Do early literacy skills in children's first language promote development of skills in their second language? An experimental evaluation of transfer.

Research supports the importance of developing early literacy skills through culturally relevant activities and school/home partnerships as essential ingredients in high quality early learning environments (Bentley & Souto-Manning, 2019; Gay, 2000). Educators, however, frequently dismiss the significance of honoring a child’s first language, family, and culture when developing early literacy skills (Purcell-Gates, Melzi, Najafi, & Orellana, 2011). Integrating children’s linguistic and cultural understandings, however, is valuable and meaningful for their academic success and overall development (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005). The purpose of this study was to explore children’s narratives as a culturally relevant practice that promotes early writing. Using student data from a prekindergarten dual language classroom, we found that using family pictures from home provided multiple iterations of children’s stories and demonstrated how Latino families’ cultural experiences are significant for the development of children’s emergent writing development. Implications for practice are discussed.

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An investigation into the early literacy skills of English second language learners in South Africa

Australasian Journal of Early Childhood ◽

10.1177/1836939120918504 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 142-154

Author(s):

Aileen Manten ◽

Mia le Roux ◽

Salomé Geertsema ◽

Marien Graham

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Second Language ◽

Early Literacy ◽

Language Learners ◽

Second Language Learners ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Early Literacy Skills ◽

English Second Language ◽

Literacy Success ◽

The Impact

This study employs the Comprehensive Emergent Literacy Model (CELM) theoretical framework, as it refers to the impact of context on learning early literacy skills. It is relevant to this study as the participants were English second language learners from cultures, communities, and demographics different from those of English first language speakers in South Africa. Early literacy skills, specifically phonological awareness (PA), are predictive of later literacy success. Many English second language (EL2) learners are unable to develop language and early literacy skills. Foundational skills such as general PA skills, often need explicit instruction to prepare the learners to learn to read in English. Twenty-one EL2 Grade 1 learners in an English medium private school in South Africa were selected as participants. Early literacy skills were assessed at the beginning of Grade 1. Reading, spelling, and reading comprehension skills were assessed after two terms in Grade 1 to determine if there is a correlation between early and later literacy skills. Results indicated significantly strong positive correlations between early literacy and later literacy skills. These results and previous research suggest that EL2 learners must be exposed to high-quality early literacy skills as early as possible to provide them with a foundation for future literacy success.

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Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills 6th Edition (DIBELS)

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e313642005-022 ◽

2013 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Early Literacy ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Early Literacy Skills ◽

Dynamic Indicators

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Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Development of an Early Literacy App in Dhuwaya

Languages ◽

10.3390/languages6020106 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 106

Author(s):

Gillian Wigglesworth ◽

Melanie Wilkinson ◽

Yalmay Yunupingu ◽

Robyn Beecham ◽

Jake Stockley

Keyword(s):

Phonological Awareness ◽

Early Literacy ◽

First Language ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Intercultural Development ◽

Educational Challenges ◽

English Speaking ◽

Surrounding Areas ◽

Bilingual School ◽

The Impact

Phonological awareness is a skill which is crucial in learning to read. In this paper, we report on the challenges encountered while developing a digital application (app) for teaching phonological awareness and early literacy skills in Dhuwaya. Dhuwaya is a Yolŋu language variety spoken in Yirrkala and surrounding areas in East Arnhem Land. Dhuwaya is the first language of the children who attend a bilingual school in which Dhuwaya and English are the languages of instruction. Dhuwaya and English have different phonemic inventories and different alphabets. The Dhuwaya alphabet is based on Roman alphabet symbols and has 31 graphemes (compared to 26 in English). The app was designed to teach children how to segment and blend syllables and phonemes and to identify common words as well as suffixes used in the language. However, the development was not straightforward, and the impact of the linguistic, cultural and educational challenges could not have been predicted. Amongst these was the inherent variation in the language, including glottal stops, the pronunciation of stops, the focus on syllables as a decoding strategy for literacy development and challenges of finding one-syllable words such as those initially used with English-speaking children. Another challenge was identifying culturally appropriate images which the children could relate to and which were not copyrighted. In this paper, we discuss these plus a range of other issues that emerged, identifying how these problems were addressed and resolved by the interdisciplinary and intercultural team.

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