ya que, a diferencia de otros países, no acostumbra a coincidir la lengua escolar y la lengua mayoritaria de uso social. En este artículo presentamos los datos obtenidos en la evaluación de conocimiento de catalán y castellano de 396 alumnos extranjeros de tres grupos lingüísticos, árabe, español y rumano, con diferentes tiempos de estancia al finalizar sexto de primaria, así como los efectos que tienen la lengua familiar y el entorno sociolingüístico en la transferencia de habilidades lingüísticas entre las lenguas que este alumnado aprende en la escuela, catalán y castellano. Las conclusiones señalan que cuando existe continuidad entre la lengua escolar y la lengua del entorno se favorece la transferencia de habilidades lingüísticas con propósitos académicos. Palabras clave: Inmigración, adquisición de segundas lenguas, bilingüismo, plurilingüismo, interdependencia lingüística.
The vast arrival of immigrant pupils has challenged the capability of our educational systems to cope with students’ diversity in classrooms. Newcomer students in Spain perform lower than their national pairs (INECSE, 2005; MEC, 2007) and it seems these results are related with the poor proficiency in the school language that they are developing (OCDE, 2006; Maruny & Molina, 2000; Vila, Siqués & Roig, 2006). In Catalonia, more than 14% of the students have an immigrant origin and 8% of them have a different mother tongue than the official languages in the host country, Catalan and Spanish. Moreover, the sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia is peculiar because there is no coincidence between the language of instruction at school (Catalan) and the majority language in the social context (Spanish). This sociolinguistic context involves negative consequences for the school language acquisition of immigrant students because they have to develop linguistic proficiency in Catalan exclusively from the school context. Our research analyzes linguistic proficiency in Catalan and Spanish of 6th grade immigrant students pointing out different effects of the social uses of languages, the length of residence in Catalonia and their first languages.
The widespread availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has generated new activity contexts that provide opportunities and resources for learning, at the same time as expanding the learning potential of traditional contexts such as the family and schools. Within this framework the present study analyses the frequency with which students of three ages (10, 13 and 16 years) participate in ICT-mediated activities outside school, as well as the learning experiences associated with this participation. To this end, we used a multimethod approach combining administration of a questionnaire with focus groups and individual interviews. The analysis revealed low rates of participation in ICT-mediated activities outside school and showed that these activities were associated with limited learning experiences. These results highlight the importance of educational institutions building closer links between students’ learning experiences in and outside school, as well as the need to develop initiatives that can foster the acquisition of the digital skills required to maximize the learning potential of new activity contexts.
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