Page 88 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Developing Literacy

schooling, within the family where children are exposed to spoken and writ-
ten language to different degrees. Children who are immersed in language
from an early age are more fluent and have a richer vocabulary than children
whoseliteracyenvironment isnot so stimulating.Academicsuccessat school
is very much dependent on the literacy level of a child. Therefore, parents can
contributetoachild’slevelofliteracybyreadingtothem,tellingthemstories,
saying traditional rhymes and finger plays, singing to them, reciting poetry
and by generally surrounding them with the written and spoken word.

Relationship between L1 and FL Literacy
Cameron (2001) argues that when teaching English literacy skills, we can rely
on some methods usually used with children who are native speakers of En-
glish. YLs that are exposed to the spoken language through songs, stories,
games, and similar sources and are surrounded by written texts of different
genres and formats will be well-prepared for reading and writing in higher
grades and will have fewer problems acquiring these two skills. Pupils with
sound foundational literacy skills developed in their L1, will have a supply of
skills and knowledge to draw on when learning an FL (Cloud et al., 2009).
Riches and Genesee (2006) showed that phonological awareness, reading
comprehension strategies and knowledge of cognate vocabulary in L1 fa-
cilitate literacy skills in English as an FL. Furthermore, they proved that suc-
cessful FL readers use the same strategies as L1 English readers and that they
rely on strategies they acquired in their L1 (Riches & Genesee, 2006). Some
of these strategies can be related to the understanding of the text, e.g. vi-
sualising the content, inferring (i.e. deducing the meaning from the context,
key words, etc.), knowing what is important and being able to summarise
the text. These strategies can be developed in different languages simulta-
neously and in this way contribute to the development of both, L1 and FL
literacy skills. The foundational literacy skills, which are the building blocks
for higher-level reading and writing skills, include: comprehending meaning
from the text, recognising letters, words and phrases, knowledge of letter-
sound relationships, phonological awareness and being able to write letters,
words and sentences (Cloud et al., 2009).
In an FL classroom, it is a good idea to give more attention to those aspects
of literacy in the FL which contrast most clearly with reading and writing in
the learners’ L1. Ten-year-old pupils have already mastered the basic aspects
of literacy in L1 so reading and writing can become a more important aspect
of their FL syllabus. Besides utilising any transferable knowledge and skills
from L1 literacy, they can also be provided with more focused instruction in

88