UNIT 6: CLASSROOM LANGUAGE AND

LITERACY
Structure
6.0 Introduction
6.1 Objectives
6.2 Some Significant Components of Emergent Literacy
6.2.1 Oral Language and Narrative Skills
6.2.2 Vocabulary
6.2.3 Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Literacy
6.2.4 Shared Reading
6.2.5 Letter Knowledge and Print Motivation
6.2.6 Invented Spelling
6.2.7 Number Knowledge
6.3 Parental Role in Child‘s Literacy
6.4 Teacher‘s Role in Developing Literacy
6.5 Interventions for Children with Inadequate Literacy
6.6 Language Development and Listening Skill
6.7 Language Development and Speaking Skill
6.8 Language Development and Reading Skill
6.9 Language Development and Writing Skill
6.9.1 Mechanics of Writing
6.10 Let Us Sum Up
6.11 Answers to Check Your Progress
6.12 Suggested Readings

6.0 INTRODUCTION
Children begin to learn from the day they are born. Interacting with their
caregivers, they develop vocabulary and language which is rudimentary in the
beginning but becomes increasingly complex as they grow.

Gaining fluency in oral language and a growing understanding of the printed

matter around children marks their preparedness to read and write (emergent
literacy). Emergent literacy skills develop in an accelerated manner if children
are given a literacy rich environment.

A literacy rich environment is one in which the children are surrounded by

language and meaning in its myriad forms like: signs and symbols, books and
toys, interaction with adults, stories, songs, fine-tuned talk and printed messages
in the environment. Soon children learn to express their ideas and feelings
through language. They also begin to understand that the printed text around
them is meaningful and has a significant role to play in their lives. Interaction
with print in its various forms like books, magazines, games and toys, signs,
symbols, labels enables a growing recognition and appreciation of print which is
the basic tool in reading.

Talking and listening to adults or when adults read books in an affectionate and
caring environment, children develop a large vocabulary and narrative skills of
their own which they use during ‗pretend -play‘ or ‗pretend-read‘ when they
simulate situations in games or pretend to read a book, the story of which is well
known to them. When children learn to hold books and learn that we read from
left to right (or right to left or top to bottom depending on language learnt) and
turn to the next page when the one in front is over, they are ready to read in the
conventional sense. 5
 Language Acquisition A child‘s unconventional attempts at reading (pretending to read) or writing
and Language (scribbles) are seen as legitimate beginnings of literacy. The emergent reader
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
enters school and soon learns the skills of reading and writing in the conventional
sense. Early childhood experiences play a decisive role in learning when the
child is introduced to formal instruction.

At school, the child is for the first time taught language in a discrete way
following a certain methodology and structure. Often a second language is also
introduced.

In this unit, we will talk about issues of emergent literacy; we will also discuss
the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing at the primary level.

6.1 OBJECTIVES
After going through this Unit you should be able to:

 enumerate the components of emergent literacy;

 sustain the literacy development of young learners through focused
activities;
 identify learners with poor literacy skills;
 guide and aid the parents in developing literacy skills of young learners;
 identify some important component skills required for listening, speaking,
reading and writing (LSRW) at the primary school level; and
 use classroom methods which will help children develop LSRW.

6.2 SOME SIGNIFICANT COMPONENTS OF

EMERGENT LITERACY
Language development is the key force behind the initiative to learn, read and
write. Children who come to school with a well-developed language (home
language) are more amenable to reading and writing and as a result expand upon
their fund of concepts and learning. Though many forces and aspects come into
play into this kind of development of the human child there are certain basic
skills that children acquire given a rich literacy environment.

The basic skills that form the reading readiness amongst pre-school children are
as follows:

a) Oral communication and narrative skills

b) Vocabulary
c) Phonemic awareness and phonemic literacy
d) Shared reading
e) Letter knowledge and print motivation
f) Invented spelling
g) Number knowledge

We shall consider each one and see how it contributes to the reading and learning
readiness of the young learner.

6.2.1 Oral Language and Narrative Skills

A child keenly observes things around, listening and absorbing and trying to
make sense of the environment around it. In literate and urban homes where the
environment is rich with language in different oral forms, the child quickly
6
develops a rich vocabulary and acquires the grammar of the language. In order to Classroom Language
achieve this, the parents need to constantly talk to the child (finely-tuned talk you and Literacy
have read about in Unit 1), talking about what they are doing and repeating words
and sentences relevant to the situation. Parents can help to develop the child‘s
vocabulary by pointing to things, people, signs and symbols, print in and around
the house or during short trips outside the house and talking about them.

The tradition of telling stories, singing songs, using rhymes and playing with
sounds of the language goes a long way in developing the child‘s oral language.
Children get an understanding about their own language and how it works. They
slowly begin to internalize the grammar and recognize rhyming words. As they
grow up they begin to spin stories around their toys or begin to pretend to play
adult roles in their free play. All this hones their oral language and narrative
skills. Not only this, if parents and children discuss the characters after the story
is read, this helps the children to make sense of this world, understand various
aspects of life and living. Even the play of sounds in an interesting manner helps
to develop their understanding of sounds; and that the oral language is made up
of a string of sounds and when these sounds are put together in different ways
they lead to different meanings.

Piaget has said that children have an innate desire to communicate. An

environment where the parents or caregivers are ready to listen to them and be
involved in conversation and respect the children‘s queries by answering them is
conducive to the development of the children‘s oral communication and narrative
skills. These become both refined and complex as the children grow.
Development of oral skills and cognitive skills are simultaneous and interrelated.
When children listen to stories which have a lot of conversations and dialogues,
they perceive the printed text first as an extension and representation of oral
language. Later they begin to notice the difference between written language and
the spoken language and develop an appreciation for the written language in the
text they read or are read to.

6.2.2 Vocabulary
Vocabulary is an integral part of one‘s language. We shall in this section see how
parents help their young children to develop a rich vocabulary.

We have already discussed how parents and caregivers help to develop the oral
communicative skills of children. The repertoire of a child‘s vocabulary gets
richer when parents point to things around them, name them and talk about them.
Similarly, while reading, the parent points to the words, pictures or images and
talks about them. This enables the child to learn names of things, actions or
qualities in an interesting manner. It is thus important to expose the child to
images and pictures.

Parents read aloud to children and this helps to develop background knowledge
about various topics and enhance their vocabulary. These would be later
employed in reading and reading strategies by the children. Children also become
familiar with the rich language patterns of written language used in the stories.
The repeated words and phrases are soon learnt by the child.

Songs and rhymes are also a nice way to learn vocabulary especially when
accompanied with music and gestures. As discussed earlier, a parent or caregiver
can enable a child to learn the names of various things while looking after the
child. Say, for example, while feeding the child the parent might use words/
7
 Language Acquisition phrases like: nice, hot, spoon, munch, sweet mango, Amit likes apples, open your
and Language mouth, wipe your face, finish your milk quickly, and yummy custard, etc.
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
Vocabulary can be enhanced by making the home environment print-rich and by
taking the child out on short trips showing him/her things and people around and
talking about them and directing the child‘s attention to the printed signs and
messages around. Children learn the words as they construct meaning around
them using different kinds of cue and clues.

Social interaction too helps to develop understanding and enhance their

vocabulary.

6.2.3 Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Literacy

As the child‘s language skills develop, the child becomes aware that spoken
words are made up of individual sounds. By playing with sounds and replacing
one sound with another to get new words or by playing rhyming games the child
becomes aware of the role of sounds in communication. Some of the phonemic
awareness is developed on its own and for some the child needs the parent or the
caregiver to provide examples by using a few words that carry the same sound
and which are names of things/action which are accessible to the child.

