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Study Guide

Field 075: Bilingual Education
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions

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Subarea 1—LANGUAGE, LINGUISTICS, AND COMPARISONS

Objective 001
Understand major concepts and principles related to the nature of language and language systems.

1. Within a bilingual education setting, which of the following instructional strategies is most reflective of Jim Cummins' theory that learning a target language involves the use of a Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) connected to the knowledge of the primary language?

  1. developing students' academic vocabulary in the target language while maintaining interpersonal skills in the primary language
  2. teaching initial literacy skills in the target language of instruction to avoid confusion with students' primary language
  3. developing students' oral language skills in the target language before teaching literacy skills in the target language
  4. teaching initial literacy skills in students' primary language to encourage the transfer of these skills to the target language
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Objective 002
Understand fundamentals of linguistics and comparative linguistics and how to apply this understanding to promote language and literacy development in English and the target non-English language of instruction.

2. Fifth-grade bilingual education students speak a first language that does not use inflectional endings for features such as plurality and tense. The students frequently omit these endings when speaking and writing in English. Which of the following strategies would best help these students develop the ability to understand and use these endings?

  1. giving students a list of their commonly misused words and providing rules for when to use inflectional endings in English
  2. leading a class discussion that overtly focuses on differences in how concepts for time and number are expressed in the two languages
  3. providing immediate correction to students who forget to use inflectional endings for tense and number when speaking in English
  4. creating worksheets that offer extra practice in generating verbs and nouns that are correctly inflected for tense and number
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.

Objective 003
Understand fundamentals of sociolinguistics and how to apply this understanding to promote language and literacy development in English and the target non-English language of instruction.

3. Use the information in the conversation excerpt below to answer the question that follows.

Speaker A: Do you need a ride?

Speaker B: I'm all right, thank you.

Speaker A: Okay, see you tomorrow.

Speaker A's correct interpretation of Speaker B's answer as a negative response is an example of:

  1. linguistic accommodation.
  2. grammatical competence.
  3. code switching.
  4. pragmatic competence.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Subarea 2—CULTURE

Objective 004
Understand major concepts, principles, theories, and research related to the nature of culture.

4. At the beginning of a school year, a bilingual education teacher designs a series of small-group and partner activities in an effort to create a relaxing atmosphere that will foster student initiative and cooperative learning. While preparing the small-group and partner activities, it is most important for the teacher to recognize that:

  1. classroom tensions are easier to defuse when using a teacher-directed approach.
  2. some students may come from cultural backgrounds in which this teaching approach is rarely used.
  3. classroom harmony can be maintained by partnering students from the same cultural background.
  4. a majority of students will prefer a more challenging and competitive classroom set-up.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.

Objective 005
Understand the role of culture in language development and academic achievement.

5. A bilingual education teacher has students collect, write, and sort materials that will be used to create a classroom newspaper. The following are suggested contributions:

  • stories and articles written by students
  • interviews of family or community members
  • family favorite recipes
  • family photos with captions written by students
  • various announcements related to students' lives

Students take charge of illustrating and printing the newspaper. With this activity, the teacher is most likely attempting to create a classroom environment that:

  1. fosters the development of students' organizational skills.
  2. encourages students to assess their own learning progress.
  3. validates students' cultural identities.
  4. respects students' preferred learning styles.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Objective 006
Understand how to create a culturally inclusive learning environment that supports individual students' language development and academic achievement.

6. In a bilingual education setting, which of the following strategies would be most effective in preventing students from feeling a sense of conflict between their home and school cultures?

  1. starting each day with a game in which students pretend to "take off" their home selves and "put on" their school selves
  2. encouraging students to bring in items from home that they can keep at their desks as reminders of their home cultures
  3. maintaining strong communication with families and inviting family and community members to participate in classroom activities
  4. decorating classrooms with pictures representing people and places from students' home cultures and changing the pictures frequently
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Subarea 3—SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES

Objective 007
Understand second language acquisition theories and research and how to apply this understanding to facilitate bilingual education students' language and literacy development.

