"Para-Phrasing" as a Family Literacy Practice in Immigrant

Transcription

In Other Words: Translating or "Para-Phrasing" as a Family Literacy Practice in Immigrant
Households (En otras palabras: Traducir o "para-frasear" como práctica de alfabetización
familiar en hogares de immigrantes) (Mit anderen Worten: Übersetzen oder "Para-phrasieren"
als eine Familienvorlesepraxis in Immigrantenhaushalten) (言い換えると：移民家庭におけるフアミリーリ
テラシープラクティスとしての翻訳または「言いかえ」) (En d'autres mots: Traduction ou "para-phrase" c ...
Author(s): Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Jennifer Reynolds, Lisa Dorner and María Meza
Source: Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2003), pp. 12-34
Published by: International Reading Association
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Reading Research Quarterly
Vol. 38, No. 1
January/February/March2003
?2003 InternationalReading Association
(pp. 12-34)
or
other words: Translating
as a family
"para-phrasing"
In
literacy
practice
in
immigrant
households
MARJORIE FAULSTICH ORELLANA
JENNIFER REYNOLDS
LISA DORNER
MARIA MEZA
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois,USA
On TuesdayI helpedmy mom reada book. My mom knew some of the thingson the book.So
the words that my mom didn't know I helped her on. It was a short book, but it was fun. The
book I readto my mom wasaboutpeoplethat moved.The title was, "WhyPeopleMove."I had
to readit to my mom becauseon Wednesday,that'stomorrowshe went to classesto learnEnglish,
and at classesthe teachergaveher homework.So that was why I had to help my mom readthe
book, "WhyPeopleMove"!
en-year-oldMaria,the daughterof immigrantsfromMexicoto Chicago,wrote
thesewordsin a journalwe gaveher to recordher experiencesas an interpreteror
for her family.(All namesarepseudonyms,in most casesselectedby
"para-phraser"
the participants.)Maria'sjournal,and our observations,documentthe manykinds
of text that she dealswith in dailylife as she usesher knowledgeof Englishto facilitatecommunicationbetweenher familyand a predominantlyEnglish-speaking
nation.Likeotherchildrenlivingin immigranthouseholds,Mariasorts,reads,and
dealswith mail;fills out forms;interpretsreportcards;and facilitatesmanyother
instrumentalliteracytasks.She also helpshersiblings,cousins,and motherwith
homework,teachesthem English,and interpretsEnglishstoriesfor them.
In this articlewe analyzedatagatheredfromethnographicresearchthat examineshow the childrenof U.S. immigrantsuse theirknowledgeof Englishto
readand speakfor theirfamilies.We focuson situationsin whichchildrenprovide
12
ABSTRACTS
bilin- In other words:
therangeofwaysinwhichSpanish-English
research
thatexplores
IN THISarticlewereportonethnographic
in
observation
on
for
families.
texts
their
Drawing participant
youthinterpret
Englishlanguage
gualimmigrant
Translating or
of these
86 transcripts
fortheirfamilies,
whoserveasinterpreters
of 18youngadolescents
thehomesandclassrooms
of Englishtexts,and95 journalentrieswrittenbytheyouthabouttheirtrans- "para-phrasing"
translations
oralSpanish
interpreters'
or "para- as a family
of dailylifethatyouthengagein whiletranslating
themultipleliteracies
wedocument
latingexperiences,
done
at
and literacy practice
for
text
close
on
of
written
families.
We
focus
for
their
home,
members,
family
interpretations
phrasing"
chartthedomainsof thesemultipleliteracies.
analysis,we thenexamine in immigrant
Usingan activitysetting/interactional
in school. households
thesewithactivitysettingsforliteracy
eventsunfoldandcontrast
howtwohome"para-phrasing"
learning
andwe arguethatbilingual
Thislargelyunexplored
households,
literacypracticeis a commononein immigrant
canbe usedto supportthewithin-language
ascross-language
paraphrasing
"para-phrasers"
youth'sexperiences
thatis animportant
practices.
partof schoolliteracy
unainvestigaci6n
EN ESTEarticuloreportamos
queexplorael rangode formasen lasquej6venesinetnogrifica
Eltrabajo
se basaen laobtextos
en
interpretan
lengua
inglesaparasusfamilias.
migrantes
bilingiies
espafiol-inglks
deintdrpretes
a susfamilias.
enloshogares
servaci6n
quesirvieron
y lasaulas,de 18j6venesadolescentes
participante
oralesde textosinglesesalespaiiolhechasporestosintirpretes
de lastraducciones
Usando86 transcripciones
y 95
comotraductores,
documentamos
acercade susexperiencias
escritosporlosadolescentes
de registros
fragmentos
losj6venesmientras
traducen
en lasquese involucran
delavidacotidiana
lasmUltiples
pricticasde alfabetizaci6n
de
cercanos
de textosescritos
Noscentramos
en interpretaciones
o "para-frasean"
paramiembros
parasusfamilias.
un
Usando
losdominiosde estaspricticasde alfabetizaci6n
la familiahechasen el hogary graficamos
miltiples.
doseventosde "parabasadoenlaactividad
anlisisinteraccional
c6mosedesarrollaron
y el contexto,examinamos
en la escuela.Estaprictica
de alfabetizaci6n
conloscontextosde actividades
fraseo"
en el hogary loscomparamos
es frecuente
de inmigrantes
en loshogares
dealfabetizaci6n,
y argumentamos
quelasexperimuypocoexplorada,
como
usarse
de la activienciasde losj6venesbilingiiescomo"para-fraseadores"
apoyo
pueden
inter-lingiiisticos
enla escuela.
delaspricticasde alfabetizaci6n
daddepara-fraseo
queesunaparteimportante
intra-lingtiistico
En otras palabras:
Traducir o "parafrasear" como
practica de
alfabetizaci6n
familiar en hogares
de inmigrantes
anM6glichkeiten
diedenBereich
wiriiberethnographische
berichten
IN DIESEM
Aufsatz
untersucht, Mit anderen Worten:
Forschung,
TexteflirihreFamilien Ubersetzen oder "ParaEinwanderer
in welchemspanisch-englische
englischsprachige
bilinguische
jugendliche
die
von 18Jugendlichen,
zuhause
undin Klassenriumen
ausderTeilnehmerbeobachtung
interpretieren.
Abgeleitet
als eine
anhandvon 86 phrasieren"
Schrifttum
behilflichsind,dokumentieren
in ihrenFamilienalsInterpreten
wireinvielseitiges
undvon95 Familienvorlesepraxis in
dieserInterpreten
insSpanische
dermiindlichen
vomEnglischen
Obersetzungen
Textiibertragungen
dievielfachen Immigrantenhaushalten
vonJugendlichen
tiberihreObersetzungserfahrungen,
niedergeschrieben
Tagebucheintragungen,
oder,,Para-phrasieren"
beimObersetzen
imAlltag,mitdenensichdieJugendlichen
Lese-undSchriftanwendungen
vonSchrifttexten
WirblickenaufInterpretationen
auseinandersetzen.
fitrihreFamilien
engerFamilienangeh6riger,
DurchNutzung
diesermultiplenNiederschriften.
zuhause,undwirermessendieWissensbereiche
ausgeftihrt
untersuchen
einesAktivititenrahmens/wechselseitiger
wirsodannwiezweihiusliche,,para-phrasierende"
Analysen,
in
desLesensundSchreibens
beimErlernen
zuAktivititsabliufe
undsetzendiesein Kontrast
ablaufen,
Ereignisse
finden sich allgemein in
der Schule. Diese weitliufig unerforschtenLese- und Schreibpraktiken
alssprachiiberundwirargumentieren,
dassdieErfahrungen
bilingualer
Jugendlicher
Einwanderungshaushalten
innerhalb
derSprache
das
unterstiitzend
werden
um
kinnen,
Para-phrasieren
genutzt
,,Para-phrasierer"
greifende
ist.
Lese-undSchreibpraktiken
Bestandteil
schulischer
zufestigen,
welcheseinwichtiger
13
ABSTRACTS
c~ s z~r~li~lb;
~?t
rgF6,j
4;kj
LU4Vt~gy7
En d'autres mots :
Traduction ou
"para-phrase"
comme pratique
de litteratie dans
des families
d'immigrants
"ApyrHMm ClOBaMH":
nepesBog unm nepecpa3
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it
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_M
NOUS RENDONScomptedansce texted'unerecherche
modalites
ethnographique
quiexplorelesdiffdrentes
selonlesquelles
dejeunesimmigrants
destextesanglaispourleurfamille.
bilinguesespagnol-anglais
interpretent
Partant
d'uneobservation
alamaisonet en classede 18jeunesadolescents
participante
quiontservid'interpretes
de cestraductions
de textesanglaisen espagnol,
et 95 textesdejournal6critspar
aleurfamille,86 transcriptions
lesjeunessurleursexperiences
de traduction,
ontfourniunebasedocumentaire
surlesmultipleslittdraties
devie
danslesquelles
cesjeunessontimpliquisquandilstraduisent
ou "para-phrasent"
deleur
quotidienne
a l'intention
famille.Nousnoussommescentr6surlesinterprdtations
d'untexte6critpourdesmembres
dela familleproches,
deceslitteraties
Enutilisant
ayant&t6effectudeslamaison,et avonsdress6unecartedesdomaines
une
multiples.
nousavonsalorsexaminecommentdeux6vinements
situation/interactions,
de "para-phrase"
analysed'activit6
se
en lescontrastant
aveclessituations
d'activit6
delalitttratie
? l'6cole.Cetteprad6veloppent,
pourl'apprentissage
trespeu&tudi&e,
esttr8sr6pandue
danslesfamillesd'immigrants,
et noussoutenons
tiquede littdratie,
quecesexdejeunesbilingues
en tantque"para-phraseurs"
aider
les
deparapourraient
periences
pour
&reemployees
activitbs
despratiques
delitteratie
phraseintra-langue
al'6cole.
quisontunepartieimportante
B arIofi
1bpeAcraslTeHo
c'CTrbe
H3
ror.ropa4)mCcKoe
HCCAeAOBaHHe
TOrO, KaKAByR3W4HaR(ncrHar.o/
aIn'AoR34Miaa)
MOAOAe)Kb
ceMei HMMHInpalTroB MIurrepiLperHpyer aI'rAHlCKHiC TeKCThMAAH CBOHX
6A113KHX. OcHOBa HCCAcAOBaHuHnR: Ha6AoAeHMII AOMa H B IIIKOAC 3a BoCeMIIallaTbuO
IIOApOCTKraMH,
CBOHX poArTBCeHHHIKOB;
KoTropbe BacayiaoT Ir nepeBoAtiKaMHAAA
BOCCMbACCRT
iIecTn, pac3THMH "riepeBoAHKaMMH" C
IIIMupOBOK creITorpaMM ycrIluX IiepeBoAoB, OCytleCCTBAeHHb1X
aI[TAH14CKOMOHa HcnaIHCKHH; AeBRIIOCTO IIRTb AHCeBIIHKOBbXX
ACCAaHHlX rlOApOCTKaMH
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?
