie, the math teacher, stressed
that “it was all about language” in his class. The biology teacher, Mrs. Evans asserted that
it was Thao’s language barrier that made her “not getting it kind of thing” and constrained
Thao socially as well. At the beginning of the year, the teachers were unifome positive
about the fact that Thao had accessed to ﬁrst language support provided by Mrs. My. On
one occasion during her class, Mrs. Turner asked if I would like to take Thao to Mrs. I
My’s oﬁice to ﬁnish reading To Kill a Mockingbird”, believing Thao would have a more
comfortable and nurturing learning environment there. Mrs. Evans, the science teacher,
shared similar feelings towards Mrs. My’s job as the language aide. Having been teaching
at Linton for more than 10 years, Mrs. Evans was thankful that she had Mrs. My to rely
on.

[S]ince we get so many students with ESL, it seems to me they were just

looking for Hispanic, Asians, for anybody who could help them. There’re

others who are hired, like Mrs. My. I don’t know of any. Those are the folks

we need in this situation - in a city school. This is not, you know, rural

country. In a bigger city school like this, we ARE a melting pot. We need

those people desperately. I can’t tell you how many times I have to run

down to another Hispanic teacher to say, “Okay, I’ve got to talk to a parent

to help me out.” Or sometimes I need help with the students. “We’re not
communicating! Can you help me out?” Those people are cold! (Mrs.

 

2‘ Lee, H. (1960) To kill a mockingbird. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

62

Evans interview transcripts)

However, doubts about the pass emerged after the ﬁrst marking period. Thao
was the ﬁrst to complain that she almost failed Biology because the teacher ignored Mrs.
My’s pass. “She [Mrs. Evans] asked why go to My. I said Mrs. My help me.” Thao sat up
and raised her voice when we chatted in library. “But she didn’t let me go and she gave
me E. That class is stupid!” Thao poured out her grievances. The incident was conﬁrmed
and clariﬁed by Mrs. Evans, saying that she did not want Thao to miss an important
biology lesson that was going to appear in a test the following day. My. Mrs. Evans was
disappointed that Thao refused to do any lab work after she rejected her request to leave
while the class was still in session. Mrs. Evans understood Thao’s need to work with her
language aide, but was puzzled why Thao was so eager to purposefully skip a review
session designed to help her through a test.

Mr. Skokie reacted to the pass more dramatically. The middle-aged white teacher
who taught a wide range of courses ﬁ'om algebra to world literature was all smiling until I
consulted him about Thao’s progress. Although he made it clear that his work schedule
was heavily booked with student portfolios, tests, and his own master’s studies, Skokie
still sounded unusually impatient and negative. On a Friday morning, I arrived at Linton
early to catch Thao in her algebra class. Unfortunately, I did not see 'Ihao in class. When
I approached Mr. Skokie at the end of the hour to ask if he knew where Thao was, Skokie
told me Thao “went to the helper”. As I asked if he meant the Vietnamese interpreter, he
suddenly grew tense. He no longer smiled and his eyes shifted away from me. To my
surprise, Skokie said that he had not even heard of this Vietnamese interpreter. “I’d love

to meet her, if there is one.” Mr. Skokie did not like to see Thao skipping at least half of

63

class time every day to go to “the helper”. “She [Thao] never turned in any assignment
and she’s not doing well!” Mr. Skokie’s voice was low but ﬁrm, as if making an
accusation. He admitted that he could have said no to Thao’s request with the pass, but he
did not do that partly because he was not sure where Thao went and what she did.

In 9th Grade English, Mrs. Turner had her worry towards Thao’s frequent
withdrawal from the class as well, though recognizing Thao’s efforts to read to her group
members.

She has tried more recently is she gets out of class and get to Mrs. My’s
ofﬁce, which makes me wonder why. Because she’s trying to doubt herself?
Because she doesn’t have the book? You know, for her that would be an easier
thing, you know? Or is it just she’s trying to use the opportunity? Because I
think it’s important for her to have Mrs. My’s support. I LOVE Mrs. My, but is
she [Thao] using it? (Mrs. Turner interview transcripts)

Mrs. Tumer’s worry was reinforced by Thao’s quarterly test result which showed
only three correct answers out of 45 questions on the reading of To Kill a Mockingbird,
punctuations, and literary terms such as genre, plot structure, and point of view. Mrs.
Turner did not grade Thao’s ﬁve—paragraph essay outline because it was way off the topic
and the requirement.

However, teachers had little idea what kind of support Mrs. My was giving to
Thao and how she helped Thao with English. Unfortunately, no teachers had tried to talk
to Mrs. My directly to share information. As Mrs. Turner, the English teacher,
commented, part of the reason was that she was not sure if going to meet Mrs. My and
pointing out what Thao should be working on would be appropriate and polite. Therefore,
Mrs. My’s office was regarded not only as another classroom in school - private and

self-contained (Jackson, 1990), but also as a space with different cultural norms that

teachers would rather appreciate from a distance.

A communication channel seemed to be missing here between Mrs. My and
Thao’s mainstream teachers. As a part-time staff dispatched by the district, Mrs. My once
conveyed her preference to not contact the teachers because they would be too busy to be
bothered. Beside, no one ever visited her the other way round. In addition, a few tutoring
hours per week would pass quickly when the work was simply going over the math and
biology questions with Thao. There was no time left for anything else.

Still, Mrs. My would write Thao a pass upon her request. The condition was that
Thao must ﬁnish the class’ required assignment ﬁrst. The pass turned out to have won
Thao precious time out of the classrooms. During these periods, Mrs. My helped her
review her math and biology problems. However, Thao lost many hours in classes to
participate in learning activities, such as reading and writing in 9'h English. Thao did
manage to ﬁnish the English assignment quickly; but as to be discussed in the next
section, the challenge to read and write in the English classroom was by no means easy to
face.

Summary

To summarize, the institutional support available at Linton to ELL students like
Thao mirrored the wider social context of educational policy and politics towards
language minorities. Guided by prevailing cultural assimilation in educating immigrant
students, the institutional assumptions tended to dichotomize language learning into
either an ESL or a mainstream. Support programs were either dealing with the basics
beyond contexts and meanings or focusing on subject matter content with no preparation
for students’ varied language backgrounds. In other words, the division of

ESL/mainstream did not consider students’ literacy development in multiple languages

65

and the means and environments to support language learning; instead, it was based
solely on the psycholinguistic criteria of whether or not an ELL student was able to use
functional English in daily interaction. Thao was expected to acquire the language on her
own as she was immersed in the mainstream curriculum.

Furthermore, Thao was not viewed as an individual learner with her social
worlds. Oftentimes, she was represented as one of the Vietnamese students who shared
the features of the “model minority” (Lee, 1996). For instance, she was believed to be
doing well both with her English and in the mainstream, because “Vietnamese students
are always on the top”, as counselor, Mr. Pierre, commented, in comparison with other
language minorities (e. g., Latino, African, or African American students). Such an
essentialized view of who Thao is as a learner ignored her challenges and needs and
created excuses when there was a lack of institutional support.

The role of the Vietnamese aide, in a way, reinforced the assumptions and
relieved much of the burden from the institution side. Even though the ﬁrst language aide
could have played a more important role in Thao’s learning, too many expectations were
placed on her to save Thao. What Mrs. My bad to face was endless subject matter
problems, limited time working with Thao, scarce support to her own professional
development in English and teaching, and isolation from teachers who also played a role
in Thao’s learning.

In the following chapter, I go with Thao into her mainstream classrooms. I
examine how the institutional notions of literacy and of the English language learner like

Thao ﬁgured into everyday pedagogical practices within the micro context of Linton.

66

CHAPTER 4
LOST IN THE INSTITUTION:
LEARNING TO WRITE IN THE MAINSTREAM

“Look! I got 10, 10, so many 10!” Tina pointed to several sheets of paper spread
in front of us when we met in Mrs. My’s office one morning in October. On the table
were her assignments, class notes, homework graded and returned by her teachers.
“That’s grea:t!” I congratulated Thao, browsing through these potentially informative
written materials at the same time. As I was going to take a close look at some particular
pages, Thao, to my surprise, ordered me forcefully, “Now, you can go and copy!” She
knew that I would be happy to photocopy anything she shared with me, but this was the
ﬁrst time she offered without me asking for her permission ﬁrst. We were supposed go to
her English class together in a few minutes, so I quickly gathered the scattering paper.
“Oh, they’re maps! Which class is this?” I couldn’t help asking. “Geography,” Thao
answered brieﬂy. “Hey, we do China next week”, she informed me, thinking I would be
interested. “Really? OK! Um, what about this cat face?” I pointed to another page with a
red stamp on it, a sketched smiling cat face. “Scien[ce] ﬁction. We watch movies. Scare
movies.” The bell rang, releasing students into the hallway. “Gotta go!” Thao rushed out
with a purple folder and the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird in hand, leaving me, Mrs. My,
and those assignment sheets behind.

The written works Thao shared with me that day were mainly ﬁ'om her Science
Fiction class, an elective course in Language Arts with its nick name -“Sci-Fi” used by
the teacher, Mr. Richards. Other written work came from World Geography taught by Mr.
Irving. Unlike Mr. Irving who used a 10 point scale grading system, Mr. Richards liked to

reward students with stamps. The more stamps they got throughout the semester, the

67

higher their grades. The usual geography assignments were ﬁll-in-the-blank exercises on
speciﬁc t0pics of the day, for example, Confucius and his philosophy, Southern Asia,
Latin America, etc. Students would get full grade if they ﬁlled out the outline sheets Mr.
Irving designed for each class session. The Sci-ﬁ written assignments varied. There were
charts to be ﬁlled on ﬁctional characters in movies or novels that Mr. Richards asked
students to watch or read; there were also short questions and movie summaries.

As the geography and sci-ﬁ photocopies grew into a big pile not long after my
project started, written materials from Thao’s English class were still scarce. As Thao
explained later, she couldn’t give me those assignments because they were always drafts
and not ready to share. Her teacher, Mrs. Turner, asked the class to revise their writing
multiple times before submitting the ﬁnal version, so the good-to-copy assignments with
ﬁnal scores did not come as frequently as those ﬁom the two previously mentioned
classes. In addition, Thao didn’t think that she should let me photocopy those with only
teacher comments but no grade. In her opinion, those were not ready, either. There were
many different kinds of writings Thao did in her English class. From a glimpse of her
purple folder for her 9th English class, I saw reading journals, free writes, and class notes.

Thao allowed me to photocopy these materials later, but it is more important to
note here that based on her teachers’ feedback and ways of grading, Thao had her own
interpretation and criteria of what counted as a written product and when it counted as a
legitimate text to be shared with me. For Thao, a written product could be a variety of
things she wrote inside (e. g. class assignments) and outside classrooms (e.g., poems,
emails, and picture diaries), which I would categorize as the official and the unofficial

respectively. Different from the unofficial writings that Thao would offer to share with

68

me, she was not ready to share the official writings until it had a grade, or a grade
equivalent, such as a cat face stamp.

As the institution posed assumptions of ELL students like Thao through its
supporting programs, curricula, and instructions, Thao had her own responses and
interpretations of what was required and expected and how to go about that. In this
chapter, I examine the contextual academic challenges Thao faced in the mainstream
classrooms as she grappled with different institutional support to participate in varied
writing practices. I consider the particular practices Thao experienced in her mainstream
classrooms — World Geography, Science Fiction, and English. I discuss their expectations
and demands by examining the instructional objectives and expectations, the required
written work, and the participation structures. I also examine how Thao, as a learner,
coped with these expectations and demands. I argue that her practices in the mainstream
classrooms reﬂected diﬂ‘erent interpretations of literacy and of language learners. Though
trying to participate in classroom practices, Thao ended up not getting coherent and
consistent support towards her English which served as both the subject and the medium
of instruction.

In Mainstream Classes: Coping With Different Expectations
“Write Down What I Say!”: Forced Participation in Controlled Dictation

On a day like many others in World Geography, a required course for all 9th
graders, Mr. Irving, a white middle-aged male teacher, was calling students’ attention
after passing out several worksheets. “Now, on the sheet, write down what I say. And if
you want a grade, better ﬁnd your pencil!” He was ready to read out answers to questions

on the class handout. For the ﬁrst half an hour in this 90-minute long class, Mr. Irving

69

read some passages about Confucius, the Chinese philosopher who lived in 500 BC,
from a textbook. He sometimes switched to his personal experiences of living a quiet and
harmonic life in the woods in the northern part of the state. For the second half of class,
Mr. Irving was going to assign some written work about Confucius.

Thao sat in the middle of the rows and columns of desks. She still did not know
the boys and girls sitting around her although it had been almost a month since the ﬁrst
Geography class. The textbook was open in front of her. Also lying on the table was a
booklet of supplementary handouts. Thao and twenty other freshmen were frequently
urged by Mr. Irving to take down words and sentences be repeated as he read and
explained these words and sentences line by line. Today, after Mr. Irving read aloud
Confucian sayings, for example, that “[a] man with clever words and an ingratiating
appearance is seldom a man of humanity,” he asked the class to write down “watch out
people” as a paraphrase. “That’s what Confucius meant.” Mr. Irving conﬁrmed.

There were four more pages of exercises with a variety of questions, such as
matching meanings with Confucius proverbs, listing Confucius’s unique ways of teaching,
and writing brieﬂy about Confucius’s ideas. Thao ﬂipped through the pages as if counting
the exercises yet to come. Her pencil needed to be sharpened after the ﬁrst ﬁve minutes
of intense note-taking with Mr. Irving. Sometimes, she underlined a particular phrase, or
a sentence; sometimes, she wrote a word or two by a particular paragraph; other times,
Mr. Irving read answers aloud and asked the students to copy into the blank area on the
worksheet. As he reminded everyone from time to time, if they worked hard and wrote
down everything he said, they would get good grades.

Thao gave up the idea of sharpening her pencil. Instead, she took out a colored

70

pen ﬁ'om her purse and tried to catch up. She already missed three lines under
“Miscellaneous Confucius” (see Figure 1). The original teacher handout Thao and her
classmates were working on looked something like this:

Figure 1. World Geography Class Handout on Confucius

 

I. Confucianism-

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A. Five Relationship-
B. Conﬁrcius aka K’ungFutzu (551 BC-479 BC)-

?”9 9-9 9"!”

C. Miscellaneous Conﬁicius-
a. Mandate of Hegven-
b. ﬂawl-
c. Filial piey-
d. “analects”-
e. Mencius-
*

f

D. Mao Zedung-
a.

b.

 

Mr. Irving, for example, read the ﬁrst heading “Confucianism”, then told
students to write “traditional China” in the space after that heading. Thao had tried to
follow the teacher who was moving from one line to the next fairly quickly. Given the
speed of the teacher’s speech and limited time to ﬁnish each line, Thao’s ﬁnal

handwritten note showed how much she was able to catch by the end of this marathon

71

dictation which lasted approximately half an hour. There were many words that Thao did
not spell right even though Mr. Irving repeated them. Thao’s handwriting became more
and more loose and unrecognizable as the exercise reached its end (see Figure 2).

A week later, Thao proudly passed me this page as well as other handouts and
worksheets from the same day in World Geography so that I could photocopy. She
received a grade of “120” for that day’s work, which was like an A, as Thao explained.

This worksheet writing practice was fairly typical in World Geography, the
objective of which, as reﬂected in such a daily routine, was to cover the required
subject-area content through mechanical writing without composing (Applebee, 1981).
Personal experiences and the development of writing skills were not emphasized. The
teacher assumed a role as the authority of content area knowledge, disseminating
concepts and information without negotiation and challenge from the students.
Expectations towards students as a whole were to follow the teacher’s directions and to
receive the information by ﬁnishing a certain quantity of writing assignment, namely,
ﬁlling in the blanks with less than a sentence and transcribing the information the teacher
dictated. In the participation structure25 in which the teacher dominated most of the
interactions, students were a generic group responding mostly through physically “doing”
the steps. It was a rare case that students spoke up or asked a question, because the
teacher had made it clear that students would be required to make up for their work
during lunch or after school hours if they failed to ﬁnish the copying in class. Therefore,
Thao, with her peers, became passive participants having no opportunity to socialize and

interact with one another over the writing activities.

 

25 This structure ﬁts in the ﬁrst type of participation structure in Philips (1972).

72

Figure 2. Thao’s Confucius Written Assignment

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73

 

“Just Write Something...”: Fake Participation in Writing for Tokens

Mr. Richards, the science ﬁction teacher, suddenly raised his voice after the bell
rang. “If you were about to die, what would go through your mind?” Some students
seemed to hear him and turned in his direction. Before the class burst into questions,
jokes, or unpredictable comments, Mr. Richards went on with his request. “In honor of
Halloween, the annual celebration of death, I just want to know and I want you to write I
‘ about it, and I have a short movie. I want you to write half a page. Right now!” Not too

many students picked up their pens.

 

It was a chilly and cloudy Friday morning before Halloween. Mr. Richards, 3
white English teacher with a tall but slim ﬁgure, wore a purple and orange tie with many
pumpkins on it. The classroom he shared with another science ﬁction teacher appeared
darker even in a late morning hour. The shades in the room were always down for the
convenience of watching movies. Students sat individually in rows and columns in two
groups divided by an aisle in the middle of the room. Mr. Richards placed an easy chair
and a sofa by his overhead projector in front of the room. Students could sit there if they
would. Thao was one of the six girls in the class. An African American girl sat in a row
ahead of her and three white girls were behind, but they did not have any interaction with
Thao. On the other side of the aisle, another Aﬁ'ican American girl sat close to the
classroom door. The rest of the area was taken by 16 boys, half of them black. White and
Latino divided the other half.

Thao was playing with her lip gloss when she suddenly heard Mr. Richard
saying that he would stamp their writing. She quickly took out a blank sheet from her
folder. After the date and name, Thao turned to me. “What the question?” she asked. A

V

74

feet away, I was trying to recall, “If you were about to die, what would go through your
mind?” Thao asked me to repeat several times until she had the complete question on the
sheet. She also signaled me to sit closer to her.

While I remained silent and continued with my own notes, Thao took me as her
listener, telling me that she would think of her mom and dad. I realized that Thao seemed
to be waiting for my response, so I brought up a question, “brothers and sisters?” Thao I
gave me an immediate and ﬁrm “No”. “Friends?” “No!” She appeared to be ready to

write her paragraph. After a minute or two, Thao let me read the half page handwriting,

 

so I became her reader.

