Challenges in Teaching Beginning Reading: CrossCultural Comparisons


1
Challenges in Teaching Beginning Reading
Cross-Cultural Comparisons

• Dr. Linda B. Akanbi
• Kennesaw State University
• lakanbi_at_kennesaw.edu
• World Congress on Reading
• San Jose Costa Rica
• July 31 2008

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Changing the Lens

• Unfortunately we become so immersed in our own
  environments that we tend to forget that large
  segments of the world read using scripts that are
  very different from our own (Samuels 1994 p.
  373).

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Purpose

• To highlight some challenges for teaching
  literacy in different linguistic and
  sociocultural environments while focusing on a
  comparison of different languages and writing
  systems.

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Goals

• To share research findings on literacy education
  in other countries.
• To increase understanding of literacy acquisition
  in other languages and cultures.

5
Previous Research

• Goswami (1999)
• Akanbi (2005)

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Languages and Writing Systems Examined

• Arabic
• Hebrew
• German
• Greek
• Chinese (Mandarin)
• Yoruba
• Kiswahili

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The Arabic Language

• Background Information
• Classical Arabic
• Modern Standard Arabic

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Arabic
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Features of Arabic Script

• 28 letters (all consonants).
• Letters written from right to left (except
  numerals).
• Letters change form depending on position in a
  word.
• No distinct upper and lower case letter forms.

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Features of Arabic Script (contd)

• Both printed and written Arabic are cursive.
• One letter equals one phoneme.
• Presence of vowels indicated differently.
• Complex morphemes.
• Arabic syntax vs. English (Palmer El-Ashry
  Lelcere and Chang 2007).

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Learning to Read in Arabic

• Acquiring spoken language (NSA).
• Decoding the print of Modern Standard Arabic
  (MSA).
• Understanding the print when the diacritical
  marks are eliminated.

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The Hebrew Language

• Brief History
• Modern Hebrew
• Israeli Hebrew
• Official language of Israel

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Hebrew Orthography

• Consonantal system.
• Abundance of homographic words.
• Two systems of vowelling.
• Double purpose letters.
• Pointed Hebrew (Eakle and Garber 2004 Share and
  Levin 1999).

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Learning to Read in Hebrew

• Children learn to read in pointed Hebrew.
• Role of phonological awareness.
• Role of morphology
• Process of word formation (Ben-Dror Bentin and
  Frost 1995).
• Challenges

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Learning to Write in Hebrew

• Writing consonants vs. vowels.
• Directionality.
• Referential writing strategy.
• Phonological writing strategy (Share and Levin
  1999).

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Emergent Writing Samples from Three Different
Languages

• English
• Hebrew
• Arabic

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The German Language Brief History

• Low and High German.
• Development of Standard German.
• Gutenbergs invention of the printing press
  (early 15th century).
• Martin Luthers translation of the Bible
  (1483-1546).
• Creation of a binding orthography by the kingdom
  of Bavaria.

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Some Features of German Orthography

• Consistent phoneme-grapheme relationships.
• Use of umlaut signs.
• Vowel complexity related to length.
• Spelling impacted more than reading (Wimmer
  Landerl and Frith 1999).

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Beginning Reading Instruction in German

• No reading instruction in kindergarten.
• Systematic phonics instruction.
• Direct modeling and training on how to recognize
  words via grapheme-phoneme translation and
  blending.

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Research

• Wimmer and Goswami (1994)
• Frith Wimmer and Landerl (1998)

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The Greek Writing System

• Language Family.
• Transparent orthography.
• No vowel distinctions.
• Half the syllable types found in English.
• Stress position influenced by morphological and
  lexical factors (Harris and Guannouli 1999).

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Research

• Performance on letter-name tasks.
• Letter-names vs. letter-sounds.
• Greek children vs. English-speaking children on
  literacy development.
• Association between phoneme awareness and reading
  ability for Greek children (Tafa and Manolitis
  2008).

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Greek Spelling

• Orthographic irregularity.
• Alternative spellings.
• Rote learning of certain words.

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Beginning Reading Instruction in Greek

• First formal reading instruction in grade 1 at
  age six.
• Greek children encounter two different alphabets.
• Reading Greek vs. Roman script.

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Chinese Languages

• Mandarin (885 million first language speakers).
• Cantonese (70 million speakers).
• Many different Chinese dialects.

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Chinese Writing System

• Non-alphabetic writing system
• Use of visual symbols called characters.
• Phonetic component sound
• Radical component meaning
• Characters represent morphemes.

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Differences between Chinese and English

• In Chinese each morpheme is represented by a
  single syllable.
• In English a morpheme may consist of more than
  one syllable.
• Far fewer syllables in Chinese than in English.
• Presence of tones in Chinese.

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Differences between Chinese and English (contd)

• No consonant blends before or after vowels.
• Open syllable structure (c-v) (Hanley Tzeng and
  Huang 1999).
• .

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Cognitive Demands of Learning to Read Chinese

• Visual discrimination and memory tasks associated
  with learning characters.
• Writing Chinese characters.

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Methods of Teaching Reading in China

• Hong Kong
• Mainland China
• Taiwan

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Hong Kong

• Children taught to read as young as three years
  old.
• Expected to be able to read 460 characters by end
  of first grade (age 7).
• Rote learning.
• Attention not drawn to phonetic component of
  characters.

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Mainland China

• Children introduced to the reading of Mandarin
  through an alphabetic system called pinyin.
• Children are taught to read pinyin the first 8
  weeks of school and then the Chinese characters.

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Taiwan

• Children introduced to Mandarin through an
  alphabetic script called Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao.
• Children learn the alphabetic script the first 10
  weeks of school and then Mandarin a
  non-alphabetic script (Hanley Tzeng and Huang
  1999 Lan 1999).

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Comparison of Zhuyin and Pinyin

• 37 characters in Zhuyin all of which are
  different from the Chinese characters. Contains
  symbols for tone.
• In Pinyin the written symbols are letters of the
  Roman alphabet.
• Both support writing development.

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Phonological Awareness and Learning to Read
Chinese

• Are children with superior phonological awareness
  better readers of Chinese
• Does knowledge of an alphabetic system increase
  the PA of Chinese children
• How do the PA skills of Chinese children compare
  with those of English-speaking children

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Teaching Reading in Bilingual and Multilingual
Contexts

• Influence of dominant language.
• Differences that influence literacy instruction.
• Degree of similarity between first and second
  languages.

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Ways Bilingualism May Impact Literacy Acquisition

• Having to learn to read in a weak language.
• Learning to read in a different script.
• Having early story experiences that are
  linguistically and culturally different from home
  language (Bialystock 2002 Fillmore and Snow
  2000).

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A Study of Bilingual Children in Singapore

• English-Mandarin speaking children.
• English-Behasa Melayu speaking children (Liow
  1999).

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Results

• Supported a dual foundation model alphabetic
  (phonological) and logographic processors.
• Mandarin-English speaking children seemed to
  rely more on logographic.
• Malay-English seemed to rely more on phonological
  (Liow 1999).

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African Context for Literacy Learning

• Left out of the mainstream for research.
• Complex continent in terms of language
  environments and functions.
• Many challenges for teaching reading.

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Challenges Teaching in the Mother Tongue (Home
Language)

• No script for some languages.
• Lack of teacher training in various languages.
• Lack of teaching materials and language support
  materials.
• Cost.
• Limitations (EFA Global Monitoring Report 2007).

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Yoruba

• Brief background
• The Yoruba alphabet
• Yoruba language characteristics
• Research

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Some Yoruba Language Characteristics

• No gender differentiation in pronouns.
• Importance of tones.
• Articles come after the subject.
• Adjectives may come either before or after the
  noun (Fakinlede 2005).

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Research on Use of Yoruba in Reading Instruction

• Six-Year Primary Project (Afolayan 1999).
• Action Research (Onukaogu and Adelabu 2004).

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Kiswahili

• Brief background.
• Official language of Kenya and Tanzania.
• Swahili vs. English

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Teaching Reading in Kenyan Primary Schools
Research Findings

• Language of Instruction (LOI) Policy follows
  general pattern.
• Problems with implementation of policy.
• Teachers use both analytical and synthetic
  approaches.
• Lack of material resources (Commeyras and Inyega
  2007).

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Conclusion

• From this limited review it appears that the
  skills children need in order to learn to read
  successfully vary to some degree based on the
  type of writing system (alphabetic
  vs.non-alphabetic) the degree of regularity in
  the orthography special features of the language
  including its

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Conclusion (contd)

• morphology syntax and print features and
  childrens facility in their mother tongue.
• Other factors that appear to impact childrens
  literacy acquisition include sociocultural and
  socioeconomic factors language of instruction
  and instructional factors including teacher
  preparation.

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Conclusion (contd)

• It is apparent that in some countries children
  face unique and sometimes complex challenges in
  learning to read.