Multiliteracy in Action

Using and Researching Dual Language Books for Children

The process of making personal books and the concept of Identity Texts

Teachers with an interest in dual text books have commonly worked with individuals or groups of children (with or without their families) to write personal books, some of which have been published internally by institutions and made available to interested teachers. Some MA students in the Cass School of Education and Communities have researched this area for dissertations and the PGCE primary team have some examples of such work.

Some teachers and publishers (Davvi in Norway, for example) have used book making by children in a particular community as a means of creating links and sharing experiences between children in different locations and different countries (Solbakk 1994).

Identity Texts: the use of writing in two languages in the classroom has been developed as a means of exploring the fluctuating nature of personal identity in multilingual contexts. Practice and research in Canada have shown this process to be particularly supportive of children who have recently arrived in a new country and are coming to terms with a new language and a new culture (Cummins et al, 2006 http://www.curriculum.org/secretariat/files/ELLidentityTexts.pdf ).

Some very good examples of this work are available on the following site http://thornwood.peelschools.org/Dual/  and in the book: Cummins, J. and Early, M. (2011) Identity Texts: the collaborative creation of power in multilingual classrooms. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.

A Friend (1995)

As part of a long running bilingual mother and child writing group (1986-2000) in a Hackney primary school, Luisa Pieris supported Mohamed, a Muslim child recently arrived from Iraq, to write a story about friendship with his mother. The true story tells how a Jewish child from the Yemen overheard him speaking Arabic to his mother and how they became friends on the basis of a shared language. When the family were re-housed the child was sad to lose contact with his friend. One day, by accident, on his way to his new school, he met his old friend in the street and discovered that they went to neighbouring schools: Mohamed to a mainstream primary, his friend to a Jewish school. The two schools had been developing a partnership, with children visiting each other’s school for special assemblies and Mohamed was very proud to read his story to an assembly that included children from his friend’s school.

Nepali Books
A teacher working in a school with a large proportion of children from Gurkha families worked with children and their parents to make dual language books in Nepali and English. Traditional tales were translated, illustrated and recorded and were, until recently, available free on the web..

The process of personalised book-making involving schools, families and communities provides a rich resource for action research (Ingham,1986).

September 2012

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