Children go through several categories of phonological skills as their literacy

develops. They begin by thinking of rhyming words or identifying words that
rhyme.

At a later stage they learn to blend phonemes and make new words or sounds like
/e/ and /I/ (/eI/), /e/ and /m/ (/em) or /e/ and /t/ (/et/). Later they substitute the
sounds to make further combinations. Gradually they move to more difficult task
of splitting words into phonemes and notice that the word bin is made up of /b/,
/I/ and /n/. This helps them to create new words by manipulating the phonemes.
(bat – mat – map – cap – cat).

This understanding of phonemes allows them to figure out the pronunciation of

new words by using their phonemic knowledge. As they begin to read, they learn
to translate the written words back into sound and its meaning.

6.2.4 Shared Reading

Reading aloud to children and then discussing the story or the characters with
them is of utmost importance. ―The single most important activity for building
the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to
children. This is especially so during the preschool years,‖ (p. 23, Anderson,
Hiebert, Scott and Wilkinson (1985)).

A parent sits with the child, reading aloud from a large picture book allowing the
child to understand the story with the help of the pictures. At first the child tries
its best to understand the plot with the help of the pictures and the intonation
pattern of the reader. Children use different cues and clues to construct the
meaning of what they hear.

While reading, the parent points to different images and pictures as he or she
reads, helping the child to understand the new vocabulary. The parent also points
to the words as he or she reads. Soon in books with repetitive text the child learns
to recognize certain words and joins in the story telling. Rereading of stories also
8 enables the child to become familiar with the unique concepts of the story.
Shared reading also enables a child to become familiar with the different aspects Classroom Language
of books and other printed matter. They learn that we read from left to right and and Literacy
top to bottom, thus knowing when to turn the page. Slowly the parent allows the
child to hold the book and turn the pages. This creates in the child awareness
about a printed text and a positive attitude towards reading.

In addition, the child, through discussions on various aspects of the story also
develops background knowledge and an understanding of the world and human
relationships. This stimulates thinking. Thus reading aloud helps children
develop in four areas that are important to formal reading instruction namely, oral
language, cognitive skills, and concepts about print and phonemic awareness.
Reading aloud to children also helps to develop their vocabulary which would
help them in reading comprehension later in life. Listening to stories being read
aloud and looking at the print helps the children to become familiar with the
language patterns and to understand what written language is.

Story time can include a variety of reading materials like books, magazines,
alphabet books, books on rhymes, newspapers and a variety of pictures with text.
Access to these helps the children to become emergent readers which will enable
them to make a smooth transition to become conventional readers.

6.2.5 Letter Knowledge and Print Motivation

In a literacy rich environment, the child is surrounded with different examples of
print beginning with books, games, magazines, pictures, posters, labels,
directions, name boards, signs and symbols. Through repeated encounters with
the text the child slowly develops the concept of letters and begins to understand
that letters stand for the sounds of the language. Thus phonemic awareness
enables the child to notice word boundaries, blend letters to create words and
later split the words.

Phonological awareness helps the child to understand the alphabetic principle and
the regular ways in which letters represent sounds.

Through exposure to the printed text in story reading sessions or other encounters
with the text, children begin to understand that reading and writing have a
communicative purpose like reading directions and signs, reading letters and
emails, reading recipes, reading instructions in a booklet, reading the information
on products, etc.

Meaningful encounters make them positively inclined towards print. They gain
an interest in books and can talk about stories and connect the new information
with their background knowledge. The child begins to understand that it is
through print we read stories and poems.

In brief pre-school children know a lot about printed language and are able to
identify signs, symbols, logos and labels, knowing very well that all these have a
direct bearing on their lives. They have also learnt that words can be segmented
into sounds and syllables which are represented by the letters.

When they enter school, children would have learnt the following about print:

 Print carries a message whether in a story or on a road sign.

 Print is related to the world.
 Books are organized with a cover, title, author and reading flows in a
particular and consistent direction.
 Print and drawing are different. 9
 Language Acquisition  Print may represent spoken language.
and Language
 Printed language consists of letters, words and sentences. These are
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years marked with punctuation marks.
 Every printed material has a beginning and an end.
 Print occurs in different places.

Emergent readers look forward to books and reading and make early attempts to
write through their scribbling. They try to make sense of their environment by
trying to decipher print around them.

6.2.6 Invented Spelling

The term invented or temporary spelling is used for a child‘s attempt to spell a
word using knowledge of the spelling system of his or her language. Using
invented spelling helps them to explore written language and experiment with
writing. Children often use graphophonics (letter/sound associations) while
attempting to write. This early writing is a valuable developmental indicator of
the spelling patterns the child has internalized.

Often teachers try to correct every word and remind the child that the spelling of
certain words is incorrect. Such over-correction discourages the child. It has been
seen that children who begin writing with invented spelling continue to write and
like to write and that they soon settle down to conventional spelling which is
developed by further reading and encounters with the printed text.

Often young children believe that words should show some figural resemblance
to their meaning. They also believe that words should have a number of letters.
During one experiment by Pick, Unze, Brownell, Drozdal, and Hopmann (1978),
three year old children rejected all two letter words as non –words. But slightly
older children put all the words they could read into the word pile and the words
they could not read into ‗non-word‘ pile.

This is because the child views reading and writing in a different way than the
adult.

6.2.7 Number Knowledge

Emergent readers when they enter school have a fairly good concept of numbers
also and can differentiate between the numbers of things. They are able to count
to a certain number and have a concept of ‗more‘ or ‗less‘ in objects.

This skill also develops through constant interaction with the environment and
other adults. An understanding of road signs, telephone numbers, house numbers
and counting is developed through direct experiences.

Check your progress 1

Based on your reading of the earlier sections answer the questions given below:

1 What skills would emergent readers have already acquired when they
come to school?
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10
 Classroom Language
……………………………………………………………………………... and Literacy

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2 What do you understand by a literacy rich environment?

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3 What are the different ways in which a preschool child develops oral and
narrative skills?
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4 An emergent reader has a good vocabulary. How does the child acquire
this vocabulary?
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5 What is shared reading? How does it influence a child‘s reading readiness?
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6 How does knowledge of phonemes and phonology help the child develop
language skills?
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11
 Language Acquisition
and Language 6.3 PARENTAL ROLE IN CHILD’S LITERACY
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years Studies have revealed that there is a positive relationship between family culture,
environment and a child‘s reading achievement. Early readers have been found to
have been brought up in literacy rich environments. Not only that, children who
grow up in an affectionate environment with members of the family interacting
with the child during most of its waking time, soon develops language and learns
to express ideas and feelings using language.

A pre-school child spends most of its time with parents or caregivers. It passes
through the stages of emergent literacy in different ways and at different ages.

During infancy the parents can promote early literacy using the following
methods:

 Introducing the child to the concept of books by providing cloth or card

board books which will not get spoiled by the child‘s handling. These
books would have a cover, pictures and some text which the parent can
read and talk about.
 Showing images to the infant while talking about them.
 Reading aloud books of rhymes especially the ones which have music,
rhyme and rhythm and repetitive text like a refrain of a song.
 Pointing to things in the environment and naming them for the child.
 Pointing to words in the environment like signs, directions and explaining
the meaning of the words.
 Singing to the child.
 Fine-tuned talk related to whatever they are doing together like eating,
bathing, playing or strolling in the neighbourhood.

