Promoting Language and Literacy in Early Childhood - Essay Example

Hong Kong Kindergarten Education Hong Kong Kindergarten Education Thesis: With reference to the literature about English language learning in the Hong Kong kindergarten context, identify the focus/ challenges of early language and/ or literacy learning in Hong Kong. Based on the focus or challenges that you have identified, create a 5-day lesson plan (the language section only) and highlight how it addresses the learning needs of young learner(s). Outline Introduction Challenges Goals 5 Day Lesson Plan Connection with Activity Conclusion Appendix Work Cited Introduction Although Hong Kong has around 1100 kindergartens and child care centers, and over 95% of their preschool-age population attends preschools, education for these young children has received however comparatively lower priority than that in primary, secondary or tertiary education. Over the past fewer decades, however, the Hong Kong Government has taken a number of positive steps to ensure that early childhood programs provide a minimum level of acceptable quality of care and education. This paper focuses on the critical examination of the statement: “identification of the focus/ challenges of early language and/ or literacy learning in Hong Kong. Hence, thereby based on the focus or challenges that have been identified, a 5-day lesson plan in considerate to the language section only has been made that would highlight how addressing such issues would cover the learning needs of young learner(s). The importance behind writing this paper is its highlighting various issues that need to be considered while providing children with an educational environment which is conducive to bilingual development or literacy improvement in Honk Kong Kindergarten Education. Hong Kongs Education System The Hong Kong Special Region of China in Administration covers 1040 sq. kilometers. It has a population of more than 6.8 million. With the formation fo Sino- British Joint declaration. Described as one of the “barren island with hardly any house upon it” in the mid-1800s, by 1990s Hong Kong became the territory with the higher (GDP) in Asia. With a higher rate of population and greater GDP Hong Kong became one of the major senders of students abroad for their further studies. As one of the former British colony along with an international gateway to the Mainland of great China, Hong Kong aims to make itself as a bilateral (Chinese and English) along with a trilingual (Cantonese, English, and Putonghua) society. Although by seeing the statistics from 2006 by-census it shows that around 95% of the Hong Kong population is an ethnic Chinese(Hong Kong Government, 2006), both the Chinese and English are the ones official language. With the rapid development in the pre-school policy and parents’ aspirations towards their children’s education, the rate of preschool education in Hong Kong has become as high as 95% (Rao, Koong, Kwong & Wong,2003). The promotion of the cognitive and language development is one in the four developmental objectives set there forth for younger children in the Government Guide to Pre-primary Curriculum (Curriculum Development Council, 2006). Cantonese is one of the mother-tongue in Hong Kong and thereby language used for communication by most of the children in Hong Kong, while English stands as an auxiliary language. This unique socio-cultural context presents an array of challenges to all educational researchers and curriculum experts in the development of bilingual language competence of the preschool children. Since 1997, most of the changes have been taken involving minimum teaching qualifications for the kindergarten teaching staff and principals. This is also as a result of government placing more emphasis on importance of early childhood education; the curriculum in the kindergarten has now been modified to provide a sound foundation for students. Steps would be taken to bring about changes to a lot of kindergartens as a manner of professionalizing them. This paper reviews various issues that need to be considered in providing children with an educational environment which are conducive to bilingual development. Challenges Faced at Kindergarten There are various issues faced while teaching English or other languages at Honk Kong. Such problems arise due to the following issues: Pedagogical Issues In many schools at a very younger age, a child is exposed to different languages being taught in school. Two such languages mainly forming part in earlier Hock Kong education includes Chinese and English. While English is an alphabetic, phonemic language but the Chinese is a morphological language. Moreover, the number of letters and morphemes in the alphabetic language of English are usually limited, whereas the differences in grammar, tones and orthography of Chinese are greater. On the other hand this would even mean that the, sound, meaning and shape of each Chinese character would thereby have to be learned individually by rote. Chinese varies with the English morphophonemic orthography as in Chinese each written character corresponds to just one syllable in its spoken language and carries special meaning. For instance, the character ­ sounds as ‘bak3’ is not just a syllable but also carries the meaning of an old man. English might be different but could be made to learn through the use of patterns and rhymes and their correspondence to such sound patterns and meanings of the word