7. In certain bilingual education programs, content materials and literacy skills are taught in students' first language during the early grades. Which of the following statements best describes the primary research-based rationale for this practice?

  1. Learning a second language requires that students be familiar with literacy skills and grammatical concepts in their first language.
  2. Families are better able to support educational goals if materials are presented in the language of the home.
  3. The transfer of knowledge and skills from the first language to the second language of instruction supports the development of biliteracy.
  4. Students who are older have an easier time learning a second language than students who study a second language at a young age.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Objective 008
Understand individual learner variables in the second language acquisition process and how to apply this understanding to facilitate bilingual education students' language and literacy development.

8. According to the research of Stephen Krashen, elementary-level bilingual education students who are literate in their primary language are able to transfer literacy skills to a second language because:

  1. students who have already achieved literacy in one language are likely to be gifted and talented.
  2. the deep structures and lexicons of most world languages share common linguistic roots.
  3. the underlying process of reading is similar even when languages appear to be very different.
  4. students who have already achieved literacy in one language are likely to have low affective filters.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Objective 009
Understand research-based best practices related to planning and implementing bilingual education instruction, including how to select, adapt, and use instructional resources.

9. A group of bilingual education teachers in a culturally and linguistically diverse school is reviewing a series of folktale books in the primary and target languages for use in the school's bilingual education classrooms. Which of the following cultural aspects should be a main concern for the teachers because it often constitutes a bias issue in folktales?

  1. the use of a variety of dialects by different characters
  2. the variations in characters' level of education
  3. the representation of characters' gender roles
  4. the composition of characters' families
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Subarea 4—INTEGRATION OF STANDARDS INTO CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

Objective 010
Understand the standards and benchmarks in the Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards for K–12 Schools related to listening and strategies for teaching bilingual education students to acquire and use listening skills for academic and social purposes in English and the target non-English language of instruction.

10. A bilingual education teacher wants to help students achieve the state standards goal of understanding the relationships between central ideas and details in a presentation. The students will listen to a primary-language presentation about different uses of computer science. The teacher can best accomplish the goal by guiding students through which of the following activities?

  1. completing a Venn diagram for each section of the presentation after they have heard the whole presentation
  2. taking detailed notes of any concepts they do not understand as they listen to the presentation
  3. checking off vocabulary words on a list as they hear them in the presentation
  4. making a concept map based on the presentation after they have heard the whole presentation
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Objective 011
Understand the standards and benchmarks in the Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards for K–12 Schools related to speaking and strategies for teaching bilingual education students to acquire and use speaking skills for academic and social purposes in English and the target non-English language of instruction.

11. When a teacher is generating and posing questions for students to answer during a content-area lesson in the primary language, which of the following strategies is most likely to promote bilingual students' academic-language speaking skills?

  1. prompting students to explain and elaborate on their answers after they have given them
  2. providing content-area glossaries and word lists for students to include in their answers
  3. writing questions on the board before asking them out loud
  4. creating questions that model complex language structures
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.

Objective 012
Understand the standards and benchmarks in the Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards for K–12 Schools related to reading and strategies for teaching bilingual education students to acquire and use reading skills for academic and social purposes in English and the second language of instruction.

12. Which of the following strategies would be the most effective way to encourage middle school bilingual education students to apply metacognitive strategies while reading a social studies text in either the primary or target language?

  1. reminding students to highlight important content in the text as they read
  2. providing students with an outline that links the information in the text to future instruction
  3. modeling for students how to create questions from chapter headings and subheadings
  4. activating students' prior knowledge about the subject before the students begin reading
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Objective 013
Understand the standards and benchmarks in the Michigan English Language Proficiency Standards for K–12 Schools related to writing and strategies for teaching bilingual education students to acquire and use writing skills for academic and social purposes in English and the target non-English language of instruction.

