Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing is an assistant professor of instruction in the Bilingual/Bicultural Education Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Having lived in Nicaragua, England, the United States, and Spain, she has experienced bilingual learning across four different countries. In this episode, she differentiates between sequential and simultaneous bilingualism, and the importance of assessment in the home and second languages before diving deep into the linguistic structures of Spanish vs. English. She also offers advice for non-Spanish speakers on the best ways to support Spanish speakers.
Show notes:
Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing - Website
Quotes:
"The way we position students in our classrooms can open or close opportunities for them to shine. When we bring in their knowledge and cultural experiences, we open more opportunities for them to be successful."
- Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing
"There's very strong research on how language and literacy skills are transferable from Spanish to English, and that transfer from Spanish to English is not automatic."
- Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing
Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing is an assistant professor of instruction in the Bilingual/Bicultural Education Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Having lived in Nicaragua, England, the United States, and Spain, she has experienced bilingual learning across four different countries. In this episode, she differentiates between sequential and simultaneous bilingualism, and the importance of assessment in the home and second languages before diving deep into the linguistic structures of Spanish vs. English. She also offers advice for non-Spanish speakers on the best ways to support Spanish speakers.
Show notes:
Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing - Website
Quotes:
"The way we position students in our classrooms can open or close opportunities for them to shine. When we bring in their knowledge and cultural experiences, we open more opportunities for them to be successful."
- Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing
"There's very strong research on how language and literacy skills are transferable from Spanish to English, and that transfer from Spanish to English is not automatic."
- Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Desirée Pallais-Downing, an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Bilingual/Bicultural program and in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. As a life - long multilingual learner, she helps us understand some of the unique aspects of bilingual, Spanish-speaking students, and how to craft instructional opportunities that take advantage of students' home language. We dive into the linguistic structure of Spanish and why that matters for our Spanish-speaking students who are also learning English. Are you unsure about what cross-linguistic transfer actually means? Well , we discussed that too. We know you'll come away from this episode, learning something new about language and learning. Well, hello, Desirée! We're so glad to have you on today's episode. Thanks for joining.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Very, very happy to be here, Susan.
Susan Lambert:Well, we have a whole lot to talk about in terms of biliteracy and just understanding some differences between Spanish and English. But before we get started, we always like our listeners to understand a little bit about who you are and your journey into this world.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yes. Yes. That's very nice. So I am from Nicaragua . So my native language is Spanish. But I was very drawn to English since I was a very , a small little girl, since six years old, I took English. So I've been learning English since I'm very little. I thought I was really good at English; <laugh> I would boast my abilities. But that changed drastically when I was sent to England because of the war in Nicaragua. So as a teenager, I went to England and then I experienced what it's like to be a second language learner. So I kept continuing to learn English—this time, British English—and I persisted with the struggles I encountered and I ended up being successful. Then I moved to the US and I went to college as a foreign student, which I think gives a very peculiar experience as a bilingual.
Susan Lambert:Sure .
:Then I went back to Nicaragua, and I'm saying all this because it has implications for biliteracy. In Nicaragua, I opened a school and taught. I had taught in Boston as well. But I opened a school and taught there for six years. And then I went to Spain to get a master's . So, you know, the mother country in English and the mother country in Spain, then you go. My Spanish was not the Spanish from Spain, but I had less issues then. But I did have to do a masters with the academic language expectations of a Spanish institution. And then I went back to Nicaragua and was a consultant for a while in education. And then I came to Austin and then I , I started another master's. So I'm saying all this because I have a master's in Spanish, in educational technology and then a master's in English. So I'm biliterate because I had so many experiences with both my native language and English as a second language. I had a lot of privileges. And I am a sequential bilingual. So biliteracy for a sequential bilingual can be very different than biliteracy for a simultaneous bilingual.
Susan Lambert:Let's talk about that a minute. So simultaneous bilingual means you're learning those two languages at the same time; sequential biliteracy means you're learning one and then another and maybe another and another.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah. And with sequential bilinguals, I had a full access to my fully developed native language in order to transfer skills to English. I did not have the experience of my native language being silenced, which is the experience of many bilinguals in the US. So I had a very positive experience with transferring those skills from Spanish to English.
