Language and Literacy in Children within Cultural Practices - Assignment Example

Running Head: LANGUAGE AND LITERACY IN CHILDREN Language and Literacy in Children with respect to Cultural practices By _____________________ Introduction Literacy in traditional way is considered as a means to possess the ability to read and write, however this is not always the case as it is an individual process perceived by each child according to his/her mental capability to develop psychological and linguistic elements critical to the acts of reading and writing, such as constructing meaning and developing sound-to-letter correspondence. Literacy when defined more broadly is viewed as a social phenomenon, which varies according to different perceptions of socio-cultural groups. The term literacy when converted into "literacies" indicates different types of literacy that an individual can acquire, such as reading textbooks, writing essays etc. Children use different literate behaviours in different contexts based on the grounds of language. (2006a) Language is partitioned into syntax, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics, each with distinctive characteristics. The semantic system bears little resemblance to the structure of phonology or the rules of communication. The mapping of words onto representations of the world appears very different from the mapping of articulatory movements onto sounds or sounds onto written letters (Bialystok, 2001, p. 24). Moreover the systems appear at different times, starting with detection of the phonological and prosodic features of language and moving to adept, persuasive prose. Vocabulary and communicative skills change throughout the child life span, whereas command of the phonological and grammatical structure of one's native tongue rarely changes radically after middle childhood. (Amsel, 2002, p. 6) Language along with the context of learning is not purely a matter of speech. Gestures of the arms, hands and face also contribute meaningfully towards essential properties of learning. Language unfolds in predictable stages from infancy through early childhood, with production lagging behind perception and comprehension. The most important aspects of language and syntax emerge between the ages of two and four and seem to be governed by a sensitive period of growth. For many years, the development of theories about the way children learn to read and write was dominated by studies of English-speaking populations. As we have learned more about the way that children learn to read and write other scripts whether they have less regularity in their grapheme phoneme correspondences or do not make use of alphabetic symbols in all it has become clear that many of the difficulties that confront children learning to read and write English specifically are less evident, or even non-existent, in other populations. At the same time, some aspects of learning to read and write are very similar across scripts. When learning to read and write is examined from a unique cross-linguistic perspective, it is found that there are several ways to develop a child's skill towards learning reading and writing. (Light et al, 2000,p. 55) In this respect Japanese, Greek and the Scandinavian languages as well as English, demonstrates several ways showing how the processes of learning to read and spell are affected by the characteristics of the writing system that children are learning to master. Language and literacy starts just after the birth of a child, as this is the time when they start hearing and recognizing sounds. Very young infants cannot speak, but they are capable of perceiving aspects of speech long before they can produce them. One way to show this in a baby is to connect an artificial nipple to a tape recorder, so that every time the baby sucks a speech sound is played. The experiment shows the infants seem to enjoy sucking for sound almost as much as they enjoy sucking for milk. After hearing the same sound for a while, however the baby loses interest and the sucking rate drops. Thus he has actually learned the phenomenon of habituation, which refers to the decline in responding to repeated presentations of a stimulus. However if the sound is changed, the baby's interest perks up and the sucking rate increases again, provided that the baby can detect the change. This means the baby has learned dishabituation. (Corballis, 2001, p. 51) Such experiments and related techniques have shown that even 1-month-old babies can detect the change between phonemes, as when 'ba' is changed to 'da'. It is amazing in this respect that babies are far better at this than adults are. Here cultural practices are also considered which can be seen from the following example. Japanese adults cannot distinguish the English phonemes 'r' and 'I' just as English-speaking adults cannot distinguish two forms of the 't' sound used in Hindi. Infants below the age of 1 year, in contrast have no difficulty distinguishing phonemes in languages other than those they have been exposed to. (Corballis, 2001, p. 51) From the above discussion we can see that children are not empty vessels when they come to school. From about 18 months, a child's vocabulary begins to increase at a dramatic rate, rising to some 2000 words at the age of 5. It has been estimated that during this period the child learns at a rate of about one new word every waking hour. At about 18 months, children also begin to move from single words to two word utterances as in 'Mummy gone', 'Daddy home', and 'no milk' etc. These are the rudiments of syntax, since nearly all two word utterances correctly reproduce the order of the words in the language being acquired: the child who is exposed to English says 'Daddy home' not 'home daddy', presumably from hearing sentences like 'Daddy's come home'. This implies that these are all the cultural influences that help a child in learning whether at home or at school. Fig 1.1. (Corballis C. Michael, 2001, p. 52) The Sheffield Project Carried out in Sheffield, UK and directed by Dr Peter Hannon of the Department of Education at the University of Sheffield this six-month project was a case study undertaken in a disadvantaged district of Sheffield. It involved twenty children