Literacy for Young Children
Being a new mother, the acquisition of spoken and written language is on my mind a lot. Although many people say that every child learns at a different rate, I cannot help but make some observations and apply them using Ong’s view of the oral and written culture. Every child starts off as a pre-literate being since their eye sight develops at a much slower rate than their hearing. Even the text or images they do see are indistinguishable blobs. Starting at 6 months, mothers are encouraged to bring their babies to a literacy program called Mother Goose where parents and babies gather in a circle and are led by the facilitator through a variety of songs and nursery rhymes. The text for these songs or rhymes were never handed out until the last day of the class, so mothers are also being submerged in a primarily oral culture. Without surprise, most mothers were able to follow the routine of the class and sing along with the songs/rhymes by the third class even though some of the songs were not traditional children songs heard in the past. The reason behind the quick acquisition to memory is because of the rhythm, balanced patterns, repetition, literary devices, and formulaic expression: which oral culture relies on according to Ong. Using the same reasoning, early childhood educators teach children through the usage of songs and would start the transition from oral to written culture using the alphabet song. But the transition to a literate being is a much more difficult one in the English language because our alphabet is not a phonetic one. In fact, English words are riddled with inconsistencies and exceptions to rules which makes it extremely difficult to even read the language. For languages such as Korean and Chinese where a phonetic alphabet exists and formulaic rules are followed, children are able to start their formal education at two (Kristof ,2011) and read at the age of three (Bryant & Ho, 1997). In order to commit the English text to memory, children may rely on techniques similar to those used in the oral tradition. For example, they may look for something distinctive in order to selectively associate the word with that feature such as the humps in the middle of the word “camel.” As a result, children learn dissimilar words more easily than similar ones (Otto & Pizzilo, 1970-71) but they would apply their tell-tale cue to all words with that feature. In many ways, this is not dissimilar to the oral tradition where only the memorable and interesting details of a story are remembered and the others become forgotten. They would not be as successful since the forgotten elements of the words are just as important as the salient elements. Another interesting thing I observed about literacy in young children is that their recognition of the text requires the text to be in proper context so children usually also associate the text with an image. Once removed from the image, the child loses the ability to recognize the word. According to Ong this can be accounted for because written texts are a construct created outside of the individual and needs to be relatable in order for the individual to make sense of it. The oral traditions, on the other hand, are innate in the individual as these skills exist within the individual; therefore, the most helpful way to help a young child learn to read is not to merely rely on memorization but on phonetical awareness.
Bryant, P & Ho, S. (1997). Phonological skills are important in learning to read Chinese. Developmental Psychology, 33 (6), 946-951.
Kristof, N. (2011, Jan 15). Opinion: China’s winning schools?. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16kristof.html?_r=0
Ong, W. (1978). Literacy and orality in our times. Retrieved from http://www.ade.org/bulletin/n058/058001.htm
Otto, W., and Pizzilo, C. (1970-71). Effect of intralist similarity on kindergarten pupils rate of word acquisition and transfer. Journal of Reading Behavior, 3, 14-19.
Thank you for bringing up the subject of kids as an example of an oral culture. This reflects Ong’s writing about memory and the ways to help the oral culture in memorizing. The development of the kids’ oral culture to an adult literate is a natural and quick process. However, the transition of the adult oral culture to a literate one is more complex and might take longer to accomplish. One important thing to mention here is that kids’ oral culture is monitored and structured by the adult’s literate culture that has the authority to enforce changes. There is a dearth of researches regarding the comparison between children in illiterate and literate cultures. However, according to one of these rare studies conducted on cognitive characteristics of children in both cultures by Matute et al. (2012), it concluded that literacy has a positive effect on all cognitive domains of these children. The question is always centred on how to stimulate children to learn; but, there is no single answer. According to Goodman as cited by Luongo-Orlando et al. (2010), children become literate if raised and have grown up in a literate community. That includes learning before going to school by connecting with their peers, parents, interaction with others, art making, games, and so on. Their ability to read, notice signs, write, listen, and many more activities start to develop naturally and without having extreme effort from parents.
Bassam
Reference:
Matute, E., Montiel, T., Pinto, N., Rosselli, M., Ardila, A., & Zarabozo, D. (2012). Comparing cognitive performance in illiterate and literate children. International Review of Education, 58(1), 109-127.
Luongo-Orlando, K., & Canadian Publishers Collection – non-CRKN. (2010). The cornerstones to early literacy: Childhood experiences that promote learning in reading, writing and oral language. Markham; London: Pembroke Publishers, Limited.
Literacy is crucial in the development of a child’s education, this is more important at an early age. Literacy could be defined as “the ability to read and write, literacy is also used to describe other skills such as computer literacy and workplace literacy” (Cramer, 2004, pg. 598).