Susan Lambert:That's really interesting because we talk a lot, even on our last episode with Dr. Claude Goldenberg, which his experience was similar, was that his home language continued to develop at the same time this language of schooling or English was developing, and the benefits to developing both of those languages for those new language learners.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yes. And so the benefits of promoting by literacy by encouraging your native language have been demonstrated through research. And so for simultaneous bilinguals, it can be very different because it involves recovering an identity as a second language learner and recovering your language with a positive sense of your language. So my experience is as a sequential bilingual.
Susan Lambert:Mm-hmm , that's really interesting and sort of an aside and shout-out to teachers who have second language learners in your classroom right now, encourage that home language! Encourage parents to continue to speak that home language at home! Even if you can't do that at school. Right?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Absolutely. Absolutely. Very, very important. Yeah.
Susan Lambert:So just an interesting observation about that is that you're a Spanish language learner, also learning English as a young child, you go to England and it's actually a different , British English...is it considered a different dialect of English? I think that's the correct term. So you're learning some things that are even a little bit different. And then your exposure back in Spain, when you were doing that in a different, a different dialect, if you will, of Spanish. So you had sort of multiple advantages that not only did you have this language development, but exposure to...to variance, is it? Within those standard languages?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah, absolutely. And we wish for all our bilinguals in the US to have those multiple opportunities with developing their native language. So that's something that really can help.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. And that makes sense. We're gonna really dive into the sort of linguistic structure of Spanish, but the reason I sort of mentioned that is because when you're looking at how the language works , you in particular have been able to see a lot of those variances. So you've had a lot of experience with what this means. Before we dive into that, though, I know that you have had a little bit of experience and maybe a lot of experience with why this matters for our Spanish-speaking students with your work, with a Response to Intervention project that you did at the University of Texas. I'd love for you to talk just a little bit about that.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Absolutely . So when I came to the US, after I had the master's in ed psych , I started working at the Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts. These were the times of Reading First, when there was a lot of funding for training. Um, so I was very, very lucky to be trained by educators such as Luisa Moats, Elsa Cárdenas-Hagen , and other educators. And also, I must clarify: When I was working there, I was in the technical assistance and professional development project.
Susan Lambert:OK, great.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:It was not a research experience. It was implementing research, but it was in practical applications of the research. So I worked at the reading center for nine years. About four of those years was in the Response to Intervention project. And so that involved supporting educators who work in bilingual schools that were considered to be underperforming. And so the Response to Intervention framework, it introduces a new criteria for identifying students that are struggling. And so it has basically two dimensions: The diagnostic aspect, which is how to correctly diagnose students who are experiencing difficulties. But the other aspect, which tends to be underestimated, is the instructional approach, which is the preventive aspect, which is identify students who are experiencing struggles and providing a layered system of intervention supports in order for them to be successful. So the preventive aspect of RTI is what drew me to create resources, especially for Spanish-speaking students. So because at that time there was an abundant research coming from the national reading panel on the benefits of the five components of reading—phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—and the benefits of explicit instruction. We designed lessons, and in my case lessons in Spanish, that we would put on our website for them to be accessible for bilingual teachers who needed to support their Spanish-speaking students. The idea behind this would be that educators would provide support depending on their needs . So for students at a highest level of risk, there would be more scaffolding. So this all sounds very powerful. But challenges come when you contextualize , because there can be some issues with misdiagnosing bilinguals who are struggling or considered to be struggling in reading, but their reading behaviors are really the result of acquiring English as a second language. So I was very drawn to the work of Albar peace and Janette Klinger in that regard, which is to provide supports to prevent the misdiagnosis of Spanish-speaking students. And that drew me to do research into the linguistic structure of Spanish and to identify some areas that could lead from a monolingual, English-only lens to think that students are experiencing difficulty without realizing that those difficulties may be the result of their experience with the Spanish language. And this mainly applies—again, I should clarify with sequential bilinguals because with simultaneous, the issue might be more complicated.
