Towards reconceptualizing exposure-track L2 Spanish in the US: A task-based pilot
Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, PhD - Indiana University
While exposure-track additional language (L2) is one of the most common types of elementary-level L2 programs in the United States (Rhodes & Puhfal, 2011; Heining-Boyton, 2017), it often operates under the assumption that children will learn minimally, if at all, in weekly lessons. Given the limited resources available to develop exposure-track programs and support schools and teachers in program creation and maintenance, this may be a fair assumption. These challenges are further exacerbated in some states, such as Indiana, by a shortage of world language teachers (US Department of Education Teacher Shortage Area Report, 2018), and where teachers do not receive training in L2 education or the L2 itself.
Operating within the frameworks of instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) and task-based language teaching (TBLT), and answering recent calls for researchers to support elementary-level L2 programs (Kissau, Adams, & Algozzine, 2015), this project designed that dream of what could be possible when researchers, teachers, administrators, parents, and local advocates work together to create, support, maintain, evaluate, and continuously improve a longitudinal task-based exposure-track L2 Spanish program. Taking place in rural Indiana, in a town with a Spanish-speaking population of more than 31% (US Census, 2020), the project I will detail began in early 2021 with needs analysis (spring 2021), cycled through program design (summer 2021), implementation (AY 2021-2022), evaluation and redesign (summer 2022), and reimplementation (AY 2022-2023).
By triangulating data sources and methods including teacher post-lesson questionnaires, researcher journal notes from teacher/researcher weekly meetings and task analysis, student task enjoyment ratings, and 46,000 tasks collected from over 700 K-5 students, I will share how our dataset will demonstrate that children can learn cumulatively in 40 minutes per week, when provided with a robust task-based program collaboratively run between their teacher and TBLT researchers and with administrative support. This task-based project serves as one example of how we may reconceptualize exposure-track L2 education in the United States from a deficit mindset to one that realizes more equitable access to the lifelong benefits of early L2 education. This project also shows how a foundation of ISLA, TBLT, and research methods can be applied in a practice-based collaboration.
This project was funded by the Vice Provost for Research and the Center for Rural Engagement at Indiana University.
