Trilingualism and reading difficulty in a third (school) language: A case study of an at-risk child in French immersion

This longitudinal study documents a trilingual child’s struggle with decoding and word recognition, the remedies sought to help him start reading in his second language (English) while he was in French immersion, and his performance after the intervention on tests of phonological awareness in L1 Romanian, L2 English, and L3 French. The study commenced at age 5;6, when the child, Alex, was in English kindergarten and diagnosed with a reading deficit. The initial diagnostic assessment uncovered his near-complete lack of phonological awareness, a key ingredient of emergent reading. An intervention using a multisensory approach to reading was used twice a week until the child was 7;9, at which point he was completing grade 2 in French immersion. Alex’s phonological processing abilities were assessed in all three languages immediately after remediation in order to determine: (i) whether his phonological processing skills improved in English, the language of the intervention; (ii) whether there were similar effects in the two non-remediation languages (Romanian and French); and, finally, (iii) whether children at-risk for reading difficulties are able to continue their education in an L3, such as French in an immersion context.

Setting the Basis for Success in the Competency-Based Curriculum: Experiential Instruction Process Issues in Emergent Reading in Kenya

Study after study has shown that reading is the single most important skill necessary for success in school and life. Emergent reading is the first stage in the developmental continuum in learning to read and consists of the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are presumed to be developmental precursors to conventional reading. In other words, students who are unable to grasp early print concepts as emergent readers may experience difficulty with reading later. In this regard, multiple assessments of reading have reported poor reading achievement in Kenyan primary school children. The Uwezo studies since 2010, for instance, have highlighted a reading crisis. The reports indicate that there has been no improvement in reading from the inception of the study despite the government launching intervention programs among them ‘Tayari’ and ‘Tusome’ which were meant to improve reading skills. This study investigated the instructional process issues in emergent reading in a bid to unravel this predicament. The study was carried out in Bureti Sub-County in Kericho County. It involved a sample of 95 pre-primary 1 teachers randomly selected from public and private schools. Data was collected using an observation checklist, a questionnaire a focused group discussion and was analysed descriptively. Instructional process factors found to impede experiential emergent reading strategies included unclear goals for reading lessons, pressure from parents for quicker learning outcomes, time allocated for the experiences was insufficient, that the teachers were overloaded with other responsibilities, large pupil numbers, among others. The results of the study will inform evidence-based policy on the implementation of the Competency-based Curriculum in Kenya and any other part of the world.

Orthographic mapping instruction to facilitate reading and spelling in Brazilian emergent readers

ABSTRACTAn experiment and a follow-up study were conducted with Brazilian Portuguese-speaking kindergartners (N =90), mean age 53 months, to examine whether emergent readers benefit more from instruction in orthographic mapping (OM) of phonemes than OM of syllables at the outset of learning to read and write, and whether the addition of articulatory gestures in the OM training of phonemes enhances the benefit. In the experiment, children received instruction in small groups in one of four conditions: OM of phonemes with letters and articulation (OMP+A); OM of phonemes with letters but no articulation (OMP); OM of syllables and their spellings (OMS); and no OM control. Results showed that the OMP+A group outperformed the others in phonemic segmentation, reading, and spelling. On literacy assessments 1.5 years later, only the OMP+A group remembered how to segment words into phonemes. We conclude that despite the greater salience and accessibility of syllables than phonemes in spoken Portuguese, teaching phonemic OM better prepares emergent readers to move into reading and spelling than teaching syllabic OM. Moreover, instruction that includes articulation as well as letters to segment words is especially effective. Results support a graphophonemic connectionist theory of emergent reading and spelling.

Leer por placer: ¡lo primero, oír los libros!

RESUMENA pesar de la enorme inversión en recursos de todo tipo para lograr la alfabetización universal, los bajos niveles lectores alcanzados al finalizar la educación secundaría, así como los pobres hábitos de lectura en adultos, constituyen un problema y un reto de mejora en todas las sociedades desarrolladas. Este trabajo aborda esta cuestión y enfatiza la necesidad de evidenciar a los niños y niñas pequeños qué hay en los libros y qué representan, mucho antes de que aprendan a leer. Se presenta una breve revisión de investigaciones sobre los efectos y beneficios de la lectura en voz alta entre padres o educadores infantiles y niños, desde edad muy temprana, como estrategia compartida para oír los libros, a implementar mucho antes del aprendizaje formal del código escrito en las escuelas. Se describen los formatos y características de este tipo de interacción social desde la responsabilidad parental y se justifica su potencialidad y necesidad para hacer de la lectura una actividad placentera, también en situaciones de pobreza, exclusión social o diversidad funcional.Palabras Clave: alfabetización inicial, lectura compartida, lectura dialógica, lectura en voz alta, lectura emergente.ABSTRACTThe low reader level achieved at the end of the secondary school education and the poor level of reading habits at adults is a problema and a challenge of improvement in all developed societies despite the enormous investment in all kinds of resources to achieve universal literacy. This paper addresses this issue and it emphasizes the need to show young children what is in the books and what they represent, long time before they learn to read. We present a brief review of researches about the effects and benefits of reading aloud among parents, educators and children from a very early age. It is a shared strategy to listen to books, to be implemented long before the formal learning of written code in schools. It describes the formats and characteristics of this type of social interaction from parental responsibility and it justifies its potentiality and need to make reading a pleasant activity, also in situations of poverty, social exclusión or functional diversity.Keywords: nitial literacy, shared reading, dialogic reading, reading aloud, emergent reading