Susan Lambert:Hmm . I have a question for you on that. We also recently did an episode with Lilian Durán, where we were talking about the importance of assessing English learners that were Spanish-speaking at home, assessing them both in their home language and the language of instruction, just to maybe find those areas that might look like they would be misdiagnosed. Do I have that right?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Absolutely. There are issues that may appear in English, but then you need to look to see they appear in Spanish because if they appear in Spanish...for example, fluency issues. If there are issues with the prosodic aspect of reading or other aspects of difficulties with the coding that are persistent, that is the key concept. If these difficulties persist in spite of high-quality instruction, THEN you could say these students may have a learning disability. So RTI as an alternative approach to prevent inappropriate referrals AND as an alternative approach to identify students who have learning disabilities
Susan Lambert:Hmm that's beautifully said and really, really important too . So I know what we're going to do is really kind of do a little bit of a dive into the linguistic structure of Spanish itself. And so caution for our listeners, if you wanna stop and get a cup of coffee, to have some caffeine, to help you through, help you through, it might get detailed. But I think it's really important because we have lots of people that, you know, really wanna know how they can help kids access their language assets to, you know, support them in English language development. And I know from your point of view, there are similarities between English and Spanish. T hey're both alphabetic languages, for example, and they have some very similar sounds in the language, but that it's really important that educators pay attention to some of the key differences between Spanish and English to support, then, those second language learners in their classroom. So how about we dive into some of those key differences?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah . So, you know, we all talk about how Spanish and English are both alphabet languages. They have the same orthographic system, and so there's a lot of benefits from the transferring of their phonological patterns and the transfer of many aspects of phonics elements. There are 19 phonics elements that are the same in Spanish and in English. And there's very strong research on how language and literacy skills are transferable from Spanish to English. The issue that I'd like to draw and to highlight here is that students transfer what they know. The transfer from Spanish to English is not automatic. Those two aspects are important. So students transfer what they know. So they will transfer many aspects that are similar. But there is a little bit of a risk of overgeneralizing. And so there might be some aspects of Spanish that are not being transferred. And this has to do with the layers, the Anglo-Saxon layers of the English language. So as we all know, when the decline of the Roman Empire happened, Britain got invaded by Germanic tribes. And this led to the birth of the Anglo-Saxon part of the language. So that produced a lot of common words like house, mother, through. And so these common words may be very well known to native English speakers. And I'm thinking here mainly of students whose experiences with Spanish is very strong. So maybe recent arrivals who come to the US and are immersed in an English-only classroom. And we might be overgeneralizing in terms of these transfer behaviors. And so, for example, the ratio of sounds to alphabet letters. So in English, there are more sounds than letters and in Spanish, there are more letters than sounds.
Susan Lambert:Wow! We gotta just—we have to stop there and say that, say those two statements one more time, because I think that's really important. In English—
Desirée Pallais-Downing:—there are more sounds than letters, And in Spanish, there are more letters than sounds. So what does mean? The most important example in terms of, I guess the phonological system, which gets established by five years of age. In Spanish, we have five vowels that are consistently pronounced in English. You may have about 15 sounds of vowels. So how do we provide supports for students who are not producing the sounds in English that we might expect from a native English speaker whose experience with the language has established that phonological system? So do we accept or do we, you know, try to produce a sound that's gonna be very hard to produce? For example, I still do not pronounce correctly for a native English speaker the difference between cut, as C U T, and caught C A U G H T. So I have to consciously attend to the difference in the sounds of the vowels that are long vowels. So that's a very important aspect where we might be maybe overgeneralizing. And this has particular implications for reading, because in Spanish, when we now think of decoding, the vowels are reliably produced in Spanish. So in closed or open syllables, they are still pronounced the same way. But when we have students transitioning to English-only classrooms, all of a sudden they have to learn that vowels are pronounced differently in closed and open syllables. And so by just focusing on the transfer, we might assume too much and, and miss an instructional opportunity of exposing students to the variety of sounds in the English language.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. I'm gonna restate that because for our very new listeners that are just new to some of these phonological issues, Spanish has five vowels and they say the same sound every time they're written in a word. So if a Spanish word has an O in it, it's always pronounced as—
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Oh.
Susan Lambert:And if it has a U, it's always pronounced as—
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Ooh. Always.
