Developing a Mother Tongue Program with Standards and Community Resources

By Dr. Christine Cipriani Wilson

This article was adapted from my presentation at the ECIS Multilingual Learning in International Education Conference, in London, March 3, 2019

Living in a Minority Language. 

Every bilingual student has a story to tell about language, culture, and identity. As a child growing up in New Jersey, my non-English speaking stay-at-home mom was communicating in her mother tongue--Italian--the only language she knew at the time. My father, on the other hand, was speaking to his five children in broken English while he was learning English through immersion on the job.  

Dr. Cipriano Cipriani in laboratory, Padua Italy

Though both of my parents were college educated, my dad having a PhD in Chemistry and my mom with an undergraduate degree, they still did not have a strong idea of how to raise literate children in a foreign country. In our home, my father did not want us using Italian--nor eating too much garlic--because in 1960's America, an Italian immigrant wanted to integrate as quickly as possible. Identifying with the American culture and language, my father thought, was the quickest way we as family would develop the one language that counted: English. The worst misconception about language that my father had was that speaking only in English to his children would improve our academic language at school as young children. This is unfortunately a common fallacy among immigrants that minority languages do not count and “privileged languages”--national languages-- must be learned at all costs, even at the cost of losing a home language. 

Thanks to my mother, I grew up speaking, reading, and writing in Italian at home along with my siblings. I would speak with my mom daily in Italian, as well as enjoy tutorials from her in reading and writing over time. It was there that developing a richer academic language in English began as I transferred skills from my home language to the school language through my mother's attempts at maintaining our heritage language at home.  

Cipriani Family, New Jersey, 1975

As I became more interested professionally in second language acquisition, I was fortunate enough to pass down this "mother tongue" with a conscious effort to my own children. I spoke to them in Italian while in Italy every summer visiting family for a full immersion experience. Attending camp and playing with Italian peers over the years during summer break provided the domino effect of acquiring Italian and providing new opportunities to learn third languages in high school and university.  

The phenomenon of living between multiple languages is a concept that underlies Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE).   Researchers, NGOs and for-profit businesses are working on solutions to the question: How can informal and non-formal learning opportunities in the mother tongue best support or supplement school settings, particularly when the formal school system is unable to serve as a venue for MTB-MLE? Rudy Klass, in addressing this concept of  “first-language-first” education (schooling which begins in the mother tongue and transitions to additional languages) begins by recognizing the inherent benefits of non-formal mother tongue literacy. (Good Answers to Tough Questions in Mother TongueBased Multilingual Education, 2016). Apart from the acquisition of transferable reading skills, learning a home language develops positive attitudes and expectations towards reading, reinforces ethnic identity and community cohesion, and allows a medium for the expression and continued appreciation of local values. 

Why Should Schools Chart a New Course in Teaching Mother Tongue?

All Americans benefit from multilingualism. Globalization has led Americans to function in new and unfamiliar parts of the world, making language learning an important skill for them. For example, today, international trade constitutes a driving force in the US national gross domestic product. New free-trade agreements require language literacy in product labeling which must be negotiated and prescribed in more than one language (Heritage Language in US, Peyton, Ranard, McGinnis, 2001).  Looking at our State Department, there is a clear need for our diplomats to be able to communicate and understand the languages and cultures of the countries where they are posted. Foreign diplomacy needs multilingual multicultural professionals to work towards peaceful solutions from more than one language and cultural lens.

Language learning outside of the US has also been limited to the narrow band of privileged languages that reflect first world values. In Switzerland the national languages are German, French, Italian, and Romansh and in Canada’s national languages are French and English. In Kenya, the national languages are English and Kiswahili, however, having exams in English became a social class distinction ensuring the elite maintained its power.

There are 50-75 million ‘marginalized’ children globally who are not enrolled in school who speak marginalized languages. (Arnold, Bartlett, Gowni, & Merali, 2006). These students speak another language outside the language of instruction at school. In teaching national languages of a country only, and not considering minority languages in school, many students either do not enroll in school or eventually drop out because they cannot understand what is going on. Growing research shows, however, that children’s first language is the optimal language for literacy and learning throughout primary school (UNESCO, 2008a). Yet, many educational systems around the world insist on exclusive use of an academic language that is not spoken by the majority of the school population despite growing evidence and parent demand for minority language education.

The case for implementing multilingual education for international schools can be made for a student body that lives in a time of unprecedented travel, technological advances, and globalization. These students are learning in a language other than their mother tongue and their numbers are growing rapidly. In some cases, multilingual learners are even identified as special needs students because they learn too slowly and high stakes testing causes some to be referred to pull-out classes where they often miss the content being taught.

As the cognitive, pedagogical, and sociocultural rationales for MLE become stronger, in the last decade policy makers and implementation agencies have been persuaded into the field of mother tongue–based multilingual education. There is much research on the value of MLE which indicates that having a strong mother tongue foundation leads to better understanding of the curriculum while developing a positive attitude towards school. (“Mother Tongue Learning”, International Teacher Magazine).

