Advances in the Study of Bilingualism

(Chris Devlin) #1

(g) The teacher responded sensitively to the pupils’ borrowing, for example:
Pupil: ‘Mae’r plant yn spinio dreidl’.. .[The children spin a dreidl.. .]
Te a c h e r : ‘Mae’r plant yn spinio...y gair Cymraeg am spinio ydy troelli...mae’r
plant yn troelli dreidl...’
[The children spin.. .the Welsh word for to spin is troelli.. .the children
spin a dreidl.. .]
(h) The teacher continued to model various sentence structures in Welsh,
for example, ‘Mae’r Iddewon yn bwyta bwyd fel ‘[The Jewish people eat
food like.. .]
(i) The teacher encouraged the pupils to write their ideas in Welsh.


Here is an example of one of the Y3/4 pupils’ written work.

‘Mae Hannukkah yn amser hapus i Iddewon achos maen nhw’n mynd i’r syna-
gog a chael parti gyda’r teulu.
Yn ystod Hannukkah mae’r plant yn chwarae gêm dreidl ac mae pawb yn canu
caneuon.
Maen nhw’n bwyta bwyd arbennig hefyd fel potato latkes gyda saws afal a
hufen.
Mae’r plant yn cael arian siocled ac anrhegion bach oddi wrth y teulu.
Bob nos maen nhw’n cynnau un cannwyll ar y menorah.
Mae Hanukkah yn digwydd bob blwyddyn am wyth diwrnod ac mae pawb yn
mwynhau e achos mae’r teulu a ffrindiau yn dod at ei gilydd.’

[Hannukkah is a happy time for Jews because they go to the synagogue
and have a party with the family.
During Hannukkah the children play a game of dreidl and everyone sings
songs.
They eat special food too like potato latkes with apple sauce and
cream.
The children get chocolate money and small gifts from the family.
Every night they light one candle on the menorah.
Hanukkah takes place every year for eight days and everybody enjoys it
as family and friends come together.]

(The spelling is left as it was in the original.)

The Year 5 and 6 pupils (age 9–11) had fairly good mastery of both
Welsh and English and they worked independently to find similarities and
differences about Hanukkah and Christmas. The pupils worked collabora-
tively using several English medium sources such as photocopied work-
sheets and textbooks and they recorded their findings on the computer in
Welsh. This case study reinforces and demonstrates how teachers ‘elaborate
the lesson for emergent bilinguals by providing different scaffolds’ (García
& Kleifgen, 2010: 133).


Language Arrangements within Bilingual Education 163
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