If you about to die what is go true your mind. 10/29/04 Thao
I will think that I will
never see my family and
mine mind is my dad and
my mom and two little brother,
little sister, and another mine
mind is my family in my
country I will never see them
again.

The classroom was not quiet. Jeffery, a white student sitting under the television
monitor, was telling about his neighbor who died just a few days before. Other boys
joined him to share more stories about someone’s death, for example, in Iraq. Thao put
her ﬁnished paper aside, took out a little mirror from her purse, and checked her hair and
lips. As Jeffery announced loudly to class that he would never go to Iraq to get himself
killed, Mr. Richards ﬁnished a conversation with a school clerk at the door and came
back to calm down Jeffery. He reminded everyone that he was going to stamp their

writings.

Richards’ words caught Thao’s attention. She stopped her personal grooming at

75

once and placed her story at the center of the desk and waited for her turn. Mr. Richards
was patrolling around the room. “You guys didn’t take your notes, uh? It’s called
‘I-don’t-care-about-my-grades’, uh?” Before he reached Thao, no one on Thao’s side of
the room had anything on paper. Mr. Richards changed his tone upon seeing Thao’s half
page. “Thank God we have someone pushing you to do the right thing!” Mr. Richards
stamped a little violin on the paper right away without even reading the content. After
watching Richards roaming away to check the rest of the students, Thao turned to me
with a proud smile. She showed me the little violin stamp, as well as 7 other stamps she
had received. “I got A if I have more!” Thao was hopeful.

This free-write exercise, either before a movie or after, is representative of this
elective course. The goal, as Mr. Richards stated in the syllabus, was to help students
enjoy science ﬁction and appreciate life, and get a grade as well. Mr. Richard created
some activities that students could use for personal and imaginative writings. As shown in
the previous vignette, students were expected to write something as an answer to a fairly
personal question set up by Mr. Richards, who did not limit students to particular genres
and formats. He seemed just to wait for some informal comments ﬁom the students on a
holiday that was close. The participation structure, therefore, was loose. Some students
such as Thao and the African American students sitting around her were working
independently, as it appeared, while others were not necessarily participating in the action
of writing. Instead, they started or joined verbal interactions with peers on a variety of
topics, including life and death and Halloween. Most of them were white boys sitting in a
corner. Mr. Richards interrupted their conversations openly (e.g., that someone should

have concentrated on the writing, or that someone should be careful of their language),

76

while reminding everyone that he would check their work soon. Unfortunately, this
loosely controlled writing activity that could have created many opportunities for
students to write was reduced to an easy token exchange. As long as there were words on
paper, a student would get a token with the exchange value for a better ﬁnal grade. Thao
earned her stamp by dutifully brainstorming [luckily with me as her partner] and later
writing it up; however, the meaning of writing to share personal and imaginative ideas
was dismissed in this activity. Neither did she receive constructive feedback towards her
writing. Some common features shared by most second language learners showed up in
Thao’s writing, such as limited vocabulary and syntax, as well as features of her spoken
English (e.g., the overuse of “and”).

The other kind of free writing was informational analyses of or persuasive
arguments on the movies shown in class. Similarly, writing took place in a loose structure
where students worked by themselves. The expectation of the students, as Thao
understood, was to write something for a stamp. However, with more controlled topics
and genres, Thao’s challenge in language became all the more evident. Thao wrote the
following passage to respond to the statement, by agreeing or disagreeing with this
statement: “ET.26 is about love, the one power in the universe that can not be
controlled.”

I think is a scare movied
because ET is a human

come to Earth down in the city
and Elliot a little boy found
ET and be friend with him

one day Elliot was lot and

his mom was so worry
and call the police and Elliot was

 

2" Spielberg, S. (Director). (1982). E. 7? The extra-terrestrial [Motion picture]. United States:
Universal Pictures.

77

come back home with his eye
is all red, his mom ask him
what happen he be quite it run
to his room a next day ET was
is in the water and die Elliot
brother was take the bike and
ﬁnd ET and take ET to his
house and tell his mom what
in the room, his mom was
hold the and walk to

the room and she drop her
coffe down and her kids

to get out because she

scare of that monster, Elliot
was cry and say live me

I want ET if ET die and

Elliot is die and the ﬂower
growing up and ET is not

die because is a magic

ET Alive in the End that movies,
Elliot was so happy and they
family was let ET go back

to Earch.

Instead of stating a position, Thao wrote a sketchy summary to describe what

happens in the movie. It caught many detailed episodes such as the dramatic reaction of

the little boy’s mother upon seeing the sick E.T. Thao also incorporated dialogues to

depict how anxious the little boy was when the ET. appeared dying. However, Thao

needed help with vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and organization. Above all, she needed

support to go through the whole process of reading, understand the questions and writing

the response that was relevant. Mr. Richards’ feedback was nothing but a stamp — no

other comment or suggestion. For her, the stamps were symbols of good work and

teacher recognition. As shown previously, because participating in the class’ writing

activities meant working on one’s own, Thao had no one to consult with in terms of the

question. If I were with her in the class, she would ask me and talk to me about the topic.

78

It happened several times when I was in the room observing her work; however, I was far
from being a regular partner. Due to lack of teacher’s support and a community of peers
working together, Thao developed coping strategies of never missing any writing
assignments and always using summaries to reply to whatever type of question. She
thought it was successful because her stamps were accumulating quickly.

“You know, she’s really, you know, doing ( ) You ( ), but in the end ( )” Mr.
Richards was aware of Thao’s English challenges, but he did not articulate them. Before I
ever saw Thao’s ﬁrst stamp, Mr. Richards already expressed, if not explicitly, his concern
and dilemma in grading Thao’s work.

I think I told you I was in Korea. You know. She’s [Thao] taking a process so
much more, you know, than [pause Richards did not ﬁnish the sentence] It
turns that it’s just sheer language and anything else. I’m sure she’ll be ( )
whatever she can get from this sci-ﬁ class, but I tried not to be ( ), um, not ( )
one dimensional in terms of, in terms of how I grade kids. And every once in
a while I get lazy in my mind and I start just go this (He grabs his grade book,
opens it, and points to the numbers and dates inside), and then this, then it
becomes reality. Then, I said “wait a minute! I’m an English teacher. What’s
wrong with me?” and I would look at the kid again and I would say okay, but
( ). (Mr. Richards interview transcripts)

Mr. Richards did not ﬁnish, but I could well see the struggle he had in terms of
making sure that students whose ﬁrst language is not English, such as Thao, would not be
judged totally by their work in a language they are still learning, and that they at least did
something to fulﬁll classroom requirements. Such a sympathetic way to see Thao as a
learner also came ﬁ'om his experiences of linguistic and cultural shock in being in a
different country. Therefore, for Richards, instead of a harsh reality to discourage Thao to
continue to learn more, his class should be a friendly, enjoyable, and safe place for her to

know some “popular literature and to compare other people’s artistic response to life with

our own experiences to develop an appreciation of our own lives as well as the sanctity of

79

those of other’s around us.”27 Yet, Thao’s speciﬁc need in language was not listed as a
priority for both Richard and Thao to work‘on, even though it was obvious for the teacher
through a ﬂeeting glimpse of Thao’s writing. Still, Mr. Richards was satisﬁed seeing
Thao participating by actually writing something for each assignment, while many native
English speakers failed to do. The participation itself appeared to be worth a stamp as a
reward.

The other reason Mr. Richards gave for his stamp policy was that he believed
that the counseling oﬂice purposely sent special education students to his room. Mr.
Richards told me that it was because they knew that he was more tolerant of the kids and
that he would not “get bent out of shape” if something happened. More seriously, he also
believed that the nature of his science ﬁction class left space for the counselors to cram
students who need some “easy” classes. For this temporary elective that was not even
listed in the curriculum, Mr. Richards explained that it was “supposed to be ﬁm and then
kids go up and succeed in maybe some other more traditional settings”.

Along the semester, Thao kept getting stamps in the Sci-Fi class. For her, Sci-F i
class “IS easy” and she could manage it, because, “you watch movie and you write about
it”. The stamp mattered most to Thao. Regardless of the demanding questions, Thao did
not hesitate to just write on. She knew that as long as she wrote something (usually
summaries of what she saw and read), she would get the stamps. The following written
sample produced in the middle of the semester reveals how Thao dealt with Mr.
Richards’s questions which she did not seem to understand at all, and how she produced
something after all to collect a stamp.

Mr. Richards had two questions for the day:

 

27 From Mr. Richards’ syllabus.

80

1) Compare your answer with the two fairy tales (that Mr. Richards had
discussed in class). Do the castles in the fairy tales represent the same '
thing? '

2) What, if anything, does this have to do with our three themes”?

Thao began answering the ﬁrst question using her usual “I think ...” starter.

I think that the fairy tales is very good
stories about the castle and how

they do it and the stories is so

scare and alot monster in there

and some part same thing

like alot stuff in the castle.

- ”Ilium—fr ‘

 

Thao did not offer a comparison, even though she tied to borrow “I think” as if t
it were an opinion. The other place that showed her effort was her mentioning the word
“castles”, because it was in the original question. Soon, Thao resumed her usual sketchy
summary with some of her emotional reactions. For Question Two, she numbered her
“themes” and ﬁlled them with generalized reports of the story.

(1) Two door is blue, red you need
to choose one door that you want
goin to help Sarah little brother.

(2) The kind don’t let Sarah go no were
he tell Sarah that she only have is
hour to ﬁnd his little brother in the
castle.

(3) Sarah don’t scare nothing and she
need to ﬁnd her little brother
she not ﬁnd him, she so sad because
she love her little brother.

She got a stamp for ﬁnishing this exercise, as well. By the end of the semester,
Mr. Richards originally pictured win-win situation had to be a lose-lose. On the one hand,

unlike the high motivation Mr. Richards may have expected his students to have, Thao

 

28 According to the course syllabus, the three themes are creating life, ruling the world, and living
forever.

81

was so tired of writing the summaries that she could not hide her boredom in class. She
told me in a short conversation that Science Fiction was an easy but boring movie class.
On the other hand, Mr. Richards revealed his frustration in grading Thao’s ﬁnal exam.
“Her answer doesn’t make sense!” Mr. Richards seemed to discover it for the ﬁrst time.
Indeed, imagine what Thao would respond to the following ﬁnal exam questions, having
been used to writing summaries.

Final Exam Questions:

(1) What is the reason for science ﬁction/fantasy and how are they different?
(2) What’s real and what’s not real?
(3) What would happen if you took the blue and red pill together”?

Here is what Thao wrote for the exam:

I think that the common idea of charaters is very cool when you
watch all the movie in this class, when she the dragon heart is so freaking,
ever body was so scare only one man wan’t to kill the dragon heart but after
all they be friend together, and he look up sky she the zodiac of dragon heart
that mean the dragon come from there.

The kid of movie navigator is very scare and all those kids live in a
town and so cold then one day they found a place can go to a pretty and cool
place they really happy, the boy was so happy and he need to help his country
when the bell ring but when you image the boy climb up to the church is like
he fail dow, but is not his little friend help him when they touch the bell ring
every body in his place hear the bell ring they was so happy and smile.

The kid of the lion King is was so scare too and so cool the white
witch is so mean she want to kill everybody, but one day a little girl ﬁnd a
place is out of a different place and she see a man look like a animal but he a
nice guy he tell her to come in his house and have some tea and she really
like his house. Then after that her brother ﬁnd out that place then he she the
white witch and she just lie to him that you wan’t same food and he say yes
than he need to promise with a witch take his sister and brother come home...

There were three natural paragraphs; however, none of them answered the

questions. Thao was immersed in several movies or stories she knew. That reminded me

 

29 The third question was based on a movie students watched on the exam day.

82

 

of her ﬁrst introduction of what the Science Fiction class was like - “You watch movie
and you write something!”

In sum, Thao’s participation in Science Fiction illustrated her reliance on
summary writing with relatively limited vocabulary and syntax features common in those
learning English. Even though such participation appeared to satisfy the expectation of
students to ﬁnish the writing assignments, such participation lost its point of learning
through meaningful interactions through texts. Not only had Thao received no comments
from the teacher or peers about the content of her writings, her language challenges were
also left untended. Out of his sympathy towards Thao as a learner who was dealing with a
very difﬁcult process across the cultural and language boundaries, Mr. Richards, a
cheerleader but never a coach, awarded Thao grade tokens - an empty encouragement,
which resulted in some unintended consequences. For one thing, the lowered
expectations of Thao’s learning did not beneﬁt her. When the goal became collecting
tokens, doing class work was all about accumulating in quantity rather than improving its
quality. Moreover, without any feedback on her writing, Thao learned to believe, as
reviewed in an informal chat about the assignments, that she was doing the right thing.
Guided Participation?: Drafting, Conferencing, and Revising

As discussed in the previous sections, the nature of class assignments and
participation in World Geography and Science Fiction did not offer Thao much space and
opportunity to work collaboratively with teachers and peers on both the content and the
language. Since Thao was only expected to complete a certain quantity of work, she tried
to accomplish it despite the fact that she was all by herself in class. The full grades she

received for such work, though without any teachers’ comments, reinforced her

83

interpretation of a successﬁrl way to tackle discipline areas. It became more the more
confusing and difﬁcult for Thao to tackle writing assignments in the English classroom
where ﬁnishing up work meant more than obtaining a check mark on the teacher’s grade
book. Thao felt her way into the 9th English class where Mrs. Turner emphasized
organizing ideas in the process of drafting, conferencing, and revising. Thao did not have
as many full grades as she planned for each mini assignment. The expectation towards
student work, in Mrs. Tumer’s words, is higher quality in writing.
what we’re trying to do is we grade them in the quality of their work, but

we give them credit for turning it in because the hardest part was having the

kids coming in if they’re not used to turning their work in. They’re starting to

get in, let’s say, the story, working on quality. So they don’t just turned their

drafts in, you know, do it more intensely.
(Mrs. Turner interview transcripts)

Thao also experienced new ways of participation different from those in World
Geography and Science Fiction. She pointed out many times in our conversations her
disadvantage of not knowing what the teacher was asking and how to say or respond to
many things. Though eager to adopt her “successful” experiences (e. g., to cooperate by
always turning in work, on time and always copying teachers’ notes on the board) getting
many full grades in the other two classes, Thao was helpless and left wondering why it
was so difﬁcult to do so in English. I will illustrate how Thao participated in two
representative and related episodes of writing practices in 9“1 English.

Egisode 1: Book review. The “Wreath Book Review” project was an extension
of a routine reading journal activity, a part of the creative writing unit earlier in the year.
As required by Mrs. Turner, students needed to follow three steps to make the ﬁnal
writing products. They should ﬁrst draft a review of a book (e. g., short story, novel,

poetry, etc.) they chose, then meet the teacher for an editing session regarding their drafts,

84

and ﬁnally print the revised reviews on a tag and hang them to a wreath as Mrs. Tumer’s
room decoration. Revisions were essential to writing a good review and to getting a good
grade as well, according to Mrs. Turner in a lecture before the one-on-one meetings with
students. She quickly went through two review samples regarding the format and content
with the class.

One early November morning, it was Thao’s turn to sit with Turner to discuss
her book review while other students were working independently on their own reviews
and waiting for their turns. She prepared a draft which physically met the requirement:
information of the novel was listed on the top of the page (e.g., book title, genre,
publisher, number of pages, ISBN, reviewer’s name andschool, length of review, and a
brief review), followed by a review paragraph. Table 4 illustrates the conference.

The conversation captured Thao’s interactions with the teacher during the book
review conference. The conference itself as a channel for interaction between the teacher
and the student was unique in the English class in comparison with those in World
Geography and Science Fiction. As reﬂected in the conversation, Mrs. Turner, playing
roles as an expert and a consultant, tried to achieve her goal of helping Thao, a novice
writer, clarify her writing in learning to write the genre of book reviews. In addition, Mrs.
Turner was also the primary reader and the evaluator of Thao’s ﬁnal writing product.
Other possible audience of the book wreath project (who, according to Mrs. Turner, could
be all kinds of visitors to Mrs. Tumer’s room, such as students from other hours) served
more as an imaginary than a concrete community sharing the reviewers’
work. The participation structure was one in which participation was required and private

between individuals, such as between students and a teacher (Philips, 1972).

85

 

Table 4. The Teacher-Student One-on—one Conference on the Book Review Project

 

 

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92

In addition to a purpose of “assess the knowledge acquired by each individual student”
(Phillips, 1972, p.307), the conference could have the potential to prOvide “guided
participation” for Thao’s learning, which, as Rogoff (1990) writes involves

In the collaborative processes of (1) building bridges from children’s present

understanding and skills to reach new understanding and skills, and (2)

arranging and structuring children’s participation in activities, with dynamic

shifts over development in children’s responsibilities. Children use social

resources for guidance — both support and challenge — in assuming

increasingly skilled roles in the activities of their community. (p. 8)

However, Thao’s role, structured in the conference, was not given adequate
guidance in writing because of a lack of shared understanding and focus, or a lack of
“intersubjectivity” (Rogoff, 1990, p. 8), between Thao and her teacher. On the one hand,
Thao’s skills in and understanding of writing a book review were inﬂuenced and
informed partly by the positive feedback from the other two classes. Interpreting and
adopting the strategies of learning to writing as following teachers’ direction and using
summaries to respond to writing tasks, Thao expected to get similar aﬂirming feedback
from Mrs. Turner. During the conference, Thao waited for conﬁrmation and/or correction
cues from the teacher, while patiently going over the clarification questions with Turner.
Thao believed she had what she wanted — a better way to tell the story, parts of which she
found difficult to explain in English, along with the sections Mrs. Turner reminded her of
adding (e.g., her opinion of the book).
Thao told me after the conference that she would submit a cleaner copy with Mrs.

Tumer’s suggestion. As shown in Figure 3, Thao gave a total and uncritical acceptance to
the teacher’s corrections and editing. Moreover, rather than incorporating the missing

features (e.g., opinion, audience, and theme of the book) into the ﬁnal review, as Turner

advised, Thao listed them as bullet points as if in a ﬁll-in-the-blanks exercise.

93

Figure 3. Thao’s Final Book Review Assignment in the 9tll Grade English

 

SUMMERS END

mystery

Todd Strasser, 1993.

261 pages

ISBN 0-590-46967-3

reviewed by Thao van, Linton HiGH School, [name of state], Maple Creek.

Jess thought this summer would be about having fun with friends.
Everything was falling into place with Reed, but a tragic accident at the
beach has driven them apart.

Paula is in love with Jess and she thought that being a lifeguards was
tough, but hiding the true feelings in even tougher.