Middle School Japanese Mother Tongue Class

Developing a first language throughout formal schooling while an academic language is learned is vital to improving literacy among multilinguals long term. Early grade reading provides evidence that having young learners read in their first language develops strong readers. This research points out two truths about language learning: (1) that both the cognitive benefits of using a familiar language of instruction provide easy construction of schemata for learning and the availability of prior knowledge in learning new content (Bloch 2014; Benson 2000; Collier and Thomas 2004) as well as (2) the opposite effects of not developing a mother tongue in which the use of a medium of instruction not understood by the learner significantly inhibits learning (e.g., Diarra 2003; Harris 2011; Motala 2013; Trudell and Piper 2014). A significant predictor of learner success in both reading competency and content knowledge in science, social studies, and math is fluency in the language of instruction (Gove and Cvelich 2011:16; Alidou et al. 2006).  

Trudell also points out that the student-centered pedagogical model which is shaped by scholars such as John Dewey, a Pragmatist, who believed that human beings learn through a 'hands-on' approach, and Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist who developed a personality theory that emphasized the importance of the self-actualizing tendency in shaping human personalities. Such ideas were popularized in the 20th century by educators such as Maria Montessori. Montessori classrooms supported learners involved in self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play. Children make creative choices in their learning, while the classroom and the highly trained teacher offer age-appropriate activities to guide the process. In such an environment, teaching methods are heavily dependent on the use of a language which the learner has mastered. 

Additionally, student-centered learning relies heavily on critical thinking and dialogue. For teachers and their students to create adequate space for discussions, they need the linguistic skills through instruction to express complex ideas and to ask critical questions. Thus, this particular pedagogy places much higher linguistic demands on classroom participants than teacher-centered approaches. Classroom research on language and learning also indicates strong links between language of instruction and the participatory nature of the classroom (e.g., Batibo 2014; Trudell 2005). Research also shows that fewer children drop out of mother-tongue classes because multilingual students understand what is being taught, and what they are expected to do themselves (Laitin, Ramachandran and Walter 2015). Mother tongue classes give learners more motivation to continue attending classes, and parental understanding of the curriculum provide mothers and fathers the ability to help the child with homework. Such an approach builds community around learning which strengthens the bridge between school and home.

Arabic Mother Tongue Class

Improved literacy skills and critical thinking can be a direct product of a developing mother tongue. When a child transfers language skills from mother tongue to the academic language of school, this child is using the asset of a first language to make sense of the second language by speaking with both languages --what linguists call “translanguaging”. This is a learning process of overlapping languages which ultimately leads to multilingualism. Translanguaging in a classroom is a highly desired attribute in learning of any kind because it allows all students to contribute to a deeper conversation using the tools they have in their tool belt-the languages they bring to the classroom. It is the kind of learning that leads to the development of personal, social and cultural identity which makes this child grow up to be a successful global citizen.

Creating a Favorable Environment.

Prior to the actual implementation of the multilingual education project (MLE) at an American international school in Israel, I did some upstream work which involved conducting an analysis of the sociolinguistic backgrounds of the learners, parents, and school administration in order to identify which languages are used by whom and for what purposes. The school’s academic language was in English supporting an American curriculum in a country with one official language, Modern Hebrew (Arabic in the passage of a nation-state-law in 2018 had been demoted to a language of “special status”). Many staff and local students used Hebrew fluently. The Modern Language Department taught from Grades 4- 12 Hebrew, French, and Spanish. Minority languages included Russian (the largest group) , followed by Korean, French, German, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Hindi as the top ten languages in a school where 29 mother tongue languages were spoken. There was a total of 464 mother tongue speakers which comprised 66% of the student body. (*Data from Powerschool Home Language Survey, January 2019).

 The pilot program that I formed in the first year included mother tongue languages of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Russian, free of charge. Arabic involved a collaboration with an Arab school nearby which provided Arabic language mentors for exchange of English classes. By the second year, the language groups increased to include French, Spanish, and German; advanced level instruction for students intent on pursuing language testing for college credit was also made available. As the number of students in each class increased, more parents raised their hands to serve as language mentors. Though tutors from outside the community were an important part of the Mother Tongue Program, multilingual parents as language mentors were critical to the development of the program . There were PTA endorsements at every level of the school, mother tongue parent networks that recruited by word of mouth, and parents helping in mother tongue classes. 

 The Mother Tongue Program had four key benefits. First, it developed multilinguals starting at the PreK level focused on early grade reading, to middle and high school to academic literacy skills, to extra-curricular activities that involved the entire school community PreK to Grade 12. Second, mother tongue lessons mirrored objectives of the school’s standards: English Language Arts Common Core Standards . As multilingual students experienced the learning of academic standards in their home languages, they began to apply their learning in the academic language of the school, thereby gaining confidence as learners within the school environment. Third, mother tongue instruction not only strengthened linguistic development of participating students, but also helped define cultural identities as students defined themselves both as part of a subgroup and part of a larger school community. Fourth, mother tongue classes unified the international school community organically, focusing students, parents, and language mentors on global citizenship skills which embraced the minority languages of the school.     

Mother Tongue as a Heart Language.

 Carlton, a Chinese Mother Tongue student, learned how to tell a story in Chinese using a postcard stimulus of a painting he had selected from a stack of postcards. Guided by the Common Core Standard for narratives, his story had a beginning, middle and end.  