significantly affect the learner’s reading ability (Leong & Joshi, 1997). Organization of Society Many of the teachers who teach Chinese students for the very first time would feel they are passive in class. The lacking of initiatives in the participating of classroom activities is generally caused by Chinese learners concept of seeking teacher’s role as dominating, authoritative while students at the same time might lack a drive to progress well or work harder. Confucianism therefore emphasizes on hierarchy of relationships along with collectivism. It is important that Chinese students take part in the activities that are carried out. Usually the Chinese students in contrast to the western individualistic or the egalitarian culture perceive themselves not as bio-logical individuals rather they are intimately related to immediate kinship. Problems for which goals need to be assigned Hong Kong Kindergarten needs to form goals to tackle the following problems highlighted: Intonation transfer from the L2 learners’ L1 to the L2 is one of the natural phenomenons. A number of studies have revealed that English spoken by various Chinese dialect groups have varying accents (e.g., Brown, Deterring and Low, 2001; Bolton and the Kwok, 1990) The distinctive system of the pronunciation and the intonation of Chinese as compared to the English language may cause Chinese people to be perceived as rude or inconsiderate. In case of more of a serious intonation transfer this could even affect comprehensiveness. The goal for Honk Kong Kindergarten Education would be handled the above given problem through finding solution to such issues. Grammatical Errors Apart from the topic prominence, the non inflected nature of Chinese language also contributes to the Inter Cultural Communication problems for Chinese L2 learners (Chang, 1987; Wong, 1988; Li & Thompson, 1990). The Levinson (1983) points out that in Chinese and similar other language without true tenses the basic concept of the time that is expressed by adverbs as well as the other implicit and contextual assumptions. Another of the factor that generally contributes to the difficulties of Chinese L2 learners is in their learning tenses is the difference existing in the concept of Chinese as compared to native speakers of English (Coppetiers, 1987; Hinkel, 1992; Guiora, 1983;; Levinson, 1983). The goal would be to reduce the incidents of grammatical error. Team Spirit It is important that activities in group are carried out and team spirit continues and maintain. This is usually problematic for Chinese children because of mainly their passive attitude. The emphasis on the much greater interests of groups rather than that of the individuals means that one will have to employ different rhetorical strategies in communicating with those of own group (ingroup) and others (outgroup). Brick (1991) mentions in addressing friends and those in subordinate position, Chinese tend to be direct or even rude when translated into English. The goal here is to employ team spirit in the students of Honk Kong kindergarten Education. 5 Day Lesson Plan ( The Target Group 3-6 years old) 1) Activity (activities in detail) 2) Positive or negative effect of activity 3) Goals link 4) Sequence why? Teaching English as a Second Language (L2/ ESL) can be fun and rewarding with great opportunities to travel, explore other types of cultures and learning new languages. The five day lesson plan would make use of a scheme that would have been made in consideration to learning English as a secondary language (L2) in Honk Kong by Kindergarten children. The goal of five day lesson plan would in overall to turn the passive attitude of Chinese students in Honk Kong Kindergarten Education System to an active attitude (especially in regard to English language). The following activities or games would be used to achieve the goal: With Day 1– Activity # 1 Charades The charades game which is known around the world as very easy and fun for learning new stuff would be used here. This game help the students getting active with the surroundings as children learn game. The point is to increase their “Vocabulary” without them really realizing that they are learning new words. The second goal of this activity is “Teamwork”. The third goal is to achieve “Decision making ability” as the activity requires at every round each team to send their representatives. This activity is very beneficial as it achieves the purpose without children getting bored. With Day 2 – Activity # 2 The next day the children would be asked to play a game called “Describe it” The objective of this game is help children learn grammar with an active participation of each and every student. This would help teacher learn which students are good and which are not in the grammar. When the students would be asked to describe the picture, they would say for instance “it has legs, etc” this will help build grammar, teachers could correct and explain. The result of this activity could either be positive or negative this would rather depend on how teacher reward the children. For instance, if teacher reward only one child who is already good at grammar than this would result other children de-motivated and even not being friends with that child who score the highest. This activity needs to have an appropriate rewarding system for effective results. With Day 3 – Activity # 3 This activity is based on unscrambling the sentences and getting them assembled through the children. The