Transcript Acts of transliteration: bridging scripts for learning in

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 Ruby
Department of Educational Studies,
Goldsmiths, University of London
The research setting
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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
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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)
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Bridging communication with parents
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Children compose questions in Bangla
about the ‘Lion and Mouse’ story to ask
parents
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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
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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
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Representing Bangla sounds
‘in Bangla, writing in English but Bangla words’
Children’s different versions
They said ‘No!’
Jameela
Junel
Miqdad
Amal
thara khoson “Na!”
Tara coisoin “NA!”
tara khoisoin “NA”!
tara koyson “Na”!
Through second order
representation children can:
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Engage with concepts
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Demonstrate and increase
metalinguistic knowledge
Enriched conceptualisation
The lion caught the mouse
 The lion was caught in a net
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Children knew dorse suitable for first
meaning but not second
Making sense
Tow oondure
shinghor loge mattse
Then mouse
lion’s
with talking
Then the mouse started talking to the lion
‘with’ or ‘to’?
Why ‘started’?
Why change the order?
‘it makes more sense’
‘it won’t make sense’
metalinguistic understanding and
conceptual re-interpretation
Awareness of language features
bondos
 netor
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friends
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)
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Learner identities
How do you feel about transliteration?
Ju: It’s exciting – it’s something that I learned
M: Cool. Different. We never done it before.
Chn: It’s easy – we just think and we know how
to write it
Does 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?
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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