Education 3-13, Vol. 36, N.3, August 2008, p.237-251.
Abstract: This article presents a socio-cultural study of parental involvement in reading by examining the reciprocal mediation between a Chinese mother and her daughter in the reading of a dual-language storybook. The findings reveal a child learningin the 'interplay of her contexts' that reflects dynamics of collaborative involvement in meaning making. With the aid of the dual-language storybook, the mother, not literate in English, is enabled to scaffold her child's learning in ways that enhance both the child's understanding of the English text and her knowledge of their heritage language, while the child herself assists her mother' learning of English. The article provides detailed explanations of ways in which inter-subjectivity (mutual understanding) arises from interpersonal communication, i.e. how 'reading' becomes transformed into a meaning-making activity from what can be a decontextualised task. The article includes implications for developing approaches that minority-ethnic parents can use when reading with their children, alongside reading strategies that can be adapted for use by monolingual teachers and bilingual assistants in mainstream schools.
This project was developed by the Minority Ethnic Achievement Service of the London Borough of Redbridge. It was designed to promote and maintain the use of children’s home languages. Schools’ own reading programmes were complemented through providing resources to support pupils in developing reading skills in their home languages with the help of their parents. Dual language books and associated resources were made available to schools.
Update: November 2008: The Teachers' Pack has now been published and is available from EMAT Redbridge, Teachers' centre, Melbourne Road, Ilford, essex IG1 4HT. Tel. 020 8553 3961. Cost: £50.
The pack contains six case studies of how schools supported children's reading in their home language, an analysis of key issues and a wide range of classroom and teachers' resources, both in print in the book and available on two CDs. The resources include story prompts, parent guidance leaflets, phonics charts, high frequency words, all available in a wide range of languages to accompany a selection of dual language books. The pack also includes advice and resources to support teachers in running their own reading in home languages programme.
Dr Leena Helaavara Robertson of Middlesex University has studied children learning to read in English, Urdu and Arabic in school, community classes and mosque and how they switch strategies according to the learning context.
Leena describes children learning to read in Urdu using the English/Urdu version of Lima’s Red Hot Chilli (David Mills, 2000, Mantralingua). Both the teacher and the children switch between languages, translating words and discussing similarities and differences between the languages at all levels: lexicon, syntax, phonology and orthography. Levels of metalinguistic awareness are high.
Leena concludes
“The children learn to read in English whilst switching between different literacy
systems. In each class they talk about their literacy learning in terms of
‘how you do it properly’. They are keen to demonstrate what they can do. Rather
than finding the different languages and scripts, or classes, confusing, they
have a powerful impact in inspiring the children to show that they have learnt
what counts as ‘proper’ learning and ‘proper’ reading in all their classes…”
(p.58)
The study is reported in Learning to Read “Properly” by Moving Between Parallel Literacy Classes. Language and Education, Vol.20: 1; pp44-61
As a result of research findings from her work with the Gujerati/Urdu speaking community, http://www.multilingual-matters.net/le/017/0371/le0170371.pdf Raymonde Sneddon has a particular interest in exploring the way in which meaning is negotiated and interpreted in the context of dual language books. Through individual case studies of children who are bilingual and have aural/oral skills in a home language and English and are learning to read, reading with an adult who is familiar with both languages, the following issues are being explored:
As part of the pilot, the following studies, of children learning to read using dual language books provided by the school, are in progress:
An article outlining current findings in this project, Young Bilingual Children Learning to Read with Dual language Books" has been published in September 2008 in the NZ journal English Teaching: Practice and Critique, Vol 7.n.2.
The Cass School of Education and Communities is currently seeking funding for a full scale study.
Laureen Mayer, an MA student from the University of Calgary in Canada, recently visited London and talked about the following project for which she is a research assistant.
Dr Rahat Naqvi at the University of Calgary has just obtained funding to carry out a two year study which will look at early reading ability and dual language books. Her website provides interesting and relevant information on:
Laureen was also involved in compiling a data base of dual language books available in Canada (many of which are published by the London-based Mantralingua). This list, organised by language, is available on
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rnaqvi/Dual_Language_Index.html
Posted by Raymonde Sneddon – February 2008
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