Chinese mother tongue student narrative with sequenced events and temporal words

The mother tongue lesson objective of the day used the Common Core Standards for story telling: "Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure" (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.3).     Carleton, with the guidance of his mother, a language mentor in the class, was able to connect the schema of one story in two languages. This is the kind of favorable environment that leads to an enriched life of bilingualism.                                      

Reflecting on the process of MLE, it begins with the first language of the multilingual learner. Mother tongue is the first language we hear. We register the sounds before we are born when we are still in the womb. A child expresses their first emotions, words and thoughts in their mother tongue. Because of that, I call it our “heart” language.

As language mentor and student became active participants in creating a story from the postcard in the mother tongue classroom, what is heard is a mother and child co-constructing meaning in the most natural of learning environments. Carleton's mother instinctively coaxes her son to give more details in the story as he looks at the postcard. The first grader sequences his story using seven keywords that helped weave his story from its introduction, “Long Hair Princess and Steve the Game player are eating a piece of cake and an egg”; to a climax, “The cake fell down on Game Player’s head and now he has to wash his hair”; to a resolution, “After they finish dinner, Long Hair Princess begins to paint because someone took her egg away”; to a conclusion, “Before they go to sleep, they read”. 

Video: Mother and child speak a heart language

Carleton's understanding of the schema of a story including time, character, and events with a beginning, middle and conclusion can more easily transfer his understanding of storytelling into English now that he has experienced storytelling in his home language. A “heart language” allows the learner to grow in his or her self-image in order to play and later acquire the academic language of math and science by being active participants in their own learning. The structure of a story can be realized in both languages and one skill of storytelling can be more easily transferred to the next language learned.

It is very important that schools pay attention to how a mother tongue language is treated because it can unlock the door to the “100 other languages” (Loris Malaguzzi, Reggio Emilia Approach). For multilingual children to develop from the language of socialization to the academic languages of science or math, they must focus on what they do best: (1) children are capable of constructing their own learning, (2) children are collaborators and learn through interactions within their communities, and (3) children are natural communicators and should be encouraged to express themselves however they feel they can. (Key Elements of the Reggio Emilia Approach).

In the Chinese mother tongue class after school, Carleton constructed his own learning of a story, collaborating within his Chinese community, and with the guidance of his language mentor, his mother, he was encouraged to express himself through his own understanding of the picture he had chosen. As an observer, it was clear that this one-on-one coaching was more than just teaching a standard in the shadow of a minority language. Interaction of this kind involved a fundamentally intimate sharing of a “heart language” to develop a complete story which met the standards of storytelling that was a measure in his own English class during the day.

Transitioning from Monolingualism to Multilingualism. 

Korean Mother Tongue Class

Jim Cummins, a second language acquisition rock star, identified the problem with monolingualism and the advantages of multilingualism. As a monolingual, a child who knows one language “doesn’t know it well enough”; conversely the child who speaks multiple languages knows a concept in multiple languages, knows how to transfer academic skills such as cause/effect, fact/opinion, and sequence of events across languages, and knows the attitudes and values from other cultures (Cummins 2000). Participating students in the Mother Tongue Program were able to demonstrate all three aspects of multilingualism. They were proud of their culture while integrating into the multicultural environment of the school; they were able to transfer the academic skills of their home language to the demands of the school curriculum; and they respected the attitudes and cultures of their friends.

Language Loss to Language Gain.

Language loss occurs for many reasons. Traumatic experiences through war or immigration can cause people to lose their mother tongue. Schmid, researcher of language attrition, found that German-Jewish wartime refugees in the UK and the US lost their language skills not because they had been abroad a long time or how old they were when they left, but because of the trauma they had experienced as victims of Nazi persecution. 

Language loss also occurs daily in the lives of children around the world who attend schools that teach in languages that are not the primary language of the student body. Monolingual schooling is perhaps the worst form of language loss. Mother Tongue Language Loss results the minute a child drops one language to start learning another language, primarily the language of school. The two systems start to compete with each other and up to age 12, a child’s language skills are vulnerable to change if the mother tongue is not activated at both a social and academic level. 

Enriching the school’s offerings, the Mother Tongue Program provided a bridge for bilingual students with classes ranging from translanguaging experiences at the beginner level to full immersion at the advanced level. Because mother tongue learners are often in a class of varied levels, language tutors and mentors can use both home and school language to create meaning as well as their students. In this class, the Chinese tutor switches from Chinese to English to ensure all of her students understood the term “brush”.

Video: Chinese Mother Tongue Class 

Mother Tongue Adaptations. 

Globalization also leads to mother tongue adaptations or change, dependent on the linguistic environment of the learner. Glyn Hicks and Laura Domínguez discovered that Spaniards in the UK and Cubans in the U.S. had different versions of Spanish due to differing linguistic environments. UK Spaniards mostly spoke English outside of the house while Miami Cubans spoke Spanish all the time. The result on their mother tongue was that the isolated UK Spaniards preserved underlying grammar while Cubans using mother tongue lost native traits. A key factor in the adaptations of Spanish was not the influence of English, but of Miami’s other varieties of Spanish. Cubans were speaking like Colombians or Mexicans, and they made changes to grammar consistent with their new reality (Hicks and Dominquez, 2016).  

