Acquiring Literacy in Pre-Primary and Class 1:
Meaning Making in a Trilingual Environment
Rekha Sharma Sen
Jamia Millia Islamia
‘National Conference on Early Learning: Status and the
Way Forward’
25-27 Sept., 2013
The Situation
Many children complete primary grades without being able to
read and write
Field Site: The School
• Self financing; afternoon shift; government school building ;
administered by University
• English medium
• Textbooks in pre-primary and primary
Field Site: The Community
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School located in Muslim dominated area in Delhi
Urdu - mother tongue
Fluent in Hindi
English rarely spoken in the family or community
A view of the classroom
Difficulties arise
• Literacy introduced mechanically
• Child’s active agency compromised
• Child’s socio-cultural context and extent of exposure to
particular language – print and spoken – is ignored
Analysis of process
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Similarity in approach across the three languages, the eight
teachers and the two classes
Learning to read seen as decoding
Decoding – letter naming, drawing and writing
spelling words and repetition
repeating sentence fragments
r-a-t = rat; adha sa, ka mein bade oo ki matra, la – skool
c-r-i x 3 ; e-d x 3 = cried x 3
Meaning making compromised
Letter-sound correspondence - only for English vowel
Drilling – Memorization - kis ko yaad ho gaya? Kaun
padhwaega?
A page from the English textbook
in pre-primary
A page from the Hindi textbook in
pre-primary
Naming Letters
• Phonetic association/ phonemic awareness cannot be assumed
to happen through letter naming and drawing
L for tiger; tha se botal; k for chabi
• Teacher too may not be explicitly aware – p ki awaaaz aa rahi
hai?
• Drilling leads to providing memorized tag word irrespective of
alternate picture– n for nest; net (VIDEO)
• Use of pictures - caused confusion – zakhira – tamatar; fell –
tree
Reading Words and Sentences
• Spell – Read - repeat – each word is tackled ab initio
• In reading new words jumps to conclusions on basis of
memorized words ball = b-a -n = ban
• Reading letters and matras separately
Decodes but cannot combine to say the word
“tikat” - ta, ta par ee ki matra, ka , ta. Keeps quiet.
I ask “ kya bana?” She says ‘kata’
• Recitation while looking at the teacher - No connection with
where these words are on the page
• Context bound
• Memorization instead of reading
• Learning ineffective strategies
Oral Expression
• Minimal
• Teacher’s imagination
Meaning Making
No focus on helping children to understand meaning
• one time activity
• holistic meaning
• pictures caused confusion
• referred to meaning indirectly – shop
• explained meaning using another English word
• Was not the meaning in context of text
• pretty girl hoti hai
Children’s Competencies in Meaning
Making
Hindi
• Most children know meanings of many Hindi words
• In most cases meanings are near approximations and had been
constructed by children through their everyday experiences.
English
• Majority of children do not know meanings of English words;
Net - “madhumakhi ka ghar’; ‘chidia ka ghar’;
Hard and soft – bhari and halka
• Inaccurate meanings constructed due to the pronunciation of
children (pen as pan)
Children as Meaning Makers
Make some correct and some incorrect inferences
• Intuitively compares letter sound correspondences across languages
Provides Hindi word for English letter and sound – b says ba; ba se
batakh, bat , ball
Provides Urdu correspondence for English letter sounds - A says ae
– ma’am urdu bhi sikhati hain
• Transfers learning from Hindi to English
Uses letter name as letter sound for English language – ka bhi ho
sakta hai aur sa bhi; cap – sap; gap – jap
• Link English letter with Hindi translation of said word
- l se seedhi; k se chabi
Constructing Meaning Against Odds
Rekha - Hard kya hota hai?
Child – jo dabta nahin hai
Rekha - Soft kya hota hai?
Child – jo dabta hai
Rekha – aap ko kaise pata?
Child - maine khud socha.
She has circled house (circling to be done for soft objects)
Rekha – ghar kya dabta hai?
Child - khillone ka ghar dabta hai.
Written Work
• Dominance of writing – correct written work Seen as evidence
of understanding
• Writing as copying – few instances of words generated by
children; no sentences
• Very good to fairly good written work
Teacher Centric
• Objective of the day’s lesson set from teacher’s perspective
• Whole class teaching with no attempt to uncover individual
learning and meaning making
• Performance of group as performance of individual children
• Teacher's impatience with the process
Teachers’ Beliefs
• Incremental step by step process
• Unaware of approaches to reading – whole word, phonics,
organic reading
• Phonics is a one time isolated activity
• Children learn by memorizing
• Agreed that children did not understand meaning
• Expectation of prior learning through a play school or nursery
school
• Expectation of parental support
• Do not question their teaching method until explicitly
challenged.
• A few are aware of their teacher centric way of teaching but
Conclusion
• Languages at varying distance from learners but taught
through the same process
• Onus on the child but meaning making while reading and
child’s active agency was compromised
• Building communicative competence before introducing
reading and writing
• Children did not own the English words – organic reading?
• The pressure of the system on the teacher
THANK YOU