When the child is a little older and has begun to toddle around and speak a few
sentences, the parents can do the following:

 Surrounding the child with large picture books, pop-up books, magazines
and games.
 Reading aloud simple stories with one central character and a simple plot.
 Answering the child‘s queries about things around, events in the stories or
about print in the environment. Listening to and talking with the child to
promote language development.
 Sharing and exploring the reading materials with children. Encouraging
children to retell stories.
 Looking at labels on food boxes, tins or packets and encouraging them to
watch and discuss television shows.
 Encouraging a child to write by giving crayons, writing material, pencils
or markers and drawing and writing with the child.
 Encouraging children to draw pictures or ‗write‘ about (mainly scribbles)
the stories they have heard.
 Presenting to the child a role-model by taking time to read and write.
 Visiting books stores and libraries with children. Borrowing books on
their behalf.
 Help to develop a phonological and phonemic awareness through rhymes,
play upon sounds and fun with sounds.

Basically parents who are sensitive to the need for reading and writing and who
make every effort to provide the child with books and colourful material that is
12 attractive and spend time reading and talking about the stories, things or objects,
create a positive attitude amongst their children towards print and reading. In Classroom Language
addition, an affectionate environment at home develops in the child a self and Literacy
confidence that allows it to experiment and learn new things.

6.4 TEACHER’S ROLE IN DEVELOPING

LITERACY
The teacher must be familiar with the concept of emergent literacy so that he or
she can identify the learner‘s specific needs and ascertain the level of literacy
with which a child enters school. The teacher can then plan intervention activities
to improve the child‘s literacy.

In general, the pre-school being an extension of home, the teacher can simulate
the literacy-rich environment of home by surrounding the children with different
kinds of print material, lot of pictures and colourful print material on the walls of
the classroom and by reading aloud to the children as often as possible. The other
things a teacher can do are:

 Organize fun activities that do not require memorization.

 Fun activities to enhance the children‘s awareness of sounds with rhymes,
word play (sound segmentation, sound substitution and sound deletions)
and chants like pat-tap, pat-mat-fat, fat-mat-pat, belt-bell, floor-flow,
train-tray.
 Singing of rhymes especially that include word play and repetition like
the rhyme ‗The wheels of the bus go round, round and round/The wipers
of the bus go swish, swish, swish‘ or ‗Five little monkeys jumping on the
bed/ Four little monkeys and so on.
 Encourage interaction amongst the children.
 Organize activities that allow the children to experiment with language.
For example: Meera loves apples/oranges/cats/ bags (substituting words),
Mummy eats/cooks/buys/ likes peas etc.
 Finger play with sand and clay.
 Reading aloud to the children and encouraging them to retell the stories
 Discussions on stories, the plot and the characters.
 Using riddles, chants and nursery rhymes.
 Talking about words so that children understand that words are used to
express ideas.

The other things a teacher can do is to label the objects in the classroom, put up a
list of the students‘ names on the wall and the significant dates including the
birthdays of the students.

While selecting literature for their classes, teachers can ensure that the following
elements are present in the stories, poems, magazines or rhymes:

 Predictability in the form of repetitive phrases

 Contextual support in the form of pictures and description of situation
 Presence of high frequency words
 Presence of decodable words (with one letter –one sound association) like
pin, tip, pill, lip

Teachers can organize word –play activities, letter activities, help the children
explore the books and focus attention on the role of letters in reading and writing.
Children should also be exposed to varied forms of literature like stories, poems,
simple expository texts on science, etc. 13
 Language Acquisition
and Language
6.5 INTERVENTIONS FOR CHILDREN WITH
Learning: Pre-School INADEQUATE LITERACY
and Early Years

Children at risk

A teacher can look for certain symptoms that indicate that a child is at risk in the
acquisition of literacy skills. Having ascertained the needs of the child, the
teacher can use the relevant methods discussed in the previous section to help
develop literacy.

Some of the indicators of inadequate literacy amongst children entering school

are the following:

 Low language and communication skills

 Inadequate phonemic awareness and poor phonological processing
 Low letter-knowledge
 Inability to do literacy tasks satisfactorily like naming pictures, colours of
objects in rapid succession
 Not being conscious of the presence of print in the environment
 Not being interested in books
 In the context of English, comes from a home where English has no
presence

This condition may be due to low socio-economic status wherein parents

themselves have inadequate language due to illiteracy and few experiences of
interacting with people who have fluency over the language. It is possible that the
child from such a home has low print awareness and may not have had desired
print experiences.

A child in the urban set up too, may come with inadequate literacy when the
child has been exclusively brought up by a semi –literate caregiver, employed for
the purpose by parents who are too busy to devote time to their child.

Children with developmental disorders, inadequate language skills from poor

homes with inadequate literacy environment are likely to have difficulty in
reading and writing. This may lead to learning problems as well. Such children
would display difficulty in learning and remembering names of letters including
those in their own names, understanding simple directions, low interest in nursery
rhymes or stories and low social skills.

Interventions

The teacher can try all the methods mentioned in the previous section but
especially for the children at risk the teacher can do the following:
 Focus on phonemic awareness through activities and games on a one-to-
one basis. For example, pat (p t), pan (p n), tall (t l) using oral
activities or through letter cards or plastic letters.
 Organize activities based on sound-symbol relationship like allowing the
learner to sound out the words by translating the letters into sound
(Letters: ch i n) (Sounds: tʃ ɪ n ).
 Organize word-play activities (like sound substitution, sound deletion and
phonemic segregation) as above.
 Read aloud to the child and engage the child in discussion through
questions and thus impress upon the child that words are used to express
14 ideas for example asking questions like, ‗How did Baby Bear say that he
 did not have any porridge to eat?‘ (Someone has eaten all my porridge) or Classroom Language
‗How did Gingerbread Man tell the animals that he did not want to be and Literacy
eaten?‘ (Run, run, as fast as you can. You can‘t catch me. I‘m
Gingerbread Man/Stop, stop, I want to eat you).
 Provide frequent and varied exposure to literature.
 Make the child conscious of the print in the environment.
 Listen to what the child has to say with attention and engage the child in
conversation to develop its communication skills and raise self-esteem.

In general the teacher could also take the following steps.

 Attract the child to the classroom through fun and doable activities.
 Build a strong school-home partnership and counsel the parents regularly,
especially semi-literate or illiterate parents.
 Ensure that abundant print material is available to the child in the school.
 Create opportunities for the child to speak, read and write through
interesting communicative tasks and making reading and writing material
readily available in the classroom.

In schools for the low socio economic group there may be less resources like
books and toys and the classroom walls may have less print, symbols and
pictures and print may not be integrated across the curriculum and words may be
taught within the confines of the subject and not linked to other subjects. If the
choice of books is low then the teacher too has limited books to read and provide
the children with the experiences related only to the few books available.

A teacher can improvise by using other print material easily available in the
environment like labels, advertisements, or text found on instructions, directions,
warnings etc. The teacher can improvise toys out of cardboard, paper (cut outs,
origami, finger puppets), cloth (puppets of all kinds) or out of wood or other
waste material.

Check your progress 2

1 Mention briefly what parents of a newborn child needs to do during its

formative years to ensure that their child faces no difficulty in reading,
writing and learning in the formal school.
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2 What are the symptoms that indicate that the child is likely to develop
difficulty in reading, writing and remembering?
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..
3 What are the interventions that a teacher can make to accelerate the
 Language Acquisition
and Language 3 What are the interventions that a teacher can make to accelerate the
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
emergent literacy of children in the early years of schooling?
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6.6 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND LISTENING

SKILL
All of the child's early language is oral rather than written. And it is the aural or
listening part that precedes the oral or speaking aspect. The development of
language comprehension for children proceeds in two directions simultaneously.
One direction is the development of comprehension of whole situations or events
such as "bed-time", "meal-time" and so on. The child learns to understand the
meaning of these situations and how language functions in them. The other
direction is the development of comprehension of individual sounds and then
words and eventually phrases.

