Acquiring Literacy in Pre-Primary and Class 1: Meaning Making in a Trilingual Environment

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Acquiring Literacy in Pre-Primary and Class 1
Meaning Making in a Trilingual Environment

• Rekha Sharma Sen
• Jamia Millia Islamia
• National Conference on Early Learning Status
  and the Way Forward
• 25-27 Sept., 2013

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The Situation

• Many children complete primary grades without
  being able to read and write

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Field Site The School

• Self financing afternoon shift government
  school building administered by University
• English medium
• Textbooks in pre-primary and primary

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Field Site The Community

• School located in Muslim dominated area in Delhi
• Urdu - mother tongue
• Fluent in Hindi
• English rarely spoken in the family or community

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• A view of the classroom

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Difficulties arise

• Literacy introduced mechanically
• Childs active agency compromised
• Childs socio-cultural context and extent of
  exposure to particular language print and
  spoken is ignored

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Analysis of process

• Similarity in approach across the three
  languages, the eight teachers and the two classes
• Learning to read seen as decoding
• Decoding letter naming, drawing and writing
  spelling words and repetition
• repeating sentence
  fragments
• r-a-t rat adha sa, ka mein bade oo ki
  matra, la skool
• c-r-i x 3 e-d x 3 cried x 3
• Meaning making compromised
• Letter-sound correspondence - only for English
  vowel
• Drilling Memorization - kis ko yaad ho gaya?
  Kaun padhwaega?

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A page from the English textbook in pre-primary
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A page from the Hindi textbook in pre-primary
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Naming Letters

• Phonetic association/ phonemic awareness cannot
  be assumed to happen through letter naming and
  drawing
• L for tiger tha se botal k for chabi
• Teacher too may not be explicitly aware p ki
  awaaaz aa rahi hai?
• Drilling leads to providing memorized tag word
  irrespective of alternate picture n for nest
  net (VIDEO)
• Use of pictures - caused confusion zakhira
  tamatar fell tree

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Reading Words and Sentences

• Spell Read - repeat each word is tackled ab
  initio
• In reading new words jumps to conclusions on
  basis of memorized words ball b-a -n ban
• Reading letters and matras separately
• Decodes but cannot combine to say the word
• tikat - ta, ta par ee ki matra, ka , ta.
  Keeps quiet.
• I ask kya bana? She says kata
• Recitation while looking at the teacher - No
  connection with where these words are on the page
  
• Context bound
• Memorization instead of reading
• Learning ineffective strategies
• Intuitive grasp of phonics on the road to
  being readers

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Oral Expression

• Minimal
• Teachers imagination

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Meaning Making

• No focus on helping children to understand
  meaning
• one time activity
• holistic meaning
• pictures caused confusion
• referred to meaning indirectly shop
• explained meaning using another English word
• Was not the meaning in context of text
• pretty girl hoti hai

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Childrens Competencies in Meaning Making

• Hindi
• Most children know meanings of many Hindi words
• In most cases meanings are near approximations
  and had been constructed by children through
  their everyday experiences.
• English
• Majority of children do not know meanings of
  English words
• Net - madhumakhi ka ghar chidia ka
  ghar
• Hard and soft bhari and halka
• Inaccurate meanings constructed due to the
  pronunciation of children (pen as pan)

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Children as Meaning Makers

• Make some correct and some incorrect inferences
• Intuitively compares letter sound correspondences
  across languages
• Provides Hindi word for English letter and sound
  b says ba ba se batakh, bat , ball
• Provides Urdu correspondence for English letter
  sounds - A says ae maam urdu bhi sikhati hain
• Transfers learning from Hindi to English
• Uses letter name as letter sound for English
  language ka bhi ho sakta hai aur sa bhi cap
  sap gap jap
• Link English letter with Hindi translation of
  said word
• - l se seedhi k se chabi

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Constructing Meaning Against Odds

• Rekha - Hard kya hota hai?
• Child jo dabta nahin hai
• Rekha - Soft kya hota hai?
• Child jo dabta hai
• Rekha aap ko kaise pata?
• Child - maine khud socha.
•   She has circled house (circling to be done for
  soft objects)
• Rekha ghar kya dabta hai?
• Child - khillone ka ghar dabta hai.

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Written Work

• Dominance of writing correct written work Seen
  as evidence of understanding
• Writing as copying few instances of words
  generated by children no sentences
• Very good to fairly good written work

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Teacher Centric

• Objective of the days lesson set from teachers
  perspective
• Whole class teaching with no attempt to uncover
  individual learning and meaning making
• Performance of group as performance of individual
  children
• Teacher's impatience with the process

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Teachers Beliefs

• Incremental step by step process
• Unaware of approaches to reading whole word,
  phonics, organic reading
• Phonics is a one time isolated activity
• Children learn by memorizing
• Agreed that children did not understand meaning
• Expectation of prior learning through a play
  school or nursery school
• Expectation of parental support
• Do not question their teaching method until
  explicitly challenged.
• A few are aware of their teacher centric way of
  teaching but justify it.

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Conclusion

• Languages at varying distance from learners but
  taught through the same process
• Onus on the child but meaning making while
  reading and childs active agency was compromised
  
• Building communicative competence before
  introducing reading and writing
• Children did not own the English words organic
  reading?
• The pressure of the system on the teacher

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