Whatever allows us to learn languages also allows us to make changes to our mother tongue as we adapt to new languages. Adaptations to minority languages in the context of the international school in Israel resulted because of the various dialects mixed in the mother tongue classes. Wang, from Mainland China, taught in Mandarin, a dialect of Chinese which is considered the standard while Lua taught in a minority dialect, Hakka, spoken in Singapore. According to these two language tutors, Mainland Chinese lessons consist of more literary components that are catered to native speakers compared to the Singaporean syllabus which focuses more on everyday conversation, which they believe is closer to an approach in second language learning. Because of these differences in Chinese dialects and teaching approaches from Mainland China and Singapore, Wang and Lua agreed to focus on early grade reading approaches since there were many preschoolers in the class and everyone in this mixed group would benefit from the modeling of different dialects of Chinese.

Chinese Mother Tongue Class-Wang teaching with Pictograms

Learning Chinese, they believed, should not be rote learning at one level as found in traditional pedagogy because it would be contrary to most international school learners’ experiences. Storytelling became a core element in the lesson to introduce common Chinese characters, with the emphasis on recognition. Writing would come at a later stage. Because the combined ages of the class ranged from PreK to Grade 5, the lessons were pitched at a Preschool to Kindergarten level for all students, considering that many learners did not come from Mainland China and were several grade levels below as a result.

Wang, tutor and mother, confers with her son in "heart language" 

Wang and Lua taught on alternate weeks, adopting a thematic approach with a new book or game which introduced a new theme. Lua introduced elementary school science concepts adapting the lessons to suit the maturity of her students and to the range of the students’ oral and written levels. When introducing a topic, keywords were simple words, such as animal names and colors which Preschoolers could understand as well. Wang used captivating videos and computer technology, even creating her own blog page, to highlight vocabulary that parents could reinforce at home. Both Wang and Lua also made use of pictograms to explain the meaning of the Chinese characters.

Lua's mother tongue science class uses multimedia resources to develop vocabulary skills

Though both language mentors were certified teachers in their home countries, they did not want to charge for the class because their own children were in the program, and they were concerned about the dialects they represented. They worried that parents would complain because of a minority dialect used as the language of instruction. By forming the class as a play group where mothers joined in to assist their children, students were taught at their level, and were exposed to multiple dialects, adapting to the environment without prescribed rules and rote memory of traditional classrooms.

Chinese mothers as Language Mentors

Program Structure.

The international school where I worked in Israel caters to 29 mother tongue languages where nine language groups have over ten students each. More than half of the student body speaks a mother tongue (66%). The school's academic language is English and it provided AP testing for three “modern languages”: Spanish, French, and Hebrew. Classes address language forms across content curriculum tied to the American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages Standards (ACTFL).

Creating a Language Policy and Meeting All Student Communication Goals. It is my opinion that a failure to respond to the mother tongue language needs of an international school community would be equivalent to denying the linguistic and cultural diversity that represents not only the student body, but the very nature of a globalized world. In Israel's local communities near the school, there are 35 languages and dialects spoken. Israelis speak Hebrew either as a native tongue or as a second language. While teaching there, Arabic had been demoted to a “special status” from a national language in 2018, and it did not go unnoticed by the Arab students that attended my classes. Creating a language policy at the school in this environment to say the least was challenging, but it was a great opportunity for our community to reflect on how best to service all of our students' needs.

Our school belonged to the Middle States Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools (M.S.A.-C.E.S.S.) which accredits public and private schools as well as school systems throughout the United States. MSA is also active in more than 85 countries around the world. As a part of the accreditation committee focused on the MSA Communication Goal, I collaborated with a team of teachers to craft a goal which could be considered our language policy. This communication goal broadly addressed the importance of multilingualism: “ By 2023, all learners will communicate effectively across diverse contexts and purposes, strengthening their academic and social language literacies.” With the rationale that “every teacher is a language teacher,” the newly developed Communication Goal in 2018-2019 defined literate behavior for the 21st Century:

"Developing and nurturing literate behaviors is of primary importance to schools. Literate behaviors include fundamental practices like reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Literate behaviors in a global society require skills and proficiencies that extend outside one’s home language and include an additional language. Literate behaviors in the 21st Century require opportunities for students to expand skills through the use of technologies and global audiences. Students will independently and collaboratively engage in rich language opportunities for authentic purposes to enhance their language proficiency/ies in social and academic settings, including proficiency in an additional language."(School Wide Language Action Plan)

EAL-Mother Tongue Reading Buddies: High School and PreKindergarten

The Mother Tongue Program developed with the guidance of all stakeholders from administration, to teachers, to parents, to students. The new focus was that all classes in the school community would help nurture literate behaviors in a home language while developing the academic language of English. From this goal, the teaching of multilingual students changed from a deficit position of pull-out classes to “fix” students to a more inclusive approach including mother tongue classes. The multilingual student-centered approach insured the development for the whole child and helped launch formally the MLE program at the school which was realized through a number of activities and development of resources. The developments that resulted from the Communication Goal included collaborations between classrooms based on language diversity during the school day, multicultural and multilingual curricular units of study, active use of the mother tongue section of the school library, extra-curricular activities such as a Mother Tongue High School club that sponsored mother tongue movies and social gatherings during lunch, in addition to weekly mother tongue classes for Prekindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school students.

