|
Papua
New Guinea Post Courier, 3 April 2002
Cultural practices: A link to formal learning
by Patricia Paraide
The development of
elementary literacy and numeracy skills using the children's own
language allows them to make linkages between the traditional world
which they understand and the formal learning of new concepts.
Parents, teachers, and the public in general have assumed that children
who have completed three years of education in English perform better
in school than those who did their elementary education in another
language. However, data from a study of English, Tok Pisin and Tok
Ples [indigenous language] elementary graduates suggest that there
is no marked difference in the cognitive development of any of the
children. They have the same strengths and weaknesses. These data
also suggest that there are differences in the mastery of some language
and mathematical concepts.
Many of those children who did their elementary education in English
had some difficulty when identifying colours. They only pointed
to the dark shades of the colours. However, those children who did
their elementary education in a language that they know best were
aware that colours have different shades. Also, they could point
out any shade of most colours.
Many children in the sample schools had difficulties with the concepts
of 2+0=2 (they multiplied and wrote 0 as the answer), 2x0=0 (they
added and wrote 2 as the answer), 2-0=2 (they divided and wrote
0 as the answer), and 0÷2=0, (they added and wrote 2 as the answer).
The average students, and those who need special assistance in all
sample schools had difficulties in adding two-digit numbers. Some
of the mathematical exercises showed that Grade 3 children were
already doing two and three digit addition, subtraction, multiplication,
and division.
However, many children were having difficulties, as shown by the
number of mistakes in the exercises that they did in class. This
is of great concern because the children obviously have not mastered
these basic concepts, and cannot apply this knowledge to more complicated
concepts. Despite this, teachers are already introducing more complex
mathematical concepts.
This has implications for the training of elementary and lower primary
teachers, who teach these basic concepts. Elementary and lower primary
teachers can relate math-ematical concepts to traditional counting
systems so that they can help the children to better understand
these concepts. Teachers at the elementary level are supposed to
be people who can competently speak the children's first language.
Basic Papua New Guinean mathematical concepts can be strengthened
in formal language learning.
However, those children who live away from their parents' traditional
homes may not know the traditional counting systems, unless their
parents reinforce this knowledge in their present locations. Many
children who did their elementary education in English are weak
in sounding letters and words. The spelling errors which they made
indicate that they rely mostly on memory. They have yet to learn
to sound words and write them accordingly.
Those children who start learning in a language they know best can
sound the letters in the English alphabet, sound basic English words,
and write them as they pronounce them. They are beginning to master
the correct spelling of common English words. Some can already spell
some simple English words. With increased exposure to English in
primary school they should be able to learn the correct spelling
of more simple English words. Many of these children are beginning
to comprehend simple English text. This is encouraging, as it indicates
that these children are beginning to transfer their Tok Ples and
Tok Pisin literacy skills across to the English language.
It is a great concern that some children who did their elementary
education in English cannot, as yet, read simple English text. These
children just copied phrases from their test papers, as their answers.
When they were asked to read what they had written they stated that
they could not read. Although these children's first languages were
Tok Pisin or Tok Ples, English was the elementary language of instruction
for three years.
The actual cause of this problem was not established in this study,
but it could be attributed to teacher training. … There are weaknesses
in linking formal lessons with the knowledge that the children already
have.
Teachers need to develop mathematical, science, and physiological
concepts by using Papua New Guinean languages, and apply such concepts
to classroom teaching. Some teachers are already doing this. However,
there is room for improvement in the linkages between traditional
concepts and what the children already know, and formal learning.
There are also weaknesses with the interpretation and implementation
of policies concerning the use of language in elementary education
in the provinces. Some elementary schools use Tok Ples in Elementary
Prep, then Tok Pisin in Elementary 1, then English in Elementary
2. Some use both English and Tok Pisin in all elementary grades,
as is the case with some schools in the provinces. However, this
practice may affect the mastery of reading, writing, and numeracy
skills in the languages of instruction. As a result, children may
have difficulties in transferring these skills when learning English.
This practice is common in many elementary schools because of pressure
from parents and primary school teachers to introduce English as
the language of instruction. They believe that children will learn
better, if English is used in elementary schools. The data collected
during this study do not support this view.
|
|
New
York Times, 10 April 2002
W.A. Stewart, Linguist Who Studied Ebonics,
Dies at 71
by Wolfgang Saxon
William Alexander
Stewart, a Hawaiian-born Scot who grew up multilingual in California
and became an authority on creole languages, in particular Gullah,
the West African-flavored speech of the Sea Islands off South Carolina
and Georgia, died on March 25 at Columbia-Presbyterian Center in
Manhattan. He was 71 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was congestive heart failure, according to the City University
of New York Graduate Center, where he had been on the faculty since
1973.
