Transaction Management in Database Management System
Lecture: literacy issues bilingual children
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Notes de l'éditeur
IN the past parents, general public and policy makers have been prejudiced and thrught that acquiring 2 lang from birth must be detrimental to childs growth. A lot of early research was based on a negative assumption that learning 2 langs will muddle the brain (not enough space- get dumber) or retard lang development. There was the idea of it bringing about split personality disorder, unbalanced. In novels and films often bilinguals used their shady skills to be spies, traitors. There are many stories of children being punished for speaking two languages at school. Anxieties about bilingualism still remain . You still hear ideas based on the idea of a set of scales, a balancing act, that the more you use a second language, the less skill the person will have in the first language. – the more one increases, the other decreases. But my friend bringing up their child bilingually tell me that there are still threads of these anxieties still around. In fact you can hear them form teachers, family members, friends…A second language is the first scapegoat to blame for other things going wrong, learning difficulties, behaviour problems.
There are so many different circumstances of kids acquiring different languages, through family, travel, immigration, chosen or forced, and So there are many different patterns of bilingual development. So for example, When kids become bilingual from birth, being exposed to 2 langs from birth, , usually where 2 paRents consistently only ever speak their own lang to infant, not surprisingly we call it simultaneous bilingualism . Where a child learns one family language at home, then goes to preschool or school and has to learn a second language, in our case, English, you have Sequential bilingualism . Langauge decisions in the family can be made consciously, having a plan, or by default . Choices might be made according to the parents relationship, balance of power, and interaction, Deaf people who have learnt AUSLAN (fully accredited as a community lang in australia) or another sign langauge are also fully bilingual, they learn literacy and oracy as a second language. Rich culture associated with their bilingualism.
I would like to acknowledge that I know both from friends and colleagues, and from my research and reading, just how hard this endeavour is. I know that it can be a constant struggle, with kids who don’t want to go to Saturday school, don’t want to do the extra homework, and the rejection of the language and culture. The power of the English speaking peer group and all that goes with it. You want your kids to be accepted in the dominant culture, its so important for their social development. But you want them to know and be part of the home language and culture group too, and to have enough language to be able to participate in it You don’t want them to be stranded in some kind of no-mans land in between. . There are no simple answers, it is a very long commitment of tiny incremental steps, thousands of conversations and exchanges, of perseverance. You may not see any fruits of your labour for a long time, maybe even until they are adults. and finally they might say “thanks for persevering”.
. In the 1950s Penfield and Robert, neurosurgeons, identified the idea that very young children have the total range of mechanical structures to produce any sound of any language in the world, like th perfect mimicking of the clicks and throat sounds of African languages,. Whereas this is no longer possible later on. Lenneberg in the 1960s came up with the idea of a critical learning hypothesis This holds that primary lang acquisition must occur during a period which starts at 2 and end s at puberty, when the brain loses its plasticity. There is work also on brain lateralisation. The left hemisphere is dominant for language processing. bilateral involvement was pronounced in early fleunt bilinguals. Its been shown that learning a second language early increases the density of gray matter. Gray matter density was greater in bilinguals than monolinguals, and early bilinguals were denser than late bilinguals. But these results have been questioned and other studies have either not been able to replicate the study or have found conflicting results.
The are plenty of research studies which show that Babies are biologically ready to acquire store and differentiate two or more languages from birth onwards. Infant bilingualism is normal and natural. To acquire 2 lang successfully from birth, babies can do 2 things: differentiate between the 2 langs and (2) store the 2 langs for both understanding and production. Infants show lang discrimination very early. Memory for lang sounds operates even in the foetal stage. Newborns can discriminate between different sounds and voices, intonation patterns. Newborns can distinguish their parents native lang sounds from unfamiliar foreign language sounds . At the babbling stage, (10-12 months) a child exposed to 2 langauges from birth (a) has tendency to babble in their stronger lang (b) show language-specific babbling patterns and intonations and (c) may not babbly with contenxt-specific accuacry. Bilingual 2 year olds, know which language to speak to whom and in what situation . Very young children can easily switch languages and differentiate between them. they can already use language in contextually sensitive ways. Where you have one parent-one language system, the ability to use the appropriate lang with a particular person occurs very early. - an awareness of 2 distinct but equivalent lang systems. The childs brain is different from the adult brain in that it is a very dynamic structure that is evolving. A 2 years old brain has twice as many synapses(connections) in the brain as an adult. The young brain must use these connections or lose them. Failure to learn a skill during a critical or sensitive period has important significance (why I cant ride a bike? or use a mobile all that well?)