objective is to learn sentence structure. Through this activity we are again targeting team spirit and the passive attitude towards learning. The positive effects of the activity would include helping children learn sentence formation. The team members would be able to help each other so we are targeting the teamwork once again. For better results it is vital that teams should be unbiased and balanced, if all the cream students are one team then the other team is sure to lose. To further improve the dedication an incentive should be attached to this activity. The success of this activity would also depend on how well the students have understood the game. Activity # 4 – Day 4 The activity that is planned for day 4 is compound word game. This activity targets the vocabulary area with students given different sets of words to form them in to compound groups. The activity makes use of “decision making ability” and also class-work. Class work is different than team work as in class work there is no competition and every child just volunteers to be a part of this activity, this help build up self esteem. The issue of passive attitude is also knocking down with every child trying to participate in this activity. The activity would have positive affects if the words are easy yet focused on learning that is they should not be too difficult or to easy to lose the purpose. With Day 5 – Activity # 5 The last and final activity is creating a story. The objective of creating a story is to help mindboggling and help children express their thoughts on the paper. This activity has been put on third day, as it is an advanced level of activity. A story can be written only when children know the verbal phrases. It is important that the teachers helps students and check on their progress and allow students to talk. This activity can even be done in groups, this would help achieve “Team spirit” plus it would not be overburdening. The activity would have positive results if teacher guides the children and the picture is of something of children interest. Conclusion With the use of above techniques the challenged faced by Honk Kong Education can be literally improved, especially if the five day plan is put into practice with much dedication and considering the motto in mind of aligning every day activities with the goals. APPENDIX For Activity Number One we would require small cards cut properly. Writing a new word or small phrase making use verb i.e. verbal phrase such as “driving a car” Dividing the students into two groups or teams. Each team then chooses a person to go first. The chosen student would then must pull a card from the bag and act out that word for his teammates. If the team/group gets it right, give one or ten points. If they answer incorrectly then give the opposing team a chance to answer or win points. The Activity Number two “Describe it!” is a game show that would require either pictures or whiteboards. Colorful markers would help build up interest. Moreover, the rewards should be such that appeals to the child; it can include toys rather than books and sweets for rest of the students in class. The Activity Number Three requires a white board and a marker. This would have written scrambled sentences on the board. First of all divide the class into teams or pairs. Give also the students example of correct sentences. Ask them to unscramble the words with the help of their team to make proper sentence. The team to say the correct sentence first out aloud receives one point. Activity Number Four makes use of compound word game. Students are given a list of words that can be used to form then compound words. The words should be in the sets of threes (nail, print, tip). First of all divide the class into two teams. Have the students to select any one person to write all words on the board. The class must guess the "common" words which can be used to form a common compound word with each of base words (finger - print, finger - nail, finger -- tip). Here are some more examples given such as: shoe, storm, man (common word = snow), light, break, time (common word = day), etc. Activity Number Five includes creating a story. This activity would require worksheet with colorful cartoonish pictures. Does Cinderella have a father? Or Write the story in the first person singular ("I"). Write a story from Cinderella’s point of view. My name is _____. Work Cited 1. Chang, J. (1987), Chinese speakers, in Swan and Smith, 224-237. 2. Coppetiers, R. (1987), Competence differences between native and non-native speakers, Language, 63: 544-573. 3. Guiora, A. (1983). The dialectic of language acquisition, Language Learning, 33: 3-12. 4. Hinkel, E. (1992), The past tense and temporal verb meanings in a contextual frame, TESOL Quarterly, 31(2): 289-313. 5. Levinson, S. C. (1983), Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6. Leong, C.K. & Joshi, R.M. (1997). Cross-language studies of learning to read and spell: phonologic and orthographic processing. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 7. Lessons & Classroom Games for Teachers from http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/lessons/index.pl?read=3591#ixzz1Pyc2yHB1 8. Rao, Koong, Kwong & Wong,2003, predictors of preschool quality in Chineese Text, Early Childhood Research Quarterly,18(3),331-350. 9. Tse, S.K., Marton, F., Ki, W.W., & Loh, E.K.Y. (in press). An integrative perceptual approach for teaching Chinese characters. Instructional Science. Read More