CO CAOBOM, B KOrTopue Bcriyaer
OTIOLCIelIHHI
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niepeBoAi
BHAH
"nepeC4)pa3HpyA"
aAHIAHtCKHe TeKCrTl AAI pOACTBeeIIIIHtKOB. Mbl yaeAAeM OCiOBiHOCe BiuHMaHHe
CeMbi,
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4AeJIOB
H COCIaBAHICM "Kapiy"
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3THX iiaBhIKAo. [lCIIOAb3ys
ACI•AeneAbiOCrIMllb•/HiirepaKrTiBi.ibii
aITC5I
t
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KaK
ABa co6wrrHa
AoMan.mIlero
"lepe4pa3a",
pa3Bopa,/B4H
ix
c
%,Vn
cpaBniHBaeM
in IIIKOAC.
IupeAipHHHMacircA
pas3BHRH'IIAR
IpaMO'1r-iOCrH
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leH3BeAarI-iaR,
OG6ItcuIH CO CAOBOM THIIHMtia AM HMMHrpITHTCKHX
IrpalKITIKa
B O6AaCTH
CCMCI,H Mbl AOKa3bIlB3ac,4TO OIIbT
AByR31d4lOiHMOA(OACeKH
rnepc(pa3a
MO)KCT HCHOAb3OBaTbCH
AAI
Cpa3a
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pa3BH'IHI
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amRlbM
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B 1IpeAcAax
14
oiIorIo
c 131Ka Ha
ial3hUK
13hLKa,
KOTOphle
In other words: Translating or "para-phrasing" as a family literacy practice in immigrant households
oral translations of written texts for their families, in
the privacy of their homes, to illuminate a family literacy practice that has gone largely unexplored by
literacy researchers.
15
cial outcomes.(Foroutcome-basedresearchsee
Buriel,Perez,DeMent, Chivez, & Moran, 1998,
who found a positivecorrelationbetweenchildren's
brokeringexperiencesand measuresof biculturalism,
academicperformance,and academicself-efficacyin
a sampleof 122 Latino/ahigh school students;see
alsoWeisskirch& Alva,2002, who found a genderdifferentiatedrelationshipbetweenlevelsof brokering and measuresof acculturativestressin his survey
of 36 Latino/afifth graders.)
haveexaminedthe skillschilOther researchers
drendisplaywhen translatingor interpretingspecific
tasksin particularsituations.Valdes(2002) engaged
25 studentsfroma high school Spanishclass(most
werenativeSpanishspeakers)in a simulatedinterpretiveexercisefollowinga scriptedprotocolinvolving a conflictbetweena parentand a school
principal.Analyzingthe linguisticstrategiesthat
theseyouth used to negotiatethe situation,she argued that the metalinguisticcompetenciesthese
youth displaywarrantrecognitionas a form of"giftedness."Malakoffand Hakuta(1991) similarly
probedthe qualityof translationsdone by Puerto
Ricanstudentsundercontrolledcircumstances,noting that the childrenmade few errors.
However,researchon translatingor language
brokeringlacksa substantiveethnographicbase.
Severalanthropologicaland sociologicalstudieshave
exploredbrokeringas one aspectof life in immigrant
communities(e.g., Schieffelin& Cochran-Smith,
1984; Song, 1999; Valenzuela,1999;Vaisquez,
& Shannon,1994;Weinstein-Shr,
Pease-Alvarez,
1994.) One exampleis the journalisticethnography
done by Fadiman(1997) of a Hmong family'sencounterswith the medicalestablishment,partlymediatedthroughchildren'sinterpretations,in caring
for an epilepticchild. (Forotherautobiographical
and literaryrecounts,see Castefieda,1996; Santiago,
1998; andTan,2001.) Still,we know verylittle
aboutwhat brokeringactuallyentails:the rangeand
natureof the experiencesof childrenof differentages
and genderswho live in differenthouseholdsand
communities,how childrenand familiesexperience
the interpretiveprocess,and how childrendealwith
In otherwords:"Para-phrasing,"
brokering,
language
translating,
andinterpreting
No single term captures the full range of ways
in which U.S. immigrant children use their knowledge of English to take on so-called "adult"tasks and
speak for others. Children translate single words,
whole phrases, extended text or discourse, and conversation. These renderings can be public or private,
formally performed or spontaneously offered, with
or without the support of other people or tools, and
done for intimates, strangers,or authority figures.
Researchershave used the terms Natural Translation
(Harris & Sherwood, 1978); languagebrokering
(McQuillan & Tse, 1995; Shannon, 1987, 1990;
Tse, 1996); and family interpreting(Valdes, 2002) to
describe this phenomenon in which people "interpret and translate between culturally and linguistically different people and mediate interactions in a
variety of situations including home and school"
(Tse, 1996, p. 226).
We use all of these terms as well as our own
term, para-phrasing.Para-phrasingdeliberately invokes a play on the Spanish word para and its
English translation ("for"),to name what children do
when they "phrase"things for others, and in orderto
accomplish social goals. The term is also useful for
signaling the parallel between translating and school
literacy practices; teachers often ask children, when
they read, to "sum things up" and "put things in
their own words"-in other words, to paraphrase.
We intend the term to include the ways in which
people para-phraseboth within and across national
languages.
Studiesof languagebrokering
There is only a small body of empirical research on immigrant children'sexperiences as interpreters or language brokers, though there is growing
interest in the phenomenon. Most researchersrecognize the variability of the tasks children are called
upon to perform but may gloss over those variations
in their concern for measuring the effects of the experience on educational achievement and psychoso-
different kinds of situations and task demands. The
ethnographic groundwork may be lacking because
the phenomenon is an elusive one, not easily captured through traditional data-gathering means. Our
efforts to explore the phenomenon led us to gather
data in different ways, and this ethnographic work in
turn led us to see many aspects of the phenomenon.
Like other researchers,when we first began
studying the phenomenon of para-phrasing,we
treated it somewhat transparently.We thought
16
Reading
Research
Quarterly
principallyaboutoraltransactionsin the public
sphere:childreninterpretingfor parentsat parentteacherconferences,in doctor'soffices,and at stores
and restaurants.
As suggestedin Tse's(1996) definition, we assumedthat two or morepartieswould be
involvedin most situations,with the interpreterpositioned"inthe middle,"animatingthe wordsspoken by eachparty.In the courseof ethnographic
work,however,we cameto see publicinterpretations
betweentwo or morespeakersas only one aspectof
Much interpretiveworkgoes on bepara-phrasing.
hind closeddoorsin immigranthomes, and much of
it involvesonly one personwho needsa translation
(often a parent)while interactingwith a writtentext
and the child interpreter.
With this realization,we
saw that this phenomenoncould be understoodas a
formof familyliteracy,so we decidedto situatethis
studywithin that body of literature.
on literacy
Socioculturalperspectives
JANUARY/FEBRUARY/MARCH
2003
38/1
contemporarymanifestationsof eachliteracypractice (Auerbach,1989; Besnier,1995; Duranti&
Ochs, 1986, 1996; Duranti,Ochs, & Ta'ase,1995;
Guerra,1998; Heath, 1983; Lee, 1995; Mahiri,
1998; Moje, 2000; Schieffelin& Cochran-Smith,
1984). They areprimarilyinterestedin documenting
the patterneddiversityof literacypracticeswithin societiesbeforemakingjudgmentson what theseliteracy experiencesmight mean to any particulargroup.
In this way,they considerhow multipleliteracies
may coexistand come into conflictin any given
sociohistoricalcontext.The ethnographicliterature
on familyliteracy,which compareshome and school
literacypractices,fits within this traditionas it attemptsto explainhow literacypracticespatterndifferentlyat home and at school and how this
disconnectioncan havematerialand socialconsequencesfor particularpopulations.
As mentionedabove,this body of workhas
helpedto challengedominantnotionsof readingand
writingas context-free,culturallyand politicallyneutralcognitiveskills,and to expandour understanding of the multipleformsof literacythatexistin
communitiesaroundthe world.Besnier(1995),
however,arguedthatwhile literacypracticesmustbe
understoodwithin socioculturalcontexts,analysts
of conmust pose morepreciseconceptualizations
text. We must considerwhataspectsof contextare
most likelyto affector be affectedby actsof reading
and writingas well as howmodes of communication
areembeddedin relationships,society,and culture.
Our projectaddressesthesetwo questions,illustrating how literacyboth shapesand is shapedby an immigrantcontextin which children'sskillsas
areneededfor dealing
interpretersor para-phrasers
with manykindsof dailylife literacies.As a point of
entryto explorethis diverseset of socialpractices,we
as constitutinga subset
contextualizepara-phrasing
of immigrantfamilyliteracypractices.
Our approachto the phenomenonof paraphrasingis guidedby a socioculturalperspectiveon
languageand literacy.This perspectiveviewslanguageas a tool for navigatingin the socialworld,
constructingmeaning,displayingidentities,and otherwiseaccomplishingsocialgoals.The focusis on
processesand practicesas they aresituatedin meaningfulactivity,not on the cognitivecapacitiesthat
arerequiredfor those practices.We highlightthe neinteractions
gotiationsthat occurin para-phrasing
in
with
the
children's
role
those negotialong
leading
ations.As suggestedby Leichter(1985), we recognize that learning,development,and socializationare
that haveoutcomesand consesharedprocesses
for
all
not just children,and that
members,
quences
familieshavespecial,sharedhistories.(Seealso
Rogoff, 1998.)
Linguisticanthropologists,
sociolinguists,and
educationalresearchers
havedevelopeda sociocultural
frameworkon languageand literacy(Gee, 1999;The
New LondonGroup,1996; Street,1995). In lieu of
Family literacyresearch
the canonized"autonomousmodel"of literacy,these
Familyliteracy,however,is much like parascholarsproposedan "ideologicalmodel"thatscrutiphrasing-difficult to capture.It has been studied
nizes literacyas a sociocultural construct (Street,
1984). This "ideological model" pays special attention to literacy activitiesand eventsand their associated ideologies as they take shape within particular
social, political, and historical contexts (Besnier,
1995).