Paula knows something 5 up because Jess want to gets Reed all to
herself-no matter what it takes or who get hurt...

Qpinion — this made it good because is like motion book when you read and
some part is make you sad and like the book tell you what happen.

Audience — This book is for teenager to read because is about friendship and
alot different stuff in the book when you read, and think was it is about and is
ﬁm.

Theme - All this story is about boyfriend and girlﬁ‘iend and a little friendship
and they talk about love and summer time.

 

For Mrs. Turner, she expected to work with Thao on the content by probing
Thao’s decision of including or excluding book information, the relevance of the
information, the relationships among characters, and the appropriate genre. The
conference was assumed to focus on the organizations and clarity of ideas rather than the
basic grammatical and syntactical problems. Starting with the why questions, Mrs. Turner
soon found herself shifting to the what questions, and ﬁnally to more Yes/No questions.
Most conference time was dedicated to clarifying the plots and reorganizing the language.

Feeling that Thao may have been put on the spot with so many questions posted on her,

94

Mrs. Turner hurried to end the session. Unfortunately, the corrections she made for Thao
all over her writing (e.g., major changes of sentences, word choice, and expressions) did
not involve much of Thao’s active learning. Moreover, her reminder that Thao should
ﬁnish in time for 10 points happened to have reinforced Thao’s misconception of writing
for a grade.

After this conference, Thao carefully. put Mrs. Tumer’s corrections in her folder
while humming a cheerﬁil tune and making faces at me as I asked why she was suddenly

’9
!

happy. “I’m done with my assignment Thao cleaned up her folder and was ready to go.
“How was it? I mean, you and Mrs. Turner?” I asked. “Very good!” she was positive
about her work.

Episode 2: Five-garagragh outline. Thao’s English class had a new focus on the
ﬁve-paragraph essays in the spring semester, which was geared towards the approaching
annual exam season, according to Mrs. Turner. And more frequently, the class was given
chunks of time for individual writing assignment. One morning during the individual
work time, Thao and her neighbor, a white young man called Nelson who shared a big
desk with Thao, were listening to Mrs. Turner as she recapped an earlier lecture of which
Thao and Nelson missed a part. The other member sitting at the same desk was Mary, a
white girl. She was busy writing her assignment when Mrs. Turner insisted that Thao and
Nelson need her review to be able to complete the assignment of the day — a
ﬁve-paragraph essay outline.

We’re writing a reﬂective essay on the whole process of writing that short story
for publication [using the ﬁve-paragraph outline]. Students wrote an entire page,
talking about what they thought about the assignment, how they ﬁt, what they

ran into, what they liked, what they didn’t like. It’s a reﬂection on the whole
process. [It is] unlike what they learned about themselves. OK?

95

Thao and Nelson nodded slightly. Mrs. Turner continued.

So once they did that, the next step we did is what we went through... on their
writing that they did, I had them circle For an essay, you have to have
paragraphs. An essay should have a minimum of three paragraphs. Quite often
in high school, we teach you to write ﬁve paragraph essays, but that’s not the
case. You need an intro, an introduction, a body and a conclusion, which have
been what we have talked about for the past since Christmas. OK? ( ) What I
had them [Thao and Nelson’s classmates] do is circle all the different topics
that they had in their paper. Some say they sound that they have three different
paragraphs or four different paragraphs they can write about. (takes Mary’s
“bubble sheet”) Once she had these four circles, we looked at this yesterday.
We talked about how to start an introduction and how not to. If you start with
an introduction like “Hi my name is... this is my paper”, that’s wrong. I know
your name and I know this paper because I assigned it. (stops to remind some
students to be on task, then turns back to Thao and Nelson) I apologize.
(continues explaining) Thesis statement is one sentence. It is the main focus of
the whole paper. (draws lines between A, B, C and thesis on the sample
worksheet, shown in ﬁgure 4. Asks the two students) You see that as well?
(continues) I’m asking you to do is look at your paper. What is your thesis
statement? What can be your supporting sentences? Make sense? If not, let me
know.

Mrs. Turner left them a sample outline (see Figure 4) and walked to other tables.
The teacher’s quick update did not seem to clarify very much for Thao and Nelson.

Neither of them had their previous writing assignments as reference. While Nelson
continued to ask Mary, who sat beside him, for what the assignment was exactly, Thao
quickly started writing her outline. The sample appeared to give her ideas. Her thesis
statement, instead of relating to the assigned topic — reﬂections of a writing experience,
was similar to the one offered in the sample outline.

“I say I like go the mall,” Thao informed me. Thao continued to put the phrase
“long drive” as her ﬁrst supporting idea and “limited parking” the second. Both ideas
were offered in the sample as well. As a response to Thao, I asked why she liked to go to

the mall.

96

Figure 4. Sample Outline of Five-Paragraph Essay30

 

Title: The Hazards of Moviegoing
I. Introduction

A. Introductory statement
B. Thesis statement: I like watching movies but I prefer watchingmem

at home.
11. My
A. First Supporting Idea (Topic Sentence): just getting to the theater
presents difficulties

1. bad weather

2. long drive and limited parking space

3. long waiting to buy ticket
B. Second Supporting Idea (Topic Sentence): facing the problems of the

 

theater itself
1. old theater's problem; such as smelly cﬁamet. wom-out sea_t,_
ﬂ

2. new theater's problems such as smaller pile. noise from next
movie theater etc
3. both ﬂoors will be rubber-like (1th the end of the movie
C. Third Supporting Idea (Topic Sentence): Some of the mons__ are
W
1. _b_ad behpvior such as running, talking loud, etc
2. human noise gd disturba_1_1_cp
111. Conclusion
A. Closing statement
B. Restate thesis: I prefer to watch movies at home where it is
comfortable clean and safe.

 

Thao: Because I ( ). (bites her thumb) Cloth pretty and fun!
Yanan: Because it’s fun?

’ Thao: Say again?
Yanan: You said it’s fun.

(Nelson, Thao’s neighbor, overhears our conversation and turns to suggest that
Thao write about the topic on a paragraph)

Yanan: (to Thao) I guess I can. You can say three fun things in a paragraph. (to
Nelson) That’s her topic, anyway.

Thao: (immediately follows me) It’s fun to go to mall. Uh, a lot stuff pretty. A

 

3° Mrs. Turner borrowed this outline sample from a website
(http://depts.gallaudet.edu/EnglishWorks/writing/ﬁveparagraph.html).

97

lot clothes pretty! (Nelson turns around to Mary) And I buy clothes.

Yanan: (to Thao) What else?

Thao: I like the food. The food is delicious. (quickly writes it down) The
problem is noisy and sound. (signals Mary to pass her completed
outline. A few seconds later, all of a sudden) I’ll COPY this!

Thao noticed that Mary used many conjunction words such as “furthermore” and
“however” in her outline. She remembered having a list of such words, too.

Thao: (to Mary, holds the conjunction sheet titled ‘Common Transitional
Words or Phrases and Their Uses’) Oh, you can use this? You can use
this?

(Mary responds positively.)

Thao: Ozh! Why not you TELL me?

(Mary said she thought Thao had known already)

Thao: No, I did not!

(Mary says Mrs. Turner was talking about it before students were asked to work
on their outlines).

Thao: No! (asks Mary again) We can use this?

(Mary responds positively.)

Thao: OK. (jokingly) I hate you!

(Mary smiles. Thao turns back to me, holding the transitional words list)
Thao: We can do this!

(Mary reminds Thao that she should think about the words, and then add the
idea. She points to her writing to show how she did that brieﬂy.)

Thao: OK.
Thao read the sample sentences on the conjunction words sheet and was looking

for things she could use. She wanted to copy some sentences to her outline as well. She

98

gave me one example:

Thao: I like go the mall. Somewhat later, I go into the mall. Then, second one

is ( ).
Yanan: What do you mean?
Thao: Look! SHE had it in here (points to Mary’s outline)

(Mary disagrees, saying she had her words and ideas as well)

Thao: Yeah! Yeah.

Thao soon discarded her mall topic and started a new one - “I like reading
romance books”. She quickly put two phrases on the following lines - “learn new things”
and “love story”. Thao threw away the paper before she came up with the third idea.
When the bell rang, Thao ran out immediately without submitting any outline. Thao
could say a lot about her reading books. In an interview not long before this outline
incident, she shared her experiences as a reader.

I love to read romance book because that’s so sad. I love sad books and
sometime I cry because the book, like, talk about sad story. And ( ). they talk
about love. And I like action book too because I love have people action and
they do stuff and really cool. And I love to watch movie action. I watch a lot
movie, love, romance, stuff. I really love reading that romance and action ( ).
Sometime I [read before I] go sleep, and I read at school at lunchtime. I read a
lot book. When I get home, like boring, take a book out, read and then go sleep.
I have a lot book at home ( ). You know rif‘? R-I-F? For free? The book for ﬁee?
In my school when I was 6 grade, the book for free. You can choose any book
you want. Your teacher choose one student again and you can have one book
again. Then you can have two. If your teacher don’t tell you, you get one more,
you don’t get one more ( ). Like, people they have free book they don’t want.
They don’t want it. You come and you choose. They put the book on a table.
You can choose any book you want. Love, romance, cartoon ( ), whatever. ( ) I
have ( ). I think I have 20 romance book. (Thao’s interview transcripts)

Like many sessions on test-based writing throughout the spring semester, this
episode captures the participation which was characterized by the teacher’s lecturing to

the students and asking them to learn to write individually. In presenting a compositional

99

 

problem, in this case, writing a coherent essay outline, the teacher introduced the writing
genre and its format using many hardcopy samples. The teacher expected the students to
be able to go through a compositional process of ﬁnding a topic based on their previous
writing experience, coming up with three or four supporting ideas and one theme, and
avoiding personal narratives in the outline. Unfortunately, Thao did not have the same
sense of what the problem was and what the goal of the writing activity was as the
teacher. For her, the problem of writing was just to produce what the teacher wanted. She
chose to imitate the sample outline as opposed to using it to solve the compositional
problem of brainstorming and organizmg ideas under a theme.

The teacher withdrew without suggesting possible participatory roles that Thao,
Nelson, and Mary could play to help each other. From my observation, the three had the
potential to work productively together. Mary was efﬁcient with her work and willing to
share and help most of the time, but she did not initiate interactions often. Nelson was
often seen as sleepy and tired, but he never detached himself from Mary and Thao, on
occasion, offering a range of responses from cheerful jokes to serious engagement with
coursework. Thao was never too shy to push the group to ﬁnish work on time; nor was
her too shy to ask for help. The three of them did not choose to sit together at a table, nor
did Mrs. Turner arrange their seating; yet they could take speciﬁc roles in helping each
other if guided correctly. As shown from the episode, without appropriate pedagogical
support of participation in small groups, Thao’s interactions with the other two, especially
Mary, were spontaneous and sporadic. The information and experience concerning
writing an outline were never fully shared and explored. The writing practice was

structured as individual work; therefore, even though there was a condition for Thao to

100

 

work collaboratively with peers, the lack of a common goal made it more difﬁcult for
Thao to learn from and with her peers.

For Thao, in order to complete the assignment, she was particularly paying
attention to what she could draw from the available resources, but her efforts did not pay
oﬂZ'First, Thao used her personal experiences, such as going to the mall and reading
romance books. Second, she was actively engaged in (most of the time initiating)
conversations while brainstorming. Thao assigned me the role of her company who
listened to and helped clarify her ideas. She also checked with Mary, who was closer to
the center of the “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1978), for update and
support. However, these resources were limited because they were not an integral part of
an overall participation. Without much scaffolding, all Thao looked for was conﬁned to
parts to be assembled into a ﬁnal writing product. The participation structure felt short of
providing an environment for her to elaborate and adopt on her own experience (e.g.,
with reading romances and shopping) and generate ideas for her outline.

Summary

Thao entered an ecosystem (Hawkins, 2004) in schools where her participation
was inevitably inﬂuenced by institutional contexts, practices, and assumptions. Within
this system, Thao wandered across classroom practices that reﬂected varied beliefs in
learning and the learner, and negotiated the available resources that were ideologically
charged, and looked for opportunities to join the interactions to survive and thrive.
However, she ended up standing at the crossroad puzzling about the discrepancy
between her consistent efforts and the inconsistent expectations of various classes. Her

unique needs as an ELL learner in learning English and subject areas were not

101

 

adequately addressed across institutional contexts. She was lost in a vacuum of
institutional and pedagogical support and that complicated her language learning
experiences. There are several social and pedagogical factors that matter in making the
student lost in an institution.

In this chapter, I argue that different reading and writing expectations across
academic classes sent Thao mixed messages as to what academic English is like and
how to master it. Without an enhanced vocabulary and fundamental lmowledge in
writing academic English, Thao tried to make sense of learning to write from her
teachers’ feedback and grading, which varied a great deal towards her written work. For
instance, for two almost identical essays on the same topic, with the same structure and
organization, she received both a top grade and a failing grade from two different
classes that focused on academic writing. Pedagogically, with varied degrees of
emphases on quantity and quality of students’ work, the mainstream curriculum classes
did not provide consistent language feedback and instruction for this ELL student.
Unfortunately, she ended up being left alone measuring and puzzling about the different
rewards and punishments for her work and stuck in a kind of writing judged far from
proﬁcient at her high school grade level. Many potential teachable moments to help her
understand and learn the function and complexity of academic English (e.g., to
distinguish academic genres from casual personal sketches, and to address different
audiences by using different tones) passed without much pedagogical attention.

This chapter is also an extension of the previous chapter, which focuses on the
available institutional language resources for ELL students and the institutional

assumption of these students. The two chapters cover the different layers of institutional

102

practices - from the national level language ideology to the classroom level pedagogy -
of educating Thao. I contend that isolated support programs, language aide, and
mainstream teachers have failed to jointly sustain Thao in her transition. Often, Thao
was in such a situation that different programs and personnel expected each other to
cure her language problems, particularly with writing, though they were being well
meaning.

Therefore, in Thao’s oﬂicial world in school, she was ﬁghting alone to
understand and interpret the academic challenges. In the chapter ahead, I enter into
Thao’s unofficial peer world where she negotiated her identities while learning and using

English in and out of classroom.

103

CHAPTER 5
A LONELY SOCIAL WORLD:

LOOKING FOR SELF AND OPPORTUNITY FOR INTERACTION

Thao is ready to ask Taysha the answer to a reading question. Taysha sits with
Thao, Mary, and Nelson’s group today. Mrs. Turner has assigned each group to ﬁnd
sentences that support six themes in T 0 Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, 1960). One of the
themes is “justice and injustice”. The room is soon noisy with group work. At Thao’s
table, Mary is busy writing. Nelson is taking a nap. Taysha seems available but she is
curious about me as I sit nearby taking notes. Before Taysha starts a conversation with
me, Thao calls upon Taysha, in a playful tone.

Thao: Like, Yo! Give me some! Justice and injustice. Is that fair?

Taysha frowns and says she does not know what Thao means. Thao gives another
choice.

Thao: Not fair? (her tone rising)

Mary jumps in, conﬁrming Thao is right but the deﬁnition is for one of the two
words

Thao: That one? Injustice? (Mary nods. Thao does not seem to get Mary ’s idea.
She starts over with Taysha) Yo! GIVE me some! GIVE me some! Justice... and
injustice ( ).

Taysha is talking to an African American girl. She does not respond to Thao.
Thao calls Mrs. Turner who is too far away and busy to notice her voice in the
noisy room.

Thao: (calls Mrs. Turner who is far away and busy working with other groups)
Ms. Turner! (then turns to Mary who sits opposite her at the other end of the
station) COME ON! YO!

Mary looks up and answers in her peaceful and soft voice that does not carry far
enough to Thao.

Thao: WHAT? Say again!

Mary reads a sentence from the novel. “The Radleys are known to be bad people.”

104

Thao: Ra, what? How to spell?

Mary repeats the sentence again, but she does not spell Bradley. Thao writes
down the sentence on the blank sheet of paper and asks Mary to ﬁnd a sentence
for the next theme, “classism.” She then turns to Taysha.

Thao: Hey, you! Give me some! Come on! Give me justice or injustice!
Taysha declines, saying she does not know much about Thao’s question.

Thao: (insists but smiles as if joking) Come on, TAYSHA! ! !!!

This vignette illustrates Thao’s learning practices, in which her ofﬁcial classroom
world and her unofficial peer world overlapped. Thao was trying to make use of the space
and time given in the ofﬁcial world by reaching out to interact with her English-speaking
peers. Her purpose was to ﬁnish the task within the given time required by Mrs. Turner,
as a good student would do. The language used (i.e., “Yo”), the mood and channel of
communication in the above interaction caught a snap of her personal interaction with
peers like Mary and Taysha in the official classroom situation. In this vignette, Thao
dragged Mary and Taysha into a conversation. The two girls responded, but with limited
information to share with Thao for the group work project. The two did not seem to be
interested even though Thao persisted. I asked her if Mary, Nelson, and Taysha, who
usually sat with her as a group, were ever Thao’s ﬁiends. Thao said no in a deﬁnite tone.
“Nobody. I mean Nobody!”

As I step from her ofﬁcial world to the unofﬁcial world, I ask what Thao’s
unofﬁcial world was like? How did she interact with peers? How did she appropriate
English while interacting with them? In the proceeding chapter, I discussed the
opportunities for Thao’s participation in her ofﬁcial world in which she negotiated the

institutional expectations and assumptions of what literacy is and who a learner is in

105

 

mainstream classrooms. The nature of the opportunities for Thao to read and write was
structured, in part, by the institutional perceptions of the kind of person she could be
within class and by teachers’ deﬁnition of “a good Asian student”. Yet the notion of “a
good Asian student” as well as the institutional and pedagogical practices in Thao’s
schooling did not help her English, or her academic English, let alone her achievement.

In this chapter, I look at Thao’s learning in her unofficial world of schoolmates
and classmates, Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese. Here, the nature of the opportunities
for Thao to interact with others was inﬂuenced by Thao’s negotiations of identities
against the extended ofﬁcial identiﬁcation of her in terms of language, race, gender,
cultural heritage, ethnicity, and the good Asian student rhetoric. To guide my analytical
path, I ﬁnd Levinson and Holland’s (1996) concept of “cultural production” helpful
because it enables me to look both at the ideological conditions and the leamer’s
confrontation with these conditions.

