Acts of transliteration: bridging scripts for learning in London schools

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Acts of transliterationbridging scripts for
learning in London schools

• Charmian Kenner, Mahera Ruby,
• Eve Gregory, Salman Al-Azami
• Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths,
  University of London

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Developing bilingual learning strategies in
mainstream and community contexts(ESRC-funded
study 2006-07)

• Charmian Kenner, Salman Al-Azami, Eve Gregory,
  Mahera Ruby
• Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths,
  University of London

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The research setting

• Two primary schools in Tower Hamlets, East London
• Second/third generation British Bangladeshi
  children, mostly more fluent in English than
  Sylheti/Bengali (Bangla)
• Children also attend community classes in Bengali
  and/or Arabic
• Bangla spoken widely in the community, Standard
  Bengali on TV, in newspapers
• Bangla little-used in school (for transitional
  purposes only)

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Research questions

• In what ways do children draw on linguistic and
  conceptual knowledge from each of their languages
  to accomplish bilingual learning?
• How are childrens identities as learners
  affected by using their home language as well as
  English in the classroom?
• How can bilingual and monolingual educators help
  children to develop bilingual learning
  strategies?

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Methodology action research

• Observe children in community class
• Plan bilingual tasks in literacy and numeracy
  for each group, relevant to
  mainstream curriculum, linking with community
  class learning
• Involve community and mainstream teachers in
  planning
• Children do task, watch video and comment
  (stimulated recall)
• Discuss data with teachers at end-of-term seminar
• Repeat process in second term

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The Lion and the Mouse Participants

• Four children, 7 years old
• Their primary school teacher (monolingual)
• The Bengali class teacher
  (after-school class held in primary school)

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Bridging communication with parents

• Children compose questions in Bangla about the
  Lion and Mouse story to ask parents
• Children write questions in transliteration

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Enabling children to read in Banglaand act as
translators

• Children could read and understand Lion and
  Mouse written by an older sibling
• They discussed and produced their own translation
  which they then explained to their primary school
  teacher

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Enabling children to act as writers in Bangla

• children collectively produced their own version
  of Lion and Mouse in Bangla
• using pictures from a Big Book they had read at
  school in English
• the story was thus a bridge between Bengali class
  and English school

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Representing Bangla sounds

• in Bangla, writing in English but Bangla words
• Childrens different versions
• They said No!
• Jameela thara khoson Na!
• Junel Tara coisoin NA!
• Miqdad tara khoisoin NA!
• Amal tara koyson Na!

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Through second order representation children can

• Engage with concepts
• Demonstrate and increase metalinguistic knowledge

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Enriched conceptualisation

• The lion caught the mouse
• The lion was caught in a net
• Children knew dorse suitable for first meaning
  but not second

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Making sense

• Tow oondure shinghor loge mattse
• Then mouse lions with talking
• Then the mouse started talking to the lion
• with or to?
• Why started? it makes more sense
• Why change the order? it wont make sense
• metalinguistic understanding and
• conceptual re-interpretation

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Awareness of language features

• bondos friends
• netor of net inside (in the net)
• giraffa or giraffe ar ?
• explicit awareness of suffixes expressed through
  written representation

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Intralingual as well as interlingual

• Ill do it in Sylheti how we speak
• Saying hara (Sylheti)
• but writing thara (Standard Bengali)

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Learner identities

• How do you feel about transliteration?
• Ju Its exciting its something that I learned
• M Cool. Different. We never done it before.
• Chn Its easy we just think and we know how to
  write it
• Does it help you to write Bangla like this?
• Chn Because then we know what it says. If we
  write in Bangla we dont know what it says but if
  we write like this..

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Sharing knowledge with monolingual teacher

• J the lion is sleeping in the cave (reading
  out the childrens translation)
• T wheres the word the? (matching up Bangla to
  English words and realising the is missing)
• M no the!
• A if a person was talking to another person and
  the person was saying a word, and said it without
  the, erm the other person would know because.

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Transliteration as a new linguistic practice

• liberating and empowering?
• diluting the learning of Bengali script?
• Example of child writing words in
  transliteration and then working out how to
  represent the sounds in Bengali script
• An essential bridge for second and third
  generation children
• enabling children to maximise cognitive and
  linguistic benefits of bilingualism