Student Language Use In a One-Way Mandarin Immersion Classroom

Introduction

Demand for bilingual workers in the US has increased since 2010 (The New American Economy, 2017). Further, the need in the US work force for Chinese speakers tripled between 2010 and 2015 (The New American Economy, 2017). In addition to economic advantages of bilingualism, studies show cognitive advantages, including delay of dementia (Craik et al., 2010) and increased academic abilities (Stewart, 2005). Yet, the Modern Language Association reported that language study in US higher education institutions has declined since 2013 (Looney and Lusin, 2018). A recent study revealed that only 20% of the total US school-age population enrolls in foreign language classes (American Councils for International Education, 2017). Fortuitously, that study found a renewed interest in language immersion programmes (American Councils for International Education, 2017).

Fortune and Tedick (2008) define a language immersion programme (LIP) as having instructional use of the target language to teach subject matter for at least 50% of the school day. Target language here refers to a language other than English. Instruction in the target language may range from 50% to 90% of the school day, giving rise to programme descriptors ‘fifty-fifty’ and ‘ninety-ten’ (Potowski, 2004). Programmes are divided into two types: one-way (foreign language immersion), designed for a linguistically homogeneous student population of native English-speakers, and two-way (dual language immersion), designed for native English-speakers and native target language speakers (Tedick and Wesely, 2015).

The effectiveness of LIPs for promoting bilingualism, biculturalism, and biliteracy is well-established through research (Collier and Thomas, 2017; Lindholm-Leary, 2016). One cross-study finding relates to the lack of time that language learners use the target language in the classroom. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL, 2010) published a position statement recommending that teachers and their students use the target language at 90% plus, at all levels of instruction. Research shows that this expectation presents a challenge for teachers and students in LIPs (LeLoup et al., 2013).

Three key issues are related to language use in LIPs. First, some immersion teachers do not provide opportunities for oral language development (LeLoup et al., 2013). Second, immersion teachers who emphasize oral language development face challenges in maintaining students’ use of the target language (Fortune, 2012). Third, student language use is influenced by multiple factors, such as attitudes, motivation, social identity and pedagogical approaches (Llinares and Lyster, 2014; Potowski, 2004). Further research in various immersion contexts is needed to understand student language use and ways to improve bilingual education.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore first-graders’ target language oral output in a one-way Mandarin immersion classroom during the teaching of mathematics and Language Arts. The over-arching research question was: How do four first-grade students in a one-way 50/50 Mandarin immersion classroom in an urban public school in the Pacific Northwest orally use Mandarin when learning mathematics and Language Arts? Sub-questions focussed on how much language each student produced in the first language (L1) and second language (L2), what type of vocabulary each student used in the L1 and L2, accuracy of students’ Mandarin, and use of linguistic functions. This report highlights findings resulting from the over-arching question. Findings from this question provide the bilingual education field with the ways four focal students used and did not use the L2. The results allow the reader to analyse how multiple factors influence student language use during instruction. With this knowledge, language educators and school administrators can adjust instruction and focus teacher professional development on how to promote student language use. This research contributes to the gap in the language use research, specifically in a dual language education context, helping to explain why student use of the L2 continues to be a challenge (LeLoup et al., 2013).

Literature Review

Many immersion researchers have studied classroom language use (Ballinger and Lyster, 2011; Broner, 2000; Potowski, 2004). Data collected in these studies triggered discussions in the second language acquisition field. They include the role of corrective feedback (Llinares and Lyster, 2014), language use expectations (Ballinger and Lyster, 2011), developmental stages (Broner, 2000), and linguistic functions (Garcia, 2007). One significant finding is the existence of diglossia. Tarone and Swain (1995) defined a diglossic situation as ‘one in which a second language is the superordinate, formal language variety, and the native language is reserved for use in informal social interactions’ (Tarone and Swain, 1995, 166). Tarone and Swain (1995) proposed using a sociolinguistic perspective to examine types and purposes of language use.