Mother Tongue Program Schedule and Fee Structure. Mother tongue class schedules after school were dependent on student demand. Mother tongue language groups formed as tutors, language mentors, and students become available throughout the year. Students could meet up to four lessons/week based on language group needs. Students signed up for two semesters/year. Mother tongue days corresponded to the bus schedule so that students could attend either one of two afternoon sessions at 3:15-4:15 p.m. or 4:15-5:15, and then be brought home. The classes were either fee-based classes in keeping with standard tutorial fees at the time with a trained tutor (language expert with teacher work experience or certification) or there were free classes with Language Mentors (native speaker of the language without training). Enrollment was a one semester commitment.

 Forming Mother Tongue Groups. The Mother Tongue Program was advertised throughout the campus at the beginning of each semester through posters, newsletters, PTA Facebook posts, PTA meetings, and Google Surveys. Direct emails were sent to mother tongue parents of newly formed groups based on the school's student database of mother tongue speakers. Parents who wanted their children to participate in the Mother Tongue Program informed either the tutor, language mentor, or coordinator of the program, or responded to solicitations by email. All participants completed a registration form. Parents also informed the coordinator if they wish to help support the program with mother tongue books or join as a language mentor or tutor. Teacher to teacher collaborations were also critical to integrate curricular projects focused on language diversity and cultural awareness.

Russian Reading Buddies-High School and PreKindergarten class collaboration

Mother Tongue Tutors. Tutors knew their home languages at an expert level with either teaching certificate or years of teaching experience and could ask for a fee comparable to other tutors at the school. They planned, prepared and delivered lessons. They posted lesson plans to the Mother Tongue Google Site using Common Core Standards and their national curriculum as a curricular framework. Tutors provided the classroom management with the help of their language mentors. They helped collect mother tongue books for the school’s library. Tutors were responsible for taking attendance and collecting registration forms and fees. They communicated with parents on student progress. Tutors prepared students at the high school level for AP/NEWL exams. Tutors worked with the program coordinator and attended training meetings to standardize classroom methodology.

Language Mentors. Language mentors were parent volunteers who had a mother tongue which they were happy to share. They worked in collaboration with other mothers to confer with students one-on-one. They brought in snacks, enhanced an appreciation of culture, and helped maintain behavior needed to provide an orderly, productive classroom environment.

Curricular Approaches. The Mother Tongue Program supported the rich diversity of languages and cultures of the student body. In order to enhance both home and school languages, teachers were guided to use Halliday’s genre pedagogy to explicitly teach text types such as narrative, persuasive, and expository pieces as negotiated in classroom activities in speaking or writing. Borrowing from Michael Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics, mother tongue classes modeled and repeated all forms of language development, across domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In order to give mother tongue students multiple opportunities to produce a wide range of genres in their home language as they did in English, they created stories, jokes, news reports, and persuasive arguments through debates. Thematic activities were woven into a range of subject areas from science, social studies, art and drama. The key was to get students engaged in their home languages 90% of the time while the teacher guided students 10% in English or home language depending on the level of the students. What standardized all mother tongue classes was the curricular framework used by the school- Common Core Standards, along with the national curriculum standards relevant to each language group.

Mother Tongue Google Site. Using Google Sites, tutors and administrators were updated on mother tongue developments. The webpage communicated and documented the building the program. Sections include a welcome letter to new tutors, registration information, language proficiency tests procedures (AP/NEWL), resources, standards, and lesson plans by language group. 

Mother Tongue Google Site Exemplar

 Tutors could model and adapt their lessons to the lessons provided by the after school English as an Additional Language (EAL) class which demonstrated monthly sessions of language and content objectives using Common Core Standards. All tutors could see other class lessons that were posted as the year went on, and could observe the class live giving them new ideas for upcoming classes. As time passed, photos and videos, as well as individual blog sites were linked onto this webpage for all to see. This developed a community of learners as we improved our craft of teaching mother tongue and aligning it with the school’s curriculum.

Mother Tongue Group Reflections.

The seven mother tongue classes (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Russian, French, and Spanish) at the school developed in different ways, but all achieved the goals of their language tutors and mentors. They helped engage students in their mother tongue at school by developing the acquisition of patterns between conversational language and academic language that Jim Cummins termed as "Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and "Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency" (CALP) in Mother Tongue. At the elementary school level, these classes focused on BICS using basic site words, oral fluency, and early grade reading. In middle and high school, mother tongue classes began to expand on the continuum of literacy focused on CALP proficiency with the hope of preparing juniors and seniors for the exit language assessments of the Advance Proficiency (AP) and NEWL exams which tested listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills for academic purposes.

Middle School Japanese Mother Tongue Class

By the second year of running the Mother Tongue Program, I came to understand that I had to manage each language group understanding that there were differences between them. Tutors guided their students based on the needs of that semester's levels, abilities, and behavior, as well as the demands of their parents. My role was to provide support, resources, and communicate to administrators and parents the developments of the program. Most importantly, I was there to advocate for the minority languages that were slowly appearing at the school. I created new venues for these languages, and ensured as much publicity for them through collaborative events and articles throughout the year published to the school webpage for a broader audience. I surveyed each group at the end of each semester, and began to collect data on them.