13. Which of the following writing techniques would be most helpful for bilingual education students who are learning to organize information for reports about specific research topics in either English or the primary language?

  1. using color-coded note cards to record data and source citations for their reports
  2. constructing graphic organizers that correspond to the structural patterns their reports will take
  3. filling in blank outline forms with the information they will use in their reports
  4. developing a list of possible topic sentences for each paragraph of their reports
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.

Objective 014
Understand how to support bilingual education students' access to the core curriculum as outlined in the Michigan Curriculum Framework as they learn language and academic content.

14. Students in a bilingual education class will be studying the characteristics and uses of different types of tools used for measurement (e.g., rulers, scales, measuring cups). During a brainstorming activity conducted in the primary language before the lesson begins, the teacher notices that many students seem to lack background knowledge about these tools. Which of the following primary-language activities would be most effective for the teacher to use first to support students' content-area learning?

  1. providing students with supplemental reading materials that explain the basic properties of measurement tools in clear, concise language
  2. giving students a list of words related to measurement tools and guiding them to use reference materials to learn the meanings of the words
  3. having students use measurement tools to measure classroom objects and label the objects with their measurements
  4. providing students with opportunities to handle and examine a wide variety of measurement tools and discuss their observations about the tools
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Subarea 5—ASSESSMENT

Objective 015
Understand major concepts and principles related to standards-based assessment of bilingual education students.

15. Which of the following assessments is required by the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to identify students who are eligible to receive bilingual instruction?

  1. a consultation with parents or guardians via a home language survey
  2. Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress (M-STEP) in reading and mathematics
  3. WIDA-ACCESS Placement Test (W-APT)
  4. a criterion-referenced test that assesses proficiency in the home language and English
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Objective 016
Understand various assessment issues and factors related to the assessment of bilingual education students.

16. A bilingual education teacher needs to communicate the results of English language performance assessments to stakeholders within the school system. When communicating the results, which of the following steps should the teacher take first?

  1. Discuss overall research findings about trends in English language development and performance.
  2. Distribute copies of the students' assessment results.
  3. Provide performance results from nearby schools districts.
  4. Describe how the assessment measures students' English language performance.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: D.

Objective 017
Understand how to select, develop, adapt, and use various classroom assessment tools and techniques, analyze assessment results, and adjust instruction for bilingual education students based on assessment results.

17. Which of the following student activities would be most appropriate for assessing intermediate-level bilingual education students' proficiency in listening for specific information in the target language?

  1. describing what to wear for an outdoor field trip based on a radio weather report
  2. creating a drawing expressing the mood conveyed by the words used in a poem read by the teacher
  3. evaluating a radio commercial for phrases and words used to sell a particular product
  4. performing a science experiment according to a sequence of steps described by the teacher
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: A.

Subarea 6—PROFESSIONALISM

Objective 018
Understand the legal and historical foundations of bilingual education.

18. Which of the following court decisions made segregated education based on race unconstitutional?

  1. Castañeda v. Pickard
  2. Lau v. Nichols
  3. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
  4. Diana v. California State Board of Education
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: C.

Objective 019
Understand the bilingual education teacher's role as a professional within a discipline.

19. A bilingual education teacher's primary consideration when selecting professional development opportunities should be:

  1. finding opportunities to do original research.
  2. networking and improving skills.
  3. purchasing new curriculum materials for the district.
  4. discovering new areas of interest.
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.

Objective 020
Understand how to serve as a resource and advocate for bilingual education students and how to build effective partnerships with bilingual education students' families and communities to support students' language development and academic achievement.

20. Which of the following best describes the primary reason for developing a network of literate bilingual- and primary-language-speaking community members who serve as successful reading role models for adolescent students?

  1. recruiting volunteers to provide tutoring assistance
  2. fostering students' self-concept as lifelong readers
  3. encouraging public support for the school reading program
  4. showing students that reading is required at every stage of life
Enter to expand or collapse answer.Answer expanded
Correct Response: B.