“Mami mami saya sudah bisa baca buku sekarang”
[Mum mum I have been able to read a book]
In this chapter I will discuss the evidence of individual differences among the Indonesian children in their reading development exploring their bilingual reading performances in their classroom, home and community. How do the children‟s levels of bilingual reading development reflect differences in the approaches they have been exposed to in each of these intersecting contexts and their individual differences in age and learning styles? Let me begin by explaining the above Indonesian quotation as a response from Fasya to his mother.
Contextualising Individual Differences in Bilingual Reading Development
“Mami mami saya sudah bisa baca buku sekarang” (Mum mum I have been able to read a book), proudly commented a smiling faced, Fasya, sitting in his living room while reading a book borrowed from the school library. He was enjoying being able to read books in Australia, as he said:
Saya senang membaca buku-buku disini karena buku-bukunya sangat menarik di baca. Bukunya juga dengan gambar-gambar didalamnya hingga saya mudah mengerti isi bukunya. (Interview, 19/04/2004).
I am happy to read books here because the books are interesting. The books also contain pictures so I can understand the content easily (Translation).
There has been increasing evidence of influences on individual children‟s reading development since the early 90s. Scarborough & Dobrich (1994a, 1994b) comment that it is not clear just exactly what, or how much children learn about reading by being read to by adults. Fox (1993) suggests the development of reading ability can
be enhanced through adults reading to children as this may help them learn to “crave” books, creating a desire to read. Through this process children learn not only which parts of the storybook one uses to derive meaning, and whether text or illustration has ultimate “authority” over that meaning, but how to display knowledge, and how one can question the meanings made by others from the same text (McNaughton, 1995).
Reading storybooks to children before they begin school has been linked to success in beginning reading at school (Heath, 1982, 1983). McNaughton (1995, p. 104) calls reading at home “an especially significant literacy activity”, but it is also one that may vary in its practice across different cultures (Au, 1995; Au 1998; Cummins, 1991; Heath 1983; McNaughton, 1995).
In relation to the L1 and L2 reading interaction, Krashen (2002) believes that a short cut to reading in a second language is by learning to read in the primary language as he argues further that: “(1) we learn to read by reading, by understanding what is on the page; (2) it is easier to understand text in a language you already know; and (3) once you can read, you can read; reading ability transfers across languages”(p.143).
In the context of reading in the classroom, Martin (2003) stresses the interaction between indigenous language and official languages and his research in a Brunei primary school classroom gives evidence that “the classroom participant cannot manage content lessons in English alone” (p. 83), needing to draw on their indigenous language, Malay as a resource.
In the community context, Baker (2006, p.335) emphasizes the value of “culturally relevant books” as “motivation to read, to read independently and enjoyably, will be enhanced when the student meets text that has a friendly cultural meaning”. Freeman et al. (2003) suggests three things to achieve such cultural relevance in books: similarity of the students‟ family and language community characterizations; the
comprehensiveness of themes and contexts within their life experiences; and the familiarity of languages and discourses to the students.
The focus in this chapter relates to development of receptive competence within the biliteracy development continuum (Hornberger, 2004), through examining the children‟s development in reading and activities promoting reading. In analysing aspects of the children‟s reading development we will focus on their individual differences and the interaction of L1 and L2 in the three intersecting Australian social contexts: school, home, and community. The evidence of children‟s bilingual reading development mostly derives from the three intersecting contexts, those of school, home, and community where these Indonesian children exposed to the interaction of their L1, Indonesian, and their L2, English as discussed alone in three chapters (Chapter 4, 5, and 6 respectively) and this chapter relates to the children‟s bilingual reading development in those intersecting and interconnecting contexts covering the L1 and L2 interactions.
The Younger Children: Prep and Grade 1
Fasya
As discussed in Chapter 7, Fasya, one of the two younger children, has some differences in language exposure as he was not able to read in his L1 before coming to Australia, so he was experiencing simultaneous reading development in English and Indonesian.