Susan Lambert:OK! Yes. Always. When we think about English and teachers will get this right away, there's multiple representations for that. And so we have to teach kids the different vowel sounds and vowel combinations. And so for our Spanish speakers, that's quite a jump to go from five very consistent sounds and spellings to more, much more than that.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Right. So before we think, oh, this student has an auditory problem or an issue, you know, with not pronouncing the vowels, first, let's accept that they're never—I am biliterate. I have had incredible exposure to both languages. And still my husband makes fun of how I pronounce some vowels because I don't—
Susan Lambert:Ohhh! I'm sorry!
Desirée Pallais-Downing:—I don't pronounce them exactly. So, I mean, I'm just saying, you know, not really making fun. But you know, I'm still never going to pronounce them the way native English speaker pronounces. And so , the other aspect is the issue of allophones. So allophones are versions of two phonemes. So for example , in the words "dolor" and "nada," those are two allophones for the phoneme "Dih." In Spanish, there are two allophones, so there are two versions of the same sound. But in English, they are two different phonemes. So when a Spanish-speaking student uses the D in particular, the sound "dih," you know, from Spanish, it might sound a little odd because you're not expecting the "the," the voiced sound, but that comes from just their experiences with the Spanish language. The same is with the Spanish Z. Zzzzzz. That sound is only realized before voice consonants. So in English, they are two different kinds of phonemes. There's no point in distinguishing between the S and the Z in Spanish, but in English, there is. So there's these very subtle differences that might lead to believe there's an auditory issue. Another example is in Spanish, we don't usually produce puffs of air with certain consonants. Like, for example, the T in the initial position, as in the word "tall," we don't aspirate as you do in English. So a Spanish-speaking student may read the word "tall" sounding like "doll." Because of the lack of aspiration. Because again, that comes from their experiences with the Spanish language. So let's hold on on the very quick evaluation that they might have a problem. The other aspect, as I mentioned it before, how Spanish vows retain their phonemic identity irrespective of the syllabic context. So graphings representing more than one phoneme and phonemes representing more than one graphing do occur in Spanish, but to a much lesser degree than in English. So Spanish-speaking students need to be exposed to letter combinations that represent one sound. That's not common in Spanish. Words that have the, I-G-H, the double E, the O -W, the O -U, they can be challenging, not because students are struggling, but because they haven't had those experiences with Spanish. So I think it's important.
Susan Lambert:I think so, too. I think that's a good example of the—we were talking about the vowels. So the O-U in English, a Spanish speaker may not understand what to do with that O-U because every vowel, right, has its own own sound. Or is related to its own sound. So explicitly teaching those combinations is important.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Right. Yes. And so they're silent consonants that are that are relatively common in English. And they're very uncommon in Spanish. So I have identified quite a number of differences between Spanish and English. The spelling consistency of the vowels is variable in English, but it is highly consistent in Spanish. So in spite of the aspects of transfer that we'd like to talk about, there are some aspects that are negatively transferred and that would need to be attended in order to support students. Another aspect , decoding multisyllabic words. It can be relatively challenging in English , but in Spanish , it's relatively easy. Again, because of the consistent way in which the vowel is produced. So maybe over in Spanish, there's no need to overemphasize multisyllabic reading, but when these students are learning to read in English, there's definitely a need to understand the syllable types so that they can chunk letter combinations and syllable types and read automatically by developing orthographic representations in English. See, with bilinguals, the issue is that, you know, the four-processor model developed by McClelland and Seidenberg of the semantic, the context, the phonological, and the orthographic system, bilinguals have to develop these representations in two languages.
Susan Lambert:Mm . Which , yeah. So let's make a connection to that. So this idea of matching the sounds that you hear to the spelling patterns that are represented in the language that you speak, so that orthographic mapping process, you have to do that...and is it separately, or is it a Venn diagram? Is it overlapping because some of the sound spellings match, but then you have to learn another set of them? Is that right?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah. So I think it would be important to be aware of those sound-letter correspondences that are different in English compared to Spanish in order to expose students to those aspects of English that they may not be familiar. And again , I'm talking about students who mainly have had an experience with the Spanish language.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. That makes sense. I'd like to dig in a little bit to this, because this is, you know , we're sort of already talking about phonics because we're talking about sound-spelling patterns and being able to decode and read words. But let's back up a little bit to talk about, like, hearing these differences. So even before a kid comes to school and we start to teach them how to read, they have heard the language from birth. But what we do know is that when kids are born, they actually hear all sounds of all languages, but over time, they actually acclimate to the language in which they hear the most. Right?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Right.
