Language strategies

16 matter (viz. Mathematics). In the other programs, exclusive use of the L2 is first reserved for less academic subjects like Sports and Home Economics.

• In the European Schools use of the L2 as a medium for teaching cognitively demanding and decontextualized subjects is delayed until grade 8, when the pupils have been taught the L2 as a subject for seven years (grades 1-7) and when they have been taught through the medium of the L2 in less academic subjects for five years (grades 3-7). In the Latvian programs, exclusive use of the L2 as a medium of instruction (i.e. excluding its use in 'bilingual teaching') for academic subjects is usually also delayed but not always as long as in the European Schools. The earliest use of the L2 for academic content matter is attested in MoES program model 4, where the L2 is used as sole medium of instruction for Mathematics from grade 4 onwards.

• In the European Schools, development of literacy in the L2 and of other decontextualized aspects of L2 is delayed until grade 5. By that time pupils have not only acquired the necessary basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) in their L2 but also CALP-related skills have been established in the L1, allowing for transfer to the L2. As was said earlier, it is unclear whether literacy in the L2 is also delayed in the Latvian programs.

In sum, curriculum structure and content of the Latvian bilingual programs seem adequate for the outcome goals desired from the policy. MoES program model 3, from which the LASOR model and many of programs currently implemented in Latvia's bilingual schools are derived, provides the most adequate curricular conditions for minority L1 maintenance and therefore seems particularly appropriate for implementation in areas where sufficient extra-scholastic contact with the L1 and motivational conditions cannot be guaranteed. In situations where L1 development is less at risk but where contextual support for L2 development cannot be guaranteed, bilingual education might be more profitably modelled after program model 4.

Finally, it may be queried whether restricting bilingual provision to primary education only is judicious if the aim is indeed to push both oral and literacy skills in both languages to their maximum capacity so as to become complete vehicles for full usage in all aspects of professional, public and personal life.

17 unavailable, which precludes a detailed appraisal of this aspect of bilingual education in Latvia. The following sections are therefore offered as personal reflections on general aspects of language teaching methods, strategies and practices that could potentially be applicable to the Latvian context.

4.3.2.1. Strategies for language content teaching

Content-matter instruction in both school languages is an essential component of bilingual education which enhances language learning in two ways. First, it renders the target language more pertinent to the pupils' immediate communicative and academic needs, thus creating a more favourable motivational disposition to learn it. Secondly, content matter instruction in the target language provides crucial input and output reinforcement for language acquisition processes. Second language acquisition research particularly emphasizes the importance of comprehensible output in this respect (Swain 1995). Comprehensive output refers to opportunities for pupils to produce their own meaningful, coherent and linguistically precise discourse in the target language. Such output is necessary for the development of high levels of productive oral and written proficiency in the target language as it moves the pupils from a purely semantic-pragmatic processing of the language to a structural analysis. Content matter classrooms must therefore ensure that they provide not only adequate comprehensible input but also opportunities for pupils to produce sufficient comprehensive output. Research on teaching practice in bilingual education shows clearly that traditional teacher-centred activities, which are inevitable at certain points of a lesson, when they become the dominant or exclusive mode, create insufficient opportunity for individual pupils to produce comprehensive output, hindering language development (Swain 1996). Such teacher-centred strategies are typically resorted to by teachers who, due to insufficient preparatory training, fail to understand the process of integrated content and language-learning syllabus in bilingual education (Baetens Beardsmore 1999). This situation leads to a pedagogic strategy which produces reactive rather than active language usage on part of the pupils, thereby defeating the major objective of a bilingual program using content-matter to reinforce the formal language learning process.

For this reason, the use of a language as a medium for teaching content matter needs to be complemented by creating communicative-rich contexts in the classroom that promote the production of spontaneous continuous output to enable the development of productive language proficiency. Such contexts can be created through, for instance, interactive teaching and the extensive use of monitored group- or pair-work rather than individual work. The European Schools experience in L2 teaching show that this practice is greatly facilitated if the pupil population is linguistically heterogeneous, because this creates a natural context for the necessary use of a common L2. Such natural occasions for informal social interaction in the L2 rarely emerge in homogenous immersion classrooms, where there is little reason for pupils to use the L2 amongst themselves as they typically share a common L1. This is one of the reasons for the lower than expected levels of productive proficiency attained in immersion education (Swain 1995). One way, therefore, in which bilingual education in Latvia could offer more interactional input and output in the L2 is

18 by creating ethno-linguistically mixed classrooms and promote the L2 as the common lingua franca.