Learning to listen in our first language requires considerable cognitive

development and constant attention to social and linguistic inputs over a period
of several years. Children are treated in a special manner by those around them in
order to allow them to become involved gradually in family activities and other
social events. In this process, children receive a special kind of language input
which helps them acquire their language. In comparison, learning to listen in a
second language is relatively more difficult. The primary difficulty is
developmental. We all learned our first language in order to be able to bring
about meaning and order in the world around us, as well as, to express and
comprehend new ideas and relationships. For example, we learned to understand
the word cow about the same time as we learnt the basic concept of a cow (that it
has four legs, it moves, it belongs to a group called ‗animals‘). Once we have
learned the basic objects and concepts and have associated them with words we
have acquired one of the principle motives to learn language i.e. self expression.
Since second language learning generally takes place at a later stage of
development it is less closely linked to cognitive and social development of the
child. Hence, the primary motive to learn the language i.e. self expression, is
missing, as the first language already provides the vehicle through which the
child can express herself/himself. This makes the task of the teacher of a second
language more challenging. It is important to relate the teaching of the second
language to some real motives so that a child would have to learn it.

As children we received ‗caretaker‘ language, which simplified words and

sounds so that they catered directly to our own learning capabilities and interests.
This language allowed us to use on-going opportunities to develop our listening
ability. Second language learners; seldom experience this same access to rich and
understandable inputs. As a result, they are deprived of a necessary condition for
full language acquisition namely a suitable social environment.

16
When speaking, it is the child herself who selects the language that is used. To Classroom Language
some extent, therefore, she can compensate for deficiencies in her repertoire, and Literacy
through communicative strategies, such as using paraphrase or simplifying her
message when speaking. However, she cannot normally exercise any control over
the language that is directed by others to her. She must be prepared to extract
meanings, from whatever language is directed at her. It is therefore not enough
that she should merely be able to understand the same range of language that she
can speak. Her receptive repertoire, (i.e. the language she is able to receive and
understand) has to be matched against the productive repertoire of the native
speakers (i.e. the language produced by another speaker and directed at her). She
will need to understand this language. In addition, the child must be prepared to
cope with a wide range of situational and performance factors which are outside
her control, such as noise, distractions, variations in accents, body movements
and so on.

Listening has often been called a passive skill. However, recent linguists claim
this to be misleading (Littlewood 1991) because listening demands active
involvement from the hearer. In order to reconstruct the message that the speaker
intends, the hearer must actively contribute. It is only by applying her knowledge
of the language that a child can divide the continuous stream of sounds that she
hears, into meaningful units. Further by relating these to her earlier language
experiences, the child is able to find a suitable meaning. In fact a majority of
utterances that we hear in daily life could be conceived as carrying different
meanings in different circumstances and it is only because the child is actively
involved in the communication process that she is able to relate them to a single
appropriate meaning. A child therefore cannot get meaning or understanding by
listening to ideas that are unrelated to her intellectual or cultural experience.

Since listening is such an important language and communication skill, it is

essential for language learners to be skilled in how to listen, why to listen, when
to listen and what and whom to listen. We shall attempt to look briefly at all these
aspects of listening.

Component Skills for Listening

In second language instruction for children or adults, the consistent and
systematic use of listening practice, through the use of tapes and oral interaction,
by itself, constitutes a holistic approach to language teaching. Linguists have
however, also taken a more analytical view of the kinds of listening skills that
learners need to develop, (Michael Rost, 1994). Some of the important
component skills for listening are:

 discriminating between sounds (auditory perception)

 recognizing words
 identifying stressed words and groupings of words
 identifying functions (such as greetings, apologies, commands, questions)
in a conversation
 connecting linguistic cues to paralinguistic cues (intonation and stress) as
well as to non-linguistic cues (gestures and relevant objects in the
situation) in order to construct meaning
 using background knowledge (what we already know about the content
and form) and the context (what has already been said) to predict and then
to confirm meaning.
 recalling important words, topics and ideas
 giving appropriate feedback to the speaker
 reformulating what the speaker has said 17
 Language Acquisition Successful listening involves an integration of these component skills. The
and Language integration of these skills constitutes a persons' listening ability. The child needs
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
to develop the skills of coping with a wide range of situational and performance
factors which are outside her control. For example:

- The child will need to understand speech in situations where

communication is made difficult by physical factors such as background
noise, distance, etc.
- The child must become accustomed to speeches which is not perfectly
planned, but contains the false starts, hesitations and so on which
characterize most everyday speech.
- The child will need to understand different accents, especially regional
variations in pronunciation, as well as variations in intonations.
- There are so many sounds around us that children need to develop the
skills of becoming selective in their listening and only hear that which is
important and relevant to arriving at a meaning. Children also need to
know how to listen.
- Depending on the situation, listening can be intensive i.e. the child is
required to be highly attentive. Normally, the child can spread his
attention over the entire spoken matter.

Check your progress 3

1 How can one become a good listener?

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Teaching Listening Skills in the Primary School

An approach to developing listening is to incorporate a variety of listening based
exercises into different areas of the curriculum. The reasoning behind this
approach is that such activities integrated into the curriculum will enhance the
children‘s 'oracy' i.e. listening and speaking as an additional tool for acquiring
new concepts.

For younger children, listening exercises would include word games and rhymes
to develop auditory discrimination, clapping in rhythm to poems and songs to
develop auditory memory, repeating poems and songs to develop aural
vocabulary and instruction following games, more complex games and activities
can be used to develop pupils' attention. Many primary school teachers will be
familiar with the following games: the telephone game (whispering a message
along a row of children to see if it is heard correctly), direction games (following
directions to walk around the room blindfolded, using only verbal instructions),
'noise story' (listening to taped sound effects and environmental sounds and
writing down a story, or sketching a cartoon, that includes these sounds).

For slightly older children more structured listening comprehension activities are
appropriate, using short stories, taped talks, documentaries, etc. In order to help
pupils develop their listening skills when using these kinds of inputs, the teacher
18 needs to help them focus on key information as they listen: listening for main
ideas, for important details, for sequence of events. Most people will be able to Classroom Language
develop listening skills if they are given consistent opportunities to listen which and Literacy
challenge them appropriately. However many will continue to experience
difficulties and two types of problems have been identified that are most resistant
to instruction.

1 Overuse of preferred information: This refers to the observation that

many pupils have trouble in listening comprehension because they tend to
ignore important information and rely excessively on facts that appeal to
them. Their attention has to be consciously drawn to other relevant facts.

2 Lack of comprehension monitoring: Poor listeners tend to understand

narratives, descriptions and explanations one fact at a time, without being
able to evaluate the facts or see inconsistencies in the facts. Children need
to be given several such tasks, initially as reading tasks, where the child's
eyes can move back and forth to detect inconsistencies. Later similar
tasks can be given as listening tasks. The stories they have heard, the
places they have visited, the home environment, the programmes they
have been listening to on television all provide the backdrop against
which they are able to view and give meaning to the various sounds,
verbal as well as nonverbal. The teacher needs to specifically develop
tasks which will help children to improve some particular aspects of their
listening. Efficient, active, attentive listening needs to be taught at all
grade levels.

While teaching children to listen, they need to:

1 clearly understand what it is that they are trying to learn.

2 become aware of their ability to listen.
3 have opportunities to discover that they can improve their listening
ability.
4 have opportunities for many kinds of listening experiences – voices of
men and women reading and speaking many kinds of material; music,
sounds in the environment, etc.