These scholars often adopt ethnographic methods to describe empirically the range and diversity of
literacy experiences and practices within and across
societies and to trace historical predecessorsas well as
under various terms such as home, intergenerational
and emergentliteracy,and its scope ranges from storybook reading to church practices to "familyliteracy programs."(See Purcell-Gates, 2000, who wrote
that as we have begun to recognize "the phenomenon of family literacy,its very definition has become
elusive," p. 853.) Much of this work and its focus on
the language and literacy practices of children outside of school grew out of child development research of the 1960s that portrayed the family as the
foundation for learning (Purcell-Gates, 2000;
Schieffelin & Cochran-Smith, 1984). Researchers
began by asking questions such as the following:
What do parents do at home? How do these activities develop their young children'sreading abilities?
and
Storybookreading: "Mainstream"families
The
first
scholars
in
this
field
beyond.
typically studied "mainstream"families interacting with their
preschool-age children (Cochran-Smith, 1984;
Heath, 1982; Ninio & Bruner, 1978; Scollon &
Scollon, 1981; Sulzby & Teale, 1991; Teale &
Sulzby, 1986). Researchersnoted that these parents
read storybooks to and with their toddlers, asking
questions and prompting their responses in a way
that enabled children to build story schemata (Heath
& Branscombe, 1986). Reading to children is perhaps the most studied family literacy practice, with
researchersexamining how it prepareschildren for
school reading (Cochran-Smith, 1986; PurcellGates, 1999, 2000; Scollon & Scollon, 1981; Teale,
1984). Storybook reading is often correlatedwith
later school achievement, although Scarborough and
Dobrich (1994) and Teale (1984) have questioned
just how much storybook reading at home affects
children'sschool success.
Some researcherschallenged this early work because of its focus on "mainstream"families. Heath's
(1983) oft-cited "wayswith words," for example,
juxtaposed the literacy practices of African American
and white working-class families with white and
black middle-class families and schools (which were
generally assumed to reflect "mainstream"practices).
Ninio (1980) found similarities in the amount of
reading in the home and children'sreadiness to participate among middle-class and working-class families but found differences in how parents asked
questions. Similarly,Miller, Nemoianu, and DeJong
(1986) found that working-class mothers do read
storybooks to their toddlers, but they point to differences in the nature of these intimate interactions and
the more competitively structured reading activities
that take place in school.
Other researchershave moved out of the home
to study how church practices and their "rulesof literacy"differ from those of traditional schools
(Baquedano-L6pez, 1998; Ek, 2001; Scollon &
Scollon, 1981; Zinsser, 1986). In doing this, they
have helped to situate literacy in the everyday stream
of family activities, as suggested by Leichter (1984).
However, attention generally remained on how
adults shape children'sliterate environments and
how these practices matter for school learning. For
example, Zinsser (1986) suggested that preschoolage children raised in fundamentalist churches may
17
be viewed at school as lacking "imagination...extension of ideas... [and] initiative" (p. 69) because of the
didactic teaching approaches and expectations of the
church leaders.
Connectingfamily literacyto educational
practice. In the 1990s, researchersgave more attention to non-"mainstream"parental practices and outof-school literacies. Gasden (1998), among others,
stressed the importance of studying minority lowincome families to better "understandthe family as a
social context that can contribute to children'sliteracy development as experiences in school" and "the
ways in which classroom teachers can support the literacy development of children through the knowledge of the family" (p. 33).
Some researchershave explored the literacyvalues and practicesof Mexican adults in relation to educational applications (Delgado-Gaitan, 1990, 1992;
Farr,1993, 1994; Guerra, 1998). Delgado-Gaitan
made these applications explicit in her comparison of
school literacypracticesand Mexican immigrant family literacypractices.She noted that parents engage
their children in a diverseand culturallyrelevantset of
practicesat home-until the demands of children's
homework take over. Because parents lacked specific
knowledge of school expectations, they were often
frustratedin their active efforts to support children's
academic achievements and to assistwith homework.
All of this researchhas unfolded at the same
time as the proliferation of family literacy programs,
many of which are targeted toward low-income,
working-class, or minority families. (See PurcellGates, 2000, for a review of researchon their effectiveness; see Paratore,Hindin, Krol-Sinclair, &
Dur"n, 1999; Paratore,Melzi, & Krol-Sinclair,
1999; Quintero, 1993; Rodriguez-Brown &
Mulhern, 1993; and Shanahan & Mulhern, 1995,
for a sampling of programs in various Latino populations.) Evaluations of these programs continue to focus on children'sschool-related outcomes, usually
relying on test scores as a measure of performance
(see Purcell-Gates, 2000; Paratore,Melzi, et al.,
1999), with some attention to home practices and
how parents might better prepare children for school
(e.g., Paratore,Hindin, et al., 1999). Few offer indepth researchon the nature of parent-child interactions. (See Paratore,Melzi, et al., 1999, and
Purcell-Gates, 2000, for more detailed reviews; and
Heath & Branscombe, 1986; and Heath & Thomas,
1984, for early studies of promoting book reading
practices in nonmainstream homes, as suggested by
Gallimore & Goldenberg, 1993.)
Through all of the varied dimensions of this research, one thing remains clear: Most family literacy
18
Reading
Research
Quarterly
studies have taken an "adult-centric"approach,
studying how parents and other adults prepare (or
do not prepare) preschool-age children for later
school literacy work. [Schieffelin and CochranSmith (1984) are an exception to this pattern.
Schieffelin'sethnographic work with SinoVietnamese refugee families revealed that an adultchild socialization hierarchywas reversedwhen
children served as knowledgeable translatorsfor their
parents. Children developed and maintained relationships of assistance with literacy-relatedtasks and
devised strategies of resource use to help their families adjust to the new social context.]
Moreover,the field remains focused on
preschool children;searchesfor "home"or "family"
literacy rarelyturn up the studies of adolescentsthat
do exist, perhapsbecause these generallyexamine either individual or peer-groupliteracyexperiences(e.g.,
teens reading romance novels or playing such high-literacy games as Dungeons and Dragons; Cherland,
1994; Christian-Smith, 1993; Finders, 1997;
Gilmore, 1986). Very little consideration has been given to how family literacypracticesmay support older
children'sliteracydevelopment or how children may
act as teachers and facilitators of literacy for their
adults. Further, few studies have focused on the negotiation of meaning that takes place between parents and children. These few studies generally center
on the negotiation that occurs in literacy activities
designed specifically for children, such as storybook
reading (e.g., Cochran-Smith, 1986), and not the
everyday literacies that we and others have found
through ethnographic work with Latino immigrant
families (Delgado-Gaitan, 1990, 1992; Farr,1993,
1994; Guerra, 1998).
Finally,when researchersdo address cultural
variations in practices, they tend to focus on differences,rather than on potential points of similarity
shaped by the constraints and opportunities of particular contexts. The key variable for examination
has been either culture or social class-not immigration status or the contexts engendered through immigration. Attention has focused on differences
between "mainstream"and non-"mainstream"community practices or between the cultural practices of
particulargroups and practices at school. Rogers
(2001) recently argued for a framework that takes
into account how families adopt multiple cultural
models, some of which may align with school practices, others of which may conflict. We endorse this
new direction, and in our work we aim to illuminate
potential points of overlap between otherwise divergent home and school literacy practices.
Methodsof inquiry
2003
38/1
This study of para-phrasingas a family literacy
practice is one part of a larger ethnographic exploration, developed in stages over the last five years in
four immigrant communities. Our ethnographic
data include thousands of pages of field notes based
on participant observation in homes and classrooms;
transcriptsof audio-recorded live translations;transcripts of interviews with 66 children (ages 10-14)
and severaladults about their experiences as translators; reenactments of translation situations (done as
part of the interviews in order to elicit children'sstories and discuss their communicative strategieswith
them); countless informal conversations with parents, children, and community members about children'swork as family interpreters;a survey of 280
fifth and sixth gradersregardingtheir language preferences, translating experiences, and daily life literacy
practices;journal entries written by children recounting translation episodes; interviews with teachers and administrators;process-focused literacy
assessments we administered to our case-study participants as well as to a comparative sample of children of immigrants who are not the primary
translatorsfor their families; and school record data
and work samples.
For this study, we focus on data gathered in two
of the four communities. One community, located
on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois, USA, is
composed mostly of immigrants from Mexico and
Poland. (Our focus is on Spanish/English bilinguals.)
The second is a mixed-ethnic, mixed-income urban
and suburban community near Chicago that is home
to a small but growing number of immigrants from
Mexico. The other two areasthat are not our focus in
this discussion are a "first-stop"community for immigrants from Mexico and Central America in central Los Angeles and an "ethnic enclave"for Mexican
immigrants on the southwest side of Chicago.
Although it is beyond the scope of this article to fully
develop a comparative analysis, gathering data in different kinds of receiving contexts for immigrants allows us to consider how contexts shape the needs and
opportunities for children to serve as para-phrasers.
For the purposes of this study of text-based translations, we simply note that across communities the
mail and school materialswere a prime source of
home literacy para-phrasing.
Eighteen youth who were identified as "designated translators"for their families (based on their
responses to the survey we administered and followup conversations) were invited to participate in this
study. Twelve of the 18 are girls; this gender skew re-
flects an assumption that more girls than boys do the
day-to-day work of translating at home (Valenzuela,
1999), though boys may be actively involved in other spheres. The families of these children represented
a range of immigration circumstances; for example,
their amount of time in the United States ranged
from 4 to more than 20 years. Most participants
were in the fifth or sixth grade at the start of the
study, though two were younger (in third grade) and
two older (in eighth and ninth grade). We primarily
selected young and preadolescents because earlier
ethnographic work and our interviews suggested that
this is the age at which bilingual children begin to
take on the more sophisticated work of translating,
especially with written texts. We also wanted to follow children as they moved into and through adolescence to consider the negotiation of family relations
and cultural identities that happens in and around
translating.
Participation involved allowing us to observe in
their homes and classrooms and audiotape translation situations. We engaged in an extended process
of rapport building with each family to gain access
to such situations; we also gave the children tape
recordersto record themselves and journals to write
about their translation experiences because we knew
that we could not be present to observe all situations.