Fasya’s Bilingual Reading Development in School
In L2 reading in Term 1, Fasya used a number of communication activities to improve his reading skills. The activities all involved completing simple activities based around texts, e.g. dramatising, sequencing sentences and asking questions,
retelling and talking about stories, reading in class. The linguistic features in reading which showed evidence of his literacy development were the uses of sound-letter knowledge to read new words and match some familiar spoken words with written words. In the school context, the reading activities always started with shared and guided reading where children learned to recognise and understand texts in its context using big books, poems, story books and CDs. In short, Fasya followed the class literacy activities as a passive learner observing what his friends were doing in the classroom. He joined the group activities and sometimes his classmates in the group helped him with how to do the instructed literacy activities. This involvement contributed to him gradually and significantly developing his L2 literacy development from term to term over the year.
My observation of the classroom activities documented a range of activities and events designed to develop the children‟s awareness of text, its structure and function. The main focus of the activities was on exploring the meaning in language (semantics) central to the story orientation. This involved the storyline, for example, characters, events - predicting and analysis. The other language focus was the study of sentence structure (syntax) and words (morphology and phonology), and with a focus also on the print, such as locating print on the page rather than illustration; locating where to start to read –left-right directionality; reading left page before right; spacing between words; and one to one matching.
Other features involved in activities included identifying first or last letters of a word, noting the term „word‟; identifying upper- and lower-case letter; identifying and using the term „capital letter‟; identifying capitals at the beginning of names and sentences; identifying high-frequency words and words beginning with a given letter; identifying sentence structure and punctuation – sentence stops, question and answer, direct speech and quotation marks, speech bubbles, interjections and exclamation marks, commas, apostrophes for contractions and possessive; identifying vowels;
identifying conjunctions (eg and, or and but); dividing words into syllables, compound words, words within words; identifying digraphs, consonant blends; learning to identify nouns, proper nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs; identifying antonyms and synonyms; identifying singular and plural; developing a knowledge of English language forms, eg she/he, her/his, they/their; and identifying verb tenses. Other areas covered included knowledge about non-fiction books such as reading for information; looking for key words, summarising; using a glossary, index and contents; and becoming familiar with scientific and technical language.
By Term 2 Fasya was able to read and understand short texts, e.g. a shared story, with the assistance from his classroom teacher as well as his parents at home. The text contained information about the environment such as school environment and community. Fasya also read aloud with expression using simple punctuation and recognized some common letters, words, phrases or sentences from charts, books. The strategies used by Fasya for developing his reading skill was listening to texts, reading aloud and using pictures to help predict meaning.
In Term 3, Fasya participated in a number of activities that improved his reading skill. He read well known or familiar stories without assistance, used pictures to help predict meaning, joined in shared reading, read a known story with appropriate pausing and intonation. By participating in those activities he could recognise that texts had characteristic structures, e.g. a beginning, middle and end, recognise some common letters, words, phrases or sentences from charts, books, posters, etc, and exhibited an awareness of the conventions of written English texts, e.g. left to right, top to bottom.
In Term 4, Fasya‟s reading activities include obtaining information from simple illustrations, tables or diagrams, rereading known books and texts, reading a known story with appropriate pausing and intonation and relating something learned from a
text to own experiences or opinions. Consequently, he could recognise some common letters, words, phrases or sentences from charts, books, posters, etc and understood common language of reading, e.g. title, page, cover. His strategies for developing reading skill were listening to texts, reading aloud, using pictures to help predict meaning, choosing appropriate books to reading level and using some phonetic, grammar and content cues to predict meaning.
From the above brief description of the literacy events and activities that Fasya participated in from Term 1 to Term 4 over the year, it is evident that he demonstrated marked development in his L2 reading, starting from simple reading activities or events to more complicated ones. Fasya was also exposed to an increasing number of reading activities or events from the first to the fourth terms (the earlier the lower, the later the higher).
At school Fasya was exposed to certain attitudes and approaches from his classroom teacher toward the use of L1 in the classroom. As discussed in detail in Chapter 4, Lily, Fasya‟s classroom teacher, was considered transitionally supportive of the use of L1 in the classroom. She used L1 to support Fasya in making the transition to feeling comfortable studying in the classroom and eager to go to school. This contributed to his L1 receptive literacy development and to the significant development of his L2 literacy and language development over the four terms in both spoken and written communication.
The other L1 exposure that Fasya experienced in school was the involvement of children from the upper grade level in the buddy program. For example, Lukman came down from Grade 5 to read Indonesian story books to the Prep Grade Indonesian speaking children every week, facilitated by their classroom teachers. Fasya seemed to feel hesitant to be involved in this L1 literacy activity at first because he thought he was expected to always use English in school. His attitude of rejecting this L1 literacy activity in the classroom saying “no, no, no” while raising
and moving his right hand to the right and left toward Lukman indicated that he did not agree to participate in the assigned L1 literacy activity. Having seen that Fasya felt uncomfortable as discussed earlier in Chapter 4, Lily, his classroom teacher, approached him saying, “selamat pagi Fasya” (good morning Fasya) and continued to say in English “You could do that, do you like it?”. Fasya kept smiling without saying a word and continued to listen to the Indonesian story read by Lukman without any more hesitation at all. This was the start of Fasya moving from a negative attitude to a positive attitude toward L1 literacy activities at school, and it was pivotal in his transition to starting to enjoy his school literacy activities. Until then he had still seemed as if he felt like confused newcomer as he struggled to understand instruction in English (Classroom Observation, 14/7/2003).
It was also interesting to note the impact on Fasya when he became an L1/L2 translator when his new friend from Indonesia, Tony, came to join the school. He was always asked by his classroom teacher, Chamely (then his teacher) to translate into Indonesian whatever he did in class for Tony who was always placed close to Fasya. Fasya, who had already moved up to a higher grade level, from Prep to Grade 1, felt happy to translate all the instructions for Tony. Some examples of the expressions that Fasya translated were the instructions such as “sit down(duduk), attention please (perhatian), circle please (duduk melingkar), listen carefully (dengar baik-baik)”. As a consequence and unlike Fasya when he had first arrived, Tony was able to join the school without any great anxiety as he had a friend from the same cultural and language background to interact with both in school and at home (as they also stayed in houses close to each other) (Classroom Observation, 11/2/2004).
Fasya’s Bilingual Reading Development in Home Context
In his L2 literacy practices at home, Fasya usually read selected books and participated in other tasks brought home from school. Either he read those books with
his mother or she read them to him. In addition, he liked reading books containing pictures, religious books, children‟s magazines and some short stories. During the observation, Fasya read a number of religious books, such as the English translation of the Qur‟an and Hadists (which is the explanation of Islamic Prophet behaviour and oral teachings). One example of Fasya‟s readings was observed as shown below:
Al-Ikhlâs : Absoluteness
Say: He is Allah, the One Allah, the eternally Besought of all He begetteth not nor was begotten.And there is none comparable unto Him
Fasya first read this Islamic text experiencing some difficulty in pronouncing the long words such as „eternally, besought, begetteth, comparable‟ in his second term in school, and then he asked his mother to explain the meaning of all the strange words. He was very keen to grasp the meaning and the message. He sometimes complained to his mother about the unfamiliar words in such religious texts, saying: “I can‟t understand this Mom because I don‟t know the words”. This response indicated that Fasya was very motivated to grasp meaning from his reading. (Observation, 6/9/2003).