The following reflections are a summary of the surveys and interviews I collected from each group:

Chinese Language Group. The Chinese group opted strongly for language mentors that were unpaid to guide the classes. Parents wanted to run a Chinese language playgroup for students PreKindergarten to Grade 5 without a fee. Even though there were trained teachers, Lua and Wang, the decision was to keep the group free of charge to ensure total satisfaction. The classes were relaxed, provided fun for the children, and served as a meeting place for parents to socialize. This group was receptive to non-native speakers of Chinese as well. One American child and his mother who had exposure to Chinese from previous posts and wanted to continue learning Chinese as a foreign language was embraced by the group. The Chinese group was tech savvy, using the Smart Board and maintaining a blog for parents. In addition to uploading model lesson plans for other language groups to learn from, one of the tutors observed my classes during the day to understand how academic classes were run during the school day. As a mother of a child at the school she gained a view of her child's school from a teacher's perspective and was able to apply this to her own mother tongue classes.

 Japanese Language Group. The Japanese group, led by two former teachers from Japan, Mari and Yuka, taught all the Japanese students in the school. Their classes were fee based. The group was lucky enough to have the Japanese Ambassador’s wife as its sponsor who encouraged all parents in the Japanese community at the school to get involved. As a result, parental support was incredibly strong and they were the first group to lobby for Advanced Placement testing for high schoolers. The aim of the Japanese Mother Tongue class was for its learners to grow fluency at the basic levels, but also to develop academic skills which would lead to a seamless return to a Japanese educational system. In the group’s aim to reach curricular standards, materials were developed to include a website, workbooks, and a greater use of technology. 

Middle School Japanese Mother Tongue Workbook

The end result was classes that were taught in the three schools (elementary, middle school, and high school) with AP Japanese exams as an exit criteria.  

 Korean Language Group. A nascent Korean group was similar to the Japanese group in its aims. The Korean community at the school wanted classes that were highly academic, and that would directly support the national Korean curriculum. This class was also fee based. The tutor, who was an interpreter for the Korean embassy, found it demanding to respond to all the parents’ request for academic training of Korean at the multiple levels of the group. Eventually another mother stepped in to help with the PreK-elementary group, while the other tutor focused on middle and high school mother tongue students. The focus at the lower levels was oral skills while at the upper levels writing skills. The Mother Tongue Program, after two years at this school, unfortunately did not meet the parents' requests. It is my understanding that student differentiation tied directly to the national curriculum would have attracted more parents to the program.  

Elementary Korean Mother Tongue Group 

Arabic/EAL Language Group. The collaboration with an Arab school in Taibeh was one of the most interesting mother tongue language groups because of its political, cultural, as well as linguistic challenges. A former Arab-Israeli student at the school, Amani, now a teacher in a neighboring Arab secondary school, asked if she could bring her students to our school to learn English. She approached our school’s principal and, when he broached the subject with me, I said, "Let's exchange Arabic for English."

We agreed that I would volunteer teaching English as an Additional Language (EAL) to her students while Amani’s school would contribute two Arabic language mentors, her advanced students of Arabic, for my EAL students who were developing Arabic in the Mother Tongue Program. The English and Arabic classes were taught in separate rooms until one of our students learning Arabic asked to combine the classes for social reasons. That student-initiated idea was a brilliant one, because as I discovered in hindsight, our Arab students needed a different kind of class that strengthened their cultural identity first and language development second. The results was a high school class that used translanguaging to support both students of Arabic and English who shared the same minority language and cultural identity. The lessons served both groups linguistically, but what transpired was a strong social collaboration that resulted in deep discussions about life in Israel as an Arab. 

The collaboration of the two schools had a positive effect on bringing to light the importance of a larger community of learners. The visiting students had an opportunity to meet our students, go to the cafeteria and socialize in a new environment. The in-depth conversations that ensued stretched not only their language abilities, but also their understanding of their self-image. One group of Arabs was learning at a well resourced international school with an American curricula. They were learning all subject matter in English with AP exams for matriculation and planning to go to school overseas. The other group of Arabs lived in a less resourced school, studying all subjects in Arabic and Hebrew, and planning for post secondary education in Israel. Their exit criteria was called the “Te’udat Bagrut” - a certificate for Israel’s high school matriculation exam and prerequisite for higher education in Israel. 

Dr. Wilson with EAL/Arabic Class

Learners from both groups, those that wanted to develop their Arabic and those that wanted to develop their English, used the language they wanted to learn to achieve the objectives of the weekly classes. The activities that were designed were thematic and focused on cultural identities, genre studies, and vocabulary development. Students in this class loved to engage in debates where they could discuss in Arabic or English sensitive issues in a safe environment that were important to their respective communities. In the video, two students from Taibeh debate the necessity of cell phones in classrooms:

Video: Arabic/EAL Class Debate

 In addition to learning genres of narration, persuasion, and exposition, these students also learned the different perspectives of peers that shared a language but had very different life experiences. Students from both groups helped encourage each other with language support as needed to accomplish the lesson objectives

Video: Two Truths and a Lie

It was clear from the hybrid class, that the English/Arabic interactions improved language skills, but more importantly, it gave them all a sense of belonging. The three high school students from this class took the NEWL exam in Arabic listening, speaking, reading and writing and scored at high levels of proficiency. Though this was a great success in itself, it was not the most important accomplishment. What I saw was the development of a new sense of confidence among my Arab students within the EAL class I taught during the school day. They were more engaged in learning academic English skills as they had already connected to these language objectives in their mother tongue after school.