Cultural productions [. . .] provide a direction for understanding how
human agency operates under powerful structural constraints. Through the
production of cultural forms, created within the structural constraints of sites such
as schools, subjectivities form and agency develops. These are the processes we
seek to evoke with our phrase, “the cultural production of the educated person.”
Indeed, the very ambiguity of the phrase operates to index the dialectic of
structure and agency. For while the educated person is culturally produced in
deﬁnite sites, the educated person also culturally produces cultural forms.

(Levinson and Holland, 1996, p.14)
Thus, I ask how Thao negotiated her identities while grabbing opportunities to
interact with people using both her languages, English and Vietnamese. What were

people’s conceptions of her being a Vietnamese female student in Linton’s context? And

what opportunities were created for Thao to interact with peers in and out of the

106

classroom as others’ identiﬁcation of her and her own understanding of herself were
played out?
“A Good Popular Vietnamese Girl”

Thao was well aware of the institutional expectations of her as “a good student”,
or “a good citizen”. These were to follow the rules and do the work.

You listen to your teacher and do the homework and do what the teacher tell to
do. Be a great student ( ). I do my work and talk and do a lot stuff ( ).
(Thao, interview transcripts)

Indeed, Thao was trying to fulﬁll the classroom tasks by decoding and following
teachers’ requirement. For example, she was the only student in her biology class who
remembered to bring in nutrition facts labels out directly ﬁom cereal boxes to earn an
additional 5 points. In English class, especially during group work, Thao oﬁen appeared
anxious about whether her group would ﬁnish the task in a given amount of time. And as
discussed previously, Thao made sure that she got all the stamps from the Science Fiction
teacher.

Thao, in fact, believed she was a good student ﬁom Day One. In a morning during
the second month of my data collection, Thao gave me a photograph of her. It was her
freshmen yearbook picture. She tied her long straight hair into a knot. Her silver hoop
earrings shined. She wore a short sleeved stretchy sweater with black, red, white stripes
and a wide collar band that well revealed her neck and collarbone. Thao looked more
mature than her actual age. She held up her head and her smiles natural and conﬁdent.
“Look at back!” Thao urged me. On the back of the picture were a few words Thao
handwrote:

To: Yanan Fan
From: Thao Your best student!

107

 

As giving me her photograph suggests, Thao was not merely seeking good grades.
She was seeking friendship and recognition. Moreover, she wanted to be a good popular
Vietnamese girl who had many friends. Through actively drawing upon teen’s culture
and trying to socialize across the racial boundaries, Thao displayed her conﬁdence and
courage to be who she was. Her version of “a good popular Vietnamese gir ” challenged
not only the stereotypical assumptions of Asian students from the dominant school

discourse represented by the counselor and mainstream teachers, but also the cultural 1

 

expectations shared by people around her. Yet, as Linton came all new to Thao, the
dynamics of peer world, which were unanticipated by Thao, complicated the negotiations
of her social and cultural identities and impacted on the opportunities to learn through
interaction and production with others.
The Black Appeal: Embracing Youth Culture

Each time Thao talked about her schooling, she remembered to mention her
middle school buddies, Marcy and Marlene, two African American young women. They
used to do group projects with Thao even though Thao was not able to speak much
English. Their ﬁiendship and constant interactions with Thao helped her social and
cultural transition in this new country. “We do a project about English. Like, you do
project you can u[se] any word you want, and to do a project and ﬁve picture like that,”
Thao explained a project that March and Marlene helped her put together. She told me
she was upset that she could not go to the same high school and that she had lost all
contact with her ﬁiends.

Thao’s experience at her former middle school, where she experienced students as

much more integrated than segregated, drew her closer to the new African American

108

youth culture rather than her home culture, thus inﬂuencing her socializing choices in
high school. Thao tried to reach out to Aﬁican American peers who appealed to her.
Even before she became acquainted with the Aﬁican American students at Linton, she
expressed her preference in a class survey to urban Hip Hop culture represented by
musicians such as Usher and Nelly or in movies such as “You Got Served”3 1. Although
Linton was still new in her ﬁrst year, Thao believed she was “cool” because she was
familiar with its dominant Aﬁican American youth culture and there was a sense of
belonging there. Such cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986), though not recognized by the
institutional discourse, gave Thao much hope for her high school years. Thao once
showed me her “diary”, a collection of all contemporary popular black singers and song
lyrics. Television channels of Black Entertainment TV (BET) and Music TV (MTV)
were also her favorite, giving her new updates of the trend.

As Thao embraced the youth culture introduced by her best ﬁiends, she was also
open to a wide range of youth literacy resources, if not in the ofﬁcial classroom. As Thao
was growing into a young woman, she also fell in love with Lurlene McDaniel’s ﬁction
for teenagers and classic or contemporary love poem collections as she explored her
emerging feelings of love and friendship in her freshman year.

Once outside the counselor’s ofﬁce, Thao and I were waiting for Mr. Pierre who
was going to rearrange Thao’s class schedule. Thao showed me the lyrics of “Miss You”,
her favorite song sung by the late R&B black singer, Aaliyah. It was a song of love and
friendship and it reminded her of her middle school ﬁiends, as Thao told me; then she

bummed the song for me. On another occasion, Thao wrote a love poem in Science

 

3‘ Stokes, C. (Director). (2004). You got served [Motion picture]. USA: Screen Gems. Thao liked
the movie because it was about teenagers of diverse ethnic backgrounds in a street dance

109

 

Fiction while others were watching a movie. “It’s your. You can take it,” Thao
generously gave it to me as I was trying to copy the poem. It was her version of a famous '
biblical text from Corinthiansns:

Love is patient

Love is kind

Love is not jealous
Love is not insist

Love is bear all thing
Love is believe all thing
Love is hope all thing

Love is never ends
Sharing songs, poems, and even love stories alone with me was infrequent. Thao
was trying to join the social world of her black peers and to seek a sense of membership
in this social circle and opportunities to interact with ﬁiends. Hoping she would ﬁnd
more Marcies and Marlenes at Linton, Thao reached out to black peers. However, she
was not fully aware of the kinds of opportunity‘for interaction that were allowed, or
prohibited, by the invisible cultural and racial borderlines assumed by her teachers and
peers.
Limited interaction: Spgpegation from African American peers. Mrs. Evans,
the science teacher, caught Thao joining a group of Aﬁican American boys to play a
game in her lab during lunch hour.
One time she was in, there were some guys from a different class. African
American guys. She [Thao] did what she was supposed to do and she went
back to the hall. And she started playing with a group of girls. I don’t even

notice where they were. When she came in, they were playing the “he-said-she-
said girlfriend/boyfriend” thing. You know, “he thinks you’re cute, or she

 

competition.
’2 From I Corinthians 13:4, New Testament.

llO

 

thinks you’re cute”. The guys are doing that and I’m thinking Thao is not into
this. Next thing I know Thao is right at the door and she’s saying “you!” She
calls Marcos over and she says, “What’s that guy’s name?” and Marcos goes,
“Which guy? The guy with the blue collar or the guy with a baseball shirt?”
She tells him and he says “That’s ( ). I forgot. I think it’s Ken.” Thao said [to
Marcos] “You can tell him I like him.” Thao’s in it! She was just right in it with
these guys insulting her and she’s just playing the game right along with them.
The people I used to work with before, the Asians are very proper. Not formal.
You know. They have some formality to them. I’m thinking Thao is getting
insulted by these guys, but she’s right in there with them. Okazy. She grew up
that way. (Mrs. Evans interview transcripts)

Shown from the teacher’s comments, instead of leaving the guys alone with their
games, Thao surprisingly initiated a new line and played the game with them. Thao’s
participation in peer interactions was judged by her teacher against the assumption of her
identity as a female Asian student and thus by the appropriateness of the activities she
could participate in. The enactment of such assumptions excluded Thao’s opportunities to
interact especially with boys across racial groups. Thao was projected as one of the Asian
students who should never be involved in some insulting games like the one mentioned in
the transcript. Mrs. Evans sounded concerned when talking about Thao’s unique way of
growing up. Thao’s behavior was beyond her imagination of an Asian girl.

Students, especially those in senior grades, had a similar take on the limited
possibility of interacting and socializing across the lines of race and gender at Linton. I
chatted with three young African American women I shared a lunch table with in the
student cafeteria one day. After they told me that there were many good students at
Linton, they admitted that they never socialized with students from other racial groups,

nor did they see many cross the line. Hong, a Hmong honor student and an active

lll

 

member of the Asian Student Association (ASA)33, suggested that making ﬁ'iends with

all walks of people beneﬁted one’s learning.
I heard that the kids at Linton, a lot of them are open-minded. They don’t really
care you can’t speak English that well. They’ll still show you around, so they’ll
always like they’ll help you out. Most people here, they don’t really care about
like race, or gender, or if you can speak the language very clear. They’re kind
of people who would walk by you and say ( ). They laugh at you or stuff. Those
are the ignorant people. You know, they’re the ones that are always helpﬁrl.

In the meantime, Hong stated that students were always seen hanging out with
their own people. The best way to see this clear division was to walk along the hallway
and to see who was being with whom in different places.

You’ll see the different groups at lunch, though. Usually you’ll see all the preps
(mostly white) will hang out in ﬁont of the mirror. You know the big wall in
front of the school right there? [Remember] the wall that separates where the
vending machines are and where the chairs are, the benches? The preps usually
hang out somewhere around there. Usually like towards the end of lunch when
they all come back. The Goths are down there, like, if you go towards the
auditorium. You know that section. That’s where the Goths are and all the
skaters are.

Hong identiﬁed himself as a “prep kid” who “dress[ed] kind of casual, kind of
clean” and who had no problem with “a lot of people”; however, he pointed out that for
many, the racial line was there. For example, be conﬁrmed that Asian students would
stay in the library during lunch hour while the black students gathered near the main
entrance or the gymnasium and Latino and white students scattered outside the building
or near the auditorium.

The student segregation outside the classroom left Thao little opportunity for
interaction with Aﬁican American peers. Still, she tried to socialize with some female

black students in class (e.g., English and Science Fiction) where they had opportunities to

talk during group work time. In the 9th Grade English, Thao oﬁen chatted with Taysha

 

33 A pseudonym for the Asian student activity group.
112

who often sat in Thao, Nelson, and Mary’s table. Thao and Taysha talked about clothes,
perfume, and boyfriends. For Thao, Taysha was a friend who listened and who appeared
to accept Thao as a member in her social circle. Although, due to the setting of the group
work, their conversations were always short and spontaneous, as in the following one.
Once in between two writing activities in the English class, Thao and Taysha were
talking about an African American boy they both knew.

Taysha bragged that the boy hugged her the day before. She wore a proud smile
as if she was a winner.

Thao: I don’t care. We’re not talking no more.

Taysha asked why.

Thao: Because he, mad at me.

Taysha was more curious about what Thao had done to make the boy mad.
Thao: Nothing. Nothing. Something. Nothing (smiles).

Taysha sounded she did not believe Thao.

Thao: He talk no more.

Taysha assumed Thao would be crying because the boy did not talk to Thao
anymore.

Thao: No.
T aysha took out her perfume and sprayed around her neck.
Thao: Can I have some? (takes the bottle from Taysha) Thank you!
In this brief conversation about teenage love, Thao appeared engaged and
conﬁdent. In contrast with other opportunities she had to interact with teachers and
students in English (e.g., the student-teacher conference in the 9th Grade English class

discussed in the previous chapter), her responses in this conversation were relatively in

113

quick pace and lacked hesitation. She demonstrated the ﬂuency and ease of interaction

and an urge of sharing her story with Taysha, someone with whom Thao wanted to

socialize and relate as a teenage urban girl. Unfortunately, such conversation did not

happen very often. Outside of the classroom, Taysha stayed with her African American

ﬁiends, a social network which did not include others like Thao. The students’ self

segregation made it more difficult for Thao to participate in any positive interaction with

Aﬁican American students she desired to associate with. Instead, Thao was involved in

many face-to-face hostile confrontations with some African American girls, who accused

Thao of stealing their boyfriends. In early spring, Thao told me a typical incident.

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Anything happened these days?

I don’t know. Nothing happened. People talk about me. I don’t
care. A girl want to ﬁght me. That girl ( ). She said she want to
ﬁght me tonight. I said okay.

Which girl?
I don’t know about that girl’s name.
Your classmate?

Yeah. [S]he say (grabs my clothes to demonstrate her position in
the ﬁght) [S] be grab me like this. And [S]he say “girl, I heard you
talk about me and you mess with my man.” I say ( ). .

Did you? Did you talk about her?

No. [S]he’s just like me because her boyfriend was mess with me. I
don’t like him, though. I say “girl!” She will do thing like this (grabs
my collar). I say “you better get your hand on [off] my shoulder.
What the hell you want?” and she say “I heard it somebody tell me
that you mess up with my boyfriend.” Then I say “You HEARD that?
Ooh, I didn’t know that. If you heard that, why don’t you tell your
boyﬁ'iend don’t mess with me because I don’t like him. He like me. If
he don’t like you, then why he like me ...” And she want to ﬁght. She
said “What you want now?” She call me bitch. You know what mean
bitch? She said “you know if you mess with my man, you know what
happen.” I say “What happen?” She said she got to do something. I
said “Go! Go and do it! Do it!” And she was scare. I still yell at her

ll4

 

before we go to bus. If you want to ( ) my ass tomorrow, go ( )! She’s
not saying something. She said “Sorry!” She better tell me that she
says “sorry.” She’s not tell sorry. That’s bullshit to me. () I said “Just
ﬁnd some station home ...”
Yanan: So you take the same bus home?
Thao: Yeah. That girl said crazy stuff.
Compared with Thao’s enthusiasm to interact and socialize, her target group was
far ﬁ'om welcoming. In terms of interracial relations, Hong’s response represented a
perspective from Asian students themselves. Hong was chair of Linton’s Asian Students
Association. Over the years, he had observed his peers, especially female peers reaching
beyond their own groups (e. g., Hmong and Vietnamese). However, he was not optimistic
about such border crossing.
Here at Linton, it’s [interracial relations] not that common. Usually the Asian
people stay with Asian people. But then there’re, like, just a few people who do
that. They don’t care, but their parents care. Oh, I think it depends on the
people you like and the people you hang out with ( ), but I don’t think it’s real

common [for example, for a Vietnamese girl to date a black guy]. (Hong
interview transcripts)

A Student With No Friends: Rejecting, and Being Rejected by Asian Peers

1 come across Thao a few times in the hallway of Linton’s classroom wing during
lunch hour. We meet outside Thao’s 4th hour class on the third ﬂoor ten to twenty
minutes before the bell. Most students hang out with others on the ﬁrst ﬂoor student
cafeteria, gym, or the main entrance. The third ﬂoor classroom wing is the quietest place.
Some students come here to check their lockers. When I spot Thao, she is sitting on the
ﬂoor and leaning against a classroom door that is no longer used as a door. She holds her

backpack to her chest as if it were a soft cushion. Mrs. My is not in her office today, so

115

Thao spends the long lunch hour in this quiet corner. She signals me to sit by her. I am

curious who she interacts with during recess when she can not go to Mrs. My’s ofﬁce.

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

When do you hang out with ﬁiends?

I play with nobody.

No?

No, I don’t have no friend in this school.

But what do you do during break, lunch hour and so forth?
I walk around the building.

Um. I see Vietnamese and Hmong students get together.
I go to Amy. She’s half Vietnamese.

Do I know Amy? Is she your ﬁiend?

No. I don’t have no ﬁiend.

But do you feel lonely?

Yeah. I don’t care.

Unfortunately, Amy remained a mysterious ﬁiend who never showed up

throughout the year. The sharp contrast was that there were a considerable number of

Asian students in the building and that students could also meet Asian students at the

ASA regular meetings that occurred every other week. What was happening, or not

happening, in Thao’s social world? Why did her connections to her own peers seem to be

absent? What kinds of opportunity for interaction were available to Thao, then?

For many, Linton’s Vietnamese and Hmong students all belonged, or were

referred, to their group identity of “the Asians”. For example, teachers and counselors in

the proceeding chapter generalized and imposed group characteristics of all Asian

116

 

students in their comments on Thao’s individual progress. However, the dynamics within
the group problematized the construction of the seemingly harmonious group character.
They further complicated Thao’s opportunity to interact with people while using
languages. Her cultural identity as a Vietnamese girl was at the same time contested and
challenged. There are two layers of peer world complexities within Linton’s Asian
student group — segregation between Vietnamese students and Hmong students and
segregation among Vietnamese students themselves based on immigrant experiences.
It is important to note that as a relatively new immigrant to the country and a new
high school student, the complexities of Linton’s peer world appeared unanticipated by i
Thao. As shown previously, Thao did not expect her African American peers to reject her
participation as friends. Similarly in the following sections, the peer world seemed
unanticipated within the institutional category of “Asian”. For this reason, I rely on more
experienced students to gain insight into “racial” complexities of peer life at Linton.
A divide from within: Hmong and Vietnamese. Senior Vietnamese student

Tram was an active member of Linton’s ASA. She sat down with me in a late spring
morning and shared her high school experiences. One observation she discussed was that
Linton’s Vietnamese students and Hmong students had a history of segregation due to
historical reasons.

Here at Linton, it’s kind of segregating. While the punky kids hang out in one

area; the Vietnamese hang out in one area; and Hmong hang out in one area.

Actually there’s a big segregation between Vietnamese kids and Hmong kids

here. I used to date a Hmong guy and I was Vietnamese. And that was like the

most horrible thing for his family and the most horrible thing for my family and

along with my friends. The Vietnamese people looked down on me. (Tram
interview transcripts)

ll7

Tram was sorry that the divide between Vietnamese and Hmong found its roots
back in history, in a war that involved forces from many countries (e.g., the US, China,
Vietnam), a war that had driven many Vietnamese and Hmong families away from their

home lands.

[A]ccording to their [Hmong] culture, it goes back to history when Vietnam
took over the Hmong people’s land. I read about it and it’s not necessarily that
the Hmong people choose to blame on the Vietnamese people. I was interested
because I always think white pe0ple hated me because of my heritage. Anyway,
they think our ancestors took their land. So I read about it, the French, the
British, the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans. And actually one of their [Hmong]
generals, I think his name is Paul, let the Vietnamese Communists into their
own country. Technically their own people betrayed them. But somehow most
of the Hmong kids they don’t know that. Their parents just don’t like
Vietnamese people. (Tram interview transcripts)

Speaking from his Hmong heritage, Hong conﬁrmed that the segregation was
caused by historical and political experiences of the Vietnamese and the Hmong. He
contended that the folklore history passed down from older generations had resulted in
meaningless ﬁghts and hatred in younger generations in their new country, especially
before the turn of the 21St century.

