Charmian Kenner

Finding the Keys to Biliteracy: How Young Children Interpret Different Writing Systems.

This paper discusses ways in which young bilingual children understand the principles underlying different writing systems. Six case studies were conducted, involving six-year-olds growing up in London who were learning to write in Chinese, Arabic or Spanish at the same time as English. The childrens formal and informal literacy interactions were observed at home, community language school and primary school. Peer teaching sessions were also set up so that children could demonstrate their ideas about Chinese, Arabic or Spanish to primary school classmates. Findings show that these young emergent biliterates were able to grasp concepts from different systems, by producing their own interpretations of the input provided by teachers and family. A discussion follows as to whether such understandings were heightened by dealing with more than one writing system, and whether the research points to a more general propensity amongst young children to look for the principles involved in graphic representation. Finally, the paper argues that mainstream educators need to recognise the cognitive gains for minority-language children who are becoming biliterate and offer support for this important area of learning.

The multisemiotic resources of biliterate children

This article argues that children gain access to an enhanced range of communicative resources through familiarity with more than one writing system. Different scripts can be seen as different modes, giving rise to a variety of potentials for meaning-making. In case-studies of children’s responses to learning Chinese, Arabic or Spanish as well as English at the age of six, they were found to be exploring these potentials in terms of symbol design, spatial framing and directionality. A multimodal analysis shows how children can build up ‘embodied knowledges’ as they construct different visual and actional dispositions through the bilingual script-learning experience. Such flexibility is likely to be an asset in a world that makes increasing use of multilingual and multimodal communication.

Bilingual Learning for Second and Third Generation Children.

Throughout the English-speaking world, children from bilingual backgrounds are being educated in mainstream classrooms where they have little or no opportunity to use their mother tongue. Second and third generation children, in particular, are assumed to be learning sufficiently through English only. This study investigated how British Bangladeshi children, learning Bengali in after-school classes but mostly more fluent in English than in their mother tongue, responded when able to use their full language repertoire within the mainstream curriculum. Through action research with mainstream and community language class teachers, bilingual literacy and numeracy tasks were devised and carried out with pupils aged seven to eleven in two East London primary schools. The bilingual activities were video-recorded and analysed qualitatively to identify the strategies used. The following cognitive and cultural benefits of bilingual learning discovered by researchers in other contexts were also found to apply in this particular setting: conceptual transfer, enriched understanding through translation, metalinguistic awareness, bicultural knowledge and building bilingual learner identities. The findings suggest that second and third generation children should be enabled to learn bilingually, and appropriate strategies are put forward for use in the mainstream classroom.

Snow White in different guises: Interlingual and intercultural exchanges between grandparents and young children at home in East London

Grandparents play a significant role in childcare and one activity that frequently occurs within this context is story-reading. However, relatively little attention has been given to the potential part that grandparents can play in terms of language and literacy development of young children.This article reports on work investigating the interlingual and intercultural exchanges occurring in a home setting in East London. In particular, it focuses on how the traditional heritage pattern of story and rhyme reading by a grandmother of Bengali origin is fused with practices experienced by her six-year old grandchild.The data reveal not only the multiple worlds inhabited by the grandchild during story-reading but also the syncretism of these worlds on a number of levels.This article contributes to the small but growing body of investigation into the reading styles occurring within families from different cultural backgrounds.

Intergenerational Learning Events Around the Computer: A Site for Linguistic and Cultural Exchange

The computer is widely recognised as a cultural tool with the potential to enhance learning, and children are considered to develop ICT skills with particular facility. However, young children still require assistance in order to gain the maximum educational benefit. This study investigates how such assistance was given to 3–6 year olds by their grandparents in Sylheti/Bengali-speaking families and monolingual English-speaking families living in East London. A multimodal analysis of video-recorded computer activities reveals the reciprocity of teaching and learning taking place between the generations. In each case, grandparents and grandchildren combined their resources in order to negotiate the activity, with adults usually providing knowledge of literacy and numeracy whilst children helped with computer skills. The intergenerational exchange was especially evident in Sylheti/Bengali-speaking families, where grandparents were less familiar with English or with the computer and operated bilingually with their grandchildren to co-construct learning. However, the support offered by grandparents was found to have common elements in all families, as they helped children to structure the learning event, maintain concentration and accomplish tasks relying on linguistic and cultural knowledge.

