Bilingual literacy and academic success among Samoan born students in a New Zealand secondary school : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masterate in Education at Massey University

This thesis is a study of bilingual students’ literacy abilities and practices in a secondary school sening. Infonned by Jim Cummins’ writings on bilingual students’ achievement in schools and by J. W. Oller’s theories on language measurement, this project addresses the nature of flrst language reading behaviour of Samoan bilingual students in English immersion education in New Zealand. In addition. the Cummins’ (Cummins, et. al . 1984) hypothesis that age 12 is the optimal age to transfer language of education and country is tested. Research took place with Samoan born students (n=29) enrolled at the researcher’s place of employment. The reading ability of students in Samoan and in English is tested through exact word scoring of a 7th word mechanical deletion cloze task, using a translated narrative text at the 12 year reading age. School records of academic achievement from the half year point are included for comparison with literacy achievement. These data were analysed with demographic details obtained from a student questionnaire. The questionnaire also provided descriptions of student reading behaviour in Samoan. Similar data is obtained from a group of NZ born Samoans (n=20) for comparison and referencing. Reading behaviour of these students gives a high itn_JlQ.llance for Samoan lan~ge rewng, yet l_ill!e actual time is SQent rea<!i_ng in that lancruage. BQ.tb groups of students 0.1) av_emge perfo!Jlled belli!r on En lish cl~~e t~ts th~ Samoan. The NZ bQ!:!l students re~~ b~lt.er ~!l En_glish and w~e in SamQallthan their i.mJnigrant counterparts. The tested hypo~sis is ouly paJ1i2Jly supP.Orted by the res~ar.ch fmdings. Preqictions of CALP (reading) ability generated by Cummins’ hypothesis are seen to a significant leyel,. Howev!!r, noQ_e of the vart~.Qles u~ed correlated with acade~nic acQ~ent. Furthennore, in contrast to Cummins’ predictions, a strong inverse correlation between length of residence and reading ability in the two languages is found. In other words, the longer Samoan born students are in one of the countries the better their ability in the language of that country and the weaker their ability in the other language. No such significant correlations were found among NZ born students. Alternate theoretical explanations for the results are offered using concepts from the fields of sociology of education and socio-historic psychology. Appendices include test materials, questionnaire and interview fonns. A bibliography of over 380 references is included.