If you rewind like probably six or eight years ago, they [Vietnamese and
Hmong students at Linton] really didn’t get along. They got into a lot of ﬁghts.
It’s kind of weird to see ( ), say, “why are Asian people beating up Asian
people?” I guess, they are just those who like to ﬁght. They were always there.
The wall between Hmong and Vietnamese people. But now, it’s kind of broken
down, like, we don’t care anymore. Like we’re all Asian, so we’re just gonna
accept that fact. I think a lot of them used to hate each other because of their
parents, coz the parents will always be like “Oh, well, they’re Vietnamese and
we fought a war against them.” The whole Vietnam War. That was Hmong
people ﬁghting the Vietnamese people and the US was ﬁghting also because
the US, they don’t want communist. Because of that conﬂict. That’s why so
many Hmong people moved over here to the US and so many Vietnamese
moved here too. That’s because of that conﬂict. Our parents still say that. Some
old people they’ll say “Oh don’t go out with Vietnamese girl”, you know
because of all the stuff. Both families won’t agree. I think it’s mainly because
of that conﬂict too. That’s why back then Hmong and Vietnamese don’t like
each other. (Hong interview transcripts)

118

Different from Tram, Hong was more hopeful for the improvement of the
relationship between the two groups of students as he believed that new generations
should look forward. As an activist, he worked hard to organize students from both sides
together [through the student association.

Now, it’s just become accepted that we’re Hmong [and] they’re Vietnamese.
There’s really no conﬂict between us. Why are we ﬁghting against each other
when it happened so long ago? You know. I think the love-hate relationship
between different groups. It’s not the individual you like or hate. That’s really r
the ( ) just the political leaders who set it out to be like that. (Hong interview
transcripts)

 

Despite that many Vietnamese students joined the ASA which was composed
predominantly of Hmong students and which also included some Latino, white, and black
students, Thao did not join in ASA. Still clinging to goal of making friends with Aﬁican
American peers, Thao showed little interest in socializing with Hmong students. In
Thao’s third hour English class, she had four Hmong classmates, two boys and two girls,
who were always together as if they were a team. They seldom talked or had other
interactions with Thao in class throughout the year. Thao could only think of one Hmong
girl, who she described as a “nice person” rather than a “friend”. They took the same
school bus home and greeted occasionally during the school year. Although Thao did not
specify the reason that she never considered socializing with Hmong students, comments
ﬁ'om Hong, Tram, and other ASA members about the historical inﬂuence on the daily
lives of both peoples may have impacted on Thao’s choice of friends in some delicate
ways.

As reﬂected from multiple voices of Vietnamese and Hmong senior students

about the historical and sociocultural tensions between the two peoples, dynamics within

119

the “Asians” problematized the manipulative classiﬁcation of race. As the institution
continued to address Asian students as a whole, Thao and her Vietnamese and Hmong
peers were all trying to identify themselves by their own ethnicity, either Vietnamese or
Hmong, not the racial term, Asian. How Thao and her peers understood who they were
also complicated their sociocultural experiences of interacting in socially organized
activities. If segregation was an implicit norm between the two student groups, fewer
opportunities for interaction were to be available for both. For Thao who has only been in
the country for four years and who learned through interactions with peers such as the
Hmong students, this was not good news, especially when her Hmong peers could serve
as what Lave and Wenger (1991) called “old timers”. Indeed, most of them were born
and had had their schooling in the US; at the same time, they had a family culture that
was close to the one Thao came from. Therefore, they could be the active and
experienced “teachers” for new immigrants like Thao. Unfortunately, opportunities for
Thao to interact with her Hmong peers were scarce.

Further away: Divisions within Vietnamese themselves. Reaching out to
Vietnamese peers seemed to be more difﬁcult for Thao than to Hmong or African
American peers. Among the Vietnamese people Thao knew at Linton, she relied solely
on Mrs. My. Her ofﬁce was Thao’s harbor away from the storms of mainstream
classroom challenge and isolation from other students. “Ms. My and you are my friend. I
only have two ﬁiend,” Thao once said to me. In addition to tutoring math and science,
Mrs. My was a company and above all a listener, as Thao explained. Thao was
comfortable to use Vietnamese with Mrs. My when she revealed her puzzles and

anxieties in studies and boyﬁiend fantasies. For Mrs. My, Thao was a kid that needed a

120

 

lot of discipline. Mrs. My listened when Thao complained that certain classroom work
was “stupid” or “boring”, but Mrs. My was ﬁrm and authoritative when trying to correct
Thao’s impolite comments and to reinforce the right attitude and manners in classroom.
Thao’s Vietnamese peers seemed missing in her world. According to Mrs. My,
communication barriers between Thao and other Vietnamese students may have
prevented both sides ﬁom approaching each other. Mrs. My revealed that it was not
difﬁcult to imagine that Thao would be isolated ﬁ'om other Vietnamese students because
she had to speak Vietnamese while learning English. However, most Vietnamese at
Linton had been in the country for so long that they either forgot Vietnamese or chose to
only use English in school. As a language aide working primarily with new Vietnamese
immigrant students, Mrs. My observed a consistent lack of interaction between those who
still relied on Vietnamese language and those who were more ﬂuent in English at Linton.
In addition to Mrs. My’s looking at language as the sole cause of isolation, senior
Vietnamese student Tram added another complex identity issue of shame and
membership within the Vietnamese group. She shared with me a demeaning phrase —
“fresh off the boat” (FOB) - made for the new Vietnamese immigrants by those not so
new. Tram revealed that many of her Vietnamese friends looked down upon the new
immigrants and took it as a shame to socialize with them.
Yeah. Actually, a few girls I hang out with. They came here 3 or 4 years ago.
They are very nice people. I hang out with them because I think they keep their
culture. But the kids who are like me asked me like “Why you’re hanging out
with FOB people?” They’re like “That’s so: uncool!” Well, I don’t think
there’s anything wrong with that. They’re a lot nicer than the kids who have
been here for a while. They get criticized a lot especially by Vietnamese people.

I don’t think a girl will ever date a guy who just came here simply because he’s
an FOB and he’s an alien. (Tram interview transcripts)

121

Although Tram claimed she was more willing to hang out with new Vietnamese
immigrant students, she said that these students were somehow difﬁcult to approach
because of their lack of cultural capital in English proﬁciency and of social capital in
being able to reach out to the right people.

I know those people are very droughty people. Like, they can’t speak ( ). Yeah,
they want to hang out with certain people who are like them, who can not speak
English very well. I think it makes them feel more comfortable. But with me,
that’s like the worst thing you can do. You should hang out with people who
know how to speak and know how to read and write correctly.

Tram implied that students like Thao should ﬁnd native speakers of English to
practice and to socialize. In doing so, they would be accepted more easily and quickly by
their “own” Vietnamese peers.

The other factor that may have contributed to Thao’s isolation from her
Vietnamese peers is their racial proﬁling. Speaking from experience, Thao believed that
it was very likely that students like Thao would be classiﬁed by her “own people”
because of her difference. “They [V ietnarnese students] threw racist comments about my
hair, clothes, and everything,” Tram recalled her ﬁrst two years at Linton.

Mrs. My was disappointed when seeing many Vietnamese boys, including new
imrrrigrants, leaving her ofﬁce upon Thao’s arrival. The boys told Mrs. My that Thao did
not appeal to them because she was too much into Aﬁican American students and
because her “attitude” did not make her a good Vietnamese girl. Mrs. My did not
welcome the Vietnamese boys’ comments, but she worried more that Thao would

gradually loSe a sense of her own culture and become marginalized in her Vietnamese

community in school.

122

Thao’s outspoken attitude in favor of others’ culture and against own culture
could lead to prejudice against her ﬁ'om the Vietnamese peers. As Tram described, such
marginalizing happened to her at Linton.

There’s girls [who are very much into black stuff and black guys] here. They’re
very much isolated. Like one time, we went to win a ball. We saw that
Vietnamese girl. She hung out with an African American guy. The Vietnamese
girls went like “Oh my God, that’s SICK!” and “That’s horrible!” (Tram
interview transcripts)

The alienation and discrimination from her Vietnamese peers shut off any chance
for Thao to interact with and learn from her Vietnamese peers. They shared national
history, ancestors, and home languages, yet they were separated by contextualized
sociocultural boundaries of social capital (e.g., student network), cultural capital (e.g.,
language and knowledge of schooling in the US) (Bourdieu, 1986), and construction of
self identities and group identities (e.g., “F OBS” or non-“FOBs”). Thao’s English, instead
of serving a tool for interaction, was rather evaluated as the cause of her isolation ﬁ'om
her Vietnamese peers. Mrs. My’s efforts to help Thao establish a stable and nurturing
peer circle did not seem to pay off, partly because Mrs. My tended to frx Thao’s behavior.
In her ﬁrst year, Thao was unable to ﬁnd a social circle of ﬁ'iends who listened and
understood the way the world was for her and the way her world was.

“I’m Proud Who I Am!”

Compared with her peers, Thao was quite tall for her age even without her high-

heeled shoes. She had a strong build and large bones, which became a constant teasing

topic among her cousins because their argument was that big girls were stupid. Once

during an information interview in the library, Thao spotted a picture book on a nearby

123

 

 

shelf. The book was The Song of Mulan", a translation of an ancient Chinese poem about
a girl who disguises herself as a man, joins the army in her father’s place, and ﬁghts
against the invaders for 12 years. Instead of resuming our interview conversation, Thao
offered to read the book aloud to me. She told me that she found herself in Mulan,
because she was as strong, smart, and pretty as Mulan. In ﬁction, Mulan bravely
challenged the traditional view of young women who were supposed to be around the
house all their lives. In reality, Thao challenged the “good Vietnamese girl” image
deﬁned by the institution and by her cultural background. She dared to venture to explore
the youth world that appealed to her, even though it was perceived as taboo by many and
the cost was isolation.
Like, I hang out with black people. I have ﬁiends black stuff. My mom say why
you hang out with black people. I say because I say any friend black, white,
Chinese. Whatever they come from, they still human. So I have any friend I
want. I want to go to my ﬁiend. And they [parents] say “No!” They say “You
better go to Linton. I say “No!” I want to say something bad, but I can’t. I so
mad. I want to go with my friend. She [refers to her mother] don’t let me. I so
mad! I say any friend will be ﬁiend - Chinese, Hmong. Whatever they come
from, it’s not like they’re animal stuff. I’m so tired, man. I wish I can 15 or 17.
Then I can get a car and go somewhere. (Thao interview transcripts)

While trying to seek friends, Thao was aware of the racial proﬁling from her
peers, including the black peers of her own ethnic identity. As she was walking along the
racial, cultural, and ethnic borderlines, she was critiquing other pe0ple’s conception of
her identity and trying to maintaining her multiple identities she deﬁned.

Thao: I heard people talk about me ( ) I walking pass them.
Yanan: Um. What did they say? Did you hear it?

Thao: They say, Asian, China.

 

3" Lee, J. M. (1995). The song of Mulan. Asheville, NC: Front Street.

124

1r

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

Yanan:

Thao:

They call you Asian?

They call China the most.

They think you’re a Chinese girl?

Yeah. Anytime they see people like Asian, they always tell China.
They always think.

Why?

I don’t know. I say, “I’m not China. I’m not whatever, or Asian.
I’m proud what I am. And you better be quiet. If you talk about me,
you look at yourself ﬁrst, because when you go this school, you should
learn or talk about someone.”

Who are they?

Who knows. Stupid people.

Your classmates?

Some people like Black, white.

Like the students here, like outside. Everywhere?

Yeah. They always talk.

But you don’t care?

Yeah.

Within structural expectations of being a good student, a Vietnamese, and a
female student and against the unanticipated peer segregation and proﬁling, Thao held
her head up and navigated the ways of schooling alone. In social institution of school, as
students and teachers produce their versions of peer culture, Thao had her own unique
version which was based on her previous sociocultural experience of peer culture and her
personal preference of friends. Thao’s negotiation of identities and membership to her

favorite peer group, in a way, is a response to the institutional assumptions informed by

125

race, gender, and cultural assumptions and expectations. Her “different” ways of
conducting herself as an active consumer of popular youth culture and a brave cultural
border-crosser challenged the stereotypes held by various members in school.
Unfortunately, in the process of learning who she is through participating, or not
participating, in varied peer group in and out of classroom, Thao was unable to access
enough resources (e.g., opportunities to use English in social practices with peers) and
support from the institution to understand the rules of the game.

Summary

Identity negotiation is an integral part of language learning. This negotiating
process is contingent upon the opportunities that are available for a learner to participate
in a community of learners. In other word, participating, or not participating, in
interactions in different social situations gives a person the sense of where she belongs
and who she connects with. In addition, the dialogic nature of identity construction is
cultural production that reveals the contradictions and complexities of learning in school.
In this chapter, I looked at Thao’s learning mainly in her unofﬁcial peer world in school.
I aimed to link her identity negotiations to the structural expectations of her role as a
learner in order to explore the available opportunities for her to interact with peers.

As illustrated in this chapter, the nature of the opportunities for Thao to interact
with others was inﬂuenced by Thao’s negotiations of identities against the extended
’offrcial identiﬁcation of her in terms of language, race, gender, cultural heritage, ethnicity,
immigration history, and the good Asian student rhetoric. Thao’s response against roles

which were assigned to or assumed of her by Linton’s peer culture illustrated the

126

complexity of learning in the social, political, and cultural contexts of Linton (e.g., the
default self segregation among peers and the complicated in-group dynamics).

Drawing from her middle school experiences and resources, Thao did not hesitate
to seek membership across racial groups; however, the self-segregation among students at
Linton provided Thao with little opportunity for interaction, especially with her Aﬁican '
American cohorts. School is where Thao learned to understand the new country, new
languages, and new self. The inﬂuence of the dominant urban teen culture at school (e.g.,
the Hip Hop culture) and her constant interaction with her African American friends were
signiﬁcant in her sociocultural experience of learning. Thao looked at herself as an active
member, not deﬁned by race, but by her participation in socially organized activities
where she and her Aﬁican American ﬁiends shared personal experiences and also social
goals to achieve together (e.g., a class project). When Thao carried her cultural resources
to Linton, a familiar environment regarding the prevalence of urban youth culture, her
opportunity for interaction and her effort to “hang out” with Aﬁican American students
was, however, far ﬁom encouraging. Peer self segregation by the skin color was
strikingly visible and difficult to break through. Border crossing was perceived as a
sporadic venture rather than a norm. Thao was admirable in that despite assumptions
regarding social circles by ethnic groups and race, she held on to her belief in socializing
with people who appealed to her. Thao managed to reach out and actively sought social
activities to participate. Sadly, such participation was difﬁcult especially when student
segregation determined the underground rule of the game.

Students’ social status, language proﬁciency, immigrant history, gender and racial

proﬁling became signiﬁcant factors that impacted Thao’s socialization and identity

127

formation within what the institution assumed as “her own group”. The result is that these
factors created different forms of segregation, if not racial and not as obvious, which
deprived Thao of opportunities to interact with her Hmong or Vietnamese peers. The ﬁrst
form of segregation was between Hmong students and Vietnamese students at Linton.
Due to historical conﬂicts dating back to the Vietnamese War, an implicit boundary had
been drawn by the older generations of Hmong and Vietnamese immigrants for their sons
and daughters who later met in American high school. Although time is healing up the
resentment between the two peoples and although younger generations are less concerned
about these historical conﬂicts, according to Mrs. My, the boundary continues to remind
younger generations of where they are from and with whom they are supposed to be
socializing.

The second form of segregation was among Vietnamese students themselves.
Thao, a new comer not only as a high school student, but as a recent immigrant without
much English, tended to be under peers’ scrutiny. English language ability and lack of
life experience in the US become a division between 1.5 (i.e., immigrants who came
during childhood) and 2“d generation students and recent immigrants who desperately
needed to learn together with the “old timers” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 29). With
limited opportunity to interact with peers in school, Thao was thrown back to her own
world of which Mrs. My, her language aide, and I, an interested observer, shared a part.
While struggling to understand the institutional assumptions of her academic
performance, including language development, Thao was isolated in her unofficial world
where peers were everywhere but they were unavailable for Thao. Before I proceed to

the conclusion, I consider my own role in these ﬁndings.

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z.

CHAPTER 6
NEGOTIATING RESEARCHER-PARTICIPAN T RELATIONSHIPS

There is good news and bad news with the most contemporary of
formulations. The good news is that the multiple selves — ourselves and our
respondents — of postmodern inquiries may give rise to more dynamic,
problematic, open-ended, and complex forms of writing and representation.
The bad news is that the multiple selves we create and encounter give rise
to more dynarrric, problematic, open-ended, and complex forms of writing
and representation. (Lincoln & Guba, 2000, p. 183)
I still remember the early days when I was “casing the joint” (Dyson & Genishi,
2005, p. 20) at Linton. I wore pants and casual sweaters, for example, a blue ﬂeece
half-zip jacket. Instead of totes that my ﬁ'iends suggested that I should carry, I went with
my backpack. I found readjusting the straps of the totes, which always slid off my
shoulders, quite annoying, even though the bags would distinguish me from a high school
student. I used to sign up my name in the main ofﬁce ﬁrst thing when I entered the
building. Instead of walking directly to Mrs. My’s ofﬁce, I sometimes stopped by the
display windows along the hallway, curiously searching for the most recent showcases on
Linton’s varsity sports, cultural heritage celebrations, student organization election
campaigns, or new Shakespeare dramas presented by students taking Performing Arts.
Once or twice, I was approached by a security guard who urged me to hurry to my next
class; but most of time, I was unnoticed when I showed up in the library, student cafeteria,
the gym, the hallway, or the parking lot, just like a default member of the community. My
plan was to make myself comfortable and ordinary at the site; however, I was not fully
aware of “the nature and boundaries of [my] role” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 51) until I
started to build relationships with my participants.

Among all the decisions, the one about my outﬁt was not a difficult one, though

it was deﬁnitely not a petty one. As I engaged more regularly in the ﬁeldwork which

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lasted approximately over a two year period, there were far more decisions for me to
make - from negotiating entry and establishing relationships with potential participants to
maintaining and continually negotiating these relationships. My role as a graduate student
and a novice researcher trying to understand the life of high school students and their
teachers grew more complicated. Not only did I become a part of my own study, but I
struggled afterwards in the coding process and the interpretive write-up, juggling with my
assertions and my own roles.

This chapter is a reﬂection on my negotiation of relationships with varied
participants during my work as a native Chinese ethnographer conducting a case study of
the complexities of learning English as a second language. Because the issue of
reﬂexivity is at the center of any discussion of ethnographic method (Anderson, 1989;
Canagarajah, 2005), I illustrate how I myself experienced the relationships and how that
ﬁgured into my decisions as a researcher. I ﬁrst describe the social constructions of self
and others that ﬁgured into the negotiation of relationships (e.g., social status, race, age,
gender, cultural heritage, family and nationality). I then reﬂect on the kind of
methodological decisions that responded to these negotiations. I also examine the ﬂuid
and dynamic interaction between role relationships and methodological decisions over
time.

The Social Constructions of Self, Others, and Relationships

Researchers’ prior experience, training, and commitments inﬂuence their stance
in writing notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 42). Similarly in my study, my
personal background, social status, and cultural heritage impact on the ways in which I

position myself in relation to my participants throughout the work (Dyson & Genishi,

130

2005). The whole process of positioning and negotiating requires conscious and constant
examination. Among my relationships with all participants, the ones with the focal
student, Thao, and the major liaison, Mrs. My, stand out. In these relationships, I feel the
need to ask who I am as a learner and a researcher who received English education in
both China and the United States because this particular aspect of my biography
inﬂuences the participants I chose to work with and the collaboration with them along the
way.
My Personal Histor_'y

Born in Beijing in the late 19605, I grew up during China’s transition from Mao
Zedong’s Cultural Revolution era to Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door era. As the ﬁrst girl in
my working class family, I was given a name that literarily means that I would bring a
baby boy to the family. Even though four and a half years later my younger sister arrived,
I was still supposed to shoulder great responsibility as a big sister. Like Thao, I cooked,
babysat, and ran errands for my parents. In my early schooling, kindergarten was the
most memorable grade only because it was a place where I did not have to memorize
Chairman Mao’s quotations and take tests. My motivation to go to school was the various
extracurricular activities (e.g., drawing, track and ﬁeld, gymnastics, and accordion
lessons) and friends. From Grade 7, we had a new course called “English”. Each day, the
English teacher taught us some funny sounds and strange calligraphy then forced us to
remember. I thought I would never be interested in English. Never.

Soon, more “foreigners” showed up outside the school classroom. They were in
the imported (but translated) movies, in the TV news, and they were everywhere in the

places of interest in Beijing, such as the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the

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Tiananmen Square. The teacher told us that these foreigners spoke English and that we
should learn to communicate with them, but I did not think that I understood them at all,
nor did I hear them say anything like “there are three trees in front of the classroom.”
Luckily, I became interested in reading some English fairy tales that I borrowed from a
neighbor who got these children’s books from a relative in Singapore. Although I did not
know most of the words, it was still fascinating to spot a couple of English words. On
another occasion, when I had our annual spring outing to the Great Wall, a friendly
foreign lady put a cute toy frog in my hand while smiling and talking to me in English. I
did not understand her but I hoped I would be able to thank her in English some day.
Packed with assignments and exams, the workload in middle and high school
years were overwhelming. My school was not a good school in a sense that a great
portion of its graduates could not go to college because of their low pass rate; still, we
were given extra work in order to catch up. Teachers worked together with us, checking
if we worked hard enough. English was all about vocabulary, grammar, and syntax that
were isolated from real text. I was lucky to be able to get through and make it to college,
but I would never want to recall the days when learning was reduced to rote
memorization, pattern drills and test-taking strategies. In college where I was a student
then an instructor, I was exposed to more real-life English used in different cultural
contexts. English was the medium of instruction and many courses were co-taught by
foreign experts. Speaking, listening, reading and writing activities were better combined
together to involve more student participation and production. Nonetheless, the
development of English literacy was still shadowed by centralized curricula, rote

learning, and preparation for grammar-based proﬁciency tests.

132

As a language learner then a teacher, I have been reﬂecting on the meaning of
learning a foreign or a second language and the process it involves when a teenager like
me learns to write the ﬁrst alphabet and articulate the ﬁrst syllable in English with both
excitement and puzzlement. I have been recalling all the people who have played a role in
my learning — my next-door neighbor who lent me the story book, the foreign lady on the
Great Wall, my English teacher who praised me for reciting a pattern drill, my college
classmates who got up at 5 am to recite words in the Oxford dictionary, my American
teacher who invited me over for ice cream and who asked about my plans for the future,
my English major students who were curious about my TOEFL test scores, my American
colleague who encouraged me to get a Ph.D in the States. . .. The list goes on and on.
These memories remind me that it is the social and cultural attraction of using the
language to interact with more people that have sustained my interest in learning English.
I became a graduate student at Michigan State’s College of Education after teaching
English in China for nine years. In a way to continue my long quest for the meaning of
learning a second language, I started focusing on experiences of teenage ELL students
who have different target language environment and different challenges in and out of
school. At the same time, as a female graduate student from China trying to understand
students and teachers in Midwestern United States, I reﬂect how people’s social status,
cultural heritage, race, nationality, age, gender, and family ﬁgured into the
methodological dimension of my project, namely my relationship with my participants.
Negotiating Self and Others

Concurrently with my investigations into the phenomena of ELL students

learning English in mainstream classroom, I was learning my new role as a researcher

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and my unique ﬁeld relationships with Thao and Mrs. My. Examining these relationships
“involves enabling conversation across societal lines — of ethnicity, religion, class,
gender, language, race — that have grown progressively more nuanced, more immediate,
and more irregular” (Geertz cited in Kirsch, 1999, p.xv). First, our relationships were
built on my given membership in the social, ethnical, and cultural world to which Thao
and My belonged; yet this membership was never stable and was always subject to
context change. Second, our relationships were complicated by its reciprocal nature
(Wade, 1984) when I encountered unanticipated demands that necessitated my
role-switching and expectations. Finally, the relationships required critical examination
of its underlying power dynamics.

Membership . My relationship with Mrs. My and Thao involved negotiations of
membership. They kindly accepted me into their social and personal worlds not long after
my debut in the building. For many, including the school teachers, my fellow graduate
students, and even I myself, working with the two Vietnamese women was a legitimate
and practical research plan because of possible cultural connections between us. Indeed,
we shared many experiences as women coming from Asia and speaking English as a
second language. The national border, at this moment and in this space, tended to be
blurred. Institutionally, Mrs. My, Thao, and I were regarded as ethnically one group, or
“Asian”, in relation to the “White,” “African American,” “Latino/a,” “Native American”,
etc., who gathered under the same roof at Linton. Because I am a married woman, the
gender and emotional dimensions (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998) could have also led to a close

and fast-building relationship. It was not difﬁcult for our conversations to shift to those

134

shared cultural traditions such as the lunar calendar, the Confucius philosophy in family
and education, and major ChineseNietnamese holidays.

Underneath the membership that was constructed through race, cultural
backgrounds, and age and gender, however, were equally prominent factors such as,
nationality, social status, and life experience, factors that made us individual persons. For
instance, Mrs. My implied that most Vietnamese immigrant families started their life at
Maple Creek as political reﬁrgees from the Vietnam War. For a student ﬁom China, a
country that also played a part in the war, I was consciously cautious about this factor in
I my relationship with the Vietnamese participants. Therefore, the membership was ﬂuid,
dynamic, and far from stable. It may help build mutual trust and understanding, but I
would never assume I was able to share the errric perspectives and interpretations
(Watson-Gegeo, 1988). Moreover, “[s]kin color, race, and cultural identity sometimes
facilitate, sometimes complicate, and sometimes erect barriers in ﬁeldwork” (Bodgan &
Biklen, 1998, p.86) through hindering many precious observation opportunities. For.
example, Mrs. My and Thao would stop their tutoring sessions to entertain me as I
dropped by the ofﬁce attempting to catch a tutoring scene. I understood the cultural code
of never neglecting a ﬁiend, but it was a pity that many potential data were slipping away
in front of me.

Recrp’ racy . My relationships with Thao and Mrs. My were also constructed by
its reciprocal nature (Wade, 1984) when my roles were partly shaped by their interests
and objectives which arose unexpectedly in varied situations. In other words, as I
assumed my social status as a student and researcher in the study, Thao and Mrs. My

responded with their expectations and assumptions of my social role when my life

135

 

l.'——_l

interwove with theirs. For example, I ﬁequently experienced role-switching from a

 

tentative note-taker and/or an observer to a peer, a prop, or a pal upon Thao’s request.
Once in 9th English, Thao was ﬁlling out a book recommendation form required by the
teacher. She did not understand a line, so she threw me a question while I was copying
her writing. “What it mean?” she asked, pointing to the last line of the card, which says
“recommended by _”. “They want to know who wrote this recommendation, so you
can put your name there if you like,” I gave a brief explanation. “Me? Really?” Thao was

not sure, but she wrote her name in the blank. Outside the classroom, Thao often dropped

1:

me brief messages (e. g. “how are you do you get any better oh you can come at Tuesday
because Mrs. My will come back ok i don’t what to say i gotta go now bye bye”) and
reminded me of emailing her as well. I became a virtual ﬁiend who was supposed to ﬁll
her inbox with new greetings. For Mrs. My, as I shadowed Thao everywhere, I made a
good student teacher who could report and monitor Thao’s behavior, especially those
“inappropriate” ones (e.g., chatting with peers, or not respecting teachers). Mrs. My also
urged me to control the time and ask Thao to stay in class if I thought that was necessary.
Such “intense sharing” (Lincoln, 2002, p.338) in our relationship was undergirded by
mutual trust and it required thorough methodOlogical decisions in terms of my
responsibilities as a researcher. For example, I frequently asked myself to gather a sense
of the limit. In other words, how do I respect and respond to my participants’ demands
without sacriﬁcing my own methodological beliefs? The trick here is that oftentimes the
intention of the researcher and that of the participants do not go hand in hand to the. same,

or even similar, direction.

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1_’o_w_e5 The relationships were also highlighted by power dynamics in three
ways. First, ethically, roles we took as the researcher and participants respectively tended
to complicate our relationships. Just in the way my gender, cultural heritage, social status
as a married graduate student and an outsider made it easy for me as a researcher to
establish rapport with Mrs. My and Thao and to develop intimacy and collaboration,
these social factors could more likely put Mrs. My and Thao in a more vulnerable
position (Kirsch, 1999; Weis & Fine, 2000). Even though Mrs. My and Thao have been
open to me in terms of their experiences in learning English in their new country, I felt
the challenge of avoiding distorting and misinterpreting the information and handling it
with in-depth ethical and methodological consideration. Therefore, the relationship was
negotiated around the “ﬁne line that separates ﬁiendship and friendliness” (Kirsch, 1999,
p.30).

Second, power was also played out in our use of English as our second language
throughout the case. In responding to my observation, interview questions, and comments,
Thao, a recent immigrant teenager who was learning the language without adequate and
appropriate support, tended to be more vulnerable in relation to me as a researcher. For
instance, for a few times in the interviews when Thao commented on her teachers, friends,
or the courses, she used the word “stupid” and appeared indifferent and reﬁrsed to say
more. I could have easily fallen into an evaluative mode instead of being patient enough
to try to understand her meaning of being stupid in context Mrs. My, who learned
English in her middle age years, declined to be audiotaped in the study. In a sense, not

having her transcripts may reduce the risk of misrepresentation because of her wrong

137

 

choice of words, as Mrs. My explained. However, that may not prevent the same risk
from my part when I paraphrased her meaning.

Third, the cultural expectations based on our similar heritage towards age and
social status powerfully assigned relationships that more or less determined the kinds of
questions I asked and the kinds of data set I was able to collect. More advanced in age
and teaching experience both in Vietnam and in the US, Mrs. My assumed a role of a
respectable senior who had the right to order and advice. Thao, a young girl who needed
guidance both socially and academically, according to Mrs. My, was in a lower position
from where she was supposed to show total respect and obedience to Mrs. My. My
position fell right in between ﬁrst based on age. I was also supposed to submit to Mrs.
My because I relied on her to negotiate the ﬁeld entry and project design. In addition,
because of my education and English language ability, I was assigned by Mrs. My the
role of Thao’s teacher. Unlike the challenges of the researcher authority (Kirsch, 1999;
Weis & Fine, 2000), the delicate and cultural-oriented power dynamic in our
relationships contested my decision-making throughout the study.

Methodological Decisions

My relationships with Mrs. My and Thao were constructed through my ﬂuid
membership in their social world, constant negotiations of their demands for my
unexpected roles, and power dynamics that may affect the “noncoercive, mutually
rewarding relationship” (Erickson, 1986, p.142). The complicated nature of such

relationships requires conscious decision-making in research methodology.

138

On Membership

Ladson-Billing (2000) writes that membership in a speciﬁc racial or ethnic
group does not imply her natural acquisition of errric knowledge of that community (p.
266). Therefore, clearly informing Mrs. My and Thao about the purpose of my study
through dialogues and actions helped better balance my relationships that could be easily
blurred by membership. Entry to the site for me was a process of negotiating the
membership and my researcher role. I started knowing Mrs. My a year before my
dissertation project when I was conducting a pilot study at Linton with a Vietnamese
senior student. The student invited me to his social circles - student club, Taekwando
class, and Mrs. My’s ofﬁce. As my pilot study went on, Mrs. My had chances to observe
me as a student researcher and to talk with me in the office when students were all gone
to their class. Our conversations covered a variety of topics, such as history of the two
countries, living and making a living at Maple Creek, learning functional English in the
earlier years, and traveling all over the United States. When I transitioned to designing
my dissertation project, Mrs. My had not only had preliminary observations of what I did
on site, but also had known me as a student ﬁiend. We had more discussions later on as
to my beliefs and methods in conducting research, and my focus on second language
learning processes, and my researcher role. I explicitly articulated my concern that some
Vietnamese students and their parents may not want to accept me because of my
nationality because of the war history shared by the two countries. Using my pilot study
as an example and abiding by the necessary procedure, I explained how I was going to

protect the student’s privacy and respect their choice to answer or not answer my

139

questions. My openness won me the trust from Mrs. My who helped me look for possible
candidates and ham Thao and her family who agreed to participate.
On Reciprocity

As Mrs. My and Thao expected me to play a part, beyond an observer, in their
worlds, speciﬁc methodological decisions were made on the spot. More importantly,
these decisions also involved communications and negotiations. In Thao’s case, when she
requested my help with her learning and to some degree socializing, I would respond
positively and take the role of a “student teacher” she assigned to me. For example,
oftentimes in English class, Thao turned to me for help with her writing assignment.
Once in the computer lab where Mrs. Turner asked students to type up and edit a short
story assignment, I asked several clariﬁcation questions to help Thao elaborate on her
description. Thao also asked for my suggestions of words and ideas in writing. While
paying attention not to give her the answer, I tried to encourage her to brainstorm ﬁrst,
and then offer words that may ﬁt her idea. I did not help Thao with all her questions, but I
noticed that Thao appeared more into the task we both worked on. By actively playing
the role that beneﬁted Thao in one way or another, I made a moral decision as well. I
rejected the role other times when Thao’s request became irrelevant. For instance, in
Science Fiction class, instead of watching the movie or listening to the lecture, Thao
would start a conversation and ask me to teach her a few Chinese characters or to take her
out of classroom for an interview. I would signal that it was not appropriate for me to do
that in a class situation. In Mrs. My’s case, I chose to talk directly about my dilemma of
being an observer and a controlling teacher of Thao in the classroom. Correcting Thao’s

behaviors in class not only violated my ethical promise to Thao, but also confronted my

140

 

 

non-judgmental and non-evaluative stance in the study, as I told Mrs. My. She seemed to
understand my position and stopped pushing. In a way, reciprocal relations established
between the researcher and the participants require communication, understanding, and
mutual realistic expectations.
On Power

It is never simple when it comes to making ethical decisions. The power-laden
relationship between the researcher and participants is always on-going and dynamic,
making the task of protecting the participant, who is more vulnerable, more demanding of
the researcher and more difficult for the institutional human subject review boards to
regulate through a medical-model (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998). Instead of trying to ﬁx many
unexpected situations, I wrote reﬂection memos to record my process of going with the
ﬂow. Because I do not speak or read Vietnamese, the ways in which English was used in
corrrmunication (e.g., among the three non-native speakers - me, Thao, and Mrs. My;
between native speakers and the three of us respectively) should be examined. For
example, the questions I often asked of myself are: When Thao does not articulate her
ideas clearly, was I possibly evaluating her English? Was I trying to understand her
through other means (e.g., contexts of the conversation; paralinguistic features)? Was I
possibly taking advantage of her English by throwing her ambiguous or confusing
questions? Was I looking for other ways to communicate? Did I gather data that can
speak for Thao in some way?

Respecting my participants meant having the patience to wait until they were
equally interested in talking with me, working the way they preferred, and inviting them

to examine and make decisions in the study. For instance, during the four formal

141

 

interviews and a few casual conversations, I used simple spoken language in my
open-ended questions to leave Thao enough time and space to open up layers of
meanings. Then, I followed up with single ideas Thao offered and probed a little deeper.
The topics ended up being all over the place, but they were signiﬁcant in that they gave
Thao a feeling of control because she decided which questions she would like to talk
about more. The topics, though segmented initially because of their open-ended nature,
still helped unfold many sides of her social life. From time to time, I asked Thao’s
feedback on whether I correctly understood what she had told me. These confnmations
ranged from facts (e.g., the number of cousins she has and their relations) to opinions
(e.g., on her choice of making and not making friends, or of completing a writing
assignment in certain way). To reconcile the tension between my researcher role and the
role of a monitor assigned by Mrs. My, I ﬁrst openly discussed my stance in being
non-intrusive when shadowing Thao in and out of classroom. Further, I turned myself
into a resource person with whom Thao could consult regarding her learning and life
around it. I was deeply aware of the issue of exploitation of subjects widely discussed in
qualitative methodology literature (Erickson, 1986; Bogdan & Biklen, 1998; Kirsch,
1999; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). In reality, all my participants were giving rather than
taking. Mrs. My’s comment was representative. She told me one day that she felt the
need to help me move forward to graduation the moment she signed the consent. While I
argue for the contribution of the work to the larger society for the long run, I did not
hesitate to make my contribution to the local to the best of my capability. I exchanged my
ideas and observations in the formal and informal interviews. I asked for their further

comments on my initial discussions on my understanding of the various situations. In a

142

way, I hoped that Thao, Mrs. My, as well as the teachers, could beneﬁt from the
conversations, discussions, and stories that I shared with them regarding learning and
teaching English in one way or another.
Over Time

My ﬂuid and dynamic interaction between role relationships and methodological
decisions evolved over time. The intimacy grew stronger between me and the two women
because of the arrival of my daughter. The notion of family, together with cultural [
heritage, gender, and age prominently pushed our relationship to a unique situation. I

could hear the warning “the greater the intimacy, the greater is the danger” (Weis & Fine,

 

2000, p.45); and yet I also saw the power of such intimacy in possibly empowering both
me and others in our understanding of the meaning of collaboration in this ethnographic
work.

