I agree with both Steve and Anne here ... illiterate third world  
people do become bilingual and multilingual as a matter of course.  
(Jane Hill pointed that out way back in the '60s... yet SLA  
researchers still have not documented how they do it.)  Their  
knowledge of language is entirely oral, and they clearly have very  
successful strategies enabling them to acquire oral second  
languages.  Research cannot tell us yet what skills and strengths  
they are employing in that oral language processing... though some of  
the teaching strategies that work here may give us hints.

In many third world contexts, these learners don't have to learn any  
reading and writing in their second and third languages.    In a  
literate society like ours, do we have the option of not teaching  
literacy, or even of postponing it? How can we maximize the strengths  
of illiterate learners with strong oral skills, in SLA here?

I am learning a lot from accounts of teaching strategies that work,  
for example, Jill's description of her approach with low literate  
Somali and Ethiopian learners, presumably adults. Very interesting  
and useful!


On Jan 26, 2009, at 10:15 PM, Anne Whiteside wrote:


> Steve brings up an important issue, multilingual countries with low

> literacy rates where people routinely learn and use each others'

> languages: with 6,000 languages and far fewer nations, this has to be

> the norm. For example, 23 Mayan languages are spoken in highland

> Guatemala where literacy rates are  fairly low, but merchants often  

> know

> enough to get by in at least one other language.  So although as  

> Elaine

> Tarone pointed out, there isn't enough research on this kind of

> learning, we do know that it occurs, outside of school, all the  

> time. We

> need to know more how to  help/ not hinder the process, and to  

> avoid the

> assumption that these people should learn the way literate students  

> do.

>

> My own experience teaching low level or beginning readers suggests  

> that

> these students do very well with exercises grounded in the here and  

> now,

> not in books or even pictures, which can seem deceptively simple, but

> instead engage in interactions in which the "what's going on" is clear

> from the physical context.  Other strengths, such as being resourceful

> with limited vocabulary and structures, serve these students well  in

> exercises like these. And there are ways of developing oral memory for

> long strings of words, by drawing attention to the beats, to help

> students "notice", as Elaine mentioned from Schmidt's research.

>

> Anne Whiteside

>

>>>>