Adapting Ong for Kindergarten Students

In the confines of the classroom, teachers can be considered the masters or elders of the community. Much like an oral society, information and knowledge can be passed along through  stories, actions, and gestures. If a student comes from a culture more focused on oral learning, it can be beneficial to that student’s learning to provide instruction that is heavily steeped in that style. While not all of Ong’s theories are accepted, there are aspects to the oral cultures that he presents that can benefit our educational practices today.

Biakolo (1999) commented that Ong’s 1982 publication, Orality and Literacy, “marks a significant stage in the conceptual study of oral tradition, and especially of its relation to other traditions of communication and signification”. Viewed through the lens of an educator it is interesting to consider the possible benefits of applying oral cultural practices to the education of pre-literate and illiterate individuals in today’s classrooms. In particular, let us consider pre-literate kindergarten students. In many ways, they are the closest society comes to being an oral culture. It’s not a perfect comparison as kindergarten students are still surrounded by a literate world, but some comparisons can be made.

A common program used as an early intervention to support struggling readers throughout British Columbia schools is Talking Tables. It focuses on improving phonological awareness as a method of creating or improving literacy. Bryant, MacLean, Bradley, and Crossland (1990) determined that rhyming, alliteration, and phoneme detection, which are all components of phonological awareness, are directly related to reading development. According to Hodgins (2014), Talking Tables contains lessons that each consist of five activities: a chant, an auditory activity, a vocabulary activity, a phonological awareness activity and a fluency activity. All of these have connections back to Ong’s work.

Children are taught from an early age that everything has a name. As Ong (1982) states, “Oral peoples commonly think of names (one kind of word) as conveying power over things.” This must be incredibly true for toddlers as, until they become literate, gestures and oral communication are their only ways to interact with the world. Names provide an entrance and a connection to society. In fact, learning and saying the name of an object can result in it being brought towards the speaker or even possessed or controlled by that speaker.

According to Ong (1982), oral cultures must think memorable thoughts through mnemonic patterns. Ong goes on to say,

“Your thought must come into being in heavily rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetitions or antitheses, in alliterations and assonances, in epithetic and other formulary expressions, in standard thematic settings (the assembly, the meal, the duel, the hero’s ‘helper’, and so on), in proverbs which are constantly heard by everyone so that they come to mind readily and which themselves are patterned for retention and ready recall, or in other mnemonic form.”

These thoughts on mnemonics can be seen in the Talking Tables program. Students are taught chants through repetition, gestures, and alliterations. Biakolo (1999) adds to the validity of this style by stating that language must be rhythmic and narrativized to serve the mnemonic purpose. These mnemonic patterns portrayed in oral cultures can aid in literacy development through the use of pictures in Talking Tables. Gelb (1952) can be connected to this method through the "Gelb Dictum" of "at the basis of all writing stands the picture". Students are provided simple pictures and taught phonological awareness through the power of naming, rhymes, and repetition. By this way, they are introduced to the basics of literacy.


References

Biakolo. E. A. (1999). On the theoretical foundations of orality and literacy. Research in African Literatures, 30(2), 42-65. Retrieved from https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/article/179349

Bryant, P. E., MacLean, M., Bradley, L. L., & Crossland, J. (1990). Rhyme and alliteration, phoneme detection, and learning to read. Developmental Psychology, 26(3), 429-438.

Gelb, I.J. (1952). A study of writing: The foundations of grammatology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hodgins, H. (2014). The Efficacy of the Talking Tables Program in the Development of Phonological Awareness in Kindergarten Children At Risk for Reading Difficulties. (Master’s Thesis). doi: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/5808

Ong, W. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.