SLIDE bilingual babies site - real stories- Ondrej A n interesting website is this one with real life stories from people bringing up their children bilingually. There are month by month accounts of the childs development. Has anyone in the audience kept a journal of their childs progress in the home language? heres your chance to publish it on the web.
I guess one common model here tonite is One parent- one language. But extended family members can also be the ones to speak the home language to the child and extend the amount of input. Some parents choose to speak the language in a specific situation, such as at mealtimes, in the bath, or on weekends. You draw language boundaries around situations rather than people. You will get many different outcomes according to the model you use but more critical, amount of exposure and input and opportunity to speak. There will usually be an uneven balance in the use of two or more languages and that can change over time, as circumstances change. A bilingual child rarely has an equal balance in 2 language experience, (only balanced bilinguals in places like belgium, alsace, close to borders) Over the years of child-rearing, there are recognised patterns in shifting balance of the 2 langauges of bilingual children. – shift in which language is dominant. Children can be reluctant to speak one of the languages in certain times can even slip to just being a passive use (i.e. just understand, not speak e.g. understand a question in L1 but answers in Englih) But then other periods, when suddenly that passive ability will blossom very quickly into a great active ability, such as visitng monolingual grandparents in the home country, vacation, etc) . I had one student tell me recently that at 4 as a bilingual, she was taken for 6 months for a holiday to her home country with her grandmother, and completely forgot all her English. when she returned to Australia to start kindy, was very upset to be completely starting from scratch. It also very normal to have different outcomes in siblings. Its recognised that the oldest child gets much greater exposure, and less interference from English. Later the siblings nearly always speak English togther, and so the links for the younger ones are weaker, more English interference, and this can produce a weaker outcome in the family language.
These 2 terms are pretty much the same thing. but they are an issue frequently brought up by parents and teachers, usually in negative terms. They both represent the idea of when one language gets mixed with another. But actually Its in fact Monolinguals who often have negative attitudes to codeswitching, thinking that it show a deficit, a lack of mastery of both languages. But in fact it tends to be those who are more fluent in a language that code-switch. It is a valuable linguistic tool. It does not typically happen at random. has purpose and logic. It is using the full language resources available, and knowing that the other person fully understands. One main language provides the sentence structure, the grammar, and the other language gest inserted into those rules, , will fit the rules of the first language. If the main language is the home language, with English inserted, that is usually regarded as a strength in the home language, Very few bilinguals keep their 2 langauges separate. the ways they mix them can be varied and complex. Codemixing is a term sometimes used, to mean almost the same thing, but more like the deliberate choice of one language to fit a particular context or person. And then there is language borrowing which is where foreign loan words (usually English) become an itegral and permanent part of another language. Codeswitching can be done for emphasis, substitute for a concept that has no equivalent in L2, to reinforce a request, have greater authority, to express common identity, bonding for humour, to exclude people, and to show shifts in emotion- use L1 to say “I love you”, and L2 to say “clean up your room!”.
research has established these 3 negative trends in adolesent heritage language kids Cognitive competence in the HL: lack of access to advanced and/or technical vocabulary in adolescence can influence learners development and speed in HL (Cummins, 1984) Do not develop the full spectrum of sociolinguistic registers of the level of cognitive or academic literacy commended by monolingual native speakers (Montrul, 2008) IN adolescence, as the peer group is so important, more and more English is used in social interactions with peers and siblings, the language for thinking and learning (Merino 1983). These kids are known in the research as heritage language speakers. Becuas eof thei incomplete set of language skills, they are regarded in some ways as a bit “unique” (Valdes, 2005). They are neither completely native speakers of the TL, nor foreign language learners. In fact, many heritage speakers, need to become heritage language learners , they need formal study at school in their home language in order to become literate in it and be able to fully develop. Children with 1 or 2 parents who speak L2, Typical patterns, K-6 limited vocab and literacy adolescence- social factors Often limited literacy, need formal study: become HL learners Need differentiation
These kids are known in the research as heritage language speakers. Becuas eof thei incomplete set of language skills, they are regarded in some ways as a bit “unique” (Valdes, 2005). They are neither completely native speakers of the TL, nor foreign language learners. In fact, many heritage speakers, need to become heritage language learners , they need formal study at school in their home language in order to become literate in it and be able to fully develop. Children with 1 or 2 parents who speak L2, Typical patterns, K-6 limited vocab and literacy adolescence- social factors Often limited literacy, need formal study: become HL learners Need differentiation
PICK the items which are not true!!!
There is quite an old book by Francois Grosjean called The Bilingual Person that was one of the first things I cam eactoss years ago when reading about bilingualism, prior to my studies. One bit I love was where Grosjean described some interwtsing reaerach on how bilingual operate differently in their different languages. He did a study where they were presented with an ambiguous picture , which they had to make up a story about in one of their languages. Then some time later, they did it again in their other language. The stories they made up were driven by social and cultural values of the particular language. So for example, a Japanese English bilingual, develop 2 different stories. The English version was driven by a focus on the individual, progress, etc. but their Japanese story was driven by notions of family honour.
Infusing Dual language literacy through the library curriculum This case study reports on a collaborative action research project developed by an elementary school teacher librarian and a university researcher. It focuses on the initiatives taken by teacher librarian Padma Sastri to use students' home languages as a resource for increasing their engagement with literacy and their overall literacy development. This study takes place in the Greater Toronto Area where half the population has been born outside of Canada making it the city with the second highest number of foreign-born residents in the world (2005, Canadian Heritage). The teacher involved in this study has made this cultural and linguistic diversity a central focus of her teaching. The purpose of the research was to observe the dual language literacy strategies that the teacher was implementing in her library curriculum and to examine both the pedagogical objectives underlying this orientation and the responses of students and parents to them. Padma, the teacher in this study has found ways to enable students to use their first language skills as a resource and further develop them. She has also enabled parents to become partners in the development of students' school literacy through dual language practices. She has done so by (a) creating a dual language book collection in the library that fosters home literacy, (b) implementing dual language "flip book" authoring by students that often includes parental support, and (c) creating a forum for multilingual oral literacy events in her library curriculum. Evidence from this case study suggests that parental participation in school literacy is increased when teachers make students' linguistic background part of the curriculum. In addition, students appear to develop a heightened awareness and acceptance of linguistic diversity as part of school life when a multilingual focus underlies literacy teaching. The potential for increasing student and parent investment in school literacy by creating a school environment in which students' linguistic and cultural background is valued as part of the curriculum is supported by the data collected. The case study elaborates on this claim and provides evidence that students' engagement with school literacy is strengthened when their linguistic differences are perceived as strengths and utilized to scaffold new learning rather than being looked at as deficits in need of remediation. In the Multilingualism, identities and multiliteracies: student and teacher voices at Coppard Glenn study, the multiliteracies pedagogy adopted was a cross-grade dual language collaborative book writing. The success of the initial project was reproduced in a cross-grade class collaboration that took place between grade 4s and grade 7s in 2004/2005. Joanne, a grade 7 teacher and Perminder brought their classes together to have their students jointly create dual language books. As in Perminder's dual language text project, the main research claims for this partnership focused on the beliefs that: engaging students L1 literacies in collaborative writing enhances cognitive engagement, and increases vocabulary in both the L1 and English, builds collaboration, negotiation and leadership skills. Furthermore, it was proposed that teacher collaboration (i.e., the integration of pedagogies, teaching styles, and personal experiences) and the co-creation of projects build and strengthen pedagogies, provide intellectual stimulation and support, and opportunities for change across the curriculum, within classrooms and within the school.