acts of transliteration: bridging scripts for learning in london schools charmian kenner, mahera...
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Acts of transliteration:bridging scripts for learning in London
schools
Charmian Kenner, Mahera Ruby, Eve Gregory, Salman Al-Azami
Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths, University of
London
Developing bilingual learning strategies in mainstream and
community contexts(ESRC-funded study 2006-07)
Charmian Kenner, Salman Al-Azami, Eve Gregory, Mahera
RubyDepartment of Educational
Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
The research setting Two primary schools in Tower Hamlets,
East London Second/third generation British
Bangladeshi children, mostly more fluent in English than Sylheti/Bengali (Bangla)
Children also attend community classes in Bengali and/or Arabic
Bangla spoken widely in the community, Standard Bengali on TV, in newspapers
Bangla little-used in school (for transitional purposes only)
Research questions
In what ways do children draw on linguistic and conceptual knowledge from each of their languages to accomplish bilingual learning?
How are children’s identities as learners affected by using their home language as well as English in the classroom?
How can bilingual and monolingual educators help children to develop bilingual learning strategies?
Methodology: action research Observe children in community class Plan bilingual tasks in literacy and
numeracy for each group, relevant to mainstream curriculum, linking with community class learning
Involve community and mainstream teachers in planning
Children do task, watch video and comment (stimulated recall)
Discuss data with teachers at end-of-term seminar
Repeat process in second term
‘The Lion and the Mouse’
Participants Four children, 7 years old Their primary school teacher
(monolingual) The Bengali class teacher
(after-school class held in primary school)
Bridging communication with parents
Children compose questions in Bangla about the ‘Lion and Mouse’ story to ask parents
Children write questions in transliteration
Enabling children to read in Bangla
and act as translators Children could read and
understand ‘Lion and Mouse’ written by an older sibling
They discussed and produced their own translation which they then explained to their primary school teacher
Enabling children to act as writers in Bangla
children collectively produced their own version of ‘Lion and Mouse’ in Bangla
using pictures from a ‘Big Book’ they had read at school in English
the story was thus a bridge between Bengali class and English school
Representing Bangla sounds
‘in Bangla, writing in English but Bangla words’
Children’s different versionsThey said ‘No!’
Jameela thara khoson “Na!”Junel Tara coisoin “NA!”Miqdad tara khoisoin “NA”!Amal tara koyson “Na”!
Through second order representation children can: Engage with concepts
Demonstrate and increase metalinguistic knowledge
Enriched conceptualisation
The lion caught the mouse The lion was caught in a net
Children knew dorse suitable for first meaning but not second
Making sense
Tow oondure shinghor loge mattseThen mouse lion’s with
talkingThen the mouse started talking to the lion
‘with’ or ‘to’?Why ‘started’? ‘it makes more sense’Why change the order? ‘it won’t make sense’
metalinguistic understanding and conceptual re-interpretation
Awareness of language features bondos friends netor of net inside (in the net)
‘giraffa’ or ‘giraffe ar’ ?
explicit awareness of suffixes expressed through written representation
Intralingual as well as interlingual
‘I’ll do it in Sylheti how we speak’ Saying ‘hara’ (Sylheti)
but writing ‘thara’ (Standard Bengali)
Learner identities
How do you feel about transliteration?Ju: It’s exciting – it’s something that I learnedM: Cool. Different. We never done it before.Chn: It’s easy – we just think and we know
how to write itDoes it help you to write Bangla like this?Chn: Because then we know what it says. If
we write in Bangla we don’t know what it says but if we write like this…..
Sharing knowledge with monolingual teacher
J: ‘the lion is sleeping in the cave’ (reading out the children’s translation)
T: where’s the word ‘the’? (matching up Bangla to English words and realising ‘the’ is missing)
M: no ‘the’!A: if a person was talking to another person
and the person was saying a word, and said it without ‘the’, erm the other person would know because….
Transliteration as a new linguistic practice
liberating and empowering? ‘diluting’ the learning of Bengali script?
Example of child writing words in transliteration and then working out how to represent the sounds in Bengali script
An essential bridge for second and third generation children
enabling children to maximise cognitive and linguistic benefits of bilingualism