In response to this call, Broner’s (2000) case study examined language use in a one-way Spanish immersion classroom. She studied language use by three students in peer-peer and peer-teacher interactions. Data collection involved observations, video recordings, lapel audio recordings, interviews, and surveys. General findings revealed that 63% of utterances were in Spanish, 35% in English, and less than 2% mixed in L1 and L2. Results indicated that when the interlocutor was an adult, the children used Spanish 98% of the time, and when the interlocutor did not include an adult, the children used Spanish 58% of the time. Children were more focussed on using the L2 when they needed to use it to carry out a task, and during peer-peer activities when negotiation of meaning and dialogue co-construction was required.

Potowski (2004) investigated Spanish language use and the purposes of its use in a fifth-grade 80:20 two-way Spanish immersion classroom. Participants were two native Spanish-speakers and two native English-speakers. Potowski collected data through observations with a stereo cassette recorder and video camera, a written questionnaire, student journals, and interviews. Overall, students used Spanish 56% and English 44% of the time. The girls used Spanish more often than boys, and Spanish was used primarily (68%) for on-task topics. Students used the L2 82% of the time when talking with the teacher, but only 32% of the time with peers. Data suggested that students who invested in identities as Spanish-speakers more frequently spoke Spanish, and that opportunities to practise Spanish were not equally distributed among students.

Ballinger and Lyster (2011) conducted a cross-sectional study that involved two first-grade teachers, two third-grade teachers, two eighth-grade teachers, and their students in a two-way Spanish immersion school. They investigated use of Spanish by students and teachers by focussing on language choice, age level, nature of interactions, and pedagogical methods. A total of 45 hours of classroom observations and field notes, student questionnaires, teacher interviews, and student focus group interviews were examined. Although students showed an overall preference for English, particularly in interactions with peers, findings indicated that students’ language background, culturally relevant teaching activities, and teacher language use and language expectations influenced their use of Spanish.

In this study, the researcher explored interactions among linguistic input (Krashen, 1989), output (Swain, 2000), transfer (Cummins, 1980), and sociocultural identity (Norton, 2006). Krashen explained that comprehensible input is the essential ingredient in language acquisition. Without negating the significance of comprehensible input, Swain (2000) hypothesized that output pushes learners to process language more deeply than does input, because it puts the learner in control. The linguistic transfer theory proposed by Cummins (1980) states that proficiency transfers from one language to another, if there is adequate exposure and motivation to learn that language. Linguistic transfer may involve: (a) conceptual elements; (b) metacognitive and metalinguistic strategies; (c) pragmatic aspects of language use; (d) specific linguistic elements; and (e) phonological awareness (1980). ‘Translanguaging’ has become popular as an instructional strategy that allows learners to use both their L1 and L2 while engaged in learning, because the use of two languages fosters deeper conceptual learning (Cummins, 2014).

Li, Steele, Slater, Bacon and Miller (2016) conducted a large-scale study of dual language programmes (one-way and two-way) in a Pacific Northwest school district. One of their two research questions focussed on the extent that first- through seventh-grade teachers and students used the L2 during instruction. Data collection included 75 classroom observations (with a focus on language use), using an observation protocol, over one year. Findings revealed that teachers strongly adhered to the L2 (close to 100% of the time they were observed). However, findings showed that students spoke with the teacher in the L2 a higher percentage of time than they did when speaking with peers. Only 20% of the observed class periods revealed students using the L2 exclusively in speaking to peers during pair or group work. Researchers concluded that student language use in dual language classrooms in this school district needed to be an area of focus for professional development and further research.

Norton’s (2006) work focussed on the relationship between identity and language learning. She outlined five characteristics of identity as a sociocultural construct. First, identity is dynamic and constantly changing across time and place. Second, identity is complex, contradictory, and multifaceted. Third, identity constructs are constructed by language. Fourth, identity construction must be understood with respect to larger social processes, marked by relations of power. Finally, identity theory can be linked with classroom practice. Using this framework, Potowski (2004) found that the teacher and school can encourage or discourage students’ investment in the identity of being a target language speaker.

