Table 3 Some exemplary bilingual pedagogies and instructional strategies (based on a discussion paper by Li, 2015b)
From: Trilingual and biliterate language education policy in Hong Kong: past, present and future
| Â | Bilingual teaching strategy | Evidence-based pedagogical merits |
|---|---|---|
(i) | Socratic questioning technique | Teacher to make complex questions cognitively more accessible and answerable in English by providing clues through scaffolding to facilitate students’ uptake of the target L2 expressions |
(ii) | Corrective feedback through recasting or paraphrasing the student’s L1 response in L2 | Teacher to provide metalinguistic input to help students grasp the meanings of technical terms and facilitate noticing, e.g., through morphological cues such as the meaning of the prefix tri-, and syllabification by ‘chopping up’ polysyllabic words on the board, e.g., ‘nu/me/ra/tor’ and ‘de/no/mi/na/tor’ |
(iii) | Reiterating and/or illustrating the key concepts in English | Teacher to consolidate students’ understanding in L2 by accepting their answers in L1, and follow up with structurally more manageable questions in L2 step-by-step, from simple (what?/which one?) to more challenging (how?/why?), before guiding the whole class to discover the correct and lexico-grammatically well-formed answers in L2 |
(iv) | Think-pair-share | Teacher to boost students’ confidence by encouraging peer learning through pair work in their L1, before calling individual students to answer teacher-led questions in L2 |
(v) | Using technological tools and multiple semiotic systems | Teacher to deepen students’ understanding of abstract concepts and enhancing their retention by deploying multimodal semiotic resources (e.g., symbols, mind maps, flow charts, graphs and diagrams, tree diagrams, crossword puzzles, electronic whiteboard, video games) |
(vi) | Fostering independent learning by asking students to keep notes and create a personal bilingual glossary of important terms in L2 | Teacher to alleviate students’ anxiety and facilitate convenient retrieval of important technical terms by keeping a personal bilingual glossary, and to boost their confidence by clarifying any doubt in L1 when engaged in collaborative learning before calling upon individual students to verbalize the correct answers in L2 |