Children talk and listen better in informal settings rather than in formal,
impersonal settings. Getting children to group themselves, in a convenient way is
one effective way in which this may be done. The duration of the listening
activity needs to be carefully planned. The length of time for which children can
attend to any listening activity depends in part upon the interest span and amount
of time children of a given age can remain physically inactive. To stimulate
attentive listening, children need to be motivated. Interest can be created through
a range of post-listening activities which allow children to give personal
expression to what they hear – by asking questions, dramatisations, or expressing
their ideas with paper, paint and clay.

Appropriate lessons are needed to teach listening skills before beginning a story.
The teacher might say, "When I finish the story, let‘s see if you know what
happened to the rasgullas?" Or she may stop occasionally to ask questions that
test attentiveness, such as "why did the mangoes fall off the tree?" Opportunities
to talk over what they listened to or to repeat important points increase the
retention of material and give purpose to listening.

The Teacher's Role

The teacher who values good listening takes time to really listen to children.
Listening is an area where the student and the teacher have a real opportunity to 19
 Language Acquisition grow and to change together. She avoids endless repetition of directions by
and Language challenging children to listen carefully. If additional clarification is required, the
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
children can be allowed to help each other. New topics, instructions and activities
are carefully planned to correlate with the child's attention span. They should not
become tedious, boring or overwhelming. Variety adds interest, renewed
enthusiasm and better listening opportunities in the classroom.

Every school day is full of opportunities for the teacher to reward good listening
behaviours. Sincere statements to the class at appropriate times might include.

- I appreciate how you're looking at me to show that you're listening.

- I can tell by your answers that you're listening carefully for main ideas.
- I see that you stopped what you were doing to be ready for these
directions.

Individual statements of appreciation and observation are always prized by

children. Honest, non-judgemental, positive feedback is a reward highly valued
by students. This kind of comment is quite different from empty praise. It
specifically lets students know what the teacher values in the task or behaviour.
Children will often follow the teacher's example by commenting on good
listening by their peers.

Check your progress 4

1 What is the role of the school in developing listening skills?

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6.7 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND SPEAKING

SKILL
The importance of developing oral skills in a language classroom cannot be
undervalued. Speech allows the user to express ideas without getting bogged
down by the mechanics of their usage. It is therefore much more accessible to a
second language learner than writing. Errors in language usage are overcome
with greater ease in spoken language. However it may be more threatening to a
new learner than written language, as the learner may feel exposed and
vulnerable, particularly if faced by a large group. To develop fluency in oral
expression it is essential to ensure a non- threatening environment. Children are
very sensitive to ridicule or being laughed at by their peers. It is important to
spend time in the beginning to discuss and generate rules with the children, to
ensure a suitable classroom climate in which children are not afraid to make
mistakes. Children need to know how to learn from their mistakes, and treat
mistakes as a natural part of the learning process. Learning a second language to
the extent that it can be used effectively is a difficult process unless it is learned
in ordinary social contact as the first language was learned. In general, the
difficulty increases with the degree of isolation of the learners from natural
contacts with those who use the language well. When the English- speaking child
20 first comes to school, she has a mastery of the language structure in English that
sometimes proves to be difficult for the child who speaks another language to Classroom Language
attain for years to come. Learning a second language does not mean that the child and Literacy
must give up her/his own language and culture, but rather that s/he must be so
educated that s/he will be able to operate in English when the situation demands
English, and in her/his own language when the situation demands the use of
her/his own language. This is the real challenge for the teacher. It is a well known
fact that the closer one comes to teaching young children a second language in
the manner in which they acquired their first language, the faster and more
permanent the learning will be.

The young child goes through two phases in learning to speak: The first stage is
the passive stage in which the child comes to understand much of what is said to
her but makes little use of the language herself; the second stage is an active
stage in which the child begins to use words and word groups. So by listening to
language the toddler learns language and through language, about the world she
lives in. By the time the child comes to school her language patterns are largely
set in her native language. She has already learned to use the sound system,
grammar, and vocabulary which is characteristic of her home and
neighbourhood. In general, research in language development indicates that a
supportive, non-threatening environment, which provides for vocabulary growth
and a variety of experiences in the formative years, may make the difference
between a child who is able to do school work and one who is unable to do so. It
is in the early years the children meet the challenge of knowing who they are in
relation to people outside the confines of the home and family. They build their
strategies of rejection, of acceptance, of domination, of submission, and of
leading, of following, of compromising.

Creating opportunities for using the spoken language within and

out of the classroom
The possibilities for using spoken language in the classroom are immense. There
are opportunities for spontaneous, unplanned discussions, debates, verbal
sharing, and recitation. Often informal talk between students is very constructive
if it can be given a focus. We are looking at a few as an illustration of the kind of
activities that can be taken up. What is exceedingly important is that a child
should feel completely free and relaxed.

The classroom atmosphere must be completely non-threatening. Individual

differences in children must be respected. Children should not be compared with
each other. Shy children should not be forced to speak in front of the whole class.
They should be gently helped to participate. Teachers need to say, ―no talking‖, a
little discretely. Talk is the vehicle for a lot of learning in the classroom, and
blocking it can take away great opportunities for developing fluency in ideas,
speech and expression. To maintain a harmonious level of 'meaningful noise' the
answer is not the over used "no talking", but rather talking within very clearly
defined rules, developed with the children.

We shall now look at some ways in which activities for reinforcing the spoken
language skills can be taken up in the classroom.

a) Opportunities for vocabulary development.

Through sharing experiences children become acquainted with the art of talking
in front of a group. Spontaneous sharing brings to light the stage of the child's
speech and the areas where the child's vocabulary needs strengthening. Some
specific activities for vocabulary development are: 21
 Language Acquisition - through games, which help the child to acquire new concepts for
and Language commonly used words. For example games which emphasise different
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
parts of speech, such as adjectives, prepositions or adverbs. (put the ball
into the bag, under the bag and so on). Also playing games like word
building, categories, spotting the odd one, guessing games, miming and so
on.
- using synonyms for tired or overused words, as well as, for the purpose of
using more precise words.
- using synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, homographs, prefixes and
suffixes, to change the meanings of words.
- using word games such as "I spy with my little eye something beginning
with..." or making riddles.
- learning to figure out the meanings of words from the context.
- making friends with new words by locating their meanings and using
them whenever the opportunity arises. (Learning the skill of using a
dictionary).
- becoming aware of idiomatic expressions in common use, as well as,
figurative language such as similes, analogies and metaphors.
- using sense perception to create words. After a picnic or an outdoor
experience, sense perception can be highlighted by having children
describe how they felt when they touched the grass or trees, what were the
different smells they got, how the sound of the wind was different to that
of the water, the different things they saw. The teacher provides a verbal
prompt for the children to respond to.

b) Opportunity for creative speech

Some of the activities for developing creative speech are:

- through using literature for releasing children from the pressures of

colourless speech, as well as, for evoking creative responses. This could
include choral recitation, read aloud sessions, as well as, creative drama.
- through poetry. Poems evoke in children words and feelings that no other
language expression can. Nonsense rhymes, picturesque poems, story
poems provide plenty of opportunity for word play and improvisation.
Children enjoy reciting as well as improvising new poems based on
existing patterns or structures.
- sentence building games work well, where each child adds on a word till
the sentence is complete. Then a new sentence is started. Expanding
sentences or changing sentences by using opposites are some variations.
- providing familiar materials for descriptive words. Provide situations for
children to use exact and concrete words to describe an experience or
feeling. For example, bring different kinds of material to the classroom,
such as wood, a bottle top, a piece of silk, a brush, a cork. Pass the objects
around so that each child can see, touch and smell them. Encourage the
children to describe them in new and imaginative ways.
- build stories. Provide a starting sentence. Let each child in turn add on a
sentence, to make a whole story. Encourage children to be imaginative.
- help children to create images with words. Use phrases such as "dancing
leaves", "slinky crocodile", ''squirmy worm" to illustrate how words can
create images, and make meanings clear and interesting. Let each child
pick any noun and use, colourful descriptive words to create images.
- children enjoy creating sound words and nonsense words, such as SWISH
SWASH went the tail of the donkey, or SNIGGELDY SNAG went the
tired crocodile. This can be turned into a game. One child names an
22 animal and the other one gives a suitable sound word.
c) Opportunities for verbal communication and sharing Classroom Language
and Literacy
Encourage co-operative learning through planned group work or pair work.
Structure some activities so that children are required to discuss and share their
perceptions or views to be able to do an activity. It is much less threatening for
shy children to participate and speak up in small groups. Such activities help
children to express their ideas verbally. They also help children to learn to listen
to, and respect the views of other children. It is important to use authentic and
real life situations preferably from the children‘s daily life experiences. Children
identify with such activities and enter into real discussions. This greatly helps a
spontaneous flow of speech. For instance, the children may be asked to form
pairs and come up with three ideas for making their classroom interesting. Later
the ideas could be pooled together and some of these ideas may actually be taken
up. A few more examples of the kind of activities that could be taken in groups or
pairs are:

- problem solving or working on puzzles, which requires the children to

discuss with each other.
- finding each others‘ preferences on some particular topic.
- discussing likes and dislikes and coming to a consensus on some topic.
- teaching each other.
- finding information about each other, based on a format.
- working together on creating a story, poem or play.
- group recitation.
- memorising.
- giving and following directions.
- improvisations and role plays based on some clues or stimulus.
- question/answer sessions based on a reading text, a project or group
experience.
- talk sessions based on sharing a book or an experience.
- show and tell sessions - the children in turn bring something to show and
talk about.
- informal talk sessions.

Schedule some time each day or each week as 'informal talk time'. Throughout
the week build up possible topics, keep track of questions or problems that arise
during the school day. Use these to generate discussions. Encourage children to
talk about their experiences. Encourage others to listen and ask questions.

d) Opportunity for improving articulation

Exposure to the spoken language helps children to improve their articulation.

Some areas that need special focus are listed below:

- hearing the difference between a consonant sound made correctly and

incorrectly. Use jingles, stories and rhymes to illustrate the sounds made
correctly and incorrectly.
- identifying particular consonants in words and in isolation. Give the
children many chances to hear the sounds of letters that are being
mispronounced - in isolation and in words. Sounds which cause the most
difficulty are - th, s, sh, r, 1.
- identifying letter sounds in initial, medial and final positions. Test whether
the child can use consonants and vowels in the three positions. Let each
child select an object for consonants in the initial, medial and final
positions.
23
 Language Acquisition - distinguishing between sounds often confused. For example s-z, th-s, th-f,
and Language w-r, 1- r, m-n, p-b. Use games, rhymes and songs for practising these, and
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
reinforcing their correct forms.
- developing rhythm. Use choral speaking and group recitation of poetry as
rhythm setting in speaking and in helping children to learn timing and
coordination. To aid in improving enunciation and voice, tie speech into
rhythm and dramatic play.
- finding methods which increase speech fluency. See if different ways of
delivery, particularly with formal speech increase the level of fluency.
Experiment with different methods of reporting such as a speech, informal
chat sessions, interview, etc.
- using intonations to suit characterisations. Locate in the dialogue of a story
a short speech by one of the characters which could be misunderstood
unless correct voice intonations were used. Ask the children to listen to and
choose which one of the ways fits the character.
- using intonations to suit meaning. Find out if the children can show varied
meanings of the same word by changing the intonation, posture and
gesture.

Check your progress 5

List a few ways in which spoken language skills can be developed in the
language classroom.
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The Role of the Teacher

The teacher needs to realise that helping students master oral skills brings the
classroom closer to the real world. We use these skills everyday - at home, at
work, at school. Oral language patterns have been shown by research to be an
important base for reading. It is important that the teacher:

- realises the relevance and importance of activities which enhance oral skills
and translate this realisation into actual classroom practice. Thus every
classroom should provide numerous opportunities for oral language
practice through discussion, reporting, and question and answer sessions.

- consciously builds in time slots for oral activities. These need to be

organised keeping in mind the particular requirements of each class, and
the learning styles of most learners.

- establishes a non-threatening and congenial classroom environment. This

has been discussed in detail earlier.

24
- ensures workable noise levels, therefore, it is vital to set very clear rules Classroom Language
and limits. and Literacy

- helps the children to listen to each other and appreciate the views of others
even if they are completely contrary to one's own beliefs.

- be very sensitive to the classroom dynamics and if need be provide extra

support to the shy, insecure child. Try and avoid opportunities at which
such children can be belittled. Draw them out very gradually, in the
beginning letting them participate in small groups, and slowly as their
confidence builds up, drawing them into the larger group. At the same time
try and ensure active involvement of all the children.

- at the end of each activity, discusses (as a class) the experience of working
on the activity.

- always uses a positive approach when evaluating students' work. Talk

about the good points first. Talk about the child's areas of strengths and
areas that require strengthening, rather than areas of weaknesses. This
approach shifts the focus from trying to find errors, to finding ways of
improving. The thrust becomes more positive. In fact it is a good idea to
allow each child to compete with her own earlier performance. Children
may actually be asked to keep records of their performances (such as
graphs) and see their own progress. The visual impact of such an exercise
helps to motivate children to do better each time. They love to see their
graphs move up.

- never misses an opportunity to praise real improvement or any creative

work. Encouragement goes a long way in creating the desire to learn and
improve. At the same time be very careful not-to compare children. Value
each child's work for itself.

- when monitoring individual or group work makes specific suggestions for

improvement.

- listens carefully and provides support or reinforcement as and when

needed.

- gives the students plenty of opportunity to practise.

6.8 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND READING

SKILL
Since language acquisition seems natural, we tend to think that the other skills
like reading and writing will also come naturally to the child. We think that if one
can speak a language then automatically one can read and write well in that
language. But this is not so. Although reading and writing deal with the same
language that is used in speech, there are other dimensions which require
perceptions and strategies quite different from those associated with speech.
Being aware of these differences will help us in realising what characterises the
reading activity and thereby be conscious of those features which enable us to
acquire the skill of reading efficiently.

Reading acquisition is different from language acquisition in three ways. First,

the reader must get accustomed to the idea that print is language, that it is not 25
 Language Acquisition marks on the paper. To do so, the reader must transform the printed code into
and Language language. Second, while the motivation for language acquisition is natural, it is
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
not so as far as reading is concerned. It depends on how children have become
familiar with print i.e., whether they can decipher the marks on paper correctly,
without confusing the different shapes of these signs. But more importantly,
motivation to read depends on the functions of the printed word in the child's
personal, social and academic interests. Third, the interaction between speaker
and hearer always occurs in an actual situation in which the non-verbal actions of
the speaker and the immediate surroundings assist in making any necessary
clarification of the utterances. But in reading there are no such extra linguistic
cues to make meaning clearer to the reader. Moreover, in reading, unlike speech,
it is always assumed that any lack of understanding is the problem of the reader
and not the writer.

Initial experiences with reading should be based on children's desire to imagine,

to know things and to explore the world. The simplest method to acquaint
children with reading, its uses and pleasures, is by reading to them and talking to
them about books. The next step is to display the print being read so that children
can see it and hear it transformed into sound. As the children's overt knowledge
of the language grows and their ability to read words quickly increases, then they
will want to read by themselves, and choose what interests them. But, to reach
this stage, the opportunity must be there. Teachers should provide such
opportunities and help children to learn to use printed material for academic,
social and personal purposes. Very often teachers tend to concentrate on the
academic side of reading in the classroom. This creates the impression that
reading is something that is done only in the classroom. Instead children should
be made to realise that reading is closely linked to one's life and that a realistic
approach to reading will help them to develop a positive outlook in life.