(We secured permission beforehand from the people
for whom they regularlytranslate, and we paid the
children for each taped episode.) We modeled the
journal-keeping for them, asking them to record the
date, for whom they translated, what they translated,
and how they felt about the experience, but giving
them freedom to develop their own narrativestyles.
We also suggested that they describe any problems
they encountered while translating and how they
dealt with them. Our observations and informal
conversations with participants and their family
members were aimed at triangulating the journal
and survey data by identifying the nature of each
child's translating activities.
The work with case-study families was done by
a team of women researcherswho range in age from
20 to 42. These included "insiders"to the phenomenon of translating (three native speakersof Spanish
and the daughters of immigrants, who translatefor
their own families); "outsiders"to the phenomenon
(three non- or semi-bilinguals, whose experiences as
"recipients"of translationslent insight on the experiences of parents and whose lack of Spanish fluency at
times made it possible to collect more natural examples of translationsthan was possible when bilinguals
were observing); and two others who are "in-between" (speakersof Spanish, with extensive experi-
19
ence in immigrant communities, but not themselves
Latina immigrants). Our different ages, experiences
(especially as teachers and students), and life span positions (e.g., as mothers and daughters) both facilitated and constrained our abilities to connect with
particularchildren, parents, and teachers.At our
weekly team meetings we shared our varying experiences and compared data collected across the cases.
This sharing of our varied viewpoints expanded our
understanding of each case-study family. We overlapped in our work (with more than one team member having contact with each child); together we were
able to develop a richer portrait of each child's experiences than would be possible working alone. As we
argue elsewhere (Dorner, Orellana, Meza, Pulido, &
Culture, Language, & LiteracyResearchGroup,
2002), by working with and translatingacross our
varied positions, as younger and older adults and as
language and cultural insiders and outsiders, we have
access to a wider set of viewpoints on each child's experiences, and in translating our own perspectives for
one another, we have gained valuable insights on children'sexperiences in translatingacross cultures, languages, experiences, and generations.
Analyses
For this study of family literacy para-phrasing,
we analyzed both observed and self-reported instances in which these children provided oral interpretations of a text. We take "text"to include printed
material, words abstracted from context, and electronic media (news, movies, television shows, radio
programs). This contrasts with para-phrasingof conversations and other interpersonal exchanges; textbased translations accounted for 37 of 95 episodes
recounted in journal entries and 44 of 86 live translations.
Domain analyses.We began a series of domain
analyses to identify and categorize the various kinds
of para-phrasingof text that children perform.
Anderson and Stokes (1984) contended that all literacy activities, including family literacy events, are
more influenced by social institutions than cultural
membership. Literacy practices understood in this
light can be grouped into different domains of practice that can then be traced back to different organizations and institutions outside of the home. Farr
(1994) noted that domains enable us to privilege a
social perspective in our analyses because we must attend to how literacy practices and social relationships
inform each other. Farrnamed five principal domains in her work: religious, commercial, state or legal, educational, and family or recreational.These
20
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2003
38/1
five domainsoverlapwith our findings.However,
ses of theseeventsin relationto otherrecordedand
basedon the diversityof textualmaterialspresentin
observedepisodesby noting points of similarityand
we
discerned
three
additional
dohouseholds,
difference.
Our aim is to illustratethe complexityof
family
mains:community,financial,and medical.
thesepara-phrasing
interactionsand to highlightthe
there
is
between
these
funcinterconnectedness
of the variousactivity-settingdiUndoubtedly,
overlap
tional domaincategories,but this divisionprovidesa
mensionsthat informall home literacyevents.
usefulgeneralrubricto understandthe diversityof
These mappingsand activity-settinganalyses
textualmaterialsrepresentingfamilialties to comareimportantfor attaininga goalof this research
plex socialand institutionalnetworks.
project:developingapplicationsfor classroompracDomain categorizatice. As we will illustrate,when immigrantyouth
Activity-setting
analyses.
tions,while analyticallyuseful,tend to stripparatranslateand interpretfor othersthey drawon lanphrasingsituationsfromtheircontexts.This led us to
guagestrategiesthat arenot unlikethe kindsof
conductan activity-setting
analysis.Activity-setting
strategiesthat good readersand writersuse when
analysesarea powerfulway to understandthe comthey tacklewrittentexts.But the natureof paraplex and multipledimensionsof literacypracticeand
phrasingoutsideof school (who participates,in what
arecongruentwith the ideologicalmodeland socioways,on what kind of tasks,drivenby particular
culturalapproachto literacy.These approachesemmotives,shapedby culturalvalues,and usingspecific
kindsof artifactsand tools) differsin importantdiphasizethe importanceof "denaturalizing"
literacy
eventsand activities,whichformpartof the natural
mensionsfromthe natureof activitysettingsfor
streamof dailylife activity.Analyseslook at different
learningand instructionin school. Situatedinsight
interlockingdimensionsin socialinteractionto see
on the variedprocessesand practicesof natural
how they aremutuallyconstitutiveof literacypractranslatingexperiences-how practicesareshaped,
tice. By separatingthesedifferentdimensions,we can
inscribed,experienced,and understood-will encompareacrosscontexts,consideringpointsof overhancethe developmentof classroomapplications.
lap aswell as of conflict.This facilitatesour effortsto
Judgingfromthe workcitedpreviously,we recmakespecificsuggestionsfor institutionallybasedlitbetweenfamiliesand schools
ognizethat "translating"
eracypractices.We drawfromGallimoreand
is a difficultprocess.In the Intergenerational
Literacy
Goldenberg's(1993) analysisof literacyactivitysetProject(Paratore,Melzi,et al., 1999), for example,
tingsin Latinohouseholdsin orderto examinehow
parentswereexplicitlyaskedto sharetheirhome, or
is shapedby the natureof participants' nonschool,literacieswith teachers
para-phrasing
duringa parenttheirculturalbeliefs;the taskoperarelationships;
teacherconference.Instead,theysharedschool-type
tions and demands(the activityitself,includingthe
literacies,such as how often they readstoriesto their
necessarytools usedto accomplishthe task);the
youngchildren.By takinga differentroute,suggestscriptsof conduct(i.e., the formsof participation);
ing the similaritiesbetweenfamilyandschoolliteraand the purposesor goalsthatparticipantsbringto
cies,we aim to translatebetweenthesespacesin a
the situation.However,unlikeGallimoreand
new way.
Goldenberg,who combinedobservedand reported
home literacyeventsfor generalizeddiscussion,we
chose to combineactivity-settinganalysiswith a more
interaction-based
analysis.
Specifically,we examinehow observedevents
unfoldedin time and socialcontext,usingtranscripts
that representparents'and children'sinteractions
Our domainanalysisof text-basedpara-phrasing
eventsilluminatesthe ubiquityof thesepracticesacross
aroundtexts.We approachactivities(includingliter-
Domainsof familyliteracy
para-phrasing
acy activities) as joint achievements by participants.
By tracking how talk-in-interaction unfolds, we can
examine how people organize their participation
through collaborative, intersubjective language practices (scripts of conduct) and how they employ tacit
cultural knowledge to handle the demands of a task
as well as to accomplish the goal(s) of the literacy activities. We focus here on two para-phrasinginstances in order to examine these activity-setting
dimensions in detail. However, we situate our analy-
many societal and institutionaldomains and the multiplicity of literaciesinvolved.Table 1 representsthe
panoramaof domains and texts presentwithin and
acrosshouseholds in the two communities.
These categorizationsenable us to see the diversity of text genres children manage: letters, forms, advertisements, storybooks, instructional guides, and
informational books (see Table 2). They also illuminate complex networks and informational flow. In
Table 3 we have categorizedthe items in terms of
21
TABLE 1
DOMAINS OF FAMILY LITERACY PARA-PHRASING (OBSERVED/REPORTED EPISODES
BY 18 CASE-STUDY PARTICIPANTS)
Familial/
Commercial
Rental
application
(fora musical
instrument)
Receipts
Community
Educational
recreational
Drug prevention Dress-codelettersLetterwriting
programmanual
Interimgrades Familycards
Letterof support
E-mail
to firefighters Reportcards
afterSeptember Schoolbank
Storybook
11,2001
reading
program
paper
"Warning
paper
Homework
(for
Movies
aring
Product
labels
Ads
aboutbus"
siblings,parents'
ESL)
Television
programs
Magnetschool
invitationalletter Jokes
Financial
Medical
Labelson
pharmaceutical
bottles
Bankstatements Vitamins
Bills
Health-care
Informational
lettersfrom
banks
products
Carfinancing
s-Mortgage
paymentyearend summary
Legal/state
Religious
Jurysummons
Church
informational
letters
Letterfrom
SocialSecurity
office
Welfare
Sundayschool
coursematerial
application
for
(Spanish,
Medical
self-helpUnemploymentsibling)
application
Letterasking
Letterfrom
permissionto
transfermedical Congress
Loans
records
om
ssocial
ocial
Letterfrfrom
Self-help
guides
InsuranceLetter
Insurance
OtOther
her
Self-helpguides
Appointment serviceagency
remindercards
informational GuinnessBookof
Letteraboutcar
fliersand letters WorldRecords
Letterfromsocial insuranceaftera
serviceagency crash
Fieldtripform Instruction
aboutproper
manuals(toys,
Otherforms
isa certification
nutrition
boardgames,
videogames,
computer,tape
recorder,sewing
Letterre:change
of address
guide)
Songlyrics
delivery through which these texts enter households
(via mail, e-mail, children'sbackpacks,the television,
parents).
We present the following sample of journal
entries to give a sense of what is involved in these
family literacy para-phrasing practices as well as
how children understand their experiences (representing three of the eight domains of para-phrasing
activities).
Familyorrecreational
Jessica
Sept.12,01 @Home
Medical
Tony
Fourthjournalentry
My dad had to send specialtabletsof calciumto my grandma. My aunt askedmy dad what the tabletsdo. He didn't
understandthe wordsso he calledme so I can translatethe
wordsto him. It was kind of confusingbecauseI also had a
hard time thinking about what it meant. I looked at the
word closely and then I remembered.So I easilytranslated
the word to Spanishand my dad told her.My aunt thanked
me for doing that. My dad also thanked me and that was
my moment of translating.
Legalorstate
Amanda
June 15, 2001
Today,beforemy momwentto sleepI readto herabout
I translatedfor my mom in the mail. An IRS [Internal
bathinga baby.Thetextwasin Englishso I hadto translate
RevenueService]lettercame and she did not understanda
I didn't
it in Spanish.It hadwordslike"fussyanddrafts."
paragraph.The paragraphsaid things about taxes I don't
rememberexactlybut I told her what it said.I felt good beknowwhatthesewordsmeant.So I hadto lookthemupin
causeI knew all the words.
