Celebrating young Indigenous Australian children's speech and language competence

World-wide it is important to recognize Indigenous children's speech and language competence and their language learning environments. Indigenous Australian children participated in the child cohort of Footprints in Time: Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, a national study supported by Indigenous Australians and the Australian Government collected annually (in waves). There were 692 3–5-year-old children in wave 1, and two years later, 570 5–7-year-old children were in wave 3 (77.0% of children in wave 1 were also in wave 3). Data were obtained via parent interviews and direct assessment. The children spoke between one and eight languages including: English (wave 1: 91.2%, wave 3: 99.6%), Indigenous languages (wave 1: 24.4%, wave 3: 26.8%), creoles (wave 1: 11.5%, wave 3: 13.7%), foreign languages (non-Indigenous languages other than English) (wave 1: 2.0%, wave 3: 5.1%), and sign languages (wave 1: 0.6%, wave 3: 0.4%). Children who spoke an Indigenous language were more likely to live in moderate to extreme isolation than their English-speaking counterparts. Parental concern about speech and language skills was similar to data for non-Indigenous children with approximately one quarter of parents expressing concern (wave 1: yes = 13.9%, a little = 10.4%). Children's language environments were rich, with many family members and friends telling oral stories, reading books, and listening to the children read. Almost a third of families wanted to pass on their cultural language, and many indicated that they would like their child to learn an Indigenous language at school. Overall, Indigenous Australian children have rich cultural and linguistic traditions and their speech and language competence is promoted through family, community, and educational experiences.     

Literacy skills in Maltese–English bilingual children

This research considers aspects of literacy in Maltese–English bilingual children. The study examined the reading and phonological awareness skills in English and Maltese of children whose home language is Maltese and second language English. A sample of 50 typically developing Maltese pupils aged 8 years 0 months to 10 years 5 months was selected. Since commencing school at the age of 5 years, the children have been learning to read in Maltese and also in English. For the purpose of this study, Maltese reading and reading‐related tests were constructed to parallel the UK and US standardised assessments. The novel tests and the standardised tests were administered to all the children. Results showed that Maltese children read better in their first language (Maltese) than in English, the language of instruction. Findings also showed that phonological awareness measures correlated across first and second languages. The results are discussed in terms of L1 and L2 transfer, whereby the transparency of Maltese orthography and English phonological processing skills facilitate performance on phonological tasks in both Maltese and English.     

The developmental progression of comprehension‐related skills in children learning EAL

Many children who speak English as an additional language (EAL) underachieve in areas of English literacy, especially in the primary years. These difficulties are often attributed to low levels of English language fluency as they enter the education system. In an effort to provide a greater understanding of this underachievement, the cognitive‐linguistic factors underlying literacy development in monolingual children and children learning EAL were examined in a three‐year longitudinal project. The project, conducted in schools in the north of England, followed the developmental progression of forty‐three children learning EAL and forty‐three monolingual children from school years Two to Four. Children were assessed on measures of reading accuracy, reading and listening comprehension, receptive and expressive vocabulary, and reception of grammar. Analysis revealed similarities between the two groups of children on reading accuracy, but children learning EAL had lower levels of vocabulary and comprehension at each point in time. Data are discussed in terms of the development of underlying language skills and the impact of these skills on both reading and listening comprehension. The implications of the findings for classroom practice are considered.     

Reading,syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian children

The purpose of the study was to examine the nature of language, memory, and reading skills of bilingual students and to determine the relationship between reading problems in English and reading problems in Portuguese. The study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 37 bilingual Portuguese-Canadian children, aged 9–12 years. English was their main instructional language and Portuguese was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program at school where they were taught to read and write Portuguese. The children were administered word and pseudoword reading, language, and working memory tasks in English and Portuguese. The majority of the children (67%) showed at least average proficiency in both languages. The children who had low reading scores in English also had significantly lower scores on the Portuguese tasks. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudoword reading, working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The Portuguese-Canadian children who were normally achieving readers did not differ from a comparison group of monolingual English speaking normally achieving readers except that the bilingual children had significantly lower scores on the English syntactic awareness task. The bilingual reading disabled children had similar scores to the monolingual reading disabled children on word reading and working memory but lower scores on the syntactic awareness task. However, the bilingual reading disabled children had significantlyhigher scores than the monolingual English speaking reading disabled children on the English pseudoword reading test and the English spelling task, perhaps reflecting a positive transfer from the more regular grapheme phoneme conversion rules of Portuguese. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of reading skills. In both English and Portuguese, reading difficulties appear to be strongly related to deficits in phonological processing.     