Check your progress 6

How does reading acquisition differ from language acquisition?

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Schooling and Reading Development

Now-a-days there is a great emphasis placed on raising the literacy standards in

various countries. Consequently, society's views of schooling and reading
instructions have changed and reading has become the most valued characteristic
of literacy. Parents at almost all levels of society expect their children to be
taught to read. In fact, demonstration of one's reading ability is often considered
as a sign of one's intelligence and education. This has even led to the acceptance
of a rapid, mechanical reading of the marks on paper without any sign of
26 comprehension. But today the standard for functional literacy must include
comprehension. Functional literacy has come to mean the ability to read common Classroom Language
texts such as newspapers and manuals and show evidence of their comprehension and Literacy
of these texts. So teachers should realize that the primary goal of teaching
reading is to help the learners how to get meaning out of printed material at every
stage of reading comprehension.

Reading development refers to changes in the reading performance and how

these changes relate to the child's cognitive growth involving the acquisition,
organisation and restructuring of knowledge. Children's knowledge of the world,
relationships and the manner in which they acquire and use this knowledge has
an effect on their reading performance. Language growth refers to a child's
knowledge of his or her native language, language uses and language functions.
There is a definite link between language growth and reading. This is clear from
the studies of deaf children. Deaf children acquire language at a considerably
slower rate than the children who can hear. It is also found that their reading
growth too is slower than and qualitatively different from that of the normal
children.

Reading instructions must take into consideration the stages of a child's cognitive
and language growth. First, if there is a big gap between the reading tasks which
elementary school children have to perform and their cognitive or language
growth, the reading comprehension is diminished. Second, individual children in
the same class may vary in their cognitive and language growth. Owing to these
factors, the major challenges of teaching reading are (1) to design and implement
a programme that will suit the cognitive and language growth of the average
child and ensure that reading comprehension is developed steadily and (2) to find
out effective alternative methods that meet the needs of children whose reading
capacities vary from that of the average child.

When a child begins to read, a number of skills are involved. The first of these is
the ability to recognize stylised shapes, ink marks on the page – lines, dots,
curves and squares appear similar and different and so the child begins to visually
discriminate, sort and classify. As reading develops as a skill, this aspect
becomes progressively mechanical.

The student then moves on to the next general skill, which is the ability to co-
relate the patterns in ink on the paper with language. Language is an essential
part of reading. The relation between the patterns on paper and the linguistic
elements of the language will depend on the learner and stage that s/he is in.
These elements may be just ―letters of the alphabet‖, ―words‖, and ―groups of
words‖, ―sentences‖, ―phrases‖ and so on. The maturity of the learner will
determine the reading competency. Children learn by the phonic method where
words are broken down into phonetic symbols and also by the ‗look and say‘
method where there is constant exposure to the word and perhaps the object it
represents.

The next stage is the purely intellectual stage where the learner knows the sound,
the word and is able to symbolize the meanings of the word.

Skilled readers do not find it necessary to distinguish every letter during reading,
or even every word during reading.

―Reading at its proficient best is a smooth, rapid guessing game in which the
reader samples from available language cues, using the least amount of available
information to achieve this…….‖ (Goodman 1970. p.25).
27
 Language Acquisition Try to read this sentence:
and Language
Learning: Pre-School A m– – was walk– – – d– –n th– s– – – – t, car– –ing a gr– –n b –g.
and Early Years
Even though more than half the letters are missing, you could probably read the
sentence without difficulty, and even guess the last word without the help of any
letters. You may also have noticed that as soon as you guessed the second word,
it helped you to guess the whole of the first part of the sentence. This example is
only an isolated sentence. If you are reading connected sentences in a text, each
sentence helps you to guess what the next one will be, and so on through the
whole text.

Reading is thus an active process. When we read, we do not merely sit as passive
receivers of the text. We also draw on our own knowledge of the world and of the
language to help us guess what the text will say next.

Good readers interact with the texts that they read. They have personal
expectations about what they want to get out of a text, and they bring those
expectations to bear on what they read. They actually create meaning by
constructing, or generating relationships between what they read and what they
already know. In generating these meanings, they draw on their prior knowledge
of and beliefs about the subject – their ―World Knowledge‖, so to speak, that
relates to the subject. Readers have networks of prior understanding about a
topic, what theorists call schema. For example, if you are going to teach young
children about bees, you would ask them questions like ‗Have you tasted honey?‘
Is it sweet or bitter?‘ ‗Have you seen a hive?‘ and so on. After you have
‗appealed‘ to what they know, you will turn to the ‗new‘ information on the
Queen bee and the Worker bees.

Early Stages in Developing the Reading Skills

In order to recognize words, here are some of the important steps that one needs
to take as a teacher.

 Ensure varied language development by providing students with a variety

of experiences. Visits to market places, shopping centres, parks, etc. and
talking about it, helps language growth by increasing vocabulary content.
 Develop sight vocabulary in the early stage by getting children to name objects.
 Through games and activities let children develop the response to sight
words almost automatically.
 Opportunities for visual discrimination and perception must be
deliberately provided so that children will distinguish differences. You
may begin with ―Spot the difference‖ type of tasks which involve
pictures. Later, ask the children to distinguish between letters of the
alphabet.
 Provide visual clues to help children acquire sight words.
 Give opportunities to discriminate between sounds by listening carefully.
 Verbal instructions given with care help language development.
 Provide plenty of practice in auditory perception and discrimination.
 Help children to establish a left to right attack in new words.
 Identification through a visual analysis must precede the blending of parts
of a word.
 Use rhymes and games to bring about phonic analysis.
 Help children as they progress to break words into roots, prefixes and
suffixes.
28  Encourage the child to use sentences and to be involved in conversation.
Natural Way of Helping Children to Read Classroom Language
and Literacy
The use of print and text should be a daily experience in the classroom. The
following activities suggest natural ways to accomplish this goal:

1 Writing daily messages to the class on the chalkboard.

2 Providing a class mailbox for the children to send pictures and notes to
the teacher and to each other.
3 Generating sight vocabulary cards by labelling objects in the room,
selecting words based on films, holidays, festivals etc.
4 Providing a large wall chart or calendar to pin notes on, to write birthday
names, special holidays etc.
5 Providing space to display language experience stories.

Reading daily to children is absolutely necessary and this can be done through
the ―shared book experience‖. In this approach the teacher creates a large sized
reproduction of the favourite books read by children. The children listen and
follow the word-to-print relationships as the teacher reads the text aloud. It
exposes them to several text cues on a whole group basis. Children can also
illustrate the reproductions and thus move from print to talk to pictures. This
initiates them to comprehension instruction.

Any form of beginning reading programme should respect what children already
know, in various degrees about language, print and reading. It should allow for
their natural curiosity and interest in the new, and should encourage them to
explore the various dimensions of print and text. For young children the onset of
reading is by its very nature, a fascinating journey from the meaning they possess
through their experiences and their spoken language, to deciphering print and the
author‘s meanings. The beginning reading programme should help the children to
sustain this fascination with reading as a meaningful activity.

6.9 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AND WRITING

SKILL
Once a child has begun to communicate orally in a language, writing can be
introduced.

Writing is the physical expression of what we think. The close relationship

between writing and thinking makes writing valuable. As young children
struggle with what to put down next, or how to put it down on paper, they often
discover a new way of expressing an idea. Sometimes they rethink the idea
itself. Thus writing is closely related to the inner processes within a child‘s mind
i.e. the internal manipulation of external experiences. In addition to this, writing
reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that we have been
teaching our children.