In this study, a sociolinguistic perspective was employed as a theoretical framework to analyse student language use. A sociolinguistic lens highlights language use (Mesthrie, 2008). It explores the role of language in human life and views language as socially construed. It studies how language is socially embedded, the social background and intentions of speakers, issues pertaining to speakers’ social characteristics and identities, as well as to the social context of speaking. The social context includes who is authorized to speak, what counts as appropriate language in different circumstances, and how speakers from different backgrounds may have different cultural assumptions that bias the semantics of the same language forms. Thus, sociolinguistics focusses on language use within a speech community (2008).

Methodology

Ethnography suits this research, because it focusses on sociocultural interpretations of phenomena. Merriam (2009) considers ethnography as both a process and a product; it focusses on human society and culture. In this study, learners’ home culture, the teacher’s culture, and the school were investigated, as they were critical in understanding the relationship between language use and social factors related to schooling. More specifically, the present study is a constitutive ethnography (Mehan, 1978). According to Mehan:

The central tenet of constitutive studies of the school is that “objective social facts,” such as students’ intelligence, scholastic achievement, or career patterns, and “routine patterns of behavior,” such as classroom organization, are accomplished in the interaction between teachers and students, testers and students, principals and teachers. Rather than merely describe recurrent patterns of behavior or seek correlations among variables, constitutive analysts study the structuring activities that construct the social facts of education (Mehan, 1978, 36).

This approach values participants as the main contributors to the science being studied. Interaction analysis (Amidon and Flanders, 1963) was also employed to observe, record, and analyse social interaction within the classroom. The marrying of selective features of interaction analysis and constitutive ethnography allowed a descriptive approach for categorizing and provided frequency counts. It is a systematic way to describe and interpret numbers of speech turns, and quality and quantity of speech samples.

The researcher, a seasoned Mandarin immersion teacher (and a native Mandarin speaker), collected, analysed, and interpreted the data (Merriam, 2009). The instrumentation involved observations, video and audio recordings, and a focus group interview. The researcher visited the site before data collection to build relationships and conduct a mock taping session. The taping lasted five weeks, with 56–75 minutes per week sessions. Teachers and students were asked not to do anything different from their typical day. Focal students worked within the natural procedures of the classroom and were not placed together intentionally. The video camera, attached to a Tripod, was positioned at the corner of the room. The audio recorder was inserted into a fabric pouch tied to a belt while a Lapel microphone clipped to the participant’s shirt collar was attached to it. This same method was employed during the focus group interview when the four focal students were questioned as a group outside their classroom. Questions in the interview were adapted from Potowski’s (2004) Interview Guides, with a focus on home language environment, learner’s Mandarin learning experiences, perceptions of language use, and awareness of classroom language expectations.

The research setting was purposefully chosen, because students in this Mandarin immersion programme came from diverse cultural backgrounds. Classroom student demographics included 31% African-American, 23% Hispanic, 15% Caucasian, 8% Asian/pacific Islander, and 23% Multiple Races/Unspecified. Participants were four first-grade students who had received 11 months of instruction at the research site, 50% in Mandarin. They were specifically selected to represent typical academic achievement, cultural and linguistic variations, and a gender balance. Four out of the 13 students in the class were chosen, because this yielded a manageable amount of data that were sufficient in answering the research question. All four participants’ names are fictitious.

The teacher, Hong Laoshi (pseudonym), was a native Mandarin-speaker from Taiwan. She had taught three years at a private US Chinese immersion school where Caucasian students learned Mandarin 100% of the school day. In that school, communicative skills and reading were emphasized more than writing. When this research was conducted, Hong Laoshi had recently re-located and had been teaching at this school for two months. Originally, the second-grade teacher was contacted, because grade two was the highest grade level in this programme. She was conscientious about the project and decided not to participate as a first-year teacher. The first-grade teacher, Hong Laoshi, was then contacted. After overviewing this study’s purpose and methodology, she agreed to participate and expressed interest in dissemination of the research.

During data analysis, Adobe Premiere Pro CC was utilized to synch the video file with each individual focal student’s audio file. When the participant spoke English, the researcher typed in English, when the participant spoke Mandarin, the researcher typed in Chinese characters. Based on the research questions, four strands of data were organized and analysed via Microsoft Excel. Strands encompassed number of speech turns, type of vocabulary, grammatical accuracy, and linguistic functions. A speech turn is a completion of one interlocutor’s speech with no interruption from another interlocutor (Broner, 2000). It was employed as a unit of analysis for each speech turn and coded with numbers for date, initials for the speaker’s pseudonym, LA for language arts, and MA for mathematics.

Results

Results were consistent with other language use studies including diglossia, academic versus social language use, teacher versus peers as interlocutors, and language use during language-related subjects versus non-language-related subjects (Ballinger and Lyster, 2011; Broner, 2000; Potwoski, 2004; Steele et al., 2015; Tarone and Swain, 1995). Three surprises emerged from the data: (a) The four students in this one-way programme orally produced a higher percentage of target language than fifth-graders in the two-way Spanish immersion programme in Potowski’s (2004) study; (b) Abelina, with the least exposure to Mandarin before enrollment at the school, spoke more Mandarin than her two native English-speaking peers; and, (c) Mackay, with the longest formal Mandarin instruction and great confidence, spoke less Mandarin than other participants. The following paragraphs describe the student participants based on results from the focus group interview.

Abelina is an African-American girl who spoke Creole at home. She was proud of her heritage and occasionally spoke Creole in class. Abelina thought learning Mandarin was important, because ‘it is good to learn multiple languages’. In class, she was an active thinker and participant. When she spoke Creole, she was aware that the Mandarin teacher might not understand, so she used paraphrasing. Abelina knew the language use and behavioural expectations in the classroom. When she faced challenges, she knew how to access resources. Data showed that she used strategies, such as using a wall chart, posing questions, and asking for assistance from the teacher. Abelina took pride in the fact she could speak ‘a lot’ of Mandarin. She had no access to Chinese resources at home and blossomed in this immersion setting.

Mackay is an African-American student. He attended a federally-funded preschool that mainly served low-income families. At that preschool, he received Mandarin instruction from a certified teacher from China. Later, he enrolled in the immersion programme. Mackay’s little brother was also learning Mandarin. According to interview data, Mackay spoke Mandarin to him at home. Mackay had confidence in himself, but was also aware that he did not speak much Mandarin in class. He had no access to Chinese resources at home, but he was proud of himself for being smart and more experienced in Mandarin learning than the other children. Mackay often sang Michael Jackson or hip-hop songs in class. He said he did not think Mandarin was as important as Spanish and he really wanted to learn Spanish. Mackay was aware that more people spoke Spanish than Mandarin in his community. He was aware of school rules and the teacher’s expectations. Mackay was strategic. He knew the teacher expected him to speak Mandarin, so he mentioned in the interview that he would, ‘try to speak it [English] quietly’. Mackay rarely repeated Chinese words the teacher expected him to repeat, nor did he respond to the teacher in a group setting. Mackay produced the least amount of Mandarin among the four focal students.

Yan is a bi-racial child. Her mother is a native Mandarin-speaker. Her father is a Caucasian who speaks limited Chinese, but has a great interest in Chinese culture. Yan was proud of her cultural identity. She mentioned her visit to China and speaking Chinese to relatives. Her mother taught her some Chinese at home. At school, she followed the teacher’s directions and participated in all activities. She was humble and polite to peers. When I asked her how much Chinese she spoke, she said 30–40%. Yan took time to think before she spoke, so she made fewer errors in initiating sentences. She liked school activities, such as singing, coloring, and reading books. During one observation, she asked the researcher to read her a Chinese book on volcanoes, which might suggest that she considered science important. In class, Yan spoke Mandarin almost exclusively, however, during the focus group interview, although the questions were asked in Mandarin, Yan answered all of them in English.

Dustin is a six-year-old Caucasian boy from a native English-speaking family. He said he was exposed to Chinese culture through art at preschool. Dustin did not speak Chinese outside school, nor did he have Chinese books at home. Dustin followed the teacher’s directions most of the time. He often noticed things on the whiteboard, either a word the teacher wrote, a pattern, or a recognizable word. He did rely on memorization at times. Dustin enjoyed songs, toys, games, playing, and used his iPad at home to support his Chinese learning. He was curious about the Japanese language and he liked Pokémon. He did not speak as much Chinese as Abelina and Yan, and he exhibited the most disfluencies in his spontaneous speech. However, he was confident and he spoke 60% of the time in Mandarin. Dustin was aware of language use expectations and complied with rules.

A total of 3,090 speech turns were spoken by the four focal students. Sixty-one percent of the total speech turns were in Mandarin, higher than in Potowski’s (2004) study at 56% and closer to Broner’s (2000) at 63%. Student language use by type, such as English, Mandarin, and blended, were disaggregated. Table 1 presents a comparison among students’ language use in terms of language. Blended refers to a speech turn that contained both English and Mandarin.

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Table 1.

Language Use Comparison among Four Focal Students.

Name	Language Use	English	Mandarin	Blended	Total
Abelina	Number of Turns	472	486	64	1,022
	Percentage	46	48	6	100
Mackay	Number of Turns	255	233	28	516
	Percentage	50	45	5	100
Dustin	Number of Turns	250	432	40	722
	Percentage	35	60	5	100
Yan	Number of Turns	83	729	18	830
	Percentage	10	88	2	100

Abelina and Yan spoke more than Dustin and Mackay. Abelina had the highest number of total speech turns, but Yan had the highest number of Mandarin speech turns. Yan and Dustin spoke Mandarin more than 50% of the time. Abelina and Mackay spoke Mandarin slightly less than 50% of the time. Although the percentage of Abelina’s Mandarin use is lower than Dustin’s, the number of her Mandarin speech turns was higher than his. Yan spoke Mandarin the most and used less code-switching. This probably relates to the fact that her mother is a native Mandarin-speaker. None of the other students had Mandarin-speaking family members at home. Yan’s motivation in speaking Chinese is higher than the others, according to the focus group interview data. She seemed to be invested in the identity of a Mandarin-speaker.

Language use results were sorted and summarized by subject areas in Table 2. The percentage represented the proportion of speech turns by language to the total speech turns in the same subject area.

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Table 2.

Four Focal Students’ Language Use by Subject Areas.

Language Type	Mathematics		Language Arts
	Turns	Percentage	Turns	Percentage
English	498	36	562	33
Mandarin	809	58	1,071	63
Blended	83	6	67	4
Total Turns	1,390	100	1,700	100

Speech corpus in this study covered 156 minutes of mathematics instruction and 168 minutes of Language Arts instruction. The time ratio between mathematics and Language Arts was 93%. Data showed 1,700 out of 3,090 speech turns took place during Language Arts time. Comparing the proportion of speech turns in relation to instructional time, more target language output was associated with Language Arts. When looking at language use situations, most Mandarin use occurred when the teacher was the interlocutor, to whom the focal students spoke.

Based on the video recording and observational notes, the following description of Hong Laoshi’s Language Arts instruction may help substantiate student language use findings associated with subject areas. Hong Laoshi taught Hanzi recognition, pronunciation, reading, writing, and the use of Hanzi in making phrases and sentences. She facilitated activities for students to read short passages, write Hanzi messages, and converse with different interlocutors during teacher-fronted activities. She presented vocabulary with gestures, visual cartooning, speech variations, and a variety of techniques to increase comprehensible input. After she modelled language use, she invited the class to practise with her. Then, she led practise activities. She provided sentence frames, such as 你喜欢什么动物？我喜欢 _____。 (What animal do you like? I like _____.). Students practised with partners before they moved to independent work. This scaffolding may have been the reason for more speech turns in Language Arts, because language was explicitly guided, giving students more opportunities to produce Mandarin.

During mathematics less teacher-fronted language activities were observed. Hong Laoshi utilized Bridges in Mathematics lesson plans and the content-allocation planner developed by her and Ms. Smith who taught mathematics in English. This planner specified which lesson would be taught in Mandarin by Hong Laoshi and which lesson would be taught in English by Ms. Smith, and which lesson would be taught in both languages by both teachers. Most lessons taught in both languages focussed on the same mathematical concept, so the concept was reinforced and examined via two languages. Lessons were recorded during ‘Number Corner’ when Hong Laoshi taught days in a month, shapes, patterns, money, and calculation of money. The focus was on mathematical content, rather than on language instruction. The district-adopted mathematics curriculum included teacher guides, designed for English-speaking classrooms. The lesson plans with step-by-step instructions, limited the degree of implementation of teacher-fronted language activities.

In the speech corpus, about 6% of speech turns were classified as private speech. Vygotsky (1987) divided speech into two types – speech directed at other people and speech directed at oneself, known as private speech. At times, private speech is egocentric and the speaker does not take into account the needs of the listener, but more often this speech is for the purpose of self-direction, such as in the following examples.

Data suggested that private speech played a specific role in first-graders’ learning. In language development, speech directed at other people continues to be communicative, but private speech becomes increasingly silent. This speech becomes internalized eventually as silent speech and then as thought. Self-talk or private speech is a window to a speaker’s thought process. Example 1 showed that students used private speech for various purposes, such as calculation, memorization, making an argument, or processing a task.

It is exciting to note that in Table 3, four focal students initiated 570 speech turns during transcribed lessons. Out of those, 202 speech turns were generated in Mandarin. It is important to highlight the quantity of student-initiated Mandarin turns, because the primary focus of this research is student Mandarin use. When a student initiated a speech turn, the speaker was in control of the intentionality and selection of the language form. Table 3 summarizes the turns.

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Table 3.

Four Focal Students’ Initiated Speech Turns.

Language Type	Number of Turns	Percentage
English	334	59
Mandarin	202	35
Blended	34	6
Total Turns	570	100

Table 3 revealed that first-graders spoke spontaneously in Mandarin 35% of the time, which is greater than findings in Ballinger and Lyster’s (2011) study. In their cross-sectional study, the first-grade Native English-speaking students were never observed speaking spontaneously in Spanish to their teachers. Ballinger and Lyster researched a 50/50 two-way Spanish immersion programme with a one-teacher model. The first-grade teacher in their study teaches both Spanish and English and she changed the language of instruction on a weekly basis. Findings in this study showed that students in first-grade are capable of initiating a conversation in the target language with their teacher.

Discussion and Implications

Student language use varied from activity to activity. During teacher structured and closely monitored activities, the teacher, as an authority figure, interacted with students at a formal level in Mandarin, including giving directions, posing questions, and teaching content. Sometimes she conversed with students in Mandarin on topics related to student life, such as toys, safety, and health. During these conversations, students were bound in this speech community by social constraints for appropriateness. During peer-peer situations, the lack of an authority figure permitted a different level of socializing. Dustin talked about his ‘fart club’. This was not introduced in the immersion curriculum. Tarone and Swain (1995) argued that students socialize with peers in their native language, because they do not know vernaculars in the target language. Taking a sociolinguistic perspective, the social structure in society impacts curriculum in terms of whose perspectives are included. Students’ voices and cultures should be addressed in the curriculum.

Peer-peer interactions were monitored less in the classroom. Sometimes a small group task was challenging when it contained multiple steps or demanded management. Some students were off-task due to a lack of task-management skills. If the teacher stayed with one group, the other groups may or may have not stayed on-task. As a result, off-task conversations were carried out in English. This does not mean that a teacher should only assign simple tasks to small groups. Rather, the teacher employs task-management skills and monitors each group frequently.

Not all learners exhibited diglossic behaviours. Yan spoke Mandarin for both academic and social purposes. Using Norton’s (2006) identity theory to interpret these data, Yan was invested in the identity of a Mandarin speaker; therefore, she spoke Mandarin most of the time during observations. Culturally, she may have regarded respecting the teacher and meeting language expectations as criteria for being a good student. She invested in being a good student, so she obeyed rules. It was apparent that this rule was attached to the setting, because during the focus group interview outside the classroom, she answered all questions in English.

An important finding from this research relates to linguistic transfer theory (Cummins, 2005). The African-American girl, Abelina, with the least exposure to Mandarin before enrollment at the researched school, outperformed her native English-speaking peers. Her motivation, learning strategies, social identity, and Creole background may have contributed to her success. These sociolinguistic factors mediated linguistic transfer. According to the interview responses, Abelina said she spoke Creole to her grandma, mother, little brother, and herself. This home culture was reflected in the video-recorded language use data, as in Example 2.

In Example 2, Abelina spoke Creole in class and then paraphrased it in English for the teacher to understand. Apparently as a Creole-speaker, she naturally acquired the paraphrasing skill to communicate with English-speakers. This linguistic skill that she acquired in the process of learning English was transferred to Mandarin acquisition, supported by classroom observation data as in Example 3.

In Example 3, Abelina’s quick response to the teacher’s Mandarin directions went beyond merely an action to follow the instructions. She translated the Chinese to English to help facilitate her peers’ understanding. It was likely that her experience of navigating between Creole and English, and between various cultures in her life, primed her in Mandarin learning. Her skills in communicating in a multilingual context were transferred to the Mandarin classroom. This could be the key to her success in oral language use.

Data indicated that this Mandarin immersion curriculum needed development. First, the curriculum needs to balance the teaching of content and language (Cammarata and Tedick, 2012). An embedded language mini-lesson on measure words might enhance the mathematical lesson by making counting more meaningful. Second, adequate materials are needed to address learners’ needs. Data showed that classroom instruction was constrained by materials. Third, the curriculum should include socially appropriate vernaculars to reflect the culture of the learner; social language that is real, rigorous, and relational to students’ cultures. Fourth, interrelatedness within school curricula needs to be stressed. It is not only important to align curriculum across subject areas, but also to align the target language curriculum with the native language curriculum. This helps to bridge and reinforce concepts taught in both languages.

A question remains as to whether Norton’s (2006) identity theory can be used to analyse student language use in a first-grade classroom. Data indicated that students did not explicitly discuss the conceptual level of identity. However, they cared about how others perceived them. Yan appeared to be a student who followed directions, met school expectations, and was good at mathematics and science. Maybe these characteristics were important to her. Abelina was proud of herself knowing multiple cultures and languages. Dustin knew how to navigate school by following rules, as well as finding moments to socialize with friends. Mackay was proud of being smart and knew more Mandarin than his peers. Though identity as a concept was not internalized by first-graders, their attitudes towards Mandarin did impact their language use. Student language use and culture mediated their social life at school, which over time affected their attitudes, behaviour, and value of self. In corollary, their experience in primary grades may positively or negatively impact their identity formation in adolescence.

This research study contained limitations. The sample size is small due to purposeful sampling and the ethnographic nature of the study. Due to the researcher’s employment situation, the observation schedule conflicted with the native Spanish-speaking students’ English language development pull-out service time. The researcher also missed an opportunity to collect data on trilingual students in this programme. This study was also limited by the number of observations. Caution needs to be taken generalizing the results from this investigation.

A sociolinguistic perspective examines target language input and output and the purposes of target language use. In this study, examination of language use provided rich information, such as whose song a focal student was singing so quietly that only the lapel microphone could pick it up. Results pose critical questions, such as how African-American students might be better served in immersion classrooms. The fact that Yan chose what language to speak in school at the age of six leads to questioning whether she will still be the one who produces the most Mandarin turns in class when she is in eighth-grade. It is important to cultivate students’ Mandarin-speaking identity and maintain this investment.

This research may be useful to teachers, administrators, and policy-makers, as it adds to our knowledge about immersion education. Research is still needed to investigate what strategies are more effective in increasing student target language use. As the access to language immersion from early childhood is expanding, demographics in immersion classrooms will be more diverse. It will be important to explore trilingual students’ target language use as well.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore four first-graders’ target language oral output in a one-way Mandarin immersion classroom during the teaching of mathematics and Language Arts. The over-arching research question was: How do four first-grade students in a one-way 50/50 Mandarin immersion classroom in an urban public school in the Pacific Northwest orally use Mandarin when learning mathematics and Language Arts? Although experts in the bilingual education field recommend that teachers and their students use the target language at least 90% of the time during instruction (ACTFL, 2010), research has shown that this presents a challenge for teachers and students in language immersion programmes (LeLoup et al., 2013). This study found that the four first-graders used Mandarin 61% of the time. Data indicated that multiple factors may impact student target language use, including motivation, learning strategies, social identity, linguistic background and pedagogy.