I readthedefiI usedanEnglishdictionary.
thedictionary.
was
nitionsandthenexplained
to mymom.Thistranslation
As these journal entries illustrate, children
a littlebit hardbecausein thetextwerewordsthatI really
didn'tunderstand.
Buta dictionary
alwayshelps.
para-phrasea range of texts, in a variety of genres,
22
Reading
Research
Quarterly
TABLE 2
GENRES OF FAMILY LITERACY PARAPHRASING (OBSERVED/REPORTED
EPISODES BY 18 CASE-STUDY PARTICIPANTS)
Letters
* Personalcorrespondence
* Institutionalcorrespondence
* Community
Forms
* Applications
* Membership
* Reports(e.g., police,insurance)
* Contracts
* Personalrecords
* Surveys
* Consent/permission
Advertisements
* Paperfliers
* Newspaper,magazine,radio,television
* Publicsignsand notices
Labels
" Food
* Health/beauty
" Pharmaceutical
" Clothing
* Song lyricsin CD/cassettecases
Recordsof transactions
* Receipts
* Financialstatements
Fiction
* Children'sstorybooks
* Movies
News
" Television
* Newspaper
* Magazines
* Internet
Referenceguides/manuals(sacredand secular)
* Instructionalguides
" Operationmanuals
* Referencebooks (Bibleand otherreligioustexts,Spanish/English
dictionaries,thesaurus)
* ESLtextbooks
for different purposes, and in the context of various
family relations. They confront assorted challenges,
such as the specialized vocabulary of these societal
domains, and they use a range of strategies to decipher the texts. This includes Tony's stated use of
"thinking"and "looking closely,"Jessica'suse of a
dictionary, and a range of other social and linguistic
strategies that we documented through observations.
2003
38/1
Their work contributes to family health, well-being,
and survival.At least sometimes their efforts are explicitly acknowledged, as when Tony's aunt and father thank him for translating "what the tablets do."
In the next section, we will examine two different examples of family literacy para-phrasingevents.
These examples represent interactions between a
child and her or his mother who work together to
para-phrasetexts from legal and educational domains. We first describe the activity settings for each
para-phrasingevent, highlighting dimensions named
by Gallimore and Goldenberg (1993): participants'
relationships, cultural values, scripts of conduct, task
operations and demands, and goals and purposes.
We then look at how the actual translations transpired, with attention to the challenges that each text
presented, and how those challenges were addressed
by the child-parent "performanceteam" (Valdds,
2002), with the child taking the lead.
analysesof family
Activity-setting
literacypara-phrasing
Activity-setting dimensions
In immigrant family para-phrasingliteracy
practices, the primaryparticipant relationshipsconsist
of child-adult dyads. Most often, the adult is a parent or grandparent, although it is not uncommon
for a child to para-phrasefor recently arrivedaunts
and uncles. (Note that not all para-phrasingis done
for adults. Forty-five percent of the fifth and sixth
graderssurveyed in our Chicago site indicated that
they sometimes translate for peers, and 31% said
they sometimes translate for younger siblings.)
Across all households, the child most often
elected to para-phrasetends to be the oldest child,
but this may vary depending on parental views of
their children'sabilities, the oldest child's fluency in
English and Spanish, the child's willingness to do the
work, and the child's availability.In the ensuing
pages, we follow the work of child para-phrasers
Adriana and Miguel as they guide their mothers
through legal and educational texts, respectively.
The scriptsfor participationfor most of the reported or observed home literacy para-phrasing
events are similar, as these events often took place in
parent-child dyads. Sometimes other relativesparticipated, in various combinations, as "co-paraphrasers,"recipients of the translation, or as an
audience. (Audiences may also include people who
are absent on the scene, but whose presence is felt, as
23
TABLE 3
PRIMARY MODES OF DELIVERY OF FAMILY LITERACY PARA-PHRASING TEXTS BY GENRE
(OBSERVED/REPORTED INCIDENTS BY 18 CASE-STUDY PARTICIPANTS)
Mail
Children
Adults
Electronicmedia
Letters
Forms
Ads
Labels
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Transactions
Fiction
News
Guides
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Note.Electronicmediaincludedtelevision,radio,and Internet.
made apparent in Tony's journal entry.) Thus, family
literacy para-phrasingcontrasts with most oral interpretations these children have done in public, which
usually require them to speak for their parents to
people they do not know very well and who are often authority figures.
Various sorts of cultural valuesmay shape the
nature of the activity that we are about to examine,
but for the purposes of our study of para-phrasing
we note one salient value that informs the work of
family interpretersin most immigrant householdsthe expectation that all members of a household or
family should pool their skills and resourcesfor the
good of the whole. In a sense, the value might be
read as "from each according to his or her ability, to
each according to his or her need." (See Moll, 1992;
Orellana, 2001; Valdes, 1996; and Vdlez-Ibaifiez&
Greenberg, 1992, for other researchthat illuminates
this shared value in immigrant communities.) This is
not to say that all members of this or other households endorse this value equally; in fact, we make
our claim to this cultural value based in part on challenges to the culturally prescribed norm. Adriana's
mother told us about Adriana'sresistanceto serving as
the family translator:"No mis, no le gusta, no le
gusta ayudarlea uno con estas cosas.... Yo no se un
inglks perfecto para hablar,y verdad, si ellos pueden,
[deberfanhacerlo]." (It'sjust that, she doesn't like to,
she doesn't like to help one with these things.... I
don't speak perfect English, and it's true, if they can,
[they should].)
The task operationsand demandsare in part
shaped by the artifacts each child has to deal with.
The jury summons that Adriana translated contrasts
with the much "easier"or more "fun"texts used in
other family literacy para-phrasingepisodes (e.g.,
joke books, the GuinnessBook of WorldRecords,
greeting cards). In a second example, Miguel contends with a letter from school. These represent two
of many domains and genres that our participants
have had to interpret, and like many texts, they do
not seem to be designed with ease of comprehension
in mind.
Adriana'staskis driven by a real sense ofpurHer
mother needs to figure out what to do with
pose:
this authoritative document. Adriana may be less invested than her mother in making sense of the text,
but she is used to being called in to help with these
sorts of things, and her purpose seems to be to get
the job done. She may be particularlymotivated to
deal with the text because she knows that her mother
may ask her to make phone inquiries on the matter,
as she has done on other occasions if she cannot determine a course of action herself, and Adriana does
not like to make such calls. (In fact, Adriana'smother doesinsist that Adriana make a phone call to check
on whether she needs to respond to the summons.)
Miguel's task carriesless weight insofar as his mother
does not have to do anything with the form other
than make sure that her children comply with the
school's dress codes. Adriana and Miguel are also undoubtedly aware that they have multiple audiences
evaluating their performances: their mothers and the
researcher.Their mothers may be more evaluative
precisely becausethe researcheris present.
Expertise in Adriana'ssituation seems to be distributed between the parent and the child: Adriana
knows more English than her mother, but her mother
knows more than Adriana about what juries are and
how they work. The scripts in which these two engage
reflectthis distributed expertise, through mutual negotiation of the meaning of English text and how best
to expressit in Spanish. Adriana initiates the activity
and elicits her mother'sparticipation by asking points
of clarificationon her own expressedguesses in
Spanish or by checking her mother'scomprehension.
Her mother, in turn, displays her understandingof
Adriana'sinterpretationand ratifiesit or requestsfurther clarification.In Miguel's case, the expertise is differentlyweighted because his mother knows little
24
Reading
Research
Quarterly
FIGURE 1
JUROR INFORMATION FORM
2003
38/1
compare situations that vary so widely in terms of
texts and contexts; certainly,we observed situations
that seemed to result in frustration on the part of
both parent and child. However, these examples reveal what is possible, especially for families like
Adriana'swho have years of experience working together on translation.
Example1: Adrianaand her mothernegotiatea
jury summons
English and has little familiaritywith U.S. school
practices.Across episodes, we saw that this weighting
shapes the nature of participation (who asks questions,
who answersthem, how meaning is negotiated, and
the nature and degree of support children receivefor
their efforts). However, as we will observe in these
contrasting cases, most observed translationsinvolved
a mutual negotiation of texts, with a focus on meaning. The child takes the lead in guiding the process of
negotiation and interpretationbut is supported by her
or his parent.
Having set these scenes, described along
activity-setting dimensions, we turn now to two consecutive interaction analyses of the interpretive
processes as they unfold. Before doing so, however,
we want to underscore the fact that we selected cases
that involve complex texts, and ones in which the
negotiations of meaning were relatively successful. In
the second case, where Miguel seems to have difficulty in conveying all the referentialcontent of the
text, he is able to successfully convey the tenor of the
school letter. We do not claim that either case is representative of all translation situations. As our domain analyses might suggest, it is difficult to
In this first para-phrasingevent that we present, the primary participant is Adriana, the 14-yearold daughter of immigrants from Guadalajara,
Mexico, to Chicago. Adrianais also our oldest participant, with relativelywell-developedliteracy skills.
Adriana lives with her mother, father, aunt, 15-yearold sister, and two younger brothers (ages 8 and 4).
Although she is not the oldest in her family (unlike
most of our selected participants who are the eldest),
she is the primary para-phaser,in her case, probably
because her older sister has a severe learning disability. Adriana'sparents both work (the father is a house
painter; the mother is a teacher'sassistant in a bilingual preschool) and speak a considerable amount of
English, as they have lived in the United States for
almost 20 years. However, they do not feel confident
in their abilities and depend on Adriana for many
translating and interpreting tasks. We use this case in
part to illustrate that even when parents speak
English, they often rely on their children to interpret, particularlyfor specialized tasks.
In the scene we view here, Adriana is seated on
a stool at a kitchen counter with her mother. The researcher (Marjorie;first author) is seated nearby,observing and monitoring a tape recorderon the table
in front of Adriana and her mother. Adriana's4-yearold brother is playing in the background, and her
older sister listens in. Toward the end of the scene,
Adriana'sfather comes home from work and enters
the conversation. Except for the tape recorderand
the researcher'spresence, this is a typical day in
Adriana'shousehold, and the participants in this
home para-phrasingevent are close family members,
with the exception of the researcheras audience.