Obviously, this option will be available in some but not all areas of the country.

4.3.2.2. Strategies for language subject teaching

Research on L2 achievement in immersion contexts and the European Schools suggests that there is a clear need in bilingual education for 'structured exposure' to the L1 and L2 in the form of language-subject teaching to supplement the 'language in use' component of language-medium content instruction (Ellis 1990, Harley 1993, Housen 2002a,b). In minority language contexts, it may even be expedient to delay L2-medium content instruction and first provide L2-subject teaching to help pupils get started in learning the language. This is the practice in the European Schools and in program model 4 in Latvia.

Methods and approaches to L2-subject teaching vary widely (see Stern 1992 for an overview) and there is no conclusive research showing the superiority of one over the other. The methodology currently being developed in Latvia for the teaching of LAT2 appears to favour an experiential approach, emphasizing the development of communicative skills rather than formal knowledge about the language. This is probably a sound option, given the wide range of functions of the L2 in education and the wider society. However, there is increasing research evidence that L2-subject teaching (and, indeed, L1-subject teaching) also needs to be analytic and focus on linguistic form at some stage of schooling to help pupils acquire the less accessible aspects of the target language and to promote their metalinguistic awareness, linguistic accuracy, precision and appropriacy (Hammerly 1991). Lack of form-focused L2 teaching can engender premature fossilisation, particularly in situations where critical levels of L2 exposure and motivation cannot be guaranteed, which might be the case in bilingual schools catering for Russian-speakers in Latvia.

'Focus on form' in language teaching need not necessarily be explicit, or the sole responsibility of the L1/L2 subject teacher. In the European Schools, all teachers in both L2 and L1 classes, whatever their nature, tend to include linguistic features in their teaching, paying particular attention to lexical precision and grammatical accuracy (esp. in written production) and spontaneously correcting minor errors by repeating the correct form before moving on. It is this general but often implicit concern with linguistic accuracy, precision and appropriateness that pervades all lessons in the European School which helps to account for the high levels of productive oral and written proficiency in both the L1 and the L2 in this program (Baetens Beardsmore 1995).

4.3.2.3. Bilingual teaching strategies

A striking feature of bilingual education in Latvia is the prominent role in many of the programs and program models accorded to 'bilingual teaching'. As was stated earlier, it is not clear exactly what this means in terms of actual teaching and classroom practice. The

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term 'bilingual teaching' can refer to a wide variety of pedagogical practices. It can refer to strong forms of bilingual instruction, such as the concurrent use of two languages in the same classroom ('translanguaging'), either by the same teacher or by team teachers, or the alternate use of the L1 and L2 in consecutive lessons or days ('Alternate Day Bilingual Teaching). Weak forms of bilingual teaching are typically characterized by the occasional and limited use of one language (usually the L1) during a designated 'other language' lesson. Weak forms of bilingual teaching may also include the use of bilingual glossaries of specific subject-matter terminology to ensure that the pupil has the requisite vocabulary in both the L1 and the L2, or the occasional and ad hoc use of code-switching and translation to clarify issues and solve communication problems. Such (weak) bilingual teaching strategies are common practice in many bilingual education programs, including the European School and Luxembourg programs.

The literature is not precise on how any of these different bilingual teaching strategies works in detail, nor what their outcomes are in terms of language and educational achievement. It is therefore not possible to make valid statements about this aspect of bilingual education in Latvia. However, on the basis of our research in L2 teaching in the European Schools (Housen 2002b), we would advise against the regular mixing of languages for teaching purposes in general and particularly against the frequent use of the 'dominant' language during lessons designated to the 'weaker' language. (In Latvia, the dominant language will normally be Latvian though in some schools it may be the ethnic minority language, in case Russian).

Regular use of the dominant language in 'weak language'-medium classrooms not only deprives pupils of vital input for language learning but it may also lead them to ‘switch off’ whenever the weaker language is used, making that language less pertinent to their immediate communicative needs and thus diminish their motivation to learn it.