基于英文绘本的儿童英语阅读教学策略建构

语言学习依赖于大量的阅读,儿童只有"培养广泛的阅读兴趣,扩大阅读面,增加阅读量,多读书,读好书,好读书,读整本的书",他们的语言能力才会得到长足的发展。目前我们儿童英语学习低效的原因也和缺少阅读、缺少语言环境有关。近年来,笔者在教学中倡导开展英文绘本阅读,扩大儿童的英语阅读量,让儿童尽可能多地接触原汁原味的英语,这无疑是提升儿童英语水平的一条有效途径。     

A different view of literacy

The Equals Formal Curriculum English Scheme of Work has been designed for that very small percentage of the school population, perhaps as low as one or two per cent, who have global learning difficulties (GLD) to such a degree that they are consistently working at levels significantly below their age-related peers for all of their academic lives. The term GLD includes all those in England currently ascribed as having severe learning difficulties (SLD) and many if not most, currently ascribed as having moderate learning difficulties (MLD). Evidence of the difficulties faced by such pupils will become increasingly obvious beyond Year 1 at age 6, because the difficulties are global rather than specific. That is, they are likely to affect all learning, but will be particularly apparent in numeracy and literacy. This paper, the first of two, seeks to clarify why reading and writing are so extraordinarily difficult for this population and posits that the answers lie in challenging perceived wisdoms within the education system’s predilections towards (i) regarding phonics as the only solution to reading difficulties (ii) persisting over time (and in the face of evidence to the contrary) with the view that children, young people and adults with GLD can make sufficient progress within phonics teaching and (iii) the use of differentiation of a standardised national curriculum model as being a sufficient answer to global learning difficulties. Clearly the main language used in England is English, but the principles and ideas outlined in this paper should apply in any language which uses a phonic structure when teaching language.     

How Do Profoundly Deaf Children Learn to Read?

Reading requires two related, but separable, capabilities: (1) familiarity with a language, and (2) understanding the mapping between that language and the printed word (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000; Hoover & Gough, 1990). Children who are profoundly deaf are disadvantaged on both counts. Not surprisingly, then, reading is difficult for profoundly deaf children. But some deaf children do manage to read fluently. How? Are they simply the smartest of the crop, or do they have some strategy, or circumstance, that facilitates linking the written code with language? A priori one might guess that knowing American Sign Language (ASL) would interfere with learning to read English simply because ASL does not map in any systematic way onto English. However, recent research has suggested that individuals with good signing skills are not worse, and may even be better, readers than individuals with poor signing skills (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000). Thus, knowing a language (even if it is not the language captured in print) appears to facilitate learning to read. Nonetheless, skill in signing does not guarantee skill in reading—reading must be taught. The next frontier for reading research in deaf education is to understand how deaf readers map their knowledge of sign language onto print, and how instruction can best be used to turn signers into readers.     

Developing and Improving: A Study of the Middle School Students' Writing Ability in the Second Language Education

With the development and advancement of social and cultural communication between China and other countries in the world,the second language education is very popular with Chinese people.And usually,it will take the young for nearly16 years to learn a second language,especially English.Most of them learn English from primary school until university.Besides having routine English classes at school,they also pay extra time and money to learn English in their spare time in many training companies.And now,English education has already become an industry in China and some training companies such as New Oriental English,are familiar to common people.And a crucial problem is that,after so many years of hard work,most of them are even having basic writing difficulties.The systemic and effective teaching method of writing in a second language education in China is being researched.This thesis attempts to cultivate the students’subjective initiative in second language education activities,raise the students’learning consciousness,and enhance their lasting interests in learning so as to reach the goal to improve the students’writing ability in second language education.     

Early literacy and comprehension skills in children learning English as an additional language and monolingual children with language weaknesses

Many children learning English as an additional language (EAL) show reading comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding. However, the relationship between early language and reading comprehension in this group is not fully understood. The language and literacy skills of 80 children learning English from diverse language backgrounds and 80 monolingual English-speaking peers with language weaknesses were assessed at school entry (mean age = 4 years, 7 months) and after 2 years of schooling in the UK (mean age = 6 years, 3 months). The EAL group showed weaker language skills and stronger word reading than the monolingual group but no difference in reading comprehension. Individual differences in reading comprehension were predicted by variations in decoding and language comprehension in both groups to a similar degree.     

Cross-language activation of phonology in young bilingual readers

We investigated whether children who were learning to read simultaneously in English and French activate phonological representations from only the language in which they are reading or from both of their languages. Children in French Immersion programs in Grade 3 were asked to name aloud cognates, interlingual homographs, interlingual homophones, and matched control words. Half of the participants performed the task in English, their first oral language, and half performed the task in French. Control monolingual children in each language were also tested. In the French reading task, fewer errors were observed for cognates and interlingual homophones than for matched control words, whereas more errors were produced for interlingual homographs than matched controls. Only the inhibitory interlingual homograph effect was observed in the English reading task. These data provide evidence that phonological activation in bilinguals is not language selective. The locus of each of these effects in the bilingual word recognition system is discussed.     

Scaffolding learning of language structures with visual-syntactic text formatting

The current study examines the effects of digital scaffolding on the English literacy of fourth- and sixth-grade students. A total of 1085 native English-speaking and language minority students from 25 treatment classes and 20 control classes across three school districts participated in this study for one school year. Treatment students read their English language arts and social studies text in visual-syntactic text format (VSTF) on their laptops and control students read the regular block format of the textbook either on their laptops or in print. Observations and interviews revealed that VSTF reading facilitated instruction processes and student learning in reading activities. The results of California Standard Tests (CST) before and after the treatment revealed that sixth-graders who received syntactic scaffolding outperformed control students on the composite CST score. In particular, reading in VSTF benefited the treatment students in three CST sub-categories: word analysis, written conventions and writing strategies. This study suggests that future research should investigate instructional strategies that support reading and writing development of adolescents, including at-risk students, using syntactic scaffolding.     

Cross‐language correlates in phonological awareness and naming speed: evidence from deep and shallow orthographies

Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatised naming (RAN) skills in relation to reading acquisition were examined using two languages, one with a deep orthography (English) and the other with a shallow orthography (Korean). Participants were 50 Korean American children who spoke English as a dominant language (DL) and were learning to read Korean as a sequential language (SL). Parallel measures in English and Korean assessed PA, RAN and reading skills. The results showed the similarities and differences between the DL and SL acquisition patterns for PA and RAN. While PA skills of the DL were a dominant predictor in SL reading achievement, RAN became important for the children with the higher level of SL reading performance. This cross‐sectional study indicates that proficiencies of PA and RAN in the DL are the pathway to reading success in an SL. This suggests that a universal thread exists in learning dual languages, despite dissimilar orthography, phonology and writing systems.     

强化读写技能培养,提升学生英语综合应用能力

听说读写译是英语学习的基本技能,培养学生的听说读写译能力是大学英语教学的主要目标。在英语作为外语教学的大学英语教学中,强化学生读写技能的培养,从读写技能训练入手,有助于学生英语综合应用能力的全面提升。     

Relations between early reading and writing skills among Spanish-speaking language minority children

Although there is a growing body of literature on the development of reading skills of Spanish-speaking language minority children, little research has focused on the development of writing skills in this population. This study evaluated whether children’s Spanish early reading skills (i.e., print knowledge, phonological awareness, oral language) were related to their Spanish and English early writing skills using a sample of 554 children whose home language was Spanish. Multivariate regression analyses with simultaneous outcomes (Spanish and English invented spelling skills) were conducted to evaluate whether children’s early reading and writing skills were related across languages. Results indicated that children’s print knowledge and phonological awareness skills, but not oral language skills, were significantly related to their Spanish and English invented spelling skills. Spanish early literacy skills were not differentially related to Spanish and English reading and writing skills. The magnitude of the relations between print knowledge and oral language skills and children’s invented spelling skills varied as a function of child age; however, the magnitude of the relation between phonological awareness and invented spelling skills did not differ as a function of child age. Furthermore, results suggested that language minority children’s early reading and writing skills are related but distinct constructs and that children may be able to apply information gained from learning to read and write in their first language when learning to write in their second language.     

The effects of bilingualism on learning to read English: evidence from the contrast between Urdu‐English bilingual and English monolingual children

Learning to read in a shallow alphabetic orthography such as Urdu may depend primarily on phonological processing skills, whilst learning to read in a deeper orthography, such as English, may place more reliance on visual processing skills. This study explores the effects of Urdu on the acquisition of English literacy skills by comparing the reading, memory and phonological processing skills of bilingual Urdu‐English and monolingual English children (7–8 years). The bilingual children had more difficulty in reading irregular English words, but were better at reading regular words and nonwords compared to the monolinguals. The poor performance of the bilingual children with irregular English words was linked to their poor visual memory skills, whilst their good performance with regular words and nonwords was related to the presence of enhanced phonological skills. The results demonstrate the transfer of first language skills to reading development in a second language. In English, first language skills can facilitate the development of either lexical or non‐lexical routes to reading.     

Revitalising Indigenous Languages in Homogenising Times

The world's linguistic and cultural diversity is endangered by the forces of globalisation, which work to homogenise and standardise even as they segregate and marginalise. Here, I focus on the struggle to conserve linguistic and cultural diversity among Indigenous groups in the United States. Native languages are in drastic decline. Yet even as more Native American children come to school speaking English, they are likely to be stigmatised as 'limited English proficient' and placed in remedial programmes. This situation has motivated bold new approaches to Indigenous schooling that emphasise immersion in the heritage language. This article presents data on these developments and their impacts on students' self-efficacy and school performance, analysing these data in light of critical theory and current knowledge in the field of bilingual education. Indigenous language reclamation efforts must not only confront a legacy of colonialism, but also mounting pressures for standardisation and English monolingualism. I conclude with an examination of these power relations as they are manifest in the struggle for Indigenous self-determination and linguistic human rights.     

Two Alternative Ways to Model the Relation Between Reading Accuracy and Phonological Awareness at Preschool Age

In this study, 91 Finnish-speaking preschoolers (ranging in age from 6.4 to 7.4 years) were tested by using 2 structural equation models. None of the participants had entered school at the time of the study because the age of school entry in Finland is 7 years. The structural equation models were built particularly to examine the connections between children's reading abilities and their phonological skills. The main results of this study show that, in a very transparent language such as Finnish, the model that emphasized sensitivity to the phonological structure of the word as the prerequisite for learning to read fit our data well. The other model, which was likewise theoretically and statistically quite accessible, implied, by contrast, the reciprocity between learning to read and the emergence of phonemic awareness. The results of this study suggest that skills related to reading at preschool age are in many respects the same and have the same relations in a transparent language such as Finnish as they do in English. However, there also seem to be differences, especially in the relations between phonemic awareness skills and reading that may be language specific and require further investigation.     

Factors influencing Filipino children’s solutions to addition and subtraction word problems

Young Filipino children are expected to solve mathematical word problems in English, which is not their mother tongue. Because of this, it is often assumed that Filipino children have difficulties in solving problems because they cannot read or comprehend what they have read. This study tested this assumption by determining whether presenting word problems in Filipino or reading them aloud to children in either language facilitated solution accuracy. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, reading word problems aloud did not seem to improve student performance (p > 0.10). In contrast, presenting word problems in Filipino significantly improved solution accuracy (p < 0.0001) and led to differences in error patterns – children were less likely to use an inappropriate arithmetic operation when problems were presented in Filipino. However, the language of the problem had minimal effects on the more difficult Compare problem type. Finally, the benefits of using Filipino were more pronounced for low‐achieving students who may have lower proficiency in English than their high‐achieving peers (p < 0.01).     

English Language Proficiency and Early School Attainment Among Children Learning English as an Additional Language

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) often experience lower academic attainment than monolingual peers. In this study, teachers provided ratings of English language proficiency and social, emotional, and behavioral functioning for 782 children with EAL and 6,485 monolingual children in reception year (ages 4–5). Academic attainment was assessed in reception and Year 2 (ages 6–7). Relative to monolingual peers with comparable English language proficiency, children with EAL displayed fewer social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties in reception, were equally likely to meet curriculum targets in reception, and were more likely to meet targets in Year 2. Academic attainment and social, emotional, and behavioral functioning in children with EAL are associated with English language proficiency at school entry.