The task that Adriana is called upon to do this
afternoon involves deciphering a jury summons that
her mother received in the mail (see Figure 1). She
had set it aside, waiting to find time in Adriana's
busy high school schedule to get her help, and
Marjorie'spresence in the home this day (with her
expressed interest in children'stranslating experiences) became the impetus for this event to unfold.
This is not to say that Adriana would not have trans-
lated the summons were the researchernot present;
but it is unlikely that the family would have had
Adriana engage in this task while a guest was in their
home, were it not for the fact that they understood
the researchagenda.
The jury summons is written in various fonts;
the letters are all relativelysmall and dense. The capital letters that introduce the summons seemingly underscore its alreadyauthoritative nature. The
language is formal and requiressome knowledge of a
legal language register in order to understand what it
requiresof the reader.The first page of the summons
contains detailed information about where, when,
and how to respond.
The first challenge Adriana faces is in the title;
she does not know what the word summonsmeans.
Her mother tries to insist that she look up the word
on the computerized pocket translator that they had
purchased for this purpose, but Adriana decides instead to read through the paper, seeking clues to the
overall meaning. She tries substituting the word service for duty--an English substitution that is quite
appropriate, and that her mother might understand,
but in this case does not. Adriana'smother follows
with a request for clarification ("What?")that suggests that she is trying to follow the words in
English. Adriana makes severalstarts at explaining
what her mother is going to have to do and then
stops to ask her mother for help, seemingly because
she does not know the Spanish word for trial.
Adriana:
Vas a tener que, umm, este,
umm,
(You're going to have to,
um, that is, um)
que dice,
vas a estar en, en,
que dice, este
(it says)
(you're going to be in, in)
(it says, that is)
Qud
es un trial?
(What is a trial?)
When her mother only responds with "Eh?"
Adriana tries again:
Adriana:
Trial.
(Trial.)
Vas a, como estar en,
umm
(You're going to, like be
in, umm)
O no, c6mo se dice cuando,
25
(Oh, no, how do you say
when,)
c6mo se dice cuando va uno
a la corte
a la, alllllll,
paraservirdejurado?
(how do you say when
yougo to court)
(tothe,to the)
(toserveasa juror?)
Adriana:
TtLeresun,
ti eresun,un,unjuror.
(Youarea,)
(youarea, a, a juror.)
Mom:
Comoparaservirdejurado.
(Liketo serveasa juror.)
Adriana:
eresunjurado,
Tdt
entoncestnivasa tenerqueir
Que es lo primero que hace
unjurado.
(Youarea jury,)
(soyou'regoingto have
to go)
(What is the first thing
thata jurydoes?)
In this passage, Adriana'smother begins with a
clarification sequence, modeling the Spanish construction "servirde jurado" (to serve as a juror).
When Adriana picks this up she transforms it to "ti
eres un juror,"speaking in Spanish but using the
English word for juror. Her mother revoices this,
again modeling the appropriate Spanish construction: "Como para servir de jurado" (Like to serve as
a juror). In her next revoicing, Adriana picks up the
Spanish word jurado (jury) but inserts it into her
previous construction (you are a jury). This suggests
that Adriana is developing her Spanish vocabularyeven if she does not use these words in precisely the
correct way. Adriana'smother may also be acquiring
English vocabulary, though she does not reveal this
through revoicings of the English words.
Following this segment of the transcript,
Adriana'smom goes on to try to explain what a jury
is, first in a general way: "cuando vas a un lugar y
estaiel juez y varias personas" (when you go to a
place and there'sa judge and other people). Then she
gives a specific example-she tells Adriana about a
time that she had to go to court about a traffic accident. With this new understanding, Adriana picks
up and continues:
Adriana:
By now Adriana'smotherseemsto havean idea
what this paperis about (shehas been looking at it
closelywith Adriana),and she beginsto workwith
Adrianato coconstructan understanding.
Mom:
Enla corteparajurar?
to take
(Inthecourtroom
oath?)
OK, entonces,de, de, de eso
(Well,that'swhat it's
se trata,
about,)
de eso se estaitratandoporque, (that'swhat it's about
because,)
de eso se trataporqueaquf
(that'swhat it's aboutbediciendo
cause
hereit's sayingthat,)
que,
esti
vas
a
tener
ir,
este,
(that
que
que
you'regoing to have
to go, that is, uh, from)
e, de,
26
Reading
Research
Quarterly
como a diario
(like daily)
hasta que te, que te digan,
que ya.
(until they tell you you're
done.)
Adriana and her mom go on to discuss the details of the summons-the time and days of service
and how to fill out the form. Adriana at this point
seems to believe that her mother is required to perform the jury service. When her mother asks if service is voluntary, Adriana draws evidence from the
authoritative nature of the summons: "Pues, me
imagino que tienes que ir porque aquifdice el 6rden
de la c-county." (Well, I imagine that you need to go
because here it says that it's an order from the county.) She reads further, laughs, and adds "Amenos que
le digas que tienes maisde setenta afios." (Unless you
say that you are older than 70 years old.)
This seems to clue Adriana'smom into another
possibility; that the order may not apply to her since
she is not a citizen of the United States. She suggests
this to Adriana. Adriana reads through more details,
for example, that no laptops or cellular phones are
permitted in court. When they get to the end of the
form and turn it over, they see two questions: "Are
you a citizen of the United States?"and "Do you
speak English?"The reader is instructed to call a Jury
Administrator if the answer to either of these questions is "no."Adriana and her mother conclude that
the jury summons probably does not apply, so
Adriana'smom instructs her (over her protests) to
confirm this the next day by phone.
Example2: Migueland his motherpara-phrase
a schoolletter
In this second para-phrasingevent, the primary
participant is Miguel. Miguel is 11 years old; he immigrated with his family from Guanajuato, Mexico,
when he was 2. He lives with his mother, father, and
two younger siblings (ages 5 and 3). They lived for a
time in Phoenix, Arizona, and in the city of Chicago
before renting a small apartment in a Chicago suburb. Neither parent speaks much English; Miguel's
father works as a gardener (seasonal labor, which involves long stretches of unemployment), and the
family of five lives in a small one-bedroom apartment. This case stands in contrast with Adriana's
much more "settled"immigrant family. (These cases
help to illustrate the fact that the term "immigrant"
glosses over wide variations in circumstances and experiences.)
In the following scene, Miguel is seated on the
couch with his mother. His younger brother and sister (Diana and Roberto) are nearby, playing with
2003
38/1
toys on the floor.A researcher(Marjorie)is present
as Migueland his motherlook oversome papersthat
weresent fromhis new school.When Miguelbegins
translating,Dianaand Robertostartgiggling;they're
awarethat Miguelis recordingthis event.At this
point Marjoriecallsthem into anotherroom and
leavesMigueland his motherto dealwith the text
"asyou would do if I werenot here."
is a school
The text Miguelhas to para-phrase
letterto parentsrequestingthat parentscooperate
with them to regulatethe studentdresscode and the
consumptionof gum and snacks.The letteris written in highlyconvolutedand bureaucratic
prose,
challengingtaskto readand
makingit a particularly
translate(see Figure2).
this letter,Miguelfacesthe
In para-phrasing
taskof translatingthe namesof particularstylesof
modernclothing(midriffsand spaghettistrapshirts)
blouses(whatcounts
as well as qualifying"sleeveless"
as "thejunctionbetweenthe armand the shoulder").
In the followingtranscript,he struggleswith the section of text that begins,"Girlswill not weartops that
exposemidriffs."To tacklethis, he readssectionby
sectionand attemptsto give literalglosses-a strategy that professionaltranslatorsoften use in theireffortsto preservethe referentialmeaningof the
sourcelanguage(Hatim & Mason, 1990;Wadensjd,
1998). In instanceswherehe does not know the
equivalentwordin Spanish,he firstpreservesthe
Englishpronunciationin his rendering,then
changesit to Spanishphonology,followingup with
an embodieddescription,gesturingto indicatehow
clothescoverbody parts.When he pausesbriefly,his
motherstepsin to offerher interpretationof what
schoolattirewould be like, clearly
inappropriate
demonstratingthatshe is followingthe gist of the
text, if not its everydetail.
Miguel:
Nifias no pueden traer [pause]
midriffs o
(Girls can't wear midriffs
or)
spaghetti straps [English
pronunciation]
(spaghetti straps)
straps [Spanish pronunciation]
asina blusas [pause] como
[pause] asina
(straps)
(like blouses like like)
que va este [gesturing]
(that go like)
Mom:
pegadas
(skin tight)
Miguel does not ratify his mother's interpretation, that the blouses are "pegadas"(skin tight) but
instead continues attempting to translate "the junc-
27
FIGURE 2
LETTER FROM SCHOOL
Dear Parents/Guardians,
Two importantmattersforyourattention
We at XX MiddleSchoolareaskingyou to cooperatewith us concerninga rulefor studentdress.We would like our schoolto appearmore
business-likethan beach-like.In this lightwe arerequestingstudentsto followthesesimplerulesof thumbregardingtheirschoolattire:
such as sleevelesstee shirtswithouta sleevedtee shirtbeneath.
Boyswill not wearshirts,basketballjerseys,or similar-to-basketball-jerseys,
Girlswill not weartops thatexpole midriffsor "spaghetti-strap"
tops. Blousesand topswill coverthe shoulders.Sleevelesstopsor blousesare
permitted.Thesewould be thosewhich beginto be sleevelessat the junctionof the armand shoulder.
Boysareexpectedto weartheirpants/shortswith the waistbandaroundtheirwaists,usinga belt if neededto keepthem in place.
Generally,girls'shortsareshorterthanboys'shorts.Shortswornat schoolareto be appropriatein length.Mid-thighmightbe a suggestedlength
for shortsworn by girlsand/orboys.
Studentsnot in compliancewill be askedto complyby usinga PE clothingor optionspossessedin theirlockers.If theseitemsareunavailable,
furtherstepswill be takenby the administrationto get the studentin compliance.
We do not feel that this inconveniencesany studentor family.We feel this actionworksin concertwith maintainingthe good orderanddiscipline
of our academicenvironment.
Further:
In attemptingto maintainan orderlyenvironmentat XX MiddleSchoolwe wouldlike to remindyou of the followingexpectationsforour students:
No gum, candyand/orbeveragesareexpectedto be chewed/consumedoutsidethe cafeteria.We havehad problemswith gum on floors,banisters
and clothing.Candyand snackchip wrapperslitterthe hallwaysof the school.We feel limitationof snacksto the cafeteriawill contributeto our
effortsto maintaina cleanand sanitaryschoolenvironment.We would appreciateyour remindersto yoursons and daughtersto disposeof trash
in availablerefusecontainersto keepour school litterfree
Walkmansarenot permittedanytimeat school.
