Beginning Literacy with Language - Assignment Example

Questions and Answers The benefits of knowing more than one language are quite many but the most important one is the ability to interact with different people from different cultures. Application of this advantage is found in international jobs where some employees employ bilingual or multilingual individuals. Knowledge of another language apart from the mother tongue usually confers competitive advantage on an individual when applying for a job. This is because the world has become globalized and the business world deals with clients from all over the globe hence necessitating the need for more than one language knowledge. In this regards, one is assured of job security because of knowing another language. Knowledge of another language can be important can be advantageous when one wants to learn and understand cultures of other people. It is utterly impossible to comprehend other cultures if in the first place you do not know the language of those cultures. Lack of knowledge of other peoples’ culture may lead to intolerance and conflicts because behaviors in one culture are expressed differently through language in other cultures. 2. An English language learner (ELL) can be confused for a child with learning disability because both of these scenarios exhibit similar characteristics and behaviors. These two groups of individuals usually share a number of traits and sometimes the line separating them becomes blurred leading to mistaken identities. ELL students may speak infrequently in class and most of the times they make keep to themselves. In other times they may engage excessively in conversations using either their first language or English. Others may have poor memory, pronunciation, grammar and syntax, refusal to respond to questions besides refusing to volunteer information. This sort of confusion can be sorted out by the teachers of the students teaming up with other professionals in order to differentiate the problems arising due to learning disabilities and those due to second language acquisition. 3. One of the important strategies of promoting language in English learners is by using questions. Many teachers ask their students questions which to an ordinary student may appear to be redundant and obvious. When questions are asked about the community and other happenings outside the class, students tend to be more assertive and active in class which promotes second language acquisition. Another strategy is use of teaching practices that are culturally responsive in order to create a positive and interactive learning environment. Incorporation of cultural and linguistic resources in the class occurs through such practices like storytelling and vivid description of past events by the students. Besides these two, a teacher can also use successful practices that ensure that there is promotion of language as a means of sharing experiences, ideas and interests in class. This simply means developing social groups within a class whereby students learn through shared experiences by socialization with peers. 4. Receptive as well as expressive language skills are very important and pertinent to the writing and reading processes. As such, they form a central part of emergent literacy in children since they form important ways in which children perceive and understand their world. Young children like adults usually learn through writing and reading but not in the way adults do because they are still learning their expressive and receptive skills. On the one hand, expressive skills are developed through reading whereas receptive skills come from reading. The combination of these two skills is very important in influencing how emergent literacy on a child will be. Children that have poor receptive and expressive learning usually tend to be poor in emergent literacy which affects their participation in class and their performance. 5. Emergent literacy develops over a long period in students which is depended on the ability of the students to move through different levels of literacy. Some of the high levels of emergent literacy include the ability to read and comprehend texts at high speeds. When an individual is reading for learning, the ability to think and understand fast is influenced by previous experiences and knowledge. It follows then that understanding the world and experiential learning will be very important in improving the levels of emergent learning. Much of the learning in a child’s world or classroom revolves around their friends, family and home place. In this regards, a teacher can combine experiential learning with educating the child about the world in order to improve emergent literacy levels through cultural inspired education or practices. 6. Symbolic information (pictures) is very important in emergent literacy because this forms the basic way through which children interact and know their world. In the simple mind of a child, it is often easier to associate a symbol with special recollection or memory and hence it is very difficult for children to forget what they have learnt. Symbols usually come in many different forms and such; they may be letters or pictorial representation which elicits different memories in a young learner. Sharing of pictorial books in children can be entrenched through introducing children to book reading early in life. This is important for building the foundation for skills such as understanding and recognition of pictorial texts. After the skills of understanding and interpreting pictures have been set, it becomes easy for a child to read and write for learning purposes. 7. Phonological awareness in emergent literacy is very important in that it makes the correspondence of spelling and sounds easier to learn when they are being taught in lessons. Phonological awareness development in children makes them have the ability to conceptualize the sounds of different words besides knowing their meaning. For instance, they learn that different words have differing parts or syllables like kitchen and although some words may rhyme in their sounds, they do not have the same meaning. When children learn to pronounce different words and how words can have different patterns of syllables, it becomes easier for them grasp and understand complex passages besides reading fluently. 8. The most important message about communication and language that I have picked form this class is that in order to understand the way English learners understand and grasp, it is important to know their backgrounds. In this regards, children are usually a product of communities and schools and therefore learning takes place along the continuum of experiential learning. On the other hand, experiential learning is shaped by different things in the society key among them cultural experiences of an individual. It is not guaranteed that teaching young children will automatically result in emergent literacy which may take some time especially when the student and teacher are not understanding each other. Works cited Dickinson, David K., and Tabors, Patton O. Beginning Literacy with Language: Young Children Learning at Home and School. Baltimore, Md.: Paul H. Brookes, 2001. Read More