Bilingual Families as Literacy Eco-Systems.

Mainstream educators tend to assume that families should follow a school‐prescribed pathway, centred on parent‐child storyreading sessions, to help their children become literate and achieve educational success. The research discussed here focuses on case studies of bilingual families with six‐year‐old children growing up in London, and shows that they function in more diverse and complex ways, to achieve the goal of children learning to read and write in English and in Chinese, Arabic or Spanish as well. The skills of different family members (including parents, siblings and grandparents) are harnessed so that they complement each other to foster childrens learning. Each family thus operates as a ‘literacy eco‐system’, which is dynamic and open to change. The paper concludes by recommending that early years educators find out more about the systems used by pupils’ families, in order to support the work that is already taking place at home.

Revealing invisible worlds: connecting the mainstream with bilingual children's home and community learning

This article sets out to make the point that if teachers and others have, as the evidence by which they will place, teach and assess young bilinguals, only those children’s performance in English, they are not likely to appreciate the full range of their capacities, and their linguistic capacity above all others.The theoretical overview is followed by sets of data deriving from four UK researchers. Rose Drury shows the interface of the home and school environments for a young bilingual girl. Charmian Kenner compares the first-and additional-language literacies of a young child in nursery.Tim Parke investigates the performance of three young potential bilinguals, retelling stories in English and then in their mother tongue. Leena Helavaara Robertson investigates the role of community schools and their construction by central agencies. Finally the authors re-state their focus, stressing what is revealed in young bilingual children’s language abilities by the work they have presented and suggesting some implications for pedagogy and practice in early years contexts.

Biliteracy in a Monolingual School System? English and Gujarati in South London

The paper draws on research with 4–7-year-olds in a South London primary school to provide a longitudinal case study of one childs relationship to mother tongue literacy within the classroom. The findings demonstrate how this child, from the age of 4, actively combined Gujarati and English to enhance her literacy learning, and to construct texts which synthesised home and school experience. It is argued that the current emphasis on a monolingual curriculum in English primary schools denies such opportunities to most bilingual children. Even for the child in this study, her biliteracy development was restricted by institutional constraints due to the lack of status afforded to literacies other than English in the educational system. The relevance of these issues for bilingual education in other English-dominant countries is considered.

Transliteration as a bridge to learning for bilingual children

Abstract This paper examines how transliteration can be used as a bridge to learning for children who are studying more than one script. The focus is on second and third generation British Bangladeshi children aged 7–11, attending London primary schools and learning to write in Bengali at community-run after-school classes. An action research project explored how Bengali could be used as well as English to enhance learning at mainstream schools. Transliteration of Bengali into Roman script was found to aid this process in the following ways: as a communicative bridge between children, parents and teachers; as a conceptual bridge, promoting reflection on meanings and metalinguistic awareness; as a bridge to the Bengali script itself, mediating between oral and written representation; and as a bridge to new learner identities, enabling expression of ideas and building childrens confidence as bilingual writers.

Modelling and close observation: ways of teaching and learning between third‐generation Bangladeshi British children and their grandparents in London

Studies on child development in cross‐cultural contexts generally contrast child‐rearing practices in traditional or non‐Western with those of Western societies. Thus, they show how non‐Western communities tend to emphasise the importance of interdependence and collectivism between family and group members; Western communities focus rather on the role of the individual and achievement within a competitive milieu. Similarly, close observation by younger siblings of older children and caregivers who ‘model’ tasks to be learned are usually concepts referring to non‐Western groups, whilst those detailing ‘scaffolding’ tend to focus on the caregiver/child dyad in the West. This paper questions the value of such binary divisions when studying the learning taking place in the homes of third‐generation migrants to the UK. Using examples of children, their younger siblings and their grandmothers in London, it shows ways in which the older generation skilfully syncretises traditional and Western teaching practices and how each child responds appropriately to the tasks in hand.