U214B

Introduction

Children learn writing and reading through different ways and techniques. They pay attention to many things around them while learning processes and there are many factors that participate in helping them acquire the writing and reading skills such as shape and size of objects around them as well as other factors. In this TMA the process of learning how to read and write in children will be discussed through analyzing the emergent literacy at children, issues related to how children acquire literacy, the way children learn the various systems of writing to write scripts out of symbols and embodied knowledge.  

Body

Emergent literacy is a process in which children acquire the basic principles of literacy, learn to understand the written and read world around them through many factors such as the environment of the community they are in, the degree of education of the people they live with or the degree of encouragement they get to read or write. Children participate in literacy practices but in their own way as they don't have to read and write properly in early ages as they may recognize things by their figures like restaurant names, signs in the street or labels but not with their letters forms. Literacy is related to many activities done by adults as reading books, writings e-mails, using notebooks, writing shopping lists and writing using computer keyboards and children at early age before they are taught how to read and write notice such activities and imitate them in a try to do as the adults do in order to prove that they have abilities just like those adults around them. They could use images, pictures or signs to express their literacy experience by pointing to them, drawing them or even talking with them. There are factors that affect the process of emergent literacy such as the way that the child sees the world as, the listened language that children get and the degree of communication in the environment the child is living in as this makes it differs from a child to another how emergent literacy is acquired and expressed. (Arab Open University, U214B Course Book 2 Communicating in English, Unit 3)

Literacy acquisition is a process that happens to the child in very early ages and happens due to many surrounding elements of life and there are many relevant issues to it. The environment the child is in decides the type and amount of gained literacy by the child. Children can find many different visual symbols that contain English words or letters during the day at home, in the street, in a supermarket, names of the street signs or shops, TV advertisements, snacks bags or letters that point to specific things or places such as M which stands for the famous restaurant loved by children "McDonald's" which is called logograms and this is the same thing as pictograms which means a child recognizes a place for example by a picture such as pictures figure schools, hospitals or WC for men and WC for women. Children do not deal with literacy as it is only written texts but there are many elements engaged in their comprehension for graphics, signs, codes and marks which could be found in computer games, movies, streets, maths signs and they could recognize things that contain letters of other languages. Children who are at the preschool age are affected with the literacy practices they face in the community they live in which reflects on how much they acquire and how far they are successful in doing emergent literacy practices as some communities do not give literacy matters great interest as other communities, then the child responds to literacy according to adults' value for it and the degree of attention they give to the child. There are different ways in directing children towards literacy as in some communities imaginative heard stories are appreciated more than other practices, some think that children must deal directly with printed papers and books, others prefer pictures to tell meanings and some communities give much interest to teach children how to write and read in the same way of schools which results in children with different emergent literacy practices. (Arab Open University, U214B Course Book 2 Communicating in English, Unit 3)

There are many writing systems that children can learn by different methods and techniques. Encoding differs from a writing system to another and this affects young children who learn different languages as each language has its own writing system, English, for example depends on alphabet and its encoding system depends on letters while Chinese is a language that depends on logographic system of encoding writing and Arabic in spite of having letters in its writing system, letters' images change according to where a letter lies whether in the middle of a word, in the front or at the end of a word. (Kenner, C. Al-Khatib, H., Kwok, G., Kam, R. and Tsai, K. 2004) Children who learn through alphabetic systems can understand words if they understand the way letters work to combine words and after that it becomes easy to them to read other different new words, this is not the case with learning through a logograph system as it is harder and could last more time than learning alphabetic languages. The relationship between alphabetic systems in languages depend on letters and between phonemes of such letters as some language could be read by a learner without being understood such as the Finish language for example. As to English, it seems that its writing system is difficult for children at early ages as its orthography has disadvantages as having advantages. Among its disadvantages is that English words include some words with origins from other languages and their pronunciation system is different to be expected as it is not following the English pronunciation system so written letters may not express the right pronunciation of these words. This makes it difficult for young children to understand how to read all English words. (Arab Open University, U214B Course Book 2 Communicating in English, Unit 3)

When children write English different scripts, they have to know many variant things related to symbols such as those different sounds expressed by one symbol as the letter "i" for example as it could be in /pin/, /tide/ or /pain/ and also those letters groups which could give specific pronunciation or be silent such as "th" in /the/ or in /teeth/ or "k" in /knife/ or /know/ or such as "gh" in /cough/ or in /though/. Children also should pay attention to some morphemes which could be read the same when found in any English word such as /ing/, /tion/, /ment/, /ly/ and / ness/ for example. Children who learn English should be taught how syllables are combined together to form words such as turning verbs to nouns by some adding syllables such as /ing/, /ment/ and so on in order to facilitate the process of reading and writing in English in young children. Onset and rime techniques are important when a child learn English written scripts in order to learn how to read syllables combined into words. Yet it is not just to decode a script in order to be literate and read and write a language as children may find more difficulty when they are dictating words they hear to transform them to written texts. Another difficulty is the children spelling trials as they may miss some silent letters or not know symbols combinations. (Kenner, C. Al-Khatib, H., Kwok, G., Kam, R. and Tsai, K. 2002)

Writing is a practice that young children consider as embodied knowledges as children give much interest to how symbols are set together and how they construct words and they have their understandings for the process of creating written texts and then understanding them which what is referred to by "embodied knowledges". This means that children's visual attitudes have a relation in interpreting written words as well as the degree of their attention paid to directionality, spatiality and other measurements when they write English scripts. When children write they have their own methods of producing symbols according to physical directions and effects of other adults' way in writing. As when teaching young Arab children to write in English for example, they will write it from right unless being told to change directions of writing. Symbols also have their own spatiality which means that there are specific stated places for letters of English for example, when teaching young children to write English symbols between two straight lines which is not preferable in Arabic and this is the same when teaching young children how to write capital letters of English to be up lines. In Arabic for example, dots positions can puzzle young children as number of dots can differ to make different symbols from one similar basic origin. Dots are often misused by young children writing Arabic letters which is a visual feature for children who are learning Arabic as a second language and teachers have to remind them with the dots and the proper size of them. Children who are taught English as a foreign language may do some practices like these as in forgetting dots of "i" or "j" for example. (Kenner, C. Al-Khatib, H., Kwok, G., Kam, R. and Tsai, K. 2002)

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important to refer to the importance of the period of emergent literacy at young children and how it affects their future readiness for learning different languages and that the environment has a great effect on strengthening or weakening the children's ability to learn languages fast and properly. It is important when teaching young children a new language to take care of the way children respond to the language symbols, directionality and spatiality in order to guide them to the best practices in learning languages. It is important to learn about the way children learn writing systems and their understanding of symbols of one language.