Thankyou foryourhelp and cooperation.
XX'sSchoolImprovementTeam
tion of the arm and the shoulder."In doing so, he
interprets this junction as the elbowrather than the
shoulder. His mother acknowledges this and then
asks what else the text says.
Miguel:
blusas? [pause] solo que 1[pause] que nno mis le- [pause] le tape
los codos.
(blouses? That only that)
(just cover the elbows)
Mom:
uhah [pause] qud mis
(uhah, what else)
Despite the fact that his mother seems to be
following the meaning, Miguel seems dissatisfied
with his interpretation of the text as he continues.
He signals this through pauses, interactional hedges,
and repeated attempts to clarify the meaning. After
working through the details of these assorted rules of
clothing, he reaches the section that begins: "students not in compliance will be asked to comply":
Miguel:
Alumnos quo no traen cinto, (Students who don't wear
belts,)
del chores o pantalones,
(with shorts or pants,)
le van a poner los,
(they will make them put on)
de esos de,
(those, of,)
(of the gym?)
de, el gimnasio?
Los uniformes.
(The uniforms.)
In his interpretation of this section, Miguel cuts
to the chase, taking up the voice of the school authority and pronouncing that students who do not wear
belts will be made to wear gym uniforms. In doing
this, he eliminates the school's veiled threat ("further
steps will be taken by the administration to get the
student in compliance"). He then proceeds directly to
the call for school to work "in concert" with families
to achieve discipline:
Miguel:
No, no sentimosque,
(We, we don't feel that,)
28
Reading
inconv,
inconvieneal estudianteo la
familia.
[pause]
Nosotrosdeseamosque estas
se va a concer-tar,con [pause],um
[pause],
asinacomo
Research
Quarterly
(this inconv-)
(inconveniencesthe
studentor the family.)
(We hope that this is
going to con-)
(cer-tar,con, um)
(like)
Here, however, he struggles with the term in
concert.He deploys his fail-safe strategy of applying
Spanish phonology to the word, thereby producing a
cognate: concertar.Miguel's prosody signals to his
mother his apparent uncertainty of this word's
meaning, and she attempts to coconstruct meaning.
She interjects a word-desconcertar (to disconcert).
This in fact is the opposite of concertar,and thus
transforms the meaning of the text at the sentential
level. Arguably, however, this word fits better with
the overall tenor of the letter, which suggests that
Miguel's mother is indeed following the meaning of
the text. Miguel, meanwhile, continues to find ways
to explain the meaning to his mother. He presents an
imagined example, in which he takes up the voice of
noncompliant students:
Miguel:
uhuh, o que, que luego que
digan, si no me
dejan poner los pantalones,
no voy a estudiar.
(uhuh, or, that, that they
later they say that if)
(they don't let me wear
pants, I won't study.)
Thus, in this segment Miguel shows his versatility with different "voices"and different audiences-taking up the voice of school authority and
then playing the part of a resistant student. He deploys these various strategies to convey the meaning
of the text, with his mother as an active listener.
Miguel's mother follows her own line of thinkshe
wonders aloud, "C6mo que les va a deconing;
certar?"(What do they mean it's going to unsettle
them?) With this, she seems to be questioning why
the school would think that this call for proper
school attire would be so unsettling to parents, or
why the school thinks that parents would be inconvenienced by such a reasonable request. Meanwhile,
Miguel continues to contend with the convoluted
wording of this letter, working through the rules that
trash should be disposed of in "availablerefuse containers."As earlier,his mother revoices various segments of his interpretation and uses other
back-channeling devices to signal that she is following the essential meaning of the text. After Miguel
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38/1
turns off the tape recorder,he and his mother talk
with Marjorie about the transaction. Miguel's mother puts the letter into her own words and then comments: "O sea que no exacto como esti alli, pero el
me da a entender." (Like, not exactly as it is there,
but he helps me to understand.)
Contrastive
activity-setting
in school
of para-phrasing
analysis
Thus far we have argued that Latino immigrant children'spara-phrasingof text constitutes a diverse set of home literacy practices. Our data corpus
illuminates the pivotal role children play in interpreting text for and in collaboration with their parents and other kin. We have underscored the
negotiations of meaning that take place, with children taking the lead, supported in different ways and
to different degrees by their parents. The fact that
these young people are bilingual speakerswho already have developed literacy skills, at least in
English, is what levels the interpretive playing
ground and affords them a more equal participant
status than might otherwise be the case in parentchild interactions. This is an important corrective to
researchthat presupposes children to be the participants needing guidance during literacy events. We
now turn briefly to a setting where these same children experience a different participant status: inschool literacy activities that entail within-language
para-phrasing.
As mentioned previously, most of our case
study participants were in the fifth or sixth grade
when we began observing in their homes and classrooms. (Adriana is our oldest participant, currently
in ninth grade; Maria, whose words introduce this
article, is our youngest participant, now in fifth
grade.) We followed them as some made the transition from self-contained elementary school classrooms to middle school, subject-specific settings. We
have been in bilingual and nonbilingual classrooms
in two school districts documenting children'sexposure to and also their participation in school-based
literacy activities.
Through this work we have mapped out a diverse range of officially sanctioned school literacy activities, which include writing their school "agendas"
(middle school students in particularare expected to
keep track of changing class schedules and homework
due dates), reading textbooks, using handouts that
provide definitions of important classroom concepts,
using referencebooks and other forms of media
(dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses,newspapers,
magazines, the Internet), completing worksheets
(word scrambles,word finds, fill-in-the blank, crossword puzzles), taking notes verbatim from overheads
or chalkboards,using other types of graphic organizers and templates (tables, graphs, charts, science fair
packets), and reading many forms of fiction (short
stories, novels, poetry). Although these school literacy
activities expose students to a range of literacy domains and genres, this range is more restrictedthan
in the family literacy para-phrasingactivities we documented, at least in terms of societal domains,
genres, and purposes. In most cases, the purposes are
to perform school tasks, not to take action in the social world. Family literacy domains and genres of
text, on the other hand, comprise a sometimes more
challenging set of literaciesfor people of any age to
tackle; they are not carefullydesigned to be age or
ability appropriate,no explicit supports are written
into the texts (such as definitions of key vocabulary
words), and their content is not necessarilypredictable by context (as perhaps, when reading about
science in science texts).
Without entering a fully developed discussion
of this school-based ethnographic data, we want to
include some observations here as point of contrast
with children'spara-phrasingfamily literacy activities. While we acknowledge considerable variation in
the approaches that different schools, classrooms,
and teachers take to literacy instruction, we have discerned one common school literacy activity that cuts
across all classroom settings, similar to the way that
para-phrasingliteracy activities are pervasive in immigrant households. This practice entails direct interactions between teachers and students in reading
and interpretingthe explanationsand instructionsfor
textbook activities and worksheets. All teachers and
types of classrooms in our study used textbooks and
photocopied workbooks or worksheets to organize
these types of intergenerationalliteracy actiities
The prototypical example of the type of school
literacy activity setting we analyze for this discussion
consists of either the teacher or an elected student
performing a token, out-loud reading of instructional passagesfrom a textbook or handout. After calling
out the instructions, the teacher steps into the role of
interpreter,paraphrasingfor the students what the
task entails. This interpretive process is treated as a
transparentprocess (by both teachers and students
alike). Rarely do students ask questions after the
teacher has authoritatively delivered the interpretation of the text. This is true even in cases where the
teacher invites students to do so. Students are then
expected to apply the teacher'sinterpretation to solve
29
the set of exercises. In classrooms where there is little
or no structured in-class time to complete exercises,
students take the assignment home as homework,
where some may then realize that they lack the conceptual base necessary to complete the exercises.
Literacyactivity setting of textbookexplanations
and instructions.Most of the dimensions of school
literacy activity settings differ radically from those of
family literacy activity settings, though there are
some interesting points of overlap. We feel it is useful to juxtapose these two activity settings in order to
explore these similarities. We acknowledge the challenges teachers face in the difficult work of guiding
literacy instruction and particularlyin coordinating a
shared intersubjective framework for interpreting
texts within the constraints of school classrooms. At
the same time, we want to suggest ways in which
teachers might modify this "standardprocedure"in
order to take advantage of the skills bilingual student
para-phrasersare concurrently developing within
their homes.
In schools, the participantsare teachers and
students rather than parents and their children.
Schools moreover are societal institutions of instruction, organized to bring a few adults (teachers) together with large groups of children (students) with
the goal of "learning."Teachers occupy a position of
authority in the lives of their students; their job involves facilitating learning and evaluating student
performance. While the processes of learning about
and evaluating children also inform family life, they
likely are not the fundamental goals characterizing
family literacyactivities. The goals of learning and
teaching do underscore family interactions where
parents enact schoolliteracyscripts to assist their children with homework (cf. Gallimore & Goldenberg,
1993). However, in family literacy activities, children
and adults must pool their different expertise and
knowledge to puzzle through the content of texts
and discern what they requireof the family
It is impossible to talk about a single set of
American cultural valuesconcerning education; however, many groups living within the United States
(citizens and noncitizens alike) value education. This
is certainly the case of immigrant Latino populations
residing within the United States. Delgado-Gaitan
(1990, 1992), Vilez-Ib~iiez and Greenberg (1992),
and Gallimore and Goldenberg (1993) all described
how Latino immigrants highly value education as a
means to secure economic stability and report making extreme personal sacrifices so that their children
may have access to it. In this way, cultural values
concerning education overlap in both Latino immigrant homes and school settings. Public educational
30
Reading
Research
Quarterly
institutions are in place ostensibly to provide equal
access to knowledge and facilitate literacy instruction
in English for all children, regardlessof what language(s) they speak at home, as well as to provide
them with a means to achieve socioeconomic mobility. In fact, children are required by law (in most
states) to attend school until age 16. Finally, the entire system of education is built around assessing the
individual's performance. Teachers may use group
activities and projects to organize student participation in classrooms and grade children on the basis of
their ability to work well with others; however, these
grades are almost always individually assessed. Each
student receives a personal set of grades and is generally expected to do his or her own work. This school
emphasis on individual achievement is not what we
document in our case study of children'sfamily literacy para-phrasingactivity.At home, children and
parents work together to accomplish tasks that matter for the family as a whole.