A professor of linguistics, he was an early scholar of what has
come to be known as ebonics, the nonstandard English many Afri-can-American
children hear and learn at home. He explored its grammatical differences
and how these can lead to misunderstandings in the classroom.
Professor Stewart examined and wrote widely about how this creates
testing prob-lems for such children. He argued that certain grammatical
peculiarities of the dialect, like "he busy," meaning "he's busy
right now", and "he be busy," meaning "he's always busy", make nonstandard
English into a separate language.
Asking its young speakers to express these ideas in standard English
simply could not reflect what the pupils intended to say, Professor
Stewart argued. He demonstrated that speakers of nonstandard English
were, in fact, speaking the remnants of a creole, melding languages
of African slaves and the English of American settlers.
Creoles are languages resulting from con-tact between two different
tongues, one of them usually being English, French, Spanish, Dutch
or Portuguese. Professor Stewart's particular fascination lay with
Gullah, the speech of a dwindling number of rural African-Americans
along the Carolina coastal delta, down to the Florida border.
The Gullah "I en bin dey, yall know," for example, translates to
"I have not been there, you know." Gullah, a word derived perhaps
from Angola, draws to some degree on a mix of West African languages
like Ewe, Ibo and Yoruba.
Born in Honolulu to Scottish immigrants, William Stewart grew up
speaking four languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese and Hawaiian.
He was an Army translator in Frankfurt and Paris in 1952 and graduated
in 1955 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he
also received a master's degree in 1958.
After study as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Pernambuco,
Brazil, he was recruited as a staff linguist by the Center for Applied
Linguistics in Washington in 1960, a job entailing much travel in
the Caribbean and Africa. By then he was fluent also in German,
French, Dutch, Wolof, Haitian, Papiamento and Gullah, a dialect
born in 16th-century Barbados.
In 1965 he proposed that it was not the vocabulary or pronunciation
of the African-American vernacular but its grammar that stumped
some children with reading problems. Three years later, he became
co-director of the Education Study Center in Washington, which helped
ghetto children with their reading.
Early in his career, he lectured on Portuguese and Spanish at Georgetown
University, taught at Johns Hopkins University and joined the faculty
of Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1968.
He started teaching at CUNY in 1973. The Graduate Center named him
a full professor in 1984. At CUNY he taught pidgins and creoles,
phonetics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and forensic linguistics.
Professor Stewart leaves no immediate survivors.
|
|
Adelaidian,
July 2002
Norfolk Islander to teach threatened language
in school
by Ben Osborne
The fight to revive
Norfolk Island's [creole] indigenous language has received another
boost from the University of Adelaide - but this time through an
island native.
Ms Suzanne Evans, a schoolteacher on the island, completed a Graduate
Certificate in Applied Linguistics under the Head of Linguistics,
Professor Peter Mühlhäusler, during the first semester of 2002.
She has since returned to Norfolk's sole school to add the Pitcairn-Norfolk
language to the curriculum and help it propagate through the latest
generation of islanders.
The language dates back more than 200 years, when mutineers from
The Bounty founded a new community on Pitcairn Island in 1790, which
transferred to Norfolk Island in 1854.
Professor Mühlhäusler, internationally regarded for his work in
Pacific Islands languages, has been visiting Norfolk since 1997
to work with locals to try and halt the language's decline (only
500 islanders speak the traditional form of Pitcairn-Norfolk, out
of a population of 2000). He said it was an important step for a
local teacher to become directly involved in the revitalisation
process. "It's part of the overall plan for the Government to give
the language official recogni-tion," he said.
"To set up a language revival program associated with that, you
need to have the school involved, and Suzanne is a big part of that.
I'm very confident that children on Norfolk will now have much easier
access to the language through her work at the school."
Before returning to Norfolk, Ms Evans spoke with the Adelaidian.
She said her first task was to prepare a syllabus for use at the
school, which caters for 300 students from Reception to Year 12.
" Studying at Adelaide opened my eyes and helped me to look at new
ways of doing things," she said.
|
|