Most writing by young children can be considered as encoded speech i.e. residual
images of experiences are stored within a child‘s mind and are transformed into
inner speech. This is then transliterated into a graphic form which is writing.
Initially children communicate their experiences and ideas in a variety of ways
such as through talking, through actions or through drawings. Writing which is a
sophisticated, abstract and complex symbol system gradually gains importance as
the child grows older.
29
 Language Acquisition As with most forms of expression, writing will not flourish, unless it gives the
and Language child some form of satisfaction. The more important and long lasting satisfaction
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
comes from the need to communicate to somebody. Therefore, any meaningful
writing activity comes from a sense of wanting to convey something to a real
audience. For writing to flourish in the classroom there should be plenty of
opportunities for communication in a naturalistic, non-threatening way.

It is by creating a natural language environment in which children are

enthusiastically experimenting with written language that we can help children
become confident and successful writers. We shall now look at how a teacher
can provide this environment.

Special Needs of Second Language Learners

Initially bilingual children seem to acquire two sets of lexical items (one of their
first language, and the other of their second language), and one syntactic system.
This has been noticed more so in cases where the second language is being
developed under natural conditions. For children who do not have support in the
second language at home, acquiring functional competency in the second
language may not be so easy. This situation gets aggravated by the fact that
‗English‘ is given an added social value, while the native language of some of the
children may be considered socially backward, particularly in the case of children
using non-standard languages or dialects. The teachers‘ own attitude towards
such children is of great importance. Children need to feel proud of their own
language and cultural backgrounds. This comes from a feeling of acceptance.
Until the child feels confident in the second language, s/he is going to keep
drawing support from her/his mother tongue. Since we function in multicultural
classrooms, it is a challenge to us teachers, to make sure that all the children in
the class feel confident to use their mother tongues, whenever the need arises.
Not only does this enrich the class environment, but it also gives the children a
strong foundation from which to launch into the second language.

The teacher also needs to be sensitive to possible areas of mismatch between the
child‘s own language and the second language. S/he should look out for areas of
confusion and provide special formal instruction in these areas. For example,
first language (Mother tongue) interference often leads to the incorrect placement
of the verb in a sentence for children who come from a Hindi speaking
background. The teacher in this case should give the children additional practice
to overcome this problem.

If the writing process is to develop naturally, then it is important to allow some

mother-tongue usage until such times as when a child has enough mastery over
the second language to not require the mother tongue. If we do not allow
children to use the mother tongue we might completely block the children from
being able to express themselves.

Creating a Natural Learning Environment

If we look at second language learning as it occurs in the natural environment, it
becomes clear that the processes for the development of communication abilities
develop, so long as the environment provides the necessary stimuli and
experiences. The most important feature seems to be that the learner should need
to use the second language for communicative purposes. The teacher should try
and use all the opportunities that a classroom provides for real communication.
In this way the teacher utilizes the natural learning environment within the
30 classroom.
Given this general view it is important to realize that the natural language Classroom Language
environment allows children to explore a variety of forms of writing, with a and Literacy
variety of different purposes. Broadly these may be categorized into three major
categories:

Transactional forms: This is speaking/writing concerned with getting things

done. It involves giving information, instructions, notes, giving messages,
writing notices and other similar activities that attempt to advise, persuade or
inform others.

Expressive form: This is language that is close to the self, used to reveal the
nature of the person. It is a free flow of ideas and feelings.

Poetic form: Here the language used is fashioned in particular ways to make
patterns. Language in this form is used as an art medium.

Any contrived writing experiences for children, within a classroom should ensure
exposure to all three forms. The teacher should support them with suggestions of
suitable form, vocabulary or writing conventions.

A peep into most existing primary schools does not reveal an environment of the
kind described above. The classes appear to be very structured and teacher-
directed. Student talk and student interactions are minimal. ‗Being quiet and
listening to the teacher‘, create a climate of controlled order, in which a child is
not free to explore language – hence there is a minimal amount of meaningful use
of the language. Written work is limited to the text book and work book
exercises or structured compositions, letters or paragraph writing. For real
language learning to take place, it is essential to create a climate where children
feel free to use the language in its various forms in meaningful ways.

So far we have been discussing the need to create a non-threatening and

conducive atmosphere in the classroom, so that children feel free to express
themselves. We shall now look at some suggested guidelines for doing this.

Some Guidelines
i We need to build our writing programme and the classroom environment
around the child’s need to convey something to a recipient audience.
ii We need to understand the importance of experimentation and risk-
taking in the process of learning to write. In an environment where
children are not anxious about making mistakes, they explore the
language in various ways. Through invented spelling, imitations of adult
writings and their own inner drives, children step into unfamiliar language
areas. Their mistakes help a teacher to provide the formal instructions
they need.
iii We need to understand that children progress in different ways and at
different paces. Each child brings to her writings a rich background of
experience. Whether this experience is supported by a literate
background at home, or whether the child comes from an oral tradition
will influence the child‘s writing.
iv We need to support children’s experiments with the new language,
watching for conventions as they creep into their writing. Children must
feel comfortable exploring the written form of the second language. They
must relate to it and feel a sense of ownership about their writing, without
being afraid to make mistakes. It is through this that each learner
discovers the strategies that allow him/her to be an effective language
user. Every time a teacher sets a topic, asks for a particular rhetorical
form or expects accurate spelling and punctuations to take precedence 31
 Language Acquisition over meaning, she is not giving children the opportunity for experiencing
and Language and experimenting with the language.
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
v Children need to be gently led into the arena of writing in the second
language. Since most children are reluctant to take risks and experiment
with an unfamiliar language – the teacher designs writing activities which
begin within a structured framework. Gradually as the child acquires
competency over the lexical and syntactical structure of the second
language, more open-ended communicative activities are taken up. Use
of the mother tongue is also allowed with gradual insistence on second
language usage as the child becomes more confident.
vi We need to recognize the importance of having an audience. Children
need to write for a real audience – for themselves, for both younger and
older children, for adults they know and for some general unknown
audience as well.
vii We need to provide demonstrations of what is involved in being a
writer. In order to help children develop as writers, we need to share in
the writing process by being writers ourselves. By providing
demonstrations of writing in action, by being partners in the creating
process, we do more to help children figure out how to be writers than all
our correcting of their mistakes can ever hope to do.

6.9.1 Mechanics of Writing

Children start to learn about writing long before they go to school. They begin
by imitating the grown-ups around them. Early writing is simply expression; it is
the sheer joy of expressing in a new form. There is no real audience. This early
writing goes through the following stages:
- scribbling
- drawing
- approximate forms that resemble letters
- pretend writing (using letter – like forms and scribbles)

A little careful observation will show that the young child is awkward in his/her
hand movements in comparison with an older child or adult. The child‘s
movements are less steady, less accurate and less rapid. The young child needs
to go through experiences which enhance his/her finer finger movements, eye-
hand coordination and other skills which build up the base for the development of
later handwriting skills. This pre-writing stage is important because children
develop certain skills which assist the development of later writing skills. Many
of these need to be reinforced through activities in the primary years.

Features of Handwriting Development

When a child first puts a pen or pencil on paper, she begins the journey with a
highly conscious participation in the writing process. Slowly, with time and
experience, the shaping of letters into words and sentences becomes automatic.
Initially children move through the space on paper making letters one after the
other. This motion is called praxis.

Scientific studies have sought to describe the features of handwriting movement,

rather than advocate one method over another. They have, however, thrown
some light on the characteristics of efficient movement. