Critical Language Awareness for Spanish-English Bilingual 5th Graders

Critical Language Awareness (CLA) instruction can and should be a part of K-12 education. This study reports on a CLA unit taught to Spanish-English bilingual 5th graders enrolled in a dual language bilingual classroom in the southwest U.S. Scores from a pretest and three posttests administered throughout the school year were compared to peer bilingual and monolingual 5th graders in an English-only classroom who did not participate in CLA instruction. A Mixed ANOVA repeated measures analysis found that bilingual students in the dual language bilingual classroom had high levels of CLA knowledge both before and after participating in CLA instruction, likely due to their bilingualism, dual language program and bilingual life experiences. The scores of bilingual students enrolled in English-only instruction initially matched their peers in the dual language bilingual classroom but declined over the course of the study, while the monolingual students’ scores remained low. This study offers empirical evidence that there is a connection between bilingualism, dual language bilingual education, and CLA. Implications for instruction and suggestions for future research are discussed.