EXPLORING THE INSTRUCTIONAL EMERGENT WRITING STRATEGIES OF THE EMIRATI KINDERGARTENERS: A MIXED METHOD STUDY

This mixed-method study aimed at exploring the nature and the types of instructional emergent writing strategies applied by UAE kindergarten teachers in their classrooms. The study also fathomed the teachers’ views toward the practicality of the instructional emergent writing strategies and the challenges they encountered when teaching emergent writing using these strategies. The study used an exploratory sequential mixed method design. In the first phase of the study, a qualitative mean was used by carrying out semi-structured interviews with a purposive-selected sampling of kindergarten English teachers (n=5). The second phase of the study featured a collection of quantitative data using a self-report questionnaire answered by a randomly selected sample of teachers (n=206). The results gleaned from the interviews, which showed that teachers used nurture writing as an emergent literacy skill by creating a meaningful environment. Kindergarteners can practise writing in an authentic, mundane, and communicative way. Teachers also believe in the use of gradual release instruction, whether when selecting instructional strategies or materials. The quantitative results revealed that the use of modelling strategy is the most common and frequent when teaching emergent writing along with other strategies (e.g., guided writing, shared writing, interactive writing, and freewriting), which is also confirmed by the qualitative results as the use of these strategies contribute immensely in promoting emergent writing literacy in which different skills were knitted and woven meaningfully. Furthermore, both the qualitative and the quantitative results signified that teachers confirmed that the limited time provided for children and teachers poses a real challenge. The study also found there are some difficulties in changing parents’ attitudes to fulfil their required expectations. Some recommendations and implications for future research related to EFL/ESL contexts (e.g., UAE context) are provided

The effect of phonemic segmentation on word recognition through the use of interactive whiteboard among Jordanian English as a foreign language (EFL) beginning readers

Developing effective reading skills is essential among primary learners of English given that this will create many types of awareness, in particular, phonemic awareness. In Jordan, studies have revealed that there is a weak performance in the skill of reading among primary school students and young learner‘s word-reading ability. Studies have also shown that the ability to segment words into phonemes is considered as the most powerful predictor of future reading skill. However, little is known about how phonemic segmentation skill affects word recognition among Jordanian English as a foreign language (EFL) beginning readers using the interactive whiteboard (IWB). This study investigated the effect of phonemic segmentation skill on word recognition among Jordanian EFL beginning readers by using IWB. It also examined their teachers‘ perception towards the use of phonemic segmentation and the use of IWB. The instruments used were word recognition test and cross-sectional questionnaire. The independent sample paired t-test, dependent ttest, descriptive statistics, and one way ANOVA were employed to analyse the data. The pre-tests and post-tests of word recognition were administered to 41 beginning readers in the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received the treatment for four weeks using IWB, whereas the control group was taught using the chalkboard. Meanwhile, the questionnaires were distributed to 86 teachers. The findings showed a significant difference in word recognition test scores between the experimental and control groups. The results also indicated that there was no statistically significant difference in the perceptions of EFL teachers of beginning readers based on gender and teaching experience in relation to the use of phonemic segmentation and IWB. The findings revealed that the EFL teachers provided positive support towards using phonemic segmentation and IWB. The findings propose some pedagogical implications for curriculum designers and English teachers. This includes training Jordanian teachers to integrate phonemic segmentation and IWB in the teaching and learning of reading

Print Awareness: a Comparison Between Print and Electronic Assessments in Typically Developing Preschool Children

This study compared print and electronic formats of the Concepts About Print (CAP) assessment in typically developing preschool children. The researchers were interested in comparing print awareness skills using two different reading modalities. Independent variables were mode of presentation and age, dependent variables were the CAP scores. To account for a learning curve, two different versions of the CAP assessment were used and counterbalanced. Modes of presentation was also counterbalanced. Examiners achieved a 98.24% agreement (K = 0.964) across 40% of all assessments. A significant correlation (r =.919) was found between the scores on the CAP and scores on the eCAP. A paired samples t-test showed no significant difference in scores based on mode of presentation (t (14) = .29, p = 0.779, 95% CIs [-.86757, 1.13423]). Further research is needed to increase the sample size, the diversity of the sample population, and examine interaction effects between age and mode of presentation. Additional research is also needed to investigate effect of gender, socioeconomic status, multiple languages, and amount of exposure to electronic text on eCAP performance

Investigating Relationships Among Measures of English and Chinese Handwriting Fluency in Early-Elementary Chinese Dual Language Immersion Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between English and Chinese handwriting fluency measures in early-elementary Chinese Dual Language Immersion students. This was done by conducting five handwriting fluency tasks among Chinese Dual Language Immersion students and comparing the findings. First, the findings showed that there was a moderate correlation between the participants\u27 English and Chinese handwriting fluencies and that English fluencies predicted Chinese fluencies. However, the students could write English numbers and letters much faster than Chinese characters. Second, as expected, Chinese DLI participants showed that handwriting fluency improved as grade level increased. Third, third-grade students were not much faster than second-grade students on both English number and English Chinese number tasks. The study informs Chinese DLI programs as it shows that supplemental handwriting instruction is likely necessary to narrow the differences between English and Chinese handwriting fluencies. Instructional amount and quality could be improved to increase Chinese fluency, and English and Chinese partner teachers should collaborate more closely and complement each other\u27s handwriting instructional efforts. In summary, this study identifies significant differences in English and Chinese handwriting fluencies, and further studies may be necessary to consider ways to address these differences

How the classroom schools: A focused ethnography exploring the built classroom environment and its inhabitants in one kindergarten

This study is a focused ethnography around the sociology of a classroom’s built environment and its young inhabitants. I spent three months immersed in a kindergarten classroom where I used child-centered research methods (ie. the kids created collaborative and individual classroom maps and conducted child-led video tours) alongside participant observation to gather data related to how young children perceive and experience the materiality and spatiality of their classroom. As a result of grounded visual and multi-modal analysis, I centered the young children’s voices and perspectives and discovered how the kids picked up on certain physical and symbolic markers bounding zones of interaction in their built environment: territories for learning↔ work and privacy ↔ play. Patterns of mobility through these territories revealed how children in the classroom had uneven access to the profits afforded by the classroom’s space. My work reveals a strong intersection between smartness, agency, and access to resources through mobility (ie. physical action and vocal action) in the classroom tied to perceptions of kids’ conformity to norms and cultural alignment with the teacher’s expectations. The findings from this study are relevant to both teacher preparation programs and veteran teachers because they take into consideration how young children make sense of the learning opportunities afforded by different materials and places in the classroom as well as the impact of the spatial organization on classroom interactions. The results of this study point to the need to pay close attention to the perceptions of young children in school, for they are observant and pick up on the subtleties of their environment in ways that reproduce social norms. Educators should pay attention to how the classroom’s built and material environment is implicated in kids’ perceptions of what matters in school and their access to learning opportunities there. In this study, I consider equity of opportunity through the lens of the relational built environment, distribution of resources, and access in the classroom. Teachers and the professionals who prepare teachers can consider how the environments they design and use socialize kids into certain ways of being and belonging in the classroo

Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind, Cognition, and Culture

This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart. ; Examines the origin, emergence, and co-evolution of written language, the human mind, and culture within the purview of script effects Investigates how the scripts we read over time shape our cognition, mind, and thought patterns Provides a new outlook on the four representative writing systems of the world Discusses the consequences of literacy for the functioning of the min

Malaysian literacy practices in English : 'big books', CD-ROMs and the year 1 English hour

In the context of an increasing awareness of improving the standards of English in Malaysia, this study explores Year 1 literacy practices in English and offers important insights into the three major innovations introduced in 2002: the English Hour, Big Books and CD-ROMs. The findings are examined in the context of the Ministry's desire to promote active engagement and high quality interaction. Two studies were conducted using a naturalistic approach. In 2003,50 questionnaires were distributed to primary school teachers: 5 classes and 9 teachers in 2 primary and 3 pre-schools were observed teaching English, Bahasa Malaysia and Arabic/Jawi. These teachers were also interviewed. In 2004,2 trainers and 10 teachers were interviewed, 48 lessons of English, Mathematics and Science in English by the 10 teachers were observed, but the study focuses on the literacy practices in 26 lessons by 4 English teachers in four schools. Interviews and role plays with 28 children from these four classes in 7 groups of 4 inform the accounts and discussion of reading and writing events and practices. The 2004 study suggests that the Ministry of Education's directives to English classes to integrate the use of the English Hour, Big Books and CD-ROMs have only been partially implemented in the classroom. The Ministry's hopes to provide more active engagement and to increase students' interests and motivation through the Big Books and the CD-ROMs were achieved, but the expectations of high quality interaction were not realised. Methods need to be developed to accommodate teachers' beliefs about the value of drilling, repetition and choral reading with the Ministry's desire to extend these interaction patterns and practices. The present study contributes to existing research on the implementation of the English Hour, Big Books and CD-ROMs in Year 1 English classrooms, specifically from the perspective of Year 1 English classes in non-English speaking contexts. It also provides greater understanding of issues to be addressed in future teacher education developments

English language learning kindergartners\u27 dynamic responses to picturebook reading

This study explores the nature of English language learning by kindergartners as they engage in multimodal literacy practices in response to picturebook readings in a mainstream classroom. Three focal Spanish-speaking kindergartners and their classroom teacher took part in this study. Data were collected daily for four months in a half-day morning kindergarten program. The participants\u27 verbal and nonverbal classroom interactions during picturebook readings were coded and analyzed to characterize the nature of ELL kindergartners\u27 multimodal responses to picturebook readings. Findings indicate that the classroom instruction did not fully address the differences in the focal children\u27s levels of English language proficiency. Further, the use of various modes of expression by individual children for meaning-making received limited support in terms of language development and literacy learning

A comprehensive assessment of reading-related skills in typically developing 4;0- to 7;0-year-old Saudi Arabian children

This cross-sectional study involves Arabic-speaking children from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. It aims to develop comprehensive Reading-Related Skills (RRS) using a battery of tests for the use of Arabic-speaking preschoolers in Saudi Arabia. The first study involved 384 participants as they began to learn to read at 4 years old and as they developed their skill up to 7 years old. The study investigated the extent to which children’s performance in Phonological Awareness (PA), Letter Knowledge (LK) and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) are affected by gender, age, and socioeconomic status (SES), and also by the levels of exposure to tuition in Tajwid (Qur’anic recitation). The second study involved 60 participants to determine the predictiveness of the test battery in relation to teacher ratings of participants’ reading ability. The results from these studies confirm the validity and reliability of the test battery of test and support previous findings that PA develops from larger to smaller linguistic units. The effect of gender on RRS was found to be minimal whereas both PA and LK were found to be age sensitive and useful for discriminating between levels of ability, whilst RAN proved to be useful only for the oldest group. The result also supports previous claims by researchers that both PA and LK play an important role in the development of reading in Arabic-speaking children and can be used as predictors of their reading ability. Similarly, the results of the RAN tasks support previous findings that the predictiveness of these tasks applies principally to older children. These points would need to be incorporated into any future RRS test. Although some socioeconomic factors were found to correlate with the RRS measured, SES did not appear to play the major role suggested in previous Western studies. Findings were inconclusive concerning the effect of levels of exposure to Tajwid tuition on RRS but indicate that this area merited further investigation, particularly given the special emphasis placed on this in the Saudi Arabian system of education

Seeing and Being Seen: A Multimodal Inquiry of Multilingual High School Newcomers and Their Contributions to Educational Communities

This dissertation research followed the experiences of seven high school newcomers who chose to participate in an internship program, assisting elementary school students, some of whom were also emergent bilinguals. This study used ethnographic and visual methodologies to explore young people’s evolving understanding of teaching, learning, and languaging as members of a community of practice within the internship. The internship provided a space for the young people to make sense of schooling in their new country. The narratives that the interns shared highlight how the set of linguistic and cultural-historical repertoires of practice that they entered with shaped how they engaged and contributed to the classroom communities in which they were placed. They rooted their linguistic practices in their critiques of language policies in their countries and in the United States. They challenged binary classroom relationships by leveraging their own experiences and understanding of what it means to be students, and they brokered relationships, expanding the classroom communities