A psycholinguistic study of literacy in a primary grade
Date
1978
Authors
Marampon, Joy Nan
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Abstract
The problems of teaching for literacy have been studied in this thesis from two related aspects, nature - how written language evidences the same learning principles that, influence the child when he learns to speak, and nurture - how these principles can help the child become proficient in the new form of expression. Therefore, the nature and the nurturing of literacy has been examined and a psycholinguistic theory of the acquisition of literacy has been developed based on a Piagetian view of thought and language in the young child.
The psycholinguistic view of language acquisition is based on the premise that children have the ability to process information about language and become fluent and skillful if the sample of language available is large enough to permit recognition of patterns and development of adequate generalizations.
Children in this society acquire two forms of language, oral and written; both speaking and writing are learned as communicative functions and can have the same personal and conceptual meaning but to develop literacy skills it is essential that the writer process different information about his language.
Oral language development moves from fluency to control and, since literacy builds and extends language skill, personally expressive and fluent writing is also the result of much experience and experimentation in the new medium. Thus a large corpus of written language is used to make accessible those aspects of language needed to become literate. The problem, of course, in instructing for literacy is to help the child gain both fluency and control. This study presumes that he will master the new forms sooner if he learns to process written language for meaning and so build the necessary strategies for recognition and production (Smith, 1975); the acquisition of literacy thus begins with the opportunity for making sense using new forms of language. The study uses the assistance of a scribe so that subjects can make sense in the new medium. The corpus of language is then analyzed for quantity, complexity and type to see if these increase with aid.
Acquisition of literacy depends on language experiences in the new medium of written language; this study uses an approach which stresses the importance of writing as communication and provides experiences to facilitate the inductive learning of the principles which connect speech to script. In this it resembles psycholinguistic learning process of spoken language. This languageĀ experience approach to instruction is justified by Piagetian principles because there are parallels between written and oral communication. The problem, therefore, addressed in this study on instruction for literacy is to find a way to help the child make the transition to written expression and be able to communicate in the new medium.
The child does not acquire an entirely new language when he learns to write, he learns to transfer his thought or his language learning to another medium. He has to be able to start off knowing roughly what he wants to say and end by being able to write it. This study has been designed to examine third grade children's written language to define the problem of transduction of the oral code to the written code, using the Piagetian idea of egocentric and socialized language, The socialization of thought and language occurs when the child is able to take a less egocentric point of view. This transition has been observed in the writing of the subjects in this study and an attempt has been made to quantify the amount of Socialized Language so that growth can be tabulated and the development of literacy observed.
The result of this study showed there was a high incidence of egocentric forms in the writing of children studied. and this was quantified and graphed during the research. As the study progressed the percentage of egocentric language decreased. Fluency and control using the written medium increased as measured by the instruments used in the study as the subjects were given assistance of a scribe to help record their ideas and so they could observe the process of composition. This was considered a synthetic method of teaching literacy since any analysis of spelling, grammar, punctuation was incidental to recording the child's own message. However, the subjects evidenced in this independent writing some improvement in the mechanics of writing. The study was considered a pilot study for further research and therefore the length of the study is not sufficient to make definitive statements about success of teaching literacy by this method. I am grateful for the opportunity to use this type of research, which included a theoretical and subjective element to the directors of my thesis.