Socioeconomic Status in Relation to Language Literacy - Research Paper Example

? Socioeconomic Status in Relation to Language Literacy Introduction Language literacy is a pillar for studying although, research shows that there is a problem with language and literacy in children of grade (7-12). Students join the secondary schools without mastering the literacy content. This could be lack of proper language and literacy development during the early years. There are several factors that affect proper development of language and literacy in early learners such as socioeconomic status. Critics claim that socioeconomic status has vast impact on students’ learning and the ability to understand and master what they learn in class. Therefore, this research paper will focus on language and literacy and how it is affected by socioeconomic status in terms of motivation, diversity, minority group/race, motivation, poverty, rural and urban locations and family support. Background Bertrand and Stice (2002) carried out a research on the issue of language literacy. A review was made on policy implementation regarding the substantial information of the language literacy and how it is affected by socioeconomic status. Through the research that the literacy task force carried out, they found out the relationship between socioeconomic status and language literacy. Factors like motivation; revision of the curriculum and understanding the diversity of cultures that the students come from have an influence on the development of language and literacy. In dealing with the problem of language literacy Miller and Lisa (2008) advocates that the teachers should set goals which act as guidelines when teaching language and literacy, which are: To improve the reading proficiency for all students. To ensure every student has the ability to read and learn new skills through the knowledge acquired in order to obtain the expected outcome at the end of secondary education, irrespective of the social status. There is also need to have a precise literacy action plan that should act as a guideline to meet the needs of all students, who take part in the education curriculum and its implementation. In order for one to meet the above goals both teachers and students should take part in ensuring that they meet the desired results at the end. Therefore they should work hand in hand with each other. The content-area instructor must assist the learner to develop the reading strategies, acquire knowledge and thinking skills to have insight and learn text that are complex (Comber, 2013). This should be done to both students who come from high socioeconomic status and those who come from low socioeconomic status. The content-area instructor may enhance the learning strategies by providing the students with instructions that are more effective for them depending on their socio economic status to improve their reading skills. Some of these instructions are: 1. There is need for dialogue on content from the text to enable students to share different ideas about the subject of discussion. The teacher can act as a facilitator among learners in their focused group discussion and encourage discussions among people from different socioeconomic status. 2. In order for the student to improve on their language and literacy it is necessary to revise the curriculum. 3. Content-area teacher should create a motivating and engaging classroom, by interacting with the students in a more friendly way to know more about their socioeconomic status in order to understand their problems at a personal level and motivate them. 4. Teacher should be aware that the students come from different cultures. Hence he should know to teach them and the teaching techniques that should be used to teach different students depending on their culture especially those from non English speaking origin. Family Support Parental support is one of the crucial elements that impact children’s learning because it is the pathway through child competences are influenced and enhanced. Research carried out on the influence of parental involvement on their children’s language/literacy revealed that maternal education qualifications and other factors such s family income played a critical role in children’s learning of language and literacy skills. As such, Hartas (2011) dtermined that lack of maternal education had a powerful influence in competences of children at the start of primary school, or even those aged 3 and above. Parents are the people who set and lay foundation for their children; therefore, their support and involvement in early language and literacy learning is very valuable in helping the children prosper in education. Furthermore, parental interventions are also essential because it helps children develop positive behaviors towards literacy (Addison et al., 2006). In addition, it is important that families should have a good knowledge of literacy and language in order to assist the young ones in developing these skills. Similarly, family support is closely related to culture, which also proves to be extremely valuable in language and literacy development. For instance, social activities available in ones culture allows the children to derive meaning from what is learn from text or classroom, and consequently, put this to practice. The early years of a child with parents and family are very important because what they learn impacts on future activities. Families and parents assist children to establish emotional interconnections, which gives children strength and resilience to meet future difficulties (Barret & Turner, 2005). Hence, if this is achieved in a child’s development he/she will not have trouble learning literacy and language, but if this is lacking then a child will have difficulties in learning literacy/language. Issues Related to Poverty From the research that was carried out, it was discovered that most teachers discriminate those students from poor backgrounds. In addition, research reveals that there is a wide gap between the performance of students from high socio economic status and those from low socioeconomic status teachers take takes those students who have less and give them less (Leob et al., 2004). Hence these students from low socioeconomic status do not develop their language and literacy skills well. The parents of these students also tend to move from one place to another to search for employment, and in return they affect their children’s school attendance and this can affect their language and literacy development. Children coming from homes with no or strained financial income are disadvantaged economically, which translates to poor performance in academics and other educational endeavors. First, these children may be exposed or experience homelessness whereby they lack adequate, fixed, nighttime residence, and as a result end up living in public places, car, parks, abandoned buildings and so on (Leob et al., 2004). Second, poor families lack financial resources of the available finances are strained causing maternal depression. These two factors lead to several physical and physiological effects on parents and severely on children (Barret & Turner, 2005). These effects include malnutrition, family stress, illness, hearing and vision problems, housing problems, fewer learning resources, neighbourhood problems such as violence and most importantly lack of linguistic and cognitive stimulation. Evidently, children from poor backgrounds affected by the above mentioned physiological and physical factors end up developing psychological problems, which hinder them from performing well in academics; hence, hindering literacy and language development in such children (Hartas, 2011). Therefore, children from poor backgrounds would be slow or have difficulties learning language as compared to those from middle class and upper class groups. Diversity and Race Arguably, there is a relationship between performance of students and their cultural origins and racial origins. Students from a stable economic background tend to perform better than those from a low economic background. This is because; children from a high economic background tend to be at peace in all areas of their life (McCarty & Perez, 2013). For instance, children from African American communities or minority groups are perceived to perform poorly in school, and those from the majority backgrounds record good performance in language and literacy. This is mainly due to the fact that children from the minority races experience several issues that hinder their performance in class as they tend not to be psychologically at peace. Similarly, social context in which the children are brought up plays a great role in the development of language literacy in the children (Bowey, 1995). This is because it creates diversity in school and classroom setting, which may hinder effective learning of children from various social or ethnic backgrounds. Therefore, harmonious relationship between the cultural values and school values should be made. Considering that there are many cultures that are represented in society, and there are students who come from these cultures and some are non-English speaking. Availability of learning materials Some of the materials used to enhance language and literacy in school are magazines, books and computers. According to Miller & Lisa (2008) students that use text books, tend to enhance their literacy instruction, as they can comprehend the content easily. The reading books that are used contain themes, stories, or interesting content thus provides the basis of improving the skills of literacy. Those students from a high socio economic status usually get access to different instructional materials because, the schools in which they learn are able to provide the different learning materials that are needed in the curriculum (Miller & Lisa, 2008). While children from a low social economic status school, are not able to access textbooks as well as other facilities that enhance language and literacy. Hence those from poor schools tend to have low rate of development in language and literacy (McCarty and Perez, 2013). Schools with many resources, enables the teacher to select reading materials which target the learners’ language literacy. This is important in targeting the reading experience at the point where the students have difficulties and to make it easier for the teacher to involve them and take part in relevant and interesting topics. Some of the materials used are; computers, books, supplementary programs and materials and intervention programs these are used to improve the learners reading skills. According to Pungello et al., (2009), computer programs are used to enhance computer literacy to teach and provide practice to the students, intervention program are easily comprehendible by using relevant instructional materials. Teachers may require supplementary materials to assist them provide vocabulary instructions that are effective. However it may be difficult for teachers to use some facilities like the computers because of socioeconomic status. Some students who come from poor families might not be able to use the computers and this will not be beneficial to them (Barret & Turner, 2005). Motivation From the research carried out by McCarty & Perez (2013) it was discovered that in the children of grade 7-12, engagement and motivation play a key role in their literacy development. If the students are not motivated to write read and be motivated to think that they have the potential, then it might be hard for most of them to develop the literacy skills (Pungello et al., 2009). However the motivation is either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. To understand the students’ motivation for writing and reading, there are many contextual factors that need to be considered. This includes the students emotional histories and background and the social relationships in class that is between the teachers and students. Therefore the instructors who need to promote language and literacy should understand and address the emotional and social needs of the students within the classroom. There are students who cannot read because they think they cannot read well as compared to the other students from English speaking origin. They tend to be inferior or they associate poor reading with public embarrassment (James & Barbara, 2009). These students can be motivated and learn that it is possible to be a proficient reader even if you come from a low social economic background. Likewise, home environment also acts as a motivator for children’s literacy and language development. These include things such as exposure to literacy materials during early years in the family setting, as well as story telling or reading story books. These are ways through which families support children to adopt and experience literacy in the early years, which in turn motivates the children into learning and understanding language and literacy. Recommendations Questions needed to be addressed in language and literacy is, how conversations instruction is used in literacy instruction, how motivation on learning language and literacy of individual students is affected by his or her socioeconomic status. Encourage teachers to implement participatory approach such as questioning, debating, elaborating and clarifying some points it can be initiated by the student or teacher (Comber, 2013). All these help students to effectively develop strategies that are expressive and comprehensive as an inquiry tool. The teachers should be aware of the emotional history of the students and also know the students background, because many students who have problems at home, end up performing poorly because they transfer those problems from home to school. Nowadays there is need for the teachers to master alternative methods of assessment. It literacy and language skills learnt by different students vary and it has been a challenge to teachers, and we should determine the case of each individual on how to assess it best to be able to develop and promote the skills, alternative methods should be used by the teachers to determine individual student progress. It is important to use observation to reveal the literacy of the students’ interdisciplinary and competencies approaches that yields the students’ educational needs as well as developmental strengths. Systematic observation is a meaningful one when interacting with the classroom, teachers, student interviews, families, and interpreting the outcome in terms of the social and cultural practices that frame school and home values. Conclusion In the study on the relationship between socioeconomic status and language literacy, It was evident motivation on students plays a great role in the development of language literacy irrespective of their socioeconomic background. Another factor that is important on language literacy was, understanding the diversity of cultures that the students come from, since some come English-speaking origin while others come from non-English speaking origin cultures. In addition, poverty, race, availability of learning materials and family support and family backgrounds also affect literacy development and learning in children. References Addison Stone, E. R. (2006). The Contexts of Learning Language and Literacy Acquisition. In S. Addison, E. R. Silliman, B. J. Ehren, & K. Ape, Handbook of Language And Literacy: Development And Disorders (pp. 155-180). Guilford Press. Barret, A. E., & Turner, R. (2005). Family structure and menatl health: The mediating effects of socioeconomic status, family process, and social stress. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 159-169. Bowey, J. (1995). Socioeconomic status differences in phanological sensitivity and first-grade reading achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 476-487. Comber, B. (2013). High-stakes literacy tests and local effects in a rural school. Australian Journal of Language and literacy, 78-89. Hartas, D. (2011). Families' social backgrounds matter : socio-economic factors, home learning and young children's language, literacy and social outcomes . British Educational Research Journal, 893-914. James, B. P., & Barbara, W. A. (2009). The Role of Ethnicity in Language and Literacy Acquisition . In B. James, & W. 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