Susan Lambert:So, as we are thinking about Spanish speaking students, as they learn English, it seems to me that this hearing element of helping kids hear and speak the sounds, this sort of oral language, would be important, even if they come to us in second or third grade, when we typically wouldn't focus on that with just English-speaking students. Am I talking crazy?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah no, I totally agree. I think it is important to identify the different sounds on the one hand and on the other hand to accept approximations. Because they're never going to produce the native—they're never gonna sound like a native speaker because the chronological system gets established very early in life.
Susan Lambert:Yeah . That makes sense.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:So it's like having these slots in the brain, like for the sounds of the vowels. I have five slots—and again, I'm not pronouncing slot the correct way.
Susan Lambert:It sounds good to me. It sounds good to me.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:I have five slots. So when you ask me to pronounce the short vowel sounds , I'm going to access the only slot that I have which is similar. I'm gonna try to pronounce it like you, but I'm not gonna do it exactly. Because you have more slots in your phonological system represented in your brain. And so accepting approximations is important.
Susan Lambert:That's great. And I wanna raise another one too. You said when you say certain words in English, you have to attend to the word more. So it takes you a little more—like, to say a word in English, there's a little more cognitive energy that you have to place there. Is that right?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Absolutely. Absolutely. And that might prevent me from accessing other parts of my system, like meaning. You know? So let's hold on in making assessments of students about their difficulties before we consider language-related aspects, at least. So for example, I'm gonna give you another example. In terms of the processing system . So, the vocabulary. When we evaluate students in vocabulary, the system, the semantic system, has a word pair for the English and the Spanish. Let's say that the student has a semantic representation for "toy" and "juguete," but the teacher is assessing the meanings of common words, like toy. And it could easily be that a Salvadorian student has very strong meaning-related representations related to "juguete," but does not have the same representations related to "toy." So when we assess students in vocabulary from just an English perspective, we may miss on all their connections that they have in the Spanish language. So again, instead of thinking these students are performing low based on expectations , let's consider that the toy-juguete network may be richer for that Salvadorian child than for a child who only knows the English word toy. So having an asset-based perspective can lead us to appreciate more of a bilingual approach to the connections that they have. And hold on to the judgment regarding their alleged difficulties in vocabulary. So that's just an example of vocabulary.
Susan Lambert:So can I ask you a question about the vocabulary piece of it then? But if a student has a mental model of a toy or , even, let's say, a classroom in their home language, if we can tap into that concept and understanding and give them English words to attach to that, isn't that a benefit to the student, to be able to use those languages together?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Absolutely. That would be a key , a very powerful, difference than just considering their knowledge in English only. Like if we provide experiences in both languages and tap, like you say, to their knowledge of the word pair in this case in Spanish, then we're really making those semantic connections to English.
Susan Lambert:What about for a teacher that doesn't know Spanish? So I'm a teacher and I'm in a classroom. I know I have several kids that, you know, they're language-rich in their home language, but I don't have access to that because I don't know their language. What can a teacher do to try to draw that out? What are some of the strategies to help make those connections?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah. Provide some support with native English speakers, pair them with Spanish-speaking students so that the Spanish-speaking student can maybe teach the native English student about the words that he or she knows in the native language and provide opportunities for Spanish-speaking students to display their knowledge in their native language so that they are positioned in a positive way. And so it doesn't—you don't need to know the native language in order to provide spaces for students to feel successful and display their knowledge
Susan Lambert:Mm-hmm. And, and then what about helping them learn from, you know, taking their ideas in their own language and attaching them to the language of English? Are there any really good strategies to do that?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Well, there's the very well-established strategy of cognates in Spanish, you know. There's many words that are cognates. And that is—there's a benefit to that. But even in this area where the potential for transfer is high, it may be important to avoid over-generalizations. And to know that previous exposure can impact the ability to learn from cognates. So for example, words like "exit' and "exito." The exit, meaning success, is not the same as exit, meaning getting out. Or "lecture" and "lectura"—lecture as reading is not the same. And then "on-say"—there's words that are written the same, but they mean different: "once" and "once" [pronounced "on-say"]. So providing explicit attention to those words that are false cognates.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. Yeah . That makes sense.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:I mean, holding on, on the quick judgment...what could be a quick judgment of students and instead providing spaces for them to display their knowledge can go a long way to enhancing the learning in their second language.