 Russian Language Group. There were two classes for Russian which included elementary, middle, and high school students. There were two teachers from the school and two language mentors who were parents. One teacher was a library media specialist who herself was a Russian mother tongue speaker, and the second teacher is Spanish teacher who also was administered language proficiency exams for the Modern Language Department.

Elementary Russian Mother Tongue Class

Both the early grade literacy instruction in Russian and the academic preparation for the National Examination in World Languages (NEWL), an assessment that provided Russian students the ability to receive college credit for the knowledge of their mother tongue in listening, speaking, reading, and writing of the language, was well attended. Every student in the high school group that took the NEWL exam after mother tongue participation, achieved advanced proficiency levels. Such a success rate would be enviable at the Foreign Service Institute where Russian is taught for the US Diplomatic service.

High School Russian Mother Tongue group taking NEWL language proficiency exam 

French and Spanish Language Groups. Because French and Spanish were offered in the school curriculum through the Modern Language Department from fourth grade to high school, French and Spanish mother tongue classes after school served as a bridge to fourth grade Modern Language classes. They were run by parents who wanted to ensure their children maintained their mother tongue fluency from PreK to Grade Three. French and Spanish mother tongue classes were run more like play groups with games, songs, and plenty of treats to keep the children going. Key to keeping these groups viable, was constant communication with the Modern Language Department to ensure their awareness of the classes as potential “feeder groups” for Modern Language classes. The availability of the class activities on the Mother Tongue Website ensured that all members of the school community were aware of the kinds of activities that were used to maintain mother tongue fluency in order to better connect these students to the standard curricula of the Modern Language Department. 

Elementary Spanish Mother Tongue Class

It was my goal that elementary mother tongue students of French and Spanish could more quickly move through language curricula so that they would be ready for more advanced topics in their mother tongue. This would in the long run prepare them for future language AP exams where advanced levels of academic reading and writing is critical.

Approaches that are Effective for Managing the use of Languages in a Multilingual Curriculum. 

A key approach to expanding multilingualism at international schools is normalizing the idea that all languages are “privilege languages” because they enrich our communities. The High School Mother Tongue Club was involved in monthly activities and assemblies. This club welcomed all language representation of the student body.

High School Mother Tongue Club Booth, International Day

The more visibility of books, materials, and student work in mother tongue that was displayed, the more aware the school community became aware of what academic work in mother tongue looked like. Bulletin boards from the mother tongue classes, display of student work in mother tongue, and mother tongue books made available in public spaces of the school was critical to making visible the work of multilingual learners.

Mother Tongue Bulletin Board and Meeting Area.

My EAL high school classes collaborated with a PreK class throughout the year in literacy activities to build a practice of language use that combined English with home language. High School and PreK student met regularly to share It offered multilingual high schoolers an opportunity to act as language experts in a continuum of language activities from reading buddies in mother tongue to singing.

Video: Multilingual Song, "I Got Peace Like a River"

Meeting with teachers from other divisions to coordinate such activities, helped build the bridges between divisions so necessary for school-wide attainment of the Communication Goal we had set that year.

A second approach was employing technology to provide outreach to the school community. An example, was writing multimedia stories which included the ability to voice over with home languages. The digital book which was published on Book Creator’s website, “Who Turned the World Grey?”, (accessible under the subject of Science), was organized through the Mother Tongue High School Club. 

High school mother tongue club members wrote a story in English on climate change that was illustrated by their collaborating PreK class. Club members then found bilingual speakers throughout the school to record their voices to translate each page of the book in different home languages. Mother tongue languages were then “played” when the digital book was shared at a high school morning assembly. Readings were performed in English and presenters clicked on the volume icon allowing the audience to hear the translation of the story in thirteen mother tongue languages representing formerly unheard minority languages from the student body such as Norwegian, Hindi, and Greek. The PreK illustrators were special guests at the assembly, and it was clear that they understood how important it was to not only share their illustrations, but also their multilingual stories. Once reluctant high schoolers were now using home language at school in a number of venues to include Poetry Night, Language Diversity Week, and a common yearly event called “International Day”. The approach was to create regular events throughout the year where multilingual students could showcase their language and culture.

A third approach was accrediting mother tongue languages by using the same tests that validate students’ mastery of a subject matter in the regular school curriculum. The Mother Tongue Program in its second year of operation was able to test for the first time a total of 12 high school students in Advanced Placement (AP) and the American Council for International Education’s NEWL exams in languages such as Arabic, Russian, Japanese, German, and Russian. Both tests accredited multilingual students for the languages they used at home in four domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing; their scores enabled them to earn college credit and the high school administration’s awareness that these students had high academic skills in another language. Previously these students were seen through a deficit lens as having low academic skills in one language, English, with need of pull-out support but now they were seen as bilinguals who had academic levels of two languages. 

