Mediation and spanish-russian bilingual reading of a story in a spanish as a second language class in Córdoba

Abstract

This study aims to describe and analyze the bilingual strategies employed during the reading and retelling of a story in a Spanish as a second language classroom with Russian-speaking children at a public primary school in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. The experience is examined from an ethnographic perspective, drawing on the contributions of interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, and cognitive psychology. Data were collected through observations and audio recordings carried out during a bilingual reading activity based on the fable The Lion and the Mouse, in which a Spanish teacher, a Russian interpreter, and children aged 5 to 7 took part. Interactional sequences and the linguistic and multimodal resources used to construct a shared understanding of the story were analyzed. The findings show that the Spanish-Russian language alternation functions as a resource for interlinguistic and intercultural mediation, fostering comprehension, participation and the shared construction of meaning. Russian is legitimized as a pedagogical resource and the collaboration between the teacher and the interpreter provides a bilingual scaffolding that acknowledges children’s skills in their home language. The study highlights the need to promote pedagogical and institutional conditions that recognize bilingualism as context, resource and approach, and that acknowledge the status of Spanish as a second language in literacy programs.