My baby girl, Fengyi, has been physically accompanying me throughout my
ﬁeldwork, but it was not until November 2004, two months deep in my data collection
that I shared the news with Mrs. My and Thao. They were excited and quickly shifted the
greetings from “how are you?” to a more speciﬁc “how do you feel today?” Our
conversations usually began with a baby-related topic with which both Mrs. My and Thao
were very familiar. Thao had two little brothers, both of whom were babysat by Thao
when their parents were out at work most of the day. Thao always offered me tricks of
the trade in looking after little infants. Mrs. My has four children who later brought her
three grandchildren; one of them was actually due a few months before Fengyi. We also
found out that Mrs. My was exactly my mother’s age and I was at the same age as Mrs.

My’s third daughter who was also pregnant at that time. Moreover, we found out that

143

Mrs. My and I (and F engyi, too) were born under the same sign of the zodiac. In addition

 

to these “facts”, we also shared many topics regarding parents’ responsibilities in family,
balancing work and family life, and planning for the ﬁrture.

Our relationship, as a result, grew more intimate till even after the data
collection. I noticed more prolonged and detailed conversations I had with Mrs. My
and/or Thao. Mrs. My started to share more sensitive information in terms of Thao’s
progress (e.g., descriptions of Thao’s language test results and the unsatisfying academic

performance despite the tutoring efforts). She also allowed me to see the other side of her

 

world where she managed to make a difference at Linton at a senior age and to live with
racism and prejudice towards minority language aides. Thao changed her way of
addressing me as Ms. Fan to Yanan, which would never be appropriate for a student to
call her teacher (of all kinds, including student teacher which was my assumed role to
Thao) under both Vietnamese and Chinese culture. Her emails arrived more ﬁ'equently,
reminding me to visit her in her classroom, to tell her if Fengyi was fussy and grumpy,
and to drop by her class when I was back to the deskwork. The emotional attachment was
mutual. While in the ﬁeld, I felt I was going to visit my mother and my sister who were
ready to listen to my pregnancy worries and project puzzles. At the same time, I became
more emotionally involved in Thao’s progress especially when her test scores in some
classes turned against her. I worried when seeing Thao putting on a considerable amount

of weight within a short period of time in spring. And I even wanted to visit her at home.

 

During the write-up, I found myself struggling to separate my ﬁeldnotes, artifacts, and
other concrete data from my reﬂection memos and all the cards and emails Thao sent me

from time to time.

144

Although risks are always there regarding the researcher-participant
relationships, I managed to follow the steps of data analysis and inquiry supported by
theory. I was trying to respond to their trust and friendship by writing up my research
with more ethical and moral responsibility. Indeed, I face many challenges that may lead
to attitudes or actions that are against them in one way or another (e.g., the danger of
essentializing ELL learners, a particular ethnic group, or in a broader sense, of the
teachers and the practices). This is the reason I decided to ﬁrlly examine my situations in

relation to my participants in a separate chapter. In so doing, I aim to deﬁne my

 

researcher identity “by the creative tension in the role of member/observer” (Behar, 1996 -

cited in Angrosino & Perez, 2000, p. 684).

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CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSIONS, DISCUSSION, AND [IMPLICATIONS

When I was back at Linton after giving birth to my daughter Fengyi, it was mid
April, a few more weeks to the end of the academic year. My ﬁeld work would also come
to an end. Thao told me she was tired all the time and was desperately looking forward to
the summer. She could not get as much sleep as she needed because she had to take care
of her toddler brother and sister after school. Thao was less willing to talk about her
classes. Except for an “okay”, I found it difﬁcult to get her to elaborate more. Instead,
Thao became more vocal and emotional when she mentioned her ﬁghts with her parents
and cousins at home. According to Mrs. My, who had a brief phone conversation with
Thao’s parents, Thao’s father admitted that he and Thao’s mother did not know much
about Thao’s school life and ﬁiends; nor were they able to pay more attention to her
schooling because of their work schedule and other family issues (e.g., a divorce in the
extended family). For Mrs. My, Thao was different from other Vietnamese students she
had during her ten years of working in the School District as a language aide. Thao was
different because her social circle (e.g., ﬁiends) and family environment worked against
her learning at school, according to Mrs. My. If necessary, Mrs. My would suggest that
Thao take the ESL class to start over. In the English class, Mrs. Turner revealed her
concern that Thao was struggling to ﬁt in but that was not successful enough to save
herself from her downhill performance. Like Mrs. My, Mrs. Turner predicted that Thao
might have bigger troubles in her 10th grade.

In this concluding chapter, I ﬁrst summarize the ﬁndings of the study. I do not
have happy stories or best practices to share, but the challenges of learning and teaching

adolescent immigrant students are what we need to understand, when we situate second

146

 

 

language learning in contexts. I then link my ﬁndings to the grand theoretical discussions
in the sociocultural stances of learning and teaching. I focus particularly on the notion of
the “cultural production of the educated person” (Levinson & Holland, 1996) and the
sociocultural notion of participation when I revisit the literature with my ﬁndings. Finally,
I explore research and pedagogical implications.
Summary of Findings

My dissertation project was an ethnographic case study. The purpose was to
understand the complexities of learning English as enacted by Thao, a recent Vietnamese
immigrant student in a Midwestern urban high school. Seen through Thao’s world of
learning in school are multiple layers of state-wide and school-wide institutional practices
regarding educating ELL students, of classroom-level pedagogical practices in
mainstream classrooms, and of peer-level socialization and interaction. These layers did
not stand alone; rather, they interrelated with one another and they jointly created the
dynamics in which Thao’s learning was situated. This study attempted to investigate and
understand what happened in Thao’s ﬁrst year in her Midwestern high school (also ﬁfth
year in the US) and how Thao, as well as varied participants, participated in the social
practices of learning or teaching, or using English in socially organized practices in
school.
Second Langpage Learning in Broader Contexts

Thao’s learning was situated in the sociopolitical landscape of the larger
educational system which inﬂuenced the learning experiences of millions of ELL
students, like Thao, through national and local language education policies. These

policies identiﬁed the goal of language (and second language) education and language

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programs, interpreted the meaning of literacy and learning English as a second language
among ELL students, and classiﬁed ELL learners as they entered into American’s
classrooms. These policies impacted on the local institutional practices and types of
support, resources, and access available to the ELL students.

I As reﬂected through the institutional support at Linton, the school district was far
from prepared to serve the needs of language minorities. Guided by prevailing cultural
assimilation in educating immigrant students (e. g, the English-only legislation that has
impacted the whole nation), the district witnessed a sharp contrast between the demand to
educate school children from more diverse backgrounds and the institutional readiness to
channel all language, ﬁnancial, and sociocultural resources into effective support. The
district was under the pressure of standardized tests and shrinking budgets over the past
years; therefore, second language programs and second language teachers were among
the ﬁrst to go away. The ELL students were left to sink or swim in mainstream
classrooms.

Through examining the nature, form, and values of the local available programs
for Thao at Linton High, I argue that the support system did not coherently encourage
Thao’s active participation in the social practices of learning English inside and outside
of classrooms. Without a clear vision of what kinds of language help ELL students
needed and how to meet their needs, various potentially useful language programs tended
to exclude Thao because she was not one of their designated students. For example, the
division of ESL/mainstream did not consider students’ literacy development in multiple
languages and the means and environments to support second language learning; instead,

it was based solely on the psycholinguistic criteria of whether or not an ELL student was

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able to use functional English in daily interaction. Caught in between the ESL and the
mainstream, Thao was expected to acquire the language on her own as she was immersed
in the mainstream curriculum. As a result, all attention was directed to Thao’s language
aide, Mrs. My. Her role as a Vietnamese bilingual tutor relieved much of the burden
from the institution side. Unfortunately, it was unrealistic to expect Mrs. My to answer all
the questions. Without strong professional support and constant communication with
mainstream classroom teachers, Mrs. My worked in isolation and frustration. Her

guidance to Thao was limited to subject matters such as math and science and to Thao’s

 

discipline problems. Helping Thao with reading and writing in academic English was not
the agenda in Mrs. My’s two-day work schedule every week. This ﬁnding identiﬁed a
common tension reported in several Canadian studies of secondary-level English
language learners: a lack of adequate social, academic, and language support further
complicates students’ learning in mainstream classroom (Duff, 2005).

It is important to point out the cultural assumptions that Asian students are
“always on the top” (to quote Linton’s counselor) were still prevalent. They were used to
lessen the tension of individual problems and struggles within the group, to legitimize the
sole responsibility of the Vietnamese language support personnel, and to create excuses
when there was a lack of institutional support.

Mainstream Practices and Second Language Learning

With limited access to institutional language help outside classroom, Thao was
left to sink or swim in mainstream classrooms. As an active learner, Thao tried to
negotiate her resources and to ﬁgure out how she could cope with reading and writing

expectations and responsibilities in each class. Although Thao needed enhanced

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vocabulary and ﬁrndamental knowledge in writing academic English, she was sensitive to
the reading and writing practices and to the kind of participation expectations of varied
mainstream contexts in order to get the grade.

However, she was lost in the lack of consistency among the regular teachers in
doing what was regarded as appropriate and required participation through oral and
written language in these classes. That is, the “compartmental nature of high school
instruction” in regular classes tends to divert expectations for “participation structures
and literate behaviors, and different levels of academic expectations” (Harklau, 1999, p.
42). What worked in one class did not work in the next. For instance, Thao found out that
when she participated in writing practices by submitting summaries of short stories,
movies, or even class discussion, the science ﬁction teacher recognized it as appropriate
and rewarded her with participation tokens. As these token later added up to a fairly
good grade, Thao learned to believe, though without any teacher comments, that such a
way (writing summaries) of participating in writing practices was valued. Nonetheless, as
Thao used the same writing strategy to participate in the English class, she was frustrated
about why the teacher was not satisﬁed with her summaries, though she thought she had
followed the directions to revise — or to re-copy the summary multiple times.

Thao was not yet aware that the goals of literacy practices in various mainstream
classrooms kept shifting in part due to the disciplinary contexts. In Thao’s courses,
however, there was also a lack of clear and consistent vision of contextual and
interactional components necessary for second language learners to gain access to
literacy and learning. Although she had more interactions with the 9th Grade English

teacher, Mrs. Turner, who occasionally worked with individual students in class, Thao’s

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interaction with the mainstream teachers was mainly through interpreting the scores they
gave her as grades. Without receiving speciﬁc advice on her acaderrric English, Thao
remained more lost regarding participating in mainstream classroom through oral and

written language.

Second Langpage Learning and Identity N ggotiations

As Thao negotiated her participation in the ofﬁcial mainstream curriculum in
order to be a good student, she was also responding to the cultural and social expectations
of who she was as a legitimate member of varied peer communities in school, the
“socially organized environment that offers categories and labels, locating students as
participants in schooling” (Meador, 2005, p. 149). In the cultural production of the good
student, many social factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, English language ability,
cultural heritage and stereotypes were all linked to Thao’s academic performance and the
dynamics generated by Thao and “various worlds and experiences [she] inhabits and
which acted on [her]” (Ricento, 2005, p. 895).

For Thao, her identities were mediated by and connected to her participation in a
variety of youth culture. To fulﬁll classroom responsibilities, Thao drew upon the popular
youth culture (e.g., songs, movies, poems, and websites) to express her view of the world
and her joys and worries as a young adult in her everyday literacy practices. She also
sought membership outside the classroom for a sense of belonging to the peer group she
preferred to join. For instance, Thao was particularly attached to her Aﬁican American
peers and always wanted to be a cool member. However, Thao was excluded not only by
the African American peers, but also by her own Vietnamese peers. The extended ofﬁcial

identiﬁcation of an ELL student regarding language, race, gender, ethnicity, cultural

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heritage, and immigrant experience was reinterpreted within peer groups, and these
interpretations further impacted on Thao’s opportunities to ﬁnd a welcoming peer group
and have relevant interactions with the group members. At Linton, students’ self-
segregation blocked Thao’s border crossing. The complex in-group dynamics of her
Asian and Vietnamese peers refused to take her back as well.

It was not a surprise that Thao was isolated by Linton’s peer culture which
reﬂected the institutional and societal problems of racial and cultural segregation. Thao’s
personal efforts to get positive interactions with the young people with whom she wanted
to socialize were not supported by the institution. Her isolation from both peers and
institutional help further complicated the process of her managing the complexities in an
urban high school.

Theoretical Discussion
Literacy, DeveIOpmeng and ESL

Literacy is the use of cultural and symbolic tools in a social dialogue (Bakhtin,
1981; Vygotsky, 1978). In this social dialogue, the cultural tools include not only
languages of all kinds, but also drawings, sounds, movements, and gestures. Thao
actively appropriated her information and thoughts in these shared forms to get her ideas
across (Dyson, 1997). For example, she learned to use African American Vernacular
English in her interactions and writings. She drew on her favorite romance books and her
own emerging sense of love when telling her own short story. In a little poem she shared
with me, Thao sketched a lotus next to the poem to express her peace of mind. And she

used her home language, Vietnamese, with her language aide in a variety of interactions.

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Indeed, for ELL learners, literacy means far beyond the constructivist concept of
separating the four basic language skills — reading, writing, speaking, and listening — as
different building blocks. Biliteracy (Homberger, 2003), which could be considered as a
dimension of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981), is a series of dialogized cultural practices
aimed to achieve a communicative repertoire among members of the community who
seek to share information and resources. Consequently, literacy for ELL students is
highly contextualized. First language (L1), joining with other symbolic tools as mediators,
can be used to facilitate second language (L2) learning. In addition to the sociocultural
view of L1 and L2, ESL requires critical lenses (Reyes & Halcon, 2001). In Thao’s
school, the provision of the ﬁrst language support was not integrated into the institution
in any meaningﬁrl way; therefore, it provided minimum support for Thao to learn English
literacies, even though it may have provided her with important cultural and emotional
backup

If literacy is the use of cultural tools in social dialogues, literacy development,
then, should not be linear as if language elements can be acquired in a certain order.
Instead, the development is more multi-dimensional. As Nancy Homberger (2000)
contends, there are many communicative means (e.g., languages, dialects, etc.) in
communicative repertoires and these communicative repertoires come from a variety of
contexts (e.g., oral to literate, rrricro to macro). In addition, literacy development follows
multiple paths (e.g., receptive to productive, oral to written, etc.) and it is a meaning
making process as people also negotiate their identities and social relationship with others.

In L2 learning, development refers to the process and product of a natural

combination of Situating oneself and using English to function in real language contexts.

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Whilst interacting with other members of the classroom community, Thao learned: her
relationship to the physical and social world around her; the functions of English by using
it across communicative events with others; and the grammatical aspect of English. For
instance, as illustrated in the previous chapter, when Thao was actively engaged in an
interaction, she was more at ease, conﬁdent, and accurate. Thao’s appropriation of
African American Vernacular culture was realized through practices in which she
constructed a sense of self and shared with peers (Miller & Goodnow, 1995). Thao’s
language is part of her identity, part of the peer culture she identiﬁed herself with, and
part of her border—crossing venture. The relationship between urban immigrant youth and
the impact of African American Vernacular English can not be deﬁnitively addressed in
this study. Further study is needed to understand the ELLs’ appropriation of Englishes
(e.g., African American Vernacular English), the transfer of their home languages into
the discourses used in school, and their identity negotiation (Huebner & Uyechi, 2004).

In the foreword of the book Language in the U.S.A. (Ferguson & Heath, 1981),
Hymes points out that “United States is a country rich in many ways, but poor in
knowledge of itself with regard to language” (p. v) in that much attention has been given
to a single form of English while no one seems to realize the signiﬁcance of “the full
repertoire of a community, the full range of its varieties of language, the variety of
purposes for which they are employed, the relations among those purposes” (p. vii).

The current language education policy mandates that immigrant students be
taught the only correct form of English. The students are looked down upon because of
their accented English. The assimilative and centralized attitude implicit in language

ideology exerts a great impact on the life of the immigrant students who come with little

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English. In Thao’s case, the conditions for her learning English were worse when the
shame of and prejudice against accented English were from her own Vietnamese peers.
Such attitudes may put immigrant students in an unfavorable position in their educational
progress, not because their English itself is deﬁcient, but because it is different -— different ..
from what is perceived as mainstream middle-class English (Stubbs, 2002). Therefore, it
is important to understand the sociocultural experiences of ELL students.

Critical pedagogues argue that learning to read the word is in fact understanding
the world (F reire & Macedo, 1987), in which teachers and students understand their
historical place in the balance of power (Maldonado cited in Reyes & Halcon, 2001).
Gender, race, class, and other constructed categories must be considered in the classroom
where the dominant value of English clashes with the value of other minority languages.
Along this line, it is equally important to note the need for ELL students to “desire the
knowledge of the rules and conventions of English” (Canagarajah, 2005, p. 936), because
for young adults who do not know academic English, learning the vocabulary and the
kinds of ways of producing discourse that match the disciplinary subjects in school will
help them participate in literacy practices in and out of classrooms (Delpit, 1988).
Participating in the Ecological System of Classrooms ’

This study is grounded in the sociocultural understanding that learning takes place
through learners’ participation in practices in the dynamic and complicated ecosystems of
school and classroom. Thao revealed to me her world of becoming a bilingual student in
her new country and new school, negotiating resources in literacy practices in and out of
classroom, and searching for her sense of self in varied communities of participants in

school. Her individual experiences were intertwined with those of others around her and

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situated within the historical and institutional contexts of Linton. Such experiences and
contexts co-exist and interact in dynamic ways, which Margaret Hawkins (2004)
describes as an ever-changing process that “shifts with each new move/interaction, and as
new organisms enter the environment, as ecological systems do.” (p. 21).

Indeed, learning never takes place in a vacuum. Drawn from Thao’s experiences
at Linton in her ﬁeshman year, her literacy practices took place in the interactions
between many layers of institution and her efforts to be a good student and to be who she
was. Therefore, her learning is highly contextualized and situated. That is, her learning
was inﬂuenced by the national climates that impacted on the attention and conditions for
educating English language learners. It was also inﬂuenced by the local capacities to
gather resources and set expectations of Thao as a learner. At the same time, Thao
reacted to the institutional environments with her own understanding of the expectation
and the available strategies to survive school.