 A fourth approach was using the same curricular standards of the school to shape language objectives for mother tongue classes. Using Common Core Standards for English Language Arts, language objectives were created to form a parallel set of standards to guide language mentors in designing language classes that paralleled standards found in the curricula of English classes K- Grade 12. Bilingual learners would then experience one set of standards realized in both academic and Mother Tongue classes. The standards used for both mother tongue and the school's academic subjects are:

1. Research- and evidence-based
2. Clear, understandable, and consistent
3. Aligned with college and career expectations
4. Based on rigorous content and application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills
5. Built upon the strengths and lessons of current state standards
6. Informed by other top performing countries in order to prepare all students for success in our global economy and society

(2020 Common Core State Standards Initiative)

Fifth, the development of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), enabled more teachers to be trained in how to better support multilingual learners. In the PLC, "EAL in the Mainstream", which I created, participating teachers at the school received specific support of multilingual learning where teachers were guided on the key pedagogical "actions" to ensure academic language success. For multilingual learners, it was Action 1 that tied academic language support to the Mother Tongue Program: "capitalize on the resources and experiences that ELLs bring to the school to build and enrich their academic language" (Essential Actions: A Handbook for Implementing WIDA’s Framework for English Language Development Standards, WIDA Consortium, 2013). Teachers used Figure E as a guideline to the development of their mainstream class curricula:

PLC Handout for EAL in the Mainstream

The PLC was the professional development arm of the school's communication goal, and as a school, we educators became more aware of the power we had to effect change in our teaching to build equity into the support of multilingual students in our school community, whether they were in EAL classes or not.

Finally, bilingual parents were given opportunities to participate as “experts” in support of the Mother Tongue Program. In survey feedback, language mentors, many of whom were trailing spouses without jobs in a foreign country, reflected that they felt a greater sense of community because they were giving something that the school needed; they had a role to play as "language experts" instead of feeling like outsiders because their English was not strong enough.   

 In a parent survey at the end of two years of the Mother Tongue Program, parents were strongly in support of its developments. Parents surveyed stated that they were involved in Mother Tongue because they believed that their child would get better exposure to the home language by being in a mother tongue class (65%). Additionally, 56% of the parents surveyed stated that they believed their child would better adapt to the demands of curriculum by being involved. Others felt that their child would be more interested in their mother tongue (39%) and more confident (39%). Finally, 21% of the parents believed that their child would be able to get college credit for their mother tongue as a result of their participation in the program.

Mother Tongue end-of-year survey

One parent's survey comments reflected what I believe to be a critical point of why Mother Tongue Program improves first language literacy:  "Of course, it would help us for the future. There is a limit to teach our mother tongue only at home and children are more improve their language skills through the class." Children master languages learning together amongst peers more than they do learning the language individually.

There were countless thank you letters and emails as well. One email shared the impact that the mother tongue class had on the children’s lives: 

Email from Japanese Parent to Mother Tongue Coordinator

This email shows the importance of language learning beyond the linguistic exercise of learning a new language. Speaking and developing a heart language bolsters self-image and cultural identity.

In a nutshell, mother tongue programs put the ‘international’ part back in international school teaching and learning. As a program manager, I found this experience gratifying on both a professional and personal level. As teachers, tutors, and mentors highlighting the value of mother tongue, we made a difference in the life of the school in a relatively short time. Sixty-three multilingual students had participated with over seven language groups developed within a school community. We had a high school Mother Tongue Club and countless cross curricular activities with classes focused on language diversity, and extra-curricular activities brimming with cultural awareness. 

 From a personal point of view, I can reflect on my own parents, Italian immigrants, who did not participate in our school lives; I can only imagine their sense of exclusion from the schools their children attended because these schools valued "English Only" . As a child, I also missed seeing my parents playing an active role within the school community. I’m ecstatic that I have been able to right a “wrong” that I felt as a first generation American going through an American school system.  

Middle School Japanese Mother Tongue Class 

Mother tongue programs celebrate our schools’ multicultural communities by developing all languages and building on students assets which are the languages and cultures they bring into the school. International schools walk the talk by acting on their language policies, and graduating students who have preserved the languages they came in with, improved their academic language, and hopefully added a new modern language to their repertoire. As more and more students receive accreditation for these languages, the more competitive they will be in their future careers.

French Mother Tongue Tutor 

As far as room for improvement and future growth for mother tongue programs, there will always be a need for strong collaboration between mother tongue tutors and language mentors and the teachers of mainstream subjects, especially EAL and Modern Language. There needs to be an improved awareness of development of mother tongue by division whereby teachers of elementary, middle, and high school collaborate on the continuum of language learning to ensure multilingualism is strengthened at each level of learning. How elementary mother tongue students are then transitioned to middle and high school groups that are immersed in language for play and later for academic purposes is an important focus. Stronger ties are needed between the mother tongue programs and other school-wide activities such as MUN, International Day, and Language Diversity Weeks at a school. Training mother tongue language mentors as well as mainstream teachers to support multilingual learners is critical to ensuring that they build on the standards of the school so that students see these standards realized in two languages.