aged between 1 and 4 years. Parents and children were visited at home, and also invited to a series of group meetings in the primary school on which the project was based. The parents were encouraged to borrow children's books of good quality to read with their children, and also to point out print in their homes and in the neighbourhood. Each home visit involved discussion about past, present and future activities, and some form of literacy activity engaged in by the visitor with the child and parent. It was found that parents were willing and able to engage in a dialogue about their children's home literacy. The parents acknowledged that the project changed their approach to children's literacy experiences at home. Opportunities to acquire literacy through print in the environment appeared to be exploited more readily. There was evidence of change in the parents' recognition of their children's literacy achievement. It was clear that even those parents, that were in very disadvantaged circumstances, like social exclusion, also welcome help in promoting their children's early-literacy development. Take-up was at 80 per cent as high as it could be, given the constraints of the parents' unavoidable domestic and employment commitments. (Light et al, 2000, p. 65) Preschool literacy beliefs by their very nature are likely to have a long-term impact on children's reading habits. Literacy development in contrast to learning to read is not a sequential process, and neither is it a discrete event providing a transitory learning stage, which transforms the pre-literate toddler into a literate schoolchild. The process of education in its broadest sense is founded on the continual development of literacy, and this in turn influences attitudes towards information and reading habits. (Owen, 1995, p. 105) For many areas of educational development the important question is not whether children are able to read, but whether they actually do read. Beliefs, which develop in the preschool years, may have implications for literacy development in this very broad sense, and for this reason be very pertinent to the management of children's reading experiences in the primary school. We know comparatively little about preschool children's beliefs about reading. Before they go to school, many children think they can read-such a belief being based on their incomplete understanding of what reading actually is. Although objectively incorrect, this belief will have quite an impact on children's subjective experiences of reading and learning to read, and is therefore of interest. (Owen, 1995, p. 106) Where preschool children's knowledge of reading is concerned, it is obvious that sheer experience of books is important, because time spent at home in joint book reading predicts later speed of learning to read. Many research studies have detailed just what it is that children are learning during such experience; this knowledge refers to the rules, which govern the activity of reading. These 'rules' are the very basic ones which stipulate that the books are 'objects of contemplation' rather than 'objects of action'; that pictures are representations of things, that words are used to interpret a picture, that pages are turned from left to right. However, books also provide a context for the development of particular kinds of language; language that through the use of rhyme and alliteration leads children into playing with language as a thing, and language that helps them to distinguish speaker reference from speaker intention. (Owen, 1995, p. 117) It is apparent from what develops in the preschool period in terms of precursors to reading that the 'higher' levels of reading are developing at the same time as the 'lower' levels. The organisation of joint storybook reading has been intensively studied, and a coherent picture has emerged of the way in which adult language follows a sequence in which children can contribute to a storybook interpretation even at the earliest stages. Children first begin contributing to a discussion of objects depicted in books, then to the events, which are symbolized, and then to the precursors and consequences of these events. The findings from this study pointed in the direction of encouraging literacy via active management of children's early experiences of literacy. (Owen, 1995, p. 117) Encouraging ownership of books, interactive reading sessions and family-literacy schemes are all ways of ensuring that children develop positive attitudes towards themselves as readers before they begin learning to read. The strong affective component involved in ownership and relationships may well be one of the best routes to influencing children's beliefs about reading, and about their own reading ability, at an early stage in life. Not only does the child initiate the learning in home but also he seeks the ability to place the learning within his (the child's) frame of reference. The parent is in an ideal position to do this since he or she shares the experience of the child and can refer forward or back as appropriate. This is obviously much harder for class teachers. Whilst they may know something of the children's life out of school they cannot know everything and they also cannot relate to thirty children's individual and idiosyncratic frames of reference all at the same time. However, both teachers had strategies for coping with this situation. (Owen, 1995, p. 117) They would often break in during story-time to ask whether children had had experience of something that was referred to in the story; for example, a bus journey where those who had not been on a bus were reminded about watching a bus going past the school. Learning at Home Children are surrounded, in our culture, by environmental print however, in most circumstances young children learn from that environmental print because a parent, is always willing to answer questions about the print. Or more directly the parent draws the child's attention to the print. Interest developed in a child towards story reading or drawing of different shapes and symbols not only teach about books, pages, left-to-right directionality etc., they also enable children to learn about story structure, discourse patterns and language. Where such interactions are developed in a relaxed, informal and enjoyable atmosphere at home, with interesting books, they play an active part in creating the possibility of a child who wants to read and write. Children's Experiences at Home The research studies indicate at home, experiences were concerned with mothers' 'teaching', as it was likely to be casual and informal; children had more free time to learn from exploring household objects, helping mother, performing real-life tasks, and seeing real live role models not from explicit lessons. Conversations with mothers were longer, included more complex utterances, offered children more opportunities to ask questions and express opinions, and were more 'inductive' than conversations with caregivers in day care or any other learning environment Although most parents do not provide formal educational activities for their children at home, informal education does occur and this, too, has been found to predict children's development. Children whose parents offered them more varied and stimulating opportunities for intellectual development had higher levels of tested intelligence. In the collaborative home study, for example, the most predictive home scale included structuring the child's play periods and providing toys that challenged the child to develop new skills. Also significantly related to intelligence was the scale that included reading stories to the child and providing the child with books. In other studies, similar links have been found. Children with the spoken language of the home, learn more effectively than they learn from school, as there is a great deal a child might learn from this situation-dependent written language by hypothesizing a likely meaning and seeing if the hypothesis is confirmed. Children can test hypotheses about the meaning of the printed word toys in a store, not because anyone reads it to them, but by ascertaining whether the sign does in fact indicate the location of the toy department. There is a consistency between the print and its environment. The print that normally surrounds children is potentially meaningful, and thus provides an effective basis for learning. (Smith, 1994, p. 205) There may be very little meaningful print in school, in the sense that it would not be possible to substitute one word for another. A teacher writes the words 'table' or 'chair' on the board but could just as well write 'horse' or 'cow'. The words in word lists, or the sentences in many 'stories,' could be changed without any child noticing anything out of place. Teachers may believe there are good reasons for a particular exercise or element of instruction, but if children cannot see the sense of the enterprise, then it can reasonably be regarded as incomprehensible. A brief list of fundamentally incomprehensible aspects of reading instruction to which children may be exposed would include: 1. The decomposition of spoken words to 'sounds.' The spoken word cat, in some contexts, can make sense, but the sounds 'kuh', 'a', 'tuh' do not. 2. The decomposition of written words to letters. The printed word cat, in some contexts, can make sense, when it refers to a real or imaginary animal with which children can meaningfully interact. But the letters c, a, and t are arbitrary visual symbols that have nothing to do with anything else in the child's life. 3. The relation of letters to sounds. For a child who has no idea of reading to be told that some peculiar shapes called letters which have no apparent function in the real world are related to sounds that have no apparent independent existence in the real world must be the purest jabberwocky. (Smith, 1994, p. 206) The preceding kinds of activity may, through their very incomprehensibility, make learning to read more complicated, and nonsensical than it need be. It is not until children have begun reading that they have a chance of making sense of such activities at all. Children who do not have the insight that written language should make sense may never achieve it, while children who have it may be persuaded that they are wrong. (Smith, 1994, p. 206) Children who expect written language to be exactly the same as speech are likely to have difficulty in predicting and comprehending its conventions and thus in learning to read. They must be familiar with how written language works. Immersion in functional language, the possibility of making sense, a plentiful experience, and the opportunity to test hypotheses would seem to be just as easily met with written language as with speech. In fact, written language might seem to have several advantages, because a number of tests can be conducted on the same piece of material, a second hypothesis tried if the first one fails. By virtue of its internal consistency the text itself can provide relevant feedback about the correctness of hypotheses. The kind of reading that would most familiarize children with written language is coherent stories, ranging from items in newspapers and magazines to traditional fairy tales, ghost and adventure stories, history, and myth. (Bialystok, 2001, p. 32) All of these types of story are truly written language produced for a purpose in a conventional medium and distinguishable from most school texts by their length, sense, and semantic and syntactic richness. There is no evidence that it is any harder for children to understand complex texts (when they are read to them or when they can explore them for themselves) than it is difficult for children to understand the complex adult speech that they hear around them and on television. Children at school may not be provided with complex written material as part of their reading instruction for the obvious reason that they could not be expected to read it by themselves. Because most of the material in which children are likely to be interested and from which they would be likely to learn tends to be too difficult for them to read by themselves, less complex material is found or produced in the expectation that children will find it 'simpler.' And when these especially tailored for children texts also seem to confound beginners, the assumption may be made that the fault lies with the children or with their 'language development.'(Smith, 1994, p. 78) Indeed, it may be the case that the language of such texts is unfamiliar to many children. But this inadequacy need not have its roots in the particular kind of spoken language with which the child is familiar nor even in the possibly limited experience of the child with print. The reason is more likely to be associated with the child's unfamiliarity with the artificial language of school books, whether of the truncated 'Sam the cat sat on the mat' variety or the more florid 'Down the hill, hand in hand, skipped Susie and her friend.' This is also so different from any other form of language, spoken or written, that it is probably safest to put it into an exclusive category of 'school language.' (Smith, 1994, p. 143) Research is of little help in the selection of appropriate methods. Research tells us that all methods of teaching reading appear to work for some children but that none works for all. Some teachers seem to succeed whatever the method they are formally believed to employ. We must conclude that the instructional method is not the critical issue. It might not be particularly unfair to say that many children learn to read and many teachers succeed in helping them despite the instructional method used. Suggestions The primary role of teachers in creating the children's interest in reading and writing can be summed up in very few words to ensure that the children have adequate demonstrations of reading being used for evident meaningful purposes and to help children to fulfill such purposes themselves. Where children see little relevance in reading, then teachers must show that reading is worthwhile. Where children find little interest in reading, then teachers must create interesting situations. No one ever taught reading to a child who was not interested in reading, and interest cannot be demanded. Teachers must themselves be conspicuous practicing users of written language. Where children have difficulty in reading, teachers must see that they are helped to read what they would like to read. In part, this assistance can be given by developing the confidence of children to read for themselves, in their own way, taking the risk of making mistakes and being willing to ignore the completely incomprehensible. Even bizarre personal interpretations are better than none at all; children find out soon enough the mistakes that make a difference. But children will also from time to time look for help from others, either in answering specific questions or in assisting with reading generally. Such reading on behalf of the child can be provided by the teacher, by other children, or by recordings. (Light et al, 2000, p. 89) Conclusion Children may also be confounded by instructions that are as unnecessary as it is futile, often as a consequence of a theoretical vogue among specialists. When, Noam Chomsky popularized transformational linguistics as a technical method of analyzing language, many people thought children would not learn to read unless they became miniature linguists themselves and made children spend a lot of time doing transformational exercises that made no apparent difference to their language ability. After psychologists became interested in the theoretical notion of distinctive features, there were several efforts to teach children the distinctive features of letters, although no one could convincingly demonstrate what these features might be. (Corballis, 2001, p. 50) Children who had difficulty with the alphabet or with these exercises were sometimes diagnosed as having poor feature discrimination, although they had no reported difficulty with knives and forks or dogs and cats. Phonic-based reading programs and materials have flourished whenever linguists have become particularly interested in the spelling-sound correspondences of language, and there have been moves toward teaching 'prediction' as if it were something foreign to most children's experience. 'Phonological awareness' is being urged as a necessity for learning to read, with the result that children may spend more time attempting to deconstruct speech than exploring written language. In all of these cases, concepts that scientists have found useful as hypothetical constructs in their attempts to understand their discipline have become something a child must learn as a prerequisite for learning to read. There is a growing acknowledgment today of the importance of comprehension as the basis of learning, but at the same time there is a feeling that comprehension itself must be taught, that it can be broken down into a series of 'comprehension skills' that presumably can be taught without comprehension. (Smith, 1994, p. 294) The fact that children often learn so much before school and that cultural influences are so important does not release schools from responsibility or provide convenient justification for failures of instruction. If children have not received adequate environmental support for embarking upon literacy, then schools must provide it. The ethnographic research shows clearly the collaborative conditions under which learning to read and write takes place. If parents fail to read to children, the importance is of the concern that teachers read to them. References Amsel Eric & Byrnes P. James, 2002. "Language, Literacy, and Cognitive Development: The Development and Consequences of Symbolic Communication": Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of Publication: Mahwah, NJ. Bialystok Ellen, 2001. "Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy, and Cognition": Cambridge University Press. Place of Publication: Cambridge, England. Corballis C. Michael, 2001. "Language" in "Psychological Science An Introduction". Light Paul & Littleton Karen, 2000. "Social Processes in Children's Learning": Cambridge University Press. Place of Publication: Cambridge, England. Owen Pamela & Pumfrey Peter, 1995. "Children Learning to Read: International Concerns": Falmer Press. Place of Publication: London. Smith Frank, 1994. "Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read": Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of Publication: Hillsdale, NJ. 2006a, Accessed on 14 May 2006 from < http://www.cfc-efc.ca/docs/cccf/00000049.htm > Read More