Susan Lambert:Yeah. Yeah. So we hear a lot about , um, a concept called cross-linguistic transfer. So I wonder if you can help us understand. I think we've been talking about some of the cross-linguistic transfer, although I'm not an expert in this area. So I wonder if you would explain to us what it is and how all of these things we've been talking about sort of relate to that concept.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Absolutely. Absolutely. There is very strong research on how language and literacy skills are transferable from Spanish to English. So what does this mean? When a Spanish-speaking student learns English, there are many common phonological patterns. There are many common phonics patterns that the student can draw upon in order to learn English. So this cross-linguistic transfer means transferring these phonological patterns using the sounds that are similar, using the phonic elements that are similar. So that's a huge advantage because when we consider, for example, Chinese, which is a language that is more complex in terms of the connection between the sounds and the visuals, the representations , there's a lot of advantages in Spanish-speaking students when they learn English. So this is what the cross linguistic transfer is about. On the other hand, like I said before, transfer from Spanish to English may not be automatic.
Susan Lambert:Right.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:It may need some support. So we may over-generalize and , you know , we may not be aware of the aspects of the Anglo-Saxon layer of English, which do not have a counterpart in Spanish. So let's be aware that there's a layer of English that doesn't have something to draw upon. There's a non-transferrable part. And so when, when working with students who are from Spanish-speaking backgrounds and who have Spanish as their strong language, let's be aware that they may need to have these experiences with these aspects of the English that are not familiar to them. And then in terms of reading behaviors, there's aspects related to the fluency. And this is where, you mentioned at the beginning, the importance of assessing in the native language, right? So when there's a slow persistent reading, like that's a marker. That could be a marker for a problem in fluency. So there's a persistent, slow rate of reading, even when English-specific orthographic processes have been given attention. So it could be that there are aspects of—and this is something that's not very well known—but there's aspects of the prosodic aspects of Spanish that are different from English. For example, the syllable has the same weight, pretty much the same weight, in Spanish, for most words. But in English, as a stress-timed language—Spanish is more of a syllabic language. So English, the stress of the syllable does not have the same weight. So let me give you an example for the word "multiply." You stress the "mull" more. Whereas in Spanish we say, "multipliCAR." We stress the LAST syllable more. But the reduction in the stress of the other syllables in Spanish is not as strong as the reduction in the stress in other syllables in English. Why am I saying that? Because from an English-only perspective, the mon monotonous way of reading from a Spanish-speaking child may seem like there's an issue when all it is, is a transfer of their prosodic experiences with the Spanish language. And I'm just mentioning now the weight of the syllable, but this also the way that, that function words are not given a lot of weight in English and in Spanish, they are, relative to English. So because of the prosodic differences between Spanish and English, all I'm trying to say here is that from an English-only perspective, a Spanish-speaking child, reading English may sound like he's reading more monotonously than what we would expect, but it could be that that is related to their experiences with the linguistic aspects of Spanish and not because there's an issue with reading. And what I'd like to draw upon here is the work of Janette Klinger, who has highlighted how the reading behaviors of Spanish-speaking students may look like reading problems, but they're actually second language behaviors.
Susan Lambert:So I am—and we've had a conversation before—I've done a little bit of reading, and I'm sitting here thinking, wow, if I'm listening to this episode of the podcast, I'm all of a sudden feeling a little bit overwhelmed, especially if I'm a classroom teacher trying to teach Spanish students to read and speak English. And I know nothing about the language. Are there places that folks can go to, to help them understand similarities and differences between English and Spanish or English and other languages?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah, I think it is important to learn a little bit for teachers to be open, to learn a little bit about the native languages of students. And I think holding on the judgment goes a long way and providing opportunities to acquire English without making a quick judgment, that by itself can go a long way. That's the first thing. A second aspect is thinking of ways that Spanish-speaking students can share their knowledge of Spanish in the classroom. Bringing in parents who speak Spanish, like, bring families to the classroom to share the knowledge that they have about their Spanish language. Provide a space in the classroom where Spanish is celebrated. That can go a long way. And then a third factor would be well, you know, if you have the time as a teacher to go and learn a little bit about these linguistic differences so that you can provide supports. And then a fourth aspect is think of a variety of ways of providing supports for English. Break down complex tasks. Think of inquiry-based approaches, where they get exposure to the different syllable types, where they get exposure to vocabulary, in ways that highlight what they know of their Spanish. So I think those strategies can go a long way.