The task operationsand task demandsof literacy
activities overlap and diverge in home and school
settings. Our observations confirm that in both settings the children have access to dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers, textbooks,
computers, and some storybooks. As we have mentioned, schools send home a barrageof materials in
the form of letters, school announcements, permission slips, children'sstorybooks, and more, which
end up comprising one of the domains of family literacy texts mediating para-phrasingliteracy activities. Of course there are other kinds of literacy
artifacts that do not appear in school. Many of them
are written in dense, convoluted, bureaucraticprose.
Most employ a specialized lexicon and language register, ones that correspond to specific professions and
social contexts. Expertise is unequal and distributed
as children and parents collaboratively use the tools
available to them, including national languages, dictionaries, electronic devices, and specialized knowledge of bureaucraticinstitutions, as well as social
resources, to parse and coconstruct meanings of
these texts.
We identified reading explanatory passages and
instructions from school textbooks as a rough approximation to many literacy activities families engage in when para-phrasing,in the sense that
instructions tell the readerwhat they have to do with
the text at hand. Similarly,children have to read
things, like jury summonses, credit card applications,
and other forms in order to figure out what is required of them. At home, children may also help
their families do the tasks (e.g., fill out the applications), but they first have to read to find out what
JANUAR
Y/FEBRUAR
Y/MARCH
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they have to do; it is this aspect of this activity that
we see as parallelto reading instructions in school.
We note that not all of the family literacy paraphrasing events that we documented involve this
"instructional"mode; children also do such things as
para-phrasestorybooks for their siblings, help their
parents select greeting cards, and report on informational texts. But even in those cases, they are expected to figure out what to do and how to deal with the
genre, without the directives of a teaching adult.
In these school literacy activity settings, the
primary artifactsorganizing interactions are textbooks. The teachers we met held mixed feelings
about using them, and there were variations in the
extent to which textbooks constituted the core of
classroom curriculum. Teachersdid express, though,
that they felt it necessary to use them for several reasons. First, access to newer books in the Chicago
school was limited, and school administrators pressured teachers to make use of what was already at
their disposal. They also wanted to be sure that students were exposed to plenty of exercisesthat would
prepare them for such standardizedtests commonly
referredto as "the Iowa" (Iowa Test of Basic Skills developed by Riverside Publishing) and the "I-SAT"
(the Illinois Student Achievement Test).
Unlike the aforementioned home literacytexts,
school textbooks are generallyorganizedand written
in carefullyregulatedways that are assumed to make
the prose more accessibleto students than other texts.
The text layout is predictable.Formattingand font
size is standardized,presumablyto enhance the young
reader'sability to interpretthe text. Texts include explanatory notes, define "big words,"and model sample questions to provide students the knowledge and
tools necessaryto complete subsequent exercises.
(Despite textbook publishers'attempts to make reading textbooks easy to interpret,teachersand students
often consider them tedious to read.)
The scriptsemployed to organize participation
frameworks and personnel relationships diverge in
these two literacy activity settings. While parents and
teachers are authority figures in these children'slives,
expertise and distribution of authority in these sets
of literacy activities is not the same. In family literacy
para-phrasingactivity settings, children take the lead
in reading, interpreting, and translating texts. The
authority and expertise are distributed as parents and
children mutually negotiate and interpret texts.
Thus, the labor involved in interpretation is pooled,
yet distributed between the participants-both of
whom acknowledge that the knowledge each possesses is unequal and equally valuable to tackle the
literacy activity at hand. In the school context, the
organization of participation is radically different.
Teachers do not see these particular texts (the instructions) as sites to be mined for building literacy
skills. Instead, they say that good teachers should
make instructions clearfor the students.
Finally, these activities are driven by a different
set of purposesor motives. Teachers do not relinquish
the interpretive power in these interactions because
they are there to teachthe students. In fact, in the
classrooms we observed where the majority of students come from immigrant families, teachers felt
that they needed to be even more clear and explicit
in their interpretations precisely because they assumed that their students lacked the vocabulary base
in English necessary to do the work of interpretation. Students were then expected to carry out the
instructions, though the hard work of interpretation
had just been done for them. This contrasts with
family literacy activity settings that involve paraphrasing. Here the goal is pragmatic-to figure out
the meaning of the text and discern what bearing it
has on family members' lives. At home, parents do
not necessarily see themselves at cross-purposeswith
their children, although children do sometimes resist
para-phrasingfor their parents. They constitute what
Valdes (2002) has termed a "performanceteam" with
a unified task at hand. Children may also find these
literacy activity settings boring and difficult, but they
recognize that they make an important and meaningful contribution to their families.
forliteracylearning
Implications
Para-phrasingsituations, like the examples
with Adriana and Miguel that we described earlier,
take place every day in immigrant households. These
daily life family literacy practices are different than
typical middle class practices like bedtime storybook
forchilbuttheymaybenolesssignificant
reading,
dren'sliteracy development. Arguably, they may be
moreso, in that these activities expose children to a
much wider arrayof genres, domains, and forms of
written texts than do storybooks (or for that matter,
than do school literacy activities). Para-phrasingalso
engages children actively in the interpretation of
texts, for real purposes, rather than positioning them
as the passive recipients of the readings. It is also a
practice that supports olderchildren'scontinued literacy development in collaboration with adults.
Moreover, this is not just a practice in which
children'sabilities are developed by more expert or
knowledgeable others. In fact, our observations and
analyses of para-phrasingas a family literacy practice
31
reveal that knowledge, within the Vygotskian notion
of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky,
1978), is often times distributed, although unequally, between participants and participant roles. Many
misconstrue the expert-novice relationship as a unidirectional one-rendering novices as those who
simply appropriate understanding and knowledge
from those with more expertise. The institution,
families, and children presuppose the teacher'sexpertise, and certainly the teacher'sposition is imbued
with greater authority by the educational institution
itself. What our work reveals is that in para-phrasing,
children take a central and often more authoritative
role. This is evidenced by the fact that children often
initiate the talk, ask andanswer questions, selectively
enlist others' help as they need it, and share the
"script."They provide the explanations, with varying
degrees and kinds of support from their adults. They
then support their adults in doing those tasks.
Children'sexpertise is recognized (implicitly or explicitly), and they at times recognize that importance
themselves, as Monique shows in this journal entry:
Monique
June 24, 2001
I do translatingto my parentsmostlyaboutbills. The company gives a letter explainingwhat is it about, but it's in
English.I translatethe lettersentenceby sentenceit is a little
hardfor me but for my dad it is betterbecausehe would understandbetter.I'm going to be honest most of the time is
boringbut sometimesit's cool becauseyou know something
thatpeopledon't know. I'm not makingfun of otherpeople
but it feelsgood becauseyou couldhelp thosepeople.I have
to do allthe translating
becauseI'mthe onlychild.My parents
may understandandspeakwell but theyneed translating.
As we have described, school literacy activity
settings are quite different from those of family paraphrasing events. At the same time, we have identified
some similarities across these settings. We would like
to suggest that practices could be made more similar
through a rather small transformation in the classroom activity of interpreting textbook instructions:
Teachers might work collaboratively with students to
para-phraseinstructions. They might also encourage
students to draw on the full repertoireof their bilingual and biliterate tool kits to work with teachers or
one another to figure out what the instructions require. This might include acknowledging and building on the spontaneous translating (and other
bilingual language play) that kids sometimes engage
in at school much as Gutidrrez, Baquedano-L6pez,
and Tejeda (1999) suggested that teachers draw students' voices into a hybrid learning space. We recognize the constraints of classroom settings (e.g., large
32
Reading
Research
Quarterly
numbers of students), so we suggest that teachers
might have students work in pairs to decipher instructions and then review their interpretations with
other dyads or with the whole group.
Certainly, we do not want to suggest that
teachers should stop explaining difficult texts and instructions and require students do it by themselves.
Nor are we calling for teachers to send kids home to
collaboratively figure things out with their parents.
In fact, most parents expect the teacherto provide
children with the conceptual framework necessary to
complete homework; this was certainly true in the
Mexican immigrant families studied by Farr(1994).
We realize that reading textbook instructions is
not a "best practice"for literacy learning, and in fact
we could envision more significant transformations
that would better align classroom practices with outof-school literacies. Rather than assign decontextualized textbook exercises, teachers could ask children
to translate texts for their family and then reflect
upon those experiences in journal or essay writing.
Teachers could then begin to see some of the literacy
demands that children face and assist them in their
learning. Alternatively, teachers could have children
bring something into class that needs translating and
ask them to work with other bilingual children in
negotiating and solving how each would read, interpret, and then translate the text for their parents (or
for whomever the relevant audience member might
be). In this way, peers could then pool their own experiences and challenge one another to come up
with more precise translations or clearer interpretations of the text.
Whatever participant structure teachers may
devise and find best suited for their classrooms, we
encourage teachers to coconstruct this understanding
with students in a way that values their work as interpreterswho ask and answer questions, while scaffolding them into achieving greater literacy
competency. This, in turn, might facilitate the work
children do at home as para-phrasers.We suggest
this as a way of linking home and school activities at
the level of activity-setting structure. By transforming practice in this way, teachers may enhance students' development as para-phraserswithin as well as
across languages. In recognizing the work bilingual
children do as active interpretersof texts in their lives
outside of school and facilitating such negotiation of
school texts, all students (not just bilingual learners)
may benefit. After all, being literate in our modern
social world requiresthe ability to navigate multiple
literacies.The success one has in such interpretation
is certainly measured by what these young para-
2003
38/1
phrasersdo on a daily basis: take the words of people
and institutions and put them in otherwords.
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processes
ReceivedOctober29, 2001
FinalrevisionreceivedJune7, 2002
AcceptedJune 14, 2002
AUTHORS'
2003
38/1
NOTE
This researchwas supportedby the SpencerFoundation/National
Academy of Education, Northwestern University, the International
ReadingAssociation(ElvaKnightAward),and the National Instituteof
Child Healthand Human Development(5 R03 HD39510-02). Thanks
to LilyGonzilez,LaurenHersh,SeanMorales-Doyle,LucilaPulido,Erica
Rosenfeld,KimberleyWilliams,and Nicole Wong for theirresearchsupport and collegiality;to RebeccaRogers;to the editors of the Reading
ResearchQuarterlyand four anonymousreviewersfor their feedbackon
earlierdraftsof this manuscript;and to the young peoplewho interpreted theirexperiencesfor us.

"Para-Phrasing" as a Family Literacy Practice in Immigrant

Transcription

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