Language and Literacy: Children's Experiences in Multilingual Environments

Sneddon, Raymonde

doi:10.1080/13670050008667711

Cited by 35 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…A more recent study of the literacy practices of Gujerati and Urdu speaking families in London (Sneddon, 2000) found that parents appreciated the fact that teachers sent Gujerati/English books home because they had great difficulty in finding suitable reading material for their children in Gujerati. In a related study, Sneddon and Patel (2003) found evidence, from children's re-telling of stories encountered in Gujerati and English dual language texts, of complex negotiations of meaning across both languages.…”

Section: Dual Language Books: the Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The 'hidden' language and literacy experiences and practices of young bilingual children in their homes, in complementary classes of various kinds, in their communities, with their parents, siblings, grandparents and peers have been explored (Blackledge, 2000;Conteh, 2003;Gregory et al, 2004;Kenner, 2004;Robertson, 2006;Sneddon, 2000). These studies revealed children who not only coped, but thrived, on learning literacy in two, three and sometimes four languages or language varieties, often with different scripts, directionality, writing conventions and teaching methods.…”

Section: Multilingual Literaciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Magda and Albana: Learning to Read with Dual Language Books

Sneddon

2008

Language and Education

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This paper explores the ways in which dual language books are used in England to support bilingual pupils in school. While pupils in many schools speak a wide range of languages at home, these hardly feature in the curriculum. In the context of a project in which an education authority provided dual language books to primary schools, the paper describes how two women used Albanian/English story books to teach their six-year-old daughters to read in Albanian. The study reports on how the mothers and their children used both texts to transfer skills from one language to another, to negotiate meaning in both languages and to compare reading strategies. At the end of the school year the girls were reading in English with the best in their class, were developing fluency in Albanian and using it more in the home. Their mothers had become closely involved in their daughters' schooling and reported improvements in their own English literacy skills. The teacher's role was crucial: by providing support and resources to parents she enabled them to help their children become additive bilinguals in a situation in which they were beginning to lose the active use of their first language.

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Section: Dual Language Books: the Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Multilingual Literaciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magda and Albana: Learning to Read with Dual Language Books

Sneddon

2008

Language and Education

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“…Later studies in Britain, such as Baumann (1996) and Gregory (1996), and in North America (Heller, 1999;Norton, 2000;Zentella, 1997), have demonstrated crucial connections between minority communities and their languages, cultures, religions, literacy practices and identities. Recent work by Kenner (2000Kenner ( , 2004 and Sneddon (2000) has shown how children from minority ethnic communities benefit from their bilingualism. Abdelrazak (2001) Kempadoo and Abdelrazak (1999) provide quantitative information and guidelines on improving 'supplementary schools'.…”

Section: Managing Learning In Complementary Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Bilingual Interaction in a Gujarati Complementary School in Leicester

Martin

Bhatt

Bhojani

et al. 2006

Language and Education

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This paper focuses on teacher-student interaction in two Gujarati complementary school classrooms in one school in the East Midlands city of Leicester, UK. To date, little work has been published on interaction in complementary schools, and little is therefore known about the cultures of learning and teaching in such contexts. Our study of complementary schools in Leicester has shown how the classroom participants manage bilingualism and bilingual learning and teaching. One of the most noticeable features of the discourses of the two classrooms is the way two languages are juxtaposed to create learning opportunities. This uncontested use of two languages through the pedagogic strategy of code-switching goes against the perceived notion of bilingual learning/teaching as being a deficient strategy. Classrooms in complementary schools offer a highly significant, though under-researched, context in which to study language choice, and specifically the multilingual experiences of classroom participants. By exploring the educational pedagogies and classroom discourses, it is the aim of the paper to extend theoretical insights into the way complementary schools might help to transform, negotiate and manage the linguistic, social and learning identities of the participants in the classroom.

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“…Imagery evoked by exploring mother tongue culture adds to creativity in a new language; Datta (2000) gives examples from London classroom work of a Bangladeshi five-year-old writing a story based on the ghost world of his home culture, and young poetry writers inspired by Hindu mythology and Bollywood films. A bilingual or multilingual background in literature can therefore enhance educational achievement, as Sneddon (2000) found in her study of eleven-year-olds learning Gujarati, Urdu and English in north-east London. There was a strong relationship between children's oral narrative skills in Gujarati and in English, and they performed above the norms for monolingual children on a test of English reading comprehension.…”

Section: Bilingual Literature As a Resource For Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sneddon (2000) documents this with respect to the highachieving children mentioned above, who were attending community language classes in both Gujarati and Urdu. Volk and de Acosta (2004) found that parents and siblings were helping young Puerto Rican children to read in Spanish at home, and Rashid and Gregory (1997) analyse how Bangladeshi-origin children in East London combined strategies from literacy lessons at Bengali class and mainstream school to help younger siblings read in English.…”

Section: Bilingual Literature As a Resource For Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilingual poetry: expanding the cognitive and cultural dimensions of children's learning

Kenner¹,

Al-Azami²,

Gregory³

et al. 2008

Literacy

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Stories and poetry have long been considered a resource for the language and literacy development of bilingual children, particularly if they can work with texts in both mother tongue and English. This paper demonstrates that bilingual learning is also beneficial for second and third generation children whose English is often stronger than their mother tongue. Presenting data from an action research project in East London primary schools, we show how children investigated metaphor and cultural content in a Bengali lullaby, clarifying concepts through dialogue with their parents.Comparison with a lullaby in English from North America generated additional ideas concerning different cultural values. The learning process enabled children to use their bilingual skills and draw on different aspects of their bicultural identities. Finally, we explain how bilingual poetry can be used to stimulate learning in a multilingual classroom context, through the example of a whole-class lesson based around Bengali and English lullabies.Keywords: bilingualism, biculturalism, poetry, metaphor, Bengali, learner identities Introduction We introduce this paper by considering key ideas emerging from research on bilingual approaches to stories and poetry in primary school. This discussion highlights the contribution that bilingual work can make to cognitive development and cultural understanding, and we focus on the potential (often unrealised) for enhancing the learning of second and third generation children in particular. We then describe how a group of ten-and eleven-year-old British Bangladeshi children in a London primary school, studying a Bengali lullaby in transliteration and translation alongside the original version, were able to explore the content with additional support from their parents. This process deepened their understanding of metaphor and consolidated their knowledge of Bangladeshi culture -a cultural background to which they were strongly attached but which was partly unfamiliar to them due to growing up in the UK. Comparing the poem with a lullaby in English from North America, known to them through school and through popular culture, sharpened their understanding of different cultural values. To fully investigate the meanings in the Bengali poem, children used both languages in their discussion, making use of bilingual skills that are at risk of being lost unless they are valued in mainstream education. By operating bilingually and drawing on their complete range of linguistic and cultural knowledge, children also broadened their learner identities. We conclude by examining how the children's classmates, including those who did not speak Bengali, benefited from a whole-class lesson developed around the Bengali and English lullabies.

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Language and Literacy: Children's Experiences in Multilingual Environments

Cited by 35 publications

References 10 publications

Magda and Albana: Learning to Read with Dual Language Books

Magda and Albana: Learning to Read with Dual Language Books

Managing Bilingual Interaction in a Gujarati Complementary School in Leicester

Bilingual poetry: expanding the cognitive and cultural dimensions of children's learning

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