Susan Lambert:That's really helpful, really helpful. I wonder what we left unsaid , as we're getting ready to close up here. Is there anything else that you think is really important for our listeners to know about this topic?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Well, just that since I covered almost all components, you know, the last component I didn't cover is , , comprehension and maybe the syntax aspect of Spanish. So the syntax in Spanish is a lot more flexible than in English, so you can change the order of words and convey the same meaning in a sentence, whereas in English it's more restrictive.
Susan Lambert:OK.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:And so you can say, "Marta va al cine," "Marta goes to the movies," or "Al cine va Marta," "To the movies goes Marta", or "Va al cine Marta," "Goes to the movies Marta," and it's all correct.
Susan Lambert:Oh, that's interesting! Implications for kids in the classroom learning English, for sure, then, right?
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yeah , exactly. So when students may construct sentences, that may seem incomprehensible again, consider, "Hey, maybe, maybe they're transferring their syntactic structures from Spanish to English." You know, as Spanish is considered to be a more synthetic language and English is considered to be more analytic. So Spanish has these inflections into big words. So we have these big words. And so when we transfer the knowledge from Spanish to English—for example, in the word cantaríamos, that's one word in Spanish, but in English is "we would sing." So the transfer again, in that aspect, it may not come natural for students. Because they're more, they're more unconsciously primed to incorporate inflections into Spanish words. So, you know, being a little more patient and providing opportunities for students to acquire the syntactic constructions in English.
Susan Lambert:That's really helpful. And it reminds me, as on this podcast, we've been learning about all the elements to both word recognition and language comprehension, that when you apply that then to second language learners, you know, we have to make sure that we're covering and thinking about like how we're helping kids make those transfers. And like you said, maybe even learning a little bit about the language of the majority of the kids in our classroom to help support them.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Yes. Yes. And I guess that kind of in closing, what I'd like to say is that, like, I started mentioning that I was a sequential bilingual and a lot of my observations apply more strictly with sequential bilinguals and there's many degrees of bilingualism in the US. And so one aspect that has fascinated me in the last six or seven years is the experience of simultaneous bilinguals or heritage Spanish speakers, whose native language was silenced as part of the schooling experiences. So that might present more challenges than are just linguistic. And this is where I think the benefits of qualitative research come along, which is qualitative research in bilingual education highlights the role of identities. You know, before I was immersed in that research, I used to think, "Well, why is identity instructionally relevant?" Well, it IS relevant, because the way we position students in our classrooms can open or close opportunities for them to shine. So when we position them in asset-based ways, bringing in their knowledge, bringing in their cultural experiences, we are going to open more opportunities for them to be successful, even in these linguistic challenges that I've highlighted. So I guess that I would like to end with that remark of the positioning aspect. How do we position students, 'cause there, there can be a tendency of positioning students that are bilinguals as at-risk, when they might be bringing in a lot of experience and knowledges that can be assets in the classroom.
Susan Lambert:Yeah, that's great. Just a reminder of, you know, really honoring and respecting the, the home experiences and the experiences of those students that are in our classroom. So I really appreciate that. That is a great thing to end on. And Desirée, we really appreciate your insights on this. And it sounds like there's probably a whole few more podcasts we could do just digging into a little bit deeper some of the things that you mentioned. So thank you again for joining us. I really appreciate it.
Desirée Pallais-Downing:Absolutely. Thank you very much to you.
Susan Lambert:Thanks for listening and keep your feedback coming. Want to learn more? Be sure to stay connected by subscribing to your favorite podcast app, and join our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading: The Community.