It was not a surprise that Thao was lost in the ecosystem of school and classroom.
When the system itself did not provide consistent conditions regarding the meaning of
literacy and expectations for learners’ participation, it did not work for Thao, a new
member who needed anything but confusing messages to inform her how to survive.
Moreover, the peer world outside the classroom did not offer healthy social interactions
for Thao as she was cornered by the various layers of student segregation. These
segregations entailed the explicit racial gaps that had long existed in the society across
racial groups and the implicit inner group alienation resulting from cultural, historical and
political conﬂicts. The ecosystem was far from ﬁiendly to Thao when she was searching

for students with whom she could identify. In a diverse urban schooling setting, Thao was

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left alone ﬁguring out the rules of the game both academically and socially. The
ecosystem did not even have a “ﬁagile balance” (Hawkins, 2004, p. 21) to offer Thao
support accordingly.

One important aspect of the support was the opportunity for participation. Lave
and Wenger’s (1991) model has been useful for interpreting a wide range of L2 learning
situations (Morita, 2004). They offer a social practice theory where they contend that
learning takes place inside a learner, and that learning itself belongs to a larger process of
cultural practice. “Situated learning,” according to the authors, takes place under the
conditions of legitimate peripheral participation, with “peripher ” suggesting the
multiple and varied ways in which a learner or an apprentice can be located in a social
practice. Through legitimate peripheral participation, new participants, or apprentices,
acquire the skills required in a community of practice by actually engaging in the
practices together with expert members. Without being explicitly taught, they move from
the periphery of this community to the center, exploring their identities and sharing
responsibilities as they transform novices to experts in an active and engaged manner. In
their words, learning to participate in the activity is not "merely a condition for
membership, but is itself an evolving form of membership" (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p.
53).

This leaves us enough space to further investigate the nature of the participation
that was available to ELL learners in order to understand the social conditions for their
learning in school. The ESL class at Linton did not offer the participation that Lave and
Wenger describe. The traditional linguistic principles in teaching English dominated and

it did not ﬁrlly recognize the sociocultural view of language as a tool of participation. As

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a result, English is taught as building blocks that lack support ﬁ'om real communication
context (Valdes, 2001). The mainstream classroom as a whole did not address the needs
of Thao as an English language learner. The societal ideology and institutional
stereotypes reﬂected from the classroom practices tended to block the path Thao
struggled to make into the center of the community. The “expert members” who could
help Thao transform into an “expert” were hard to ﬁnd. Outside the classroom, where
students may potentially beneﬁt from peer interactions, Thao’s participation with Aﬁican
American peers, or Asian peers, or her own Vietnamese community, was not smooth. She
was isolated from the social practices of her peer groups. Lack of participation results in
difﬁculties in accessing resources, interaction opportunities, and a sense of membership.
Many ELL students are trapped in ESL programs (e.g., pull-out or ESL track)
without any opportunity to participate in real or regular classroom contexts (F altis, 1999;
Harklau, 1994). When ELL students are mainstreamed, school ofﬁcials, teachers, and
even parents tend to believe that the students are given the best chance to immerse in real
time English with language experts around them, namely teachers and English speaking
peers (Crawford, 1998). However, the puzzles and struggles Thao and her teachers had
raise in-depth questions regarding the nature of participation. For instance, under what
circumstances and to what degree is the legitimate peripheral participation really
effective in helping the marginalized immigrant students? What is happening around
languages used in the interaction by the “new” and “old” members in various
communities? What are the roles of English and the student’s home language(s) in the
power-laden negotiation of participation as “Hegemony over resources for learning and

alienation from full participation are inherent in the shaping of the legitimacy and

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peripherality of participation in its historical realizations” (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p.
42)?
Elﬁn—r6.

The notion of culture is fundamental to this ethnographic case study of second
language learning in school. I argue that culture is made up of interconnected practices
informing choice-making. Culture is not scripts. Research on literacy and language
development can not avoid this conception because languages, as symbolic tools, are
uniquely salient in the human beings’ practices of meaning-making and interacting
among one. another in social contexts (Street, 2001). That is, language learning is
intertwined with the cultural production of identity formation and negotiations (Levinson
& Holland, 1996).

Thao’s participations in the social and cultural practices in school were far more
complicated than the cultural difference notion of a mismatch of “patterned ways of
behaving, thinking, or feeling, formed over time as an adaptation to speciﬁc
environmental conditions” (Eisenhart, 2001, p. 211) between school and home. The view
of culture and cultural difference (e. g., Heath, 1981) is limited and problematic in that it
allows certain characteristics assumed to be shared by a group to determine the children’s
success or failure in school.

Even though John Ogbu (1978) reconﬁgures cultural differences with a “cultural
frame of reference”, his comparison between the history and educational motivation of
the “voluntary” recent immigrants and the “involuntary” subordinate minorities still
solidiﬁes groups thus again, drawing clear-cut boundaries. Therefore, I would argue that,

along his line, culture, instead of a “problem” (both cultural deﬁcit theory and cultural

159

difference theory would agree upon this stand), can be viewed as an “excuse,” which is
no better than the former.

This “excuse” is particularly present in this study. Interview transcripts indicated
that Tina’s progress was always commented in relation to her Aﬁican American peers
and her Asian peers. On the one hand, regardless of her grades, Tina was one of those
who were “always on the top” because, to echo her counselor, there were so many
African American and Cuban students in her class who could not even get an average
GPA of 1.0. On the other hand, as believed by some teachers and staff in the study, Tina
would fmally conquer English and grow an “excellent student” thanks to her Asian
heritage, which should strongly and positively impact her commitment to study.

Such so-called justiﬁcation will do her more harm than good. For example,
pedagogically, Tina’s learning was not attended to in a timely manner and with an
understanding of the complexities and capacities of institutional support and practices
with regard to ELL students, like Tina. Socially, Stacy Lee (1996) asserts that
stereotyping not only diminishes varied individual experiences within the group, but also
makes Asian students, as a group crowned “model minority”, only an invisible,
vulnerable but handy tool to oppress other minority groups (e.g., African or Latino
Americans). Unfortunately, in an effort to understand more within-group variations, Lee
ended up essentializing her Korean American participants as a group who dress
expensive and fancy, associate with White students, and keep their distance from other
Asian students.

Culture, for me and in this case study, is what is interpreted, negotiated, and

constructed through interaction and socialization mediated by languages. In short, culture

160

responds to certain social conditions and contexts. As explained by Levinson and Holland
(1996), such a stance toward culture as produced opens up new lenses to examine human
agency within and against structural constraints. In Linton, Thao, like other students, not
only faced the local notion of becoming the “educated person”, but also was situated
within a network of social relations among other students, with parents, teacher, school
oﬁicials, and staff members. Race, class, ethnicity, generation all played a part in this
grand drama of life in school. Various social sites1 represented different expectations and
relations. Thao experienced, interpreted, and negotiated with these expectations and at the
same time, produced her own meaningful interpretations of schooling and of using
English. My deﬁnition of culture awaits reﬁnement; nonetheless, Tina’s experiences in
the institutional complexities of language policy, pedagogy, and assessment will only
strengthen my understanding of culture and language learning, because in her social
world, ideas of schooling, family, romance, friends, race, and gender complicate
traditional group labels (e.g., as based on her social group and heritage), and so do her
language practices and negotiations. I hope that the study is compelling enough for
educators to reﬂect on their understanding of language development for both L1 and L2,
as well as the sociocultural implications for teaching and learning in America’s more
diverse classrooms.
On the Case

The purpose of this case study is not to represent the world, but to represent case
“in a small, naturalistic social unit” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p. 2), that is, I examined the

phenomenon of second language learning through Thao’s experiences at Linton. Within

 

1 For example, mainstream classroom vs. ESL class; library vs. cafeteria, Vietnamese language
aide’s ofﬁce vs. classroom.

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this social unit, Thao and her teachers, peers, and language aide were all trying to make
sense of learning and teaching English as a second language both inside and outside
classrooms; therefore, this study entails important “atypical features, happenings,
relationships, and situations (Stake, 2000, p. 439). Through Thao’s daily practices of
schooling, I as researcher learned not only the challenges Thao and her teachers faced in
fulﬁlling academic expectations, but also invisible layers of contextual meaning which
inﬂuential to Thao’s participation in varied socially organized activities. By detailed
analysis and description, as well as Situating this study in the literature, I aimed to reﬁne
what we know, both theoretically and practically, about ELL adolescents’ learning
experiences in high school (e.g., How do they interact with the institutional support and
expectations?; and how do they negotiate identities while learning in school?)
Limitations of the Study

Although the study left room for many potential informants for participation,
some remained important but beyond the boundaries of the study. I was not able to recruit
them into the study mainly because of the lack of consent. For example, I was not able to
interview Thao’s classmates — Mary (white), Nelson (white), and Taysha (black) — who
often sat with Thao as a group and interacted with her in varied ways. I also had to focus
solely within school because Thao’s parents were not ready to give me access to Thao’s
life outside school.

Second, the scope of the study only allowed me to look at Thao as she
transitioned from middle school to high school; therefore, the long-term implications for
her learning through participating in the social practices and her negotiating resources,

self, and expectations can not be drawn. As more case studies are desirable in the area of

162

academic language development for mainstreamed English language learners (van Lier,
2005), longitudinal studies will provide more complete descriptions and analyses of what
kinds of challenges ELL high school students experience over time, how researchers and
teachers conceptualize second language literacy informed by studies, and what
interventions may be helpful to better assist student learning.
Educational Implications

The complexities of Thao’s learning indicated that in order to better serve English
Language Learners in secondary schools, schools should have a consistent vision of
literacy and second language education that “places the responsibility for the education of
ELLs on all personnel” (Short, 1999: 112). As illustrated by Thao and other informants,
the overdependence on Mrs. My, the Vietnamese language aide, reﬂected the lack of
institutional consistency in the beliefs and strategies of working with the growing
diversities among students. It also covered the institutional inability to provide school-
wide assistance, regardless if it is from the general curriculum or language-speciﬁc
programs (e.g., the transitional ESL class, or ﬁrst language tutoring), or if it is from the
English class or other subject areas. The key is how to clarify pedagogical objectives and
social values across different learning situations in school (Leung & Franson, 2001).
Teaching and learning second language should respect the development process of
language learning in its sociocultural contexts where students learn through using the oral
and written language as a tool to participate in the cultural practices of schooling.
Teaching should also reﬂect this dialogic and interactional nature of learning. Therefore,
language education involves team work — the team work that all school departments and

teachers should participate in, the team work that requires collaboration and

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communication, and the team work that is done with the ELL students (Adger & Peyton,
1999; Harklau, 1999).

Educating ELL students does not mean lowering the standards. In her Science
Fiction class, Thao received easy grades throughout the semester not because of the
quality of her work, but because of the teacher’s sympathy towards a reality that Thao
had to use a language she barely knew to ﬁnish the work that was expected of those
‘regular’ and ‘ﬂuent’ students. Grades can not help Thao learn the vocabulary and
discourse that matches the disciplinary subjects, and neither can sympathy and
kindheartedness. Working with ELL students actually raises the bar for schools and
teachers to improve pedagogy that actively responds to their students’ second language
development. For example, Canagarajah (2005) argues that many studies (e.g., Street,
2001) reveal the importance of teachers’ listening to the students, as well as the local
communities they are ﬁom, and seeking channels to bridge the literacy practices
treasured by the students and the practices promoted in classroom. In so doing, teachers
will also avoid imposing the institutional version of literacy and achieve their
“enlightened purpose of empowering” the students (Canagarajah, 2005, p.935). To
achieve this goal, teachers should set up clear objectives of teaching both in the subject
matter and in the English language that ELL students need to acquire to survive the
school discourse. These objectives should also be revealed explicitly to the students so
that they understand what is expected of them and how they can actively involve
themselves in the learning process.

Every teacher is a language teacher. Classroom instruction is a reﬂection of

teachers’ beliefs about English language development. For those who see language as a

164

linguistic structure and as separate from subject matter content, English should be, and
can only be, taught piece by piece in a rigid order of letters, words, and sentences.
However, these narrow assumptions do not help ELL learners, because they
underestimate three important factors: home language/L1 in students’ learning of L2,
teachers’ more explicit scaffolding, and needs of culturally diverse learners (Reyes, 1992).
First, ELL students incorporate elements of L1 and L2 as well as elements that are not a
part of either L1 or L2 to create a series of overlapping approxirnative systems or
interlanguages while attempting to communicate. It will be helpful if teachers understand
the developmental features of second language learners before they make judgment about
the students’ ability, motivation, or attitude. Working closely with the community from
which the students come and with ﬁrst language support personnel should also inform
teachers’ instruction in class.

Second, supported by L1 whenever it is available, L2 instructions should be
consider that sociocultural nature of second language learning. That is, learning is not
acquiring a set of skills. It occurs in students’ participation in socially organized practices.
The default discourse patterns of IRE (Mehan, 1979; Cazden, 1988) only encourage
structured limited participation. The structured teacher-initiation, student-response, and
teacher-evaluation can be problematic for ELL students, due to the lack of opportunities
for developing students’ communicative competence. In classroom, teachers can create
more exploratory and collaborative talk (McCormick & Donato, 2000) for scaffolding.
Teachers’ comments, gestures, questions are symbolic tools to mediate and assist mental
activity (Vygotsky, 1978). They should also be familiar with ways to draw students’

attention to a task, simplify task demands, maintain motivation and progress towards

165

goals, decrease students’ stress, and model preferred procedures to achieve the goal
(McCormick and Donato, 2000).

Third, it is crucial for every teacher to understand who their students are as
learners and where they are from. This bears political implications in classroom
instruction. As Brian Street (2001) suggests, before any interventions, “it is necessary to
understand the literacy practices that target groups and communities are already engage
in” (p. 1). When Thao entered into her mainstream classrooms, she was regarded as one
of those Asian students rather than as Thao, a Vietnamese young women inﬂuenced by
and actively involved in youth culture, an outspoken young women who practiced poems
in English and who read romance book, or a caring sister who had her theory of family,
child rearing, and her social role at home. Teachers’ efforts to link Thao’s personal and
peer world and her classroom learning will not only prevent superﬁcial and stereotypical
judgments, but also inform them of possible interventions in classroom. These
interventions are then designed to integrate learning academic English in the practices, in
which the students are more apt to engage. This requires a more “permeable curriculum”
(Dyson, 1993) that nurtures, rather than separates ELL students from, the literacy
practices they are keen to connect to and at the same time, creates teachable moments to
help students understand and learn the function and complexity of academic English (e.g.,
to distinguish academic genres from casual personal sketches, and to address different
audiences by using different tones). In addition, teachers should make concerted efforts to
help ELL students accumulate experiences in the many areas required for successful
participation in mainstream classrooms (Duff, 2001). For example, teachers should

involve ELL students in a variety of classroom literacy practices. They need to help the

166

students to accumulate and make use of their knowledge of “popular North American
culture, mass media, and newsworthy events” (p. 103). Teacher Should help student learn
to articulate their perspectives on cultural and social topics and gradually “enter quick-
paced interactions” (p. 103).

Finally, teachers can not make up and carry out the game plan alone. Their
pedagogy, teaching materials, assessment tools, and the whole process of conducting
teaching should be informed by research and continuous professional development. For
example, they need assistance in understanding the kinds of participation for English
language learners created by the ways they design and conduct lessons. They need to
know how to address the language difﬁculties their ELL students have while they learn
English as a medium and the school subject matter taught through English. They need
help in distinguishing the developmental features in the students’ English in order to
transition them to the mastery of English.

The university teacher education departments shoulder great responsibility to
develop rigorous programs that prepare future teachers to address second language
learning and development in their classrooms. When we advocate a school-wide vision of
language education in secondary classrooms, we need to consider how our teacher
preparation programs contribute to this goal. In reality, language issues and diversity are
still disjointed topics covered only by a course or two in many teacher education
programs. In a prestigious teacher preparation program near Thao’s city, second language
development and ELL students are not included in the general curricula. If teacher

educators themselves do not recognize the signiﬁcance of addressing language variation

167

and ELL students’ learning of subject matter in school, how can we expect change in
thousands of classrooms?

My very last visit to Mrs. My’s office was in early May, 2006, when Thao was
ﬁnishing her second high school year. Thao was upset that her new counselor had sent
her to two ESL class sessions to start over from the very basics and that Mrs. My would
retire by the end of the semester; however, she tried to ensure me that she would still be
my best student even though I could not follow her to the classrooms any more. As we
move on to our next phrase of life, I am considering my role as a researcher and a teacher
educator and future research directions. Compared with studies that have longer time
expanse, this study attempted to only capture Thao’s learning on a given period time of
one year. More longitudinal studies that accompany ELL students throughout longer
periods of time may help us understand the challenges and resources students have over
time. Moreover, the vast area of the Midwest is still an underrepresented region despite
its growing diverse demographics and cultural integration. Thao’s case may be more
relevant when it is jointly examined across similar studies in the region. Finally, the goal
of understanding the dynamics of learning in local schools is to inform teacher education
and to help teacher educators, prospective teachers, and in-service teachers to serve our
students. Therefore, studies on teachers’ experiences, perspective, and practices of
teaching the ELL students should be equally important. Above all, when we look at
second language learning as a process of becoming an actual participant in the
contextualized social practices, more work needs to be done to understand this
participation metaphor (John, 2004) as enacted by students and teachers in varied and

dynamic contexts.

168

( )

[ 1

NO

N-O

/n:/

APPENDIX
Conventions Used in the Presentation of Transcriptsl

Parentheses enclosing text contain notes, usually about contextual and
nonverbal information, e.g., (laughs, points at her).

Empty parentheses, on the other hand, indicate unintelligible worlds or
phrases.

Brackets contain explanatory information inserted into quotations by me,
rather than by the speaker.

A capitalized word or phrase indicates increased volume.

Capitalized letters separated by hyphens indicate that letters were spoken or
words were spelled aloud by the speaker.

A colon inserted into word or sentence indicates that the sound of the
previous letter was elongated.

Ellipsis points inserted in the middle of a blank line indicate omitted material

Conventional punctuation marks are used to indicate ends or utterances or
sentences, usually indicated by slight pauses on the audiotape.

Commas refer to pauses within words or word phrases.

 

1 Conventions adopted from Dyson, 1989, p. 4.

169

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