Students' bilingual voice at an American overseas school: Individual and sociocultural dimensions in the process of learning English and in patterns of language use

This explanatory account of variability explored processes of learning English, patterns of language use, and levels of comprehensibility in an immersion education setting at the American School of Asuncion (ASA). This investigation was guided by the bilingual voice of 34 predominantly Spanish-speaking 12 th graders, mostly Paraguayans of high SES. The study examined data from language learning histories, group interviews, self-reported language use, self-assessed proficiency, SAT, GPA, school activities, learning styles and strategies, senior speeches, and comprehensibility ratings. Ensuing analyses described individual and sociocultural dimensions, established correlations, and identified linguistic dimensions affecting comprehensibility.; Results revealed a diglossic situation with mainly English for academic use and Spanish for social. An L2 vernacular was almost non-existent. Higher L2 comprehensibility corresponded to females and former schooling within English language contexts as well as integrative motivation (making L2 friends) and more frequent L2 use via extended early childhood education, US-based studies (semester exchange, summer college, camp), interactions with peers/siblings, and personal situations (expressing emotions, thinking, dreaming). Negative attitudes often paralleled lower comprehensibility. Statistical correlations with comprehensibility varied greatly depending on gender and schooling.; When judging comprehensibility, raters seemed influenced primarily by prosodic elements and overall fluency. The divergent pronunciation between genders suggested that males oriented their speech via covert prestige to norms of own reference group. The students' descriptions of their ASA variety (Spanglish marked occasionally by Guarani), inferred an awareness of language's symbolic value for group/social identity. Students expressed appreciation for family support, recalled own efforts and emotions, recognized importance of wanting to learn, proposed relatively sophisticated theories, stressed need for more practice, and wanted “proof” of own English proficiency within authentic settings.; Findings were congruent with studies in immersion education, discourse analysis, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, social psychology, and critical theory. The multiple variables affecting individual variability coupled with context specific opportunities seemed analogous to a rainbow spectrum of complex interrelationships with overlapping strands identifiable only in isolation. This organic rainbow metaphor represents the linguistic ecology of holistic immersion settings with interconnected systems nurturing L2 development but near-native competence remaining as elusive for some students as the perfect 180° arc spanning the sky.*; *This dissertation includes a CD that is compound (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation).