Phonemic Awareness on Eric Carles Brown Bear - Coursework Example

Phonemic Awareness on Eric Carle’s Brown Bear Overview Phonemic awareness is basically assumed to be a unitary paradigm that is said to be made up of a hierarchy of diverse phonological units in size and consequence. This hierarchical diversity of phonological units is believed to overlay syllabic awareness, sub-syllabic awareness (onset and rime), and segmental (phonemic) awareness (Gough, Larson and Yopp, 1996, Retrieved online). As phonemic awareness seems to be the most crucial aspect for learning to read English, it will be treated as the fundamental rule for analysis of Carle’s Brown Bear. However, explicit and overly suggestive phonemic instructions in an ESL environment may not altogether promote language learning among first grade ESL students. This hypothesis is equally applicable to both native and non-native ESL subjects. Jannuzi, defiunes phonemic awareness as "a verifiable insight that one's native or non- native language can be broken down into sounds and sound combinations" (Jannuzi, 1998, p.8). Phonics has become a highly controversial topic in both the teaching and learning of written language. In modern ESL classrooms the pivotal role played by phonics in learning to read and in reading instructions has been questioned by many. For instance it has become a subject so widely misinterpreted and misunderstood (Goodman, 1993, p.90). In his book, Phonics Phacts, Ken Goodman has adopted a non-conventional approach to convince his readers of the futility of emphasizing phonics-centric instructions and methodology to achieve specific results. He has successfully employed non-technical jargon to illustrate how fallacious it is to place emphasis on phonics-centric teaching and learning thinking that it is the be-all-and-end-all process in language teaching and learning in an ESL classroom. His methodology is focused on facilitating a better understanding among teachers of phonics so that they may feel more comfortable in evaluating conflicting views about it. The book analyses three major issues: The linguistic aspects of phonics – Goodman has systematically argued that phonics is a network of relationships between disparate patterns of speech and written language. He does not agree with the view that there is a system of relationships between words and their sounds. Goodman elaborates on the way phonics works in both reading and writing. He goes on to show how readers use orthographic, phonic and phonological markers along with semantic, morphological, syntactical and other information. The logic behind phonics-centric teaching – Teachers might place emphasis on teaching phonics in an ESL classroom though there can be a great deal of misinformation and disinformation on the subject. In ESL classes where teachers play a pivotal role in giving out instructions on phonics, there is a greater burden on the teacher to be more specific about such information so that his/her subjects will not be misled. Goodman dwells on the significant contribution made by Halliday, Piaget and Vygotsky to the study of phonics. Political nuances of phonics – Goodman assumes that the kind of real phonics has not been taught or learned in the ESL classroom simply because of the political undertones that it carries. According to him phonics has been used to scare away and politicize rural folk and working class parents. Teachers of phonics are too scared to adopt a holistic approach to teaching phonics. Eric Carle’s World of Sounds A first grade English as a Second Language (ESL) student is not necessarily of a given age limit, though Carle’s “Brown Bear” is primarily focused on English phonetics. Psycholinguistic theory postulates on the relative significance of phoneme structures in capturing the imagination of an ESL student as a preliminary requirement. A series of sounds produced in rapid succession with a euphonious sibilance, could have a dramatic impact on the student. Carle has identified a particularly appealing theme for the beginner who may either be an ESL learner or just a child whose mother tongue is English. The dynamic phonemic structures in Brown Bear echo and reecho in the minds of numerous people who have studied the text at one time or the other. Eric Carle was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1929. Since his parents were German immigrants, he went to Germany when he was six years of age. His education was in Germany though he moved back into America later after the World War II. Bill Martin, educator and author, met Carle around this time after he had seen the illustration of a lobster in red by Carle. He wanted Carle to illustrate a story. The story was none other than “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See” which became a best seller thereby giving Carle the much needed impetus to author and illustrate his own books. His extraordinary ability to captivate his reader is obviously borne out by what is known as “a stylistic phonemic characterization of nature and its ephemeral qualities”. In his hands animals and creatures acquire a semblance of dignity and in the eyes of the ESL learner this elevation creates a virtual pantomime that utters words or sounds. In my structured analysis I propose to examine these qualities as well for a comprehensive study of the ESL student’s phonemic awareness of Brown Bear. Theoretical analysis Linguistic theory places emphasis on the individual learner’s capacity to adjust to rather than digest what has been taught. There is a known quantity of meaning-laden sounds in our languages at a given time. Phonemes or meaningful sounds are different in each language though there may be some common phonemes as well in a number of languages that belong to the same sub-family of languages. Each language has its own sub-set of phonemes that build up to produce a coherent sound structure. For instance if we take sounds like “shooo” or “sh” in English, they are not meaningful sounds. On the other hand these sounds can be meaningful in another language such as Afrikaana. Thus sounds like “tsk” can be regarded as phonemes in this language. In English language sneezing sound is represented by “pshaw” but it is not a phoneme. A sub set of sounds or phonemes, on the other hand, must have a predetermined position in that language in order to be a sub-set of phonemes. Brown Bear by Carle has a remarkable theoretical paradigm here. The sounds in the book are deliberately set to rhyme with a distinct pattern which appeals to the average reader. For the first grade ESL student the text has plausibly institutionalized a closer-fitted variation pattern of phonemes that, not only play on the meaning but also the adjectival phrase to magnify contextual reference and thereby the perceptive scope of the reader. The phonetic or phonemic structure has a positive impact on the reader. (Hayes et al, 2001, p.485). The first grade ESL student is just being introduced into a new world of phonetics and phonology. How would the student respond to it, depends on a number of factors. The extent of use of the target language at home. Overall degree of exposure to the target language. The degree of polarity in the child’s own attitude and response to the target language. The degree of influence of the mother tongue on the target language. Environmental influences on the child, specially in the ESL class. Richards and Rodgers suggest a holistic approach to ESL teaching and learning for what is initiated in the ESL class room for first grade kids could have a veritable conceptual development through the whole process (Richards and Rodgers, 2001, p.108). Linguistic theory and praxis are two different extremes though. In a study that investigated the effects of disparate L1 (first language) alphabetic experience on L2 (second language) phonemic awareness and decoding among ESL readers with alphabetic and non-alphabetic L1 orthographic backgrounds, the author hypothesized that the amount of L1 alphabetic experience is causally related to the development of L2 phonemic awareness and decoding skills (Koda, 1998, pp.194-215). ESL first graders have a natural tendency to decode L2 phonemic structures by using L1 alphabetic non-alphabetic experience. Phonemic awareness can be subject to a set of metrics such as correlations and regressions. For example empirical data on phonemic awareness support the view that first grade ESL students irrespective of their ethnicity are more likely to display identical learning and absorption patterns. For instance my own ESL classroom experience suggests that though the subjects are of diverse cultural backgrounds and identities, their average phonemic awareness of Carle’s Brown Bear has a degree of constancy across the classroom. However, my hypothesis given below is related to three students out of twenty, in the same class with three different cultural identities and language abilities. I have consistently followed them through the lesson and session to find out some striking similarities in their learning habits and patterns despite the cultural diversity. Data analysis I have assigned pseudonyms to these three students whose average age is seven. They are Carla, Roger and Shridhar. Their commonalities are many when compared to dissimilarities. Specially, in habits and classroom behavior they display identical tendencies. Carla’s parents are Chinese and both educated up to university level. Roger has a French mother and an English father while Shridhar is of Indian parents who are working as IT consultants. Though three students might not have the broader representative character, the degree of consistency in the analysis of data would necessarily support my conclusions below. After all, a measure of central tendency like the mean or the median would necessarily focus on these three students for the veracity of the tested parameters. Phonemic awareness among ESL students, irrespective of their different cultural identities, on Carle’s Brown Bear has a degree of uniformity. For example in the line “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?”, all three subjects chorused with heightened emphasis on the final word “see”. The kids accented on the vowel “e” with a drag. Alphabetic and non-alphabetic orthographic L1 backgrounds have a significant bearing on phonemic awareness in an ESL environment. Here Carla comes from a mainland Mandarin speaking background while Shridhar is from southern India. The latter is already bilingual – Tamil and Hindi. Roger is bilingual too – French and English. However Roger has been influenced by his mother because his father comes home only once a month from his duty station. Carla struggles to adapt Mandarin characters to identify “sounds on colors”, while Shridhar does it with more ease by using Hindi alphabetic sounds. Roger is more at ease with nasal vowels so that French nasal sounds interfere with his pronunciation of colors in Brown Bear. Incontrovertible evidence exists to prove that L1 alphabetic experience is consciously or unconsciously utilized by the first grade ESL student to decode L2 experience. For example Standard Mandarin does not have letters. It has a set of characters or symbols. On the other hand Hindi has an alphabet like English. Shridhar uses it to identify parallel phonemes in Brown Bear while Carla is unable to do it. Both French and English have a lot of common features, but Roger’s ESL phonemic awareness is inhibited by nasal vowels in French such as “un”, “vin”, “on” and “an” in blanc(he). Strong correlations were noticed between reading ability, phonemic awareness and L2 decoding in Shridhar while Carla did not show such strong positive tendencies. Roger remained average. Shridhar uses phonemes in Brown Bear with greater facility to articulate sounds, Carla is direct opposite. Roger vacillates between French and some English. L1 grammar, syntax, morphology and phonology have had a significant bearing on L2 phonemic processing or decoding. I have noticed how much the Hindi syntax, grammar, morphology and phonology have played a significant role in heightening the phonemic awareness on Brown Bear in Shridhar while Carla has no such basic support. Roger has been influenced by French syntax and phonology rather than grammar. Conclusion Thus I have come to the conclusion that while emphasizing the need for the ESL teacher to be more circumspect in teaching phonemics to first graders, there must be a qualitative approach to it as a holistic process rather than indiscriminately adopting a phonemics-centric approach that may hinder efforts to generate a degree of enthusiasm among students. Brown Bear has been received with much love and affection by kids in the ESL classroom. Its phonics necessarily appeals to the kids who have endeared themselves to the brown bear. My subjects have displayed a very strong feeling towards its empathic qualities that Carle has injected into it. Empathy goes a long way in awakening the phonemic awareness in these kids about the Brown Bear. The process of personification or onomatopoeia invariably juxtaposes the ESL student’s phonemic awareness in Brown Bear. They tend to identify with its world of resonating progression, thus culminating in a metaphorical euphoria. The rhyming sibilance and poetic intonation apart, Brown Bear maneuvers to produce a series of positive palpitations in kids. Phonological impact of Brown Bear on ESL first graders has been characterized by its near universal appeal in the ESL classroom. REFERENCES 1. Goddman, Kenneth S (1993) Phonics Phacts, New Hampshire, Heinemann Publishing. 2. Gough, Philip B, Larson, Kevin C and Yopp, Hallie (1996), The Structure of Phonemic Awareness, Retrieved from http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/klarson/ on July 3, 2008. 3. Martin, Jr , Bill (1996), Brown Bear, Carle, Eric (Illustrator), New York, Henry Holt and Company. 4. Jannuzi, Charles (1998), Key Concepts in Literacy: Phonics vs Whole Language, Retrieved from www.2.aasa.ac.jp/-dedycus/LAC97/phonics.htm APPENDIX I DATA ON L1 ALPHABETIC EXPERIENCE ON L2 DECODING IN A FIRST GRADE ESL CLASSROOM Number Name L1 L1 on L2 decoding Grading 1 Carla Mandarin Least noted D 2 Roger French Less noted C 3 Shridhar Hindi Most noted A 4 Lima Russian More noted B 5 Alex English 6 Trevo German More noted B 7 Sonia Italian More noted B 8 Chan Mandarin Least noted D 9 Sara English 10 Kalpana Hindi More noted B 11 Rizan Arabic Less noted C 12 Jennifer Spanish More noted B 13 Grace English 14 Gautham Hindi More noted B 15 Jason Jewish Less noted C 16 John Greek More noted B 17 George English 18 Carlos Spanish More noted B 19 Tania Japanese Least noted D 20 Lynda Rumanian Less noted C Read More