Young Children Growing Up in English-Using Communities Essay Example for Free

Young Children Growing Up in English-Using Communities Essay In this essay we will discuss what children growing up in English using communities have to learn about writing practices and how they learn it. Children are involved in the literate world around them long before the commencement of formal schooling (U211, Book 3, p.79). At a very young age, even during the first three years of their life, children interact with their surroundings and learn that written language can be used to accomplish many different things. For example, they can learn that shopping lists can help remember things which need to be bought, recipes can be followed to make their favourite foods, letters can used as tools of communication etc. (Pierce P.L). Czerniewska explains the concept of emergent literacy, which is a term used to convey a young child’s first discoveries of reading and writing, as a process whereby a child living in a literate community begins to become literate almost from birth via the world of environmental print. The Environmental print is the print of everyday life seen through symbols, numbers, and colours we see in familiar objects like signs for McDonalds, Tesco, Coca-Cola and various other websites etc. They offer an excellent entry point for young children to begin learning to read, write and do math. Environmental print is everywhere and children make concrete connection to it as they ‘read’ it within the context of their everyday life, their interests and background (Sharon MacDonald.com, 2012). In figure 3, when Alexandra is encouraged to write an invitation to a party, she produces pretend signs from the symbols she is familiar with. Literacy related activities which are familiar to the children in their social context are learnt by them at a very young age. For example, when Issac is asked to do some writing, he draws some squiggly lines and declares it is not writing (figure 1), but in figure 2 he is reminded of a familiar object, a greeting card he had written his name on previously and based on this he is able to write two letters. Most of the child’s exposure to the printed word happens in combination with the oral talk, and is more about the social organisation of people’s life instead of strictly being about reading and writing. Through these types of literary interactions children are not only learning about reading and writing, they are also learning about their family life and the purpose served by reading and writing (U211, Book 3, p.83). Czerniewska, in her narrative quotes Bruner, who contends that a child’s discovery of literacy is a collaborative process. He sees learning as a communal activity which involves sharing of culture. Because each child acquires different language varieties from different speakers, readers and writers, there is diversity among communities in which children learn to write and read English. Paths taken to literacy by children in different communities, thus varies from context to context (U211, Book 3, p.84). If learning is a communal event, it becomes important to note that not all communities see literacy in the same light. Different communities use variable patterns of written and spoken language in distinct ways for their daily literary events. Communities also vary in the types of literary practices they encourage and the value they place on the literacy itself. Child’s learning has to be viewed in the context of the community they are being raised in and environmental print they are exposed to in that particular community. One of the research studies quoted by Czerniewska in her chapter concludes that as the meaning of being literate can vary among communities its crucial not to ‘equate the form, function, and the meaning of literacy events across cultures, communities, or social groups. One consequence of this is that it is difficult to describe the process of becoming literate in English in general terms’ (U211, Book 3, p. 86). When learning to read and write and how writing is organised around them, children often take long and complicated routes. It is almost like process of trial and error. They try out different theories of organizing language and test it through their interactions with the adults to see what works and what does not. For example in figure 3, Alexandra has drawn many symbols which are known to her to make up an invitation for the party. Czerniewska believes that the writing that ‘goes on in the formative preschool years does not consist of unstructured doodles, rather, it provides evidence of children’s search for principles underlying the adult systems’ (U211, Book 3, p.86). Children begin to construct their writing system by looking at various written symbols. Symbols show children many possible ways a language can be represented. Children try to work out the meaning of these symbols, and their place in the adult system. As most communities are multicultural young English speaking children are not only exposed to English alphabet but also scripts like Chinese or Arabic, which they might see displayed in shops , menus etc. Due to this children are exposed to and observe more than written script and symbols used in one particular community. They are therefore able to represent words with symbols that are different than the way adults do it. ‘Numbers, letters, musical notation, non-English symbols and their own invented signs all occur side by side in collections of emergent writing’ (U211, Book 3, p. 88-89). In figure 3, Alexandra invitation is rich with environmental print she is probably exposed to in her community. Czerniewska quotes the study done by Yetta Goodman, who believes that children’s writing develops as a process of hypothesis making experimentation, and then refinement of these hypotheses. She noted that ‘every convention that has been adopted by written language users worldwide was being reinvented and tested by the group of very young (3 to 6 years old) language users’ (U211, Book 3, p.90). It appears that children assimilate the way the written script and symbols are used in their community; they then sort this information in their mind through experimentation in order to make sense of how written language is used in their community. It would seems that children who are trying to learn to write while being exposed to more than one scrip concurrently would find it more difficult to grasp either script. But when early writing explorations of such children is looked at it becomes apparent that these children from bilingual or multilingual families are able to develop two or more literacy systems alongside each other with relative ease (U211, Book 3, p. 94). Biliterate children develop the capability of recognizing what is important in each script and what really matters when distinguishing one character or letter from other (U211, Book 3, 94-95). Figure 3.7, depicts the bilingual child’s attempt at assimilating both languages into her world. This essay has looked at the concept of emergent learning, which is related to a young child’s early discovery of writing. It has been noted that children are involved in literacy almost since their birth through being exposed to environmental print.