Children develops their cognitive skills from a tender age and it is very important for parents to facilitate this development. “Literacy is a social and cultural achievement as well as a cognitive one. A literate family life is the best assurance that literacy will be transformed to the children. A literacy culture is one which education is honored, learning is respected and literacy is valued” (Bruner,1970,pg 178). Cramer further argued that “reading and writing form the foundation of literacy, however listening talking,viewing and visually representing are as important. He went on further to state that reading has two main branches, comprehension and word recognition” (Cramer,2004,pg.6).
As Bass mentioned in the previous comment, children are literate if they are raised and have grown up in a literate community, this includes learning before going to school. It is therefore important for them to be in structured programs and are exposed to educational tools and activities. “Literacy development begins long before children starts formal instructions. Children use legitimate reading and writing behaviors in the informal settings of home and community. Literacy develops in real life settings for real life activities in order to get things done,therefore the functions of literacy are as integral a part of learning about writing and reading during early childhood as are the forms of literacy. Children are doing critical cognitive work in literacy development during years from birth to six”. (Cramer,2004, pg199)
Source:
Cramer, R.L. (2004). The language arts: A balanced approach to teaching reading, writing, listening, talking and thinking. Boston. Pearson
First of all, congrats on being a new mother! Thank you for sharing this interesting experience at the literacy program with us, I also agree with Aldene that literacy is crucial in the development of a child’s education, this is more important at an early age. This discussion led me to ponder about bilateracies at early children education. I was raised in a monolingual family and did not begin to learn English as my second language until Primary school. I always thought that language acquisition is much easier for early learners. I wonder if children raised in bilingual families have an advantage over children raised in monolingual families, in terms of both language and literacy development? Any thoughts?
Like everything, I believe that there are some advantages and disadvantages for being in a bilingual family. I come from a Chinese background but being born here, I am much more comfortable in English even though Chinese was the first language I picked up as a child. I believe that my child is following the same pattern because he was able to pick up spoken Chinese a lot easier than English, but interestingly, pick up written English a lot easier than Chinese. I think the reason behind this is obvious: spoken Chinese and written English is simpler than their counterparts. To elaborate on this point, most pronunciation of nouns in Chinese are mono syllabic and do not end in consonants. For example bread in Chinese is bāo. The difficulty in oral Chinese lies in the intonation of the word, which can be overlooked by observing the context on the situation. For example, when a child points to bread and says bāo I will not mistaken it for băo which means treasure in Chinese. Even though my child was introduced to both languages at the same time, he comprehends both languages but favors speaking Chinese. Around the same time, he started identifying the letters in the alphabet. Part of this skill is a result of the exposure to alphabet related toys and books in English. However, he cannot associate the spoken word to the letter of the alphabet yet, especially when taken out of context. For example, he recognizes the word dad when there is a picture of a man attached to the word but he cannot recognize it without the picture. Only recently he associated the letter D with the word dad without a visual aid after watching a sesame street video where the word dad appeared when the person said the word dad. I think it would be extremely difficult to pick up written Chinese as every letter requires the child to memorize the appearance. For myself, I find that I am not very good at either languages now that I am an adult. I struggle with many ESL mistakes in English and I sound like a foreigner when I speak Chinese. Perhaps, he can learn from my mistakes and be better at both. Nonetheless, it is definitely interesting watching him pick up language from the very beginning.
Your personal connection of how your child is learning language is a terrific connection to the oral culture described by Ong. As you point out, young children are not yet book literate, yet they learn and memorize starting from a very young age. The power of music, as you pointed out, once again parallels the features of oral culture. How often do we hear a phrase from an old jingle and it is immediately back in our heads. The rhythms and flow of music is incredibly powerful. As your son grows you will most likely go through the wonderful phase of enduring the same Disney (or other) movies over and over again. As the parent, I could not understand how my children wanted to watch the same thing so many times. I did not realize how much more was internalized at every viewing. The songs and script was becoming embedded not only in their minds, but also in my own. This was a prime example of how oral history could be forced into the memory banks: repetition and rhythm. To this day I can still recall the words to those songs!
Being unfamiliar with Chinese and Korean written language, I found your comparisons between acquisition of English and Chinese very interesting! I know there had been a shift into a more phonetic spelling system, but did not know the extent of the success. To be able to read by age three is remarkable! Like all languages, English has transformed many times over the centuries. There are discussions again about changing the spellings of English words to being more phonetic; removing the aged silent “gh” blends. Hopefully this can happen before “texting lingo” takes over modern day spelling.
As for children growing up in multi-lingual homes, so much research supports the young brain’s ability to learn multiple languages before age 6. I wish I’d had the opportunity!