The lecture focused on four major points with regard to Semilingual children:
    --    A discussion of the term itself
    --    Semilingual children possess normal language learning capabilities but they may be
                perceived as disordered because of other complex variables.
    --    Discuss several ways that we can work within the educational system to assist these
                children in overcoming their difficulties.
    --    Engage in a CALL FOR ACTION on behalf of multicultural children.
 

    --    Used by Skutnabb-Kangas (1975) to describe the language skills of the children of
            Finnish migrant workers in Sweden
    --    Used by Jim Cummins & Merrill Swain (1979) to refer to minority children of low
            socioeconomic background who appeared to perform poorly on various tests and in
            their classroom performances in Canada.
    --    Cummins asked,
           Why does a home-school language switch result in high levels of functional
            bilingualism and academic achievement in middle class majority language
            children......yet lead to inadequate command of both first (L1) and second (L2)
            languages and poor academic achievement in many minority  language children.
            That is, it appeared that many minority language children -- especially those
            from lower socioeconomic backgrounds -- were able to function as
            communicators in their first language and even in their second language.  But
            when they were required to use their language proficiency for academic
            purposes, they appeared incapable of doing so in either language.

    --    Issues discussed by Cummins (1983; 1989):
              Continuum of language tasks
              BICS/CALP
              Contextually Embedded/Cognitive Demand
              Threshold Hypothesis
              Subtractive/Additive Bilingualism
 

    --    Cummins abandoned the term "semilingual" altogether because of its pejorative
              connotations.
    --    Cummins never believed that semilingualism implied that a minority child's language
             was itself deficient (1979:231).
    --    Damico agrees with him on that point.  Semilingualism is a result of the complex
            interaction between the social context of mainstream schools and the language
            differences that semilingual students bring with them to the educational
            environment.  In effect, Semilingualism describes a state of educational existence
            and NOT an intrinsic language or cognitive condition.
    --    I base my belief on four types of data:
           ONE:
                The work of others:
                    Altwerger
                    Collier
                    Edelsky et al
                    Flores
                    McDermott
                    Ogbu
                    Sinclair & Ghory
                    Smith
                    Wong Fillmore
                *    They have demonstrated that when the schools hold to and apply narrow
                        culture-specific types of  literacy and academic expectations and
                        activities to all children in the classroom, some minority language children
                        are at a distinct disadvantage.
                *     In school, these students are faced with kinds of tests and tasks that are
                        more demanding and less contextually embedded for them given their
                        expectations and experiences.
                *    The literacy practices and the learning and interactional demands placed on
                        them make the whole endeavor of learning to read and write and acquire
                        knowledge within these academic settings discontinuous with their
                        sociolinguistic experiences of everyday life.
                *    When learning is decontextualized (for instance trying to learn to read by
                        focusing on splinter skills like phonics and using poorly motivated and
                        non-meaningful reading material) and when you are already struggling
                        because you are using your less proficient language, then it is hard to
                        acquire skills and knowledge since it is filtered through instructional
                        nonsense.
                *    Also have demonstrated that even when educators and the children
                        themselves recognize that these mismatches exist, the social, cultural, and
                        sociopolitical complexities of the educational agenda, the ethnic and
                        cultural boundaries that exist within people, and the intentional and
                        unintentional inertia of our society to maintain the status quo all conspire in
                        the actual classroom so that the teachers and students collaborate to create
                        ethnic/cultural boundaries that are manifested in classroom behaviors and
                        performances.
           TWO:
                My own research --  A qualitative study that I have conducted focusing on three
                lower socioeconomic bilinguals (one in French and two in Spanish)
                    * Ethnographic investigation of these three individuals at school, at home,
                        and in the community
                    * Capable of numerous communicative tasks in both languages outside of
                        de-contextualized classrooms
           THREE:
                Studies at the Doris B. Hawthorne Center for Special Education and
                Communicative Disorders:
                    * Dynamic assessment tasks with two other "semilinguals" on grade-level
                        academic tasks and on academic achievement tasks.
                    * Employed Mediated Learning strategies and "Testing the limits" technique
                        in formal testing situations.  Both students significantly improved during and
                        after the mediational activities.
             FOUR:
                The experiences that I have had working with students identified as semilingual:
                    * The clinical success that we have had with four "semilingual" students once
                        we have placed them within a more contextualized and authentic
                        classroom setting.
 

    --     We have to reduce our focus and reliance on
          *    An impairment/disability orientation as a knee-jerk reaction
          *    We have to focus more on the complexity of the social phenomena at work
                within the learning context ... That means a greater accounting of the contextual
                and affective variables.
           *   We have to move away from a reliance on inauthentic and invalid ways of testing
                language and academic proficiency
           *   We have to find ways to empower these children
           *   We have to advocate and utilize more authentic, functional, and meaningful ways
                to teach academic skills like literacy and apply these methods to education
                overall.
    --    I attempt this with an eight-pronged strategy when working with these children as a
            speech-language pathologist:
                  A Collaborative Approach
                  A Pre-Referral Intervention Structure
                  A Diversity Framework built into the process
                  A Functional Focus
                  Determination of Appropriate Placement
                  Creation of a Language Usage Plan
                   Structuring an Additive Language-Learning Environment
                  Utilizing a Holistic/Pragmatic Intervention Paradigm
 

    --    The need and recognition that there must be a change is not sufficient.
    --    Each one of us must do what we can to make this change happen on an individual
            basis
    --    To change ourselves we need to focus on four items
            *    ESTABLISH A VISION
            *    COMMIT TO THAT VISION
            *    CREATE A PLAN TO ACCOMPLISH THAT VISION
            *    IMPLEMENT THAT PLAN

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