As discussed earlier (Chapter 5), Fasya regularly watched Indonesian programs on TV, including the SBS screening of Indonesian news for about 30 minutes everyday. He would sit with his Mom and Dad finding out what was happening in his native country, particularly looking out for news about his regional area. Chatting about the current news in Indonesia was one of L1 interaction between Fasya and his parents at home and this usually occurred twice a week on Saturday and Sunday, as reflected in my journal written in L1:
When it is time for watching the Indonesian news program on SBS TV, the children shouted asking their parents to watch together indicating that these children are getting great enjoyment out of listening to the news in their L1, Indonesian and the literacy involved in such viewing. (RJ, 26/12/2004) (Translation).
This home literacy activity was valuable for Fasya given that he had not been able to read or write in Indonesian before coming to Australia as it modelled of literate practices where Fasya was exposed to understanding the messages through his L1 listening comprehension as well as reading captions from the TV display as the newsreader read the news from around Indonesia. The responses from Fasya when reading the news, such as him saying “something happens in Indonesia, an earthquake, many people died Mom” indicated that he had a good understanding of the news and he continued to discuss further using both L1 and L2 interactively with family members, including his older brother (another focal child in this study). The responses from his father, such as “apa yang terjadi Fasya? (translation: what happened Fasya?)” sometimes invited Fasya to explain what he had just heard from the TV news usually from the breaking news, using L1 to respond to his father‟s questions such as:
Ada gempa di Sumatera, banyak sekali orang meninggal. Banyak orang cari tempat tinggi dan lari ke gunung. Kasian sekali mereka hidupnya, Dad (Home observation, 30/12/2004).
There was an earthquake in Sumatera. Many people run away looking for higher places and run toward the mountain. What a pity for their life, Dad (Translation).
The other L1 literacy activity that Fasya was exposed to was religious literacy reading related to his community literacy activities. Fasya used to read some religious materials, such as the four great books (Kitab), such as Kitab Taurat, Zabur, Injil, and Al-Qur‟an. When I picked him up from his house to go to the community centre one day, before we left we sat down together reading the religious book that was on the table in the guest room, a book containing the story of Prophet Isa AS. We just picked
the word of Allah to read aloud, as shown below:
Dan kami iringkan jejak mereka (nabi- nabi Bani Israil) dengan Isa putera Maryam, membenarkan kitab yang sebelumnya yaitu Taurat. Dan kami telah memberikan kepadanya kitab Injil sedang di dalamnya (ada) petunjuk dan cahaya (yang menerangi) dan membenarkan kitab yang sebelumnya yaitu kitab Taurat. Dan menjadikan petunjuk serta pengajaran untuk orang-orang yang bertaqwa (QS Al Ma‟idah: 46).
Later, in the train (of the prophets), We sent Jesus, son of Mary, confirming the Torah which had been (sent down) before him, and gave him the Gospel containing guidance and light which corroborated the earlier Torah, a guidance and warning for those who preserve themselves from evil and follow the straight path (The Feast: 46).
Like the school classroom teacher in checking the reading development of each child in the classroom by putting a tick above those words read correctly, Fasya and I also agreed to do the same thing in reading the text. In his reading of the text, he could easily read the words that contained one or two syllables such as “dan, kami, yang, Bani, Isa, yaitu, di, orang, etc”. However, he was hardly able to read words that contained more than three syllables, for example, the words such as ”Iringkan,
membenarkan, memberikan, menerangi, menjadikan, pengajaran”. Fasya sometimes
complained while he was reading when he got to words containing 4 or 5 syllables, saying: “Uh, I can‟t read the long words”. His L1 reading level was similar to his L2 reading at this time, as at that stage he was also able to easily read only those words that contained one or two syllables (Home Observation, 10/1/2004).
As discussed earlier, Fasya‟s L2 reading progressed consistently over the four terms of the school calendar year, and his L1 reading developed along with his L2 reading. The similar script in his L1 and L2 seemed to assist in his being able to transfer his developing decoding skills from L2 to L1. While Fasya had not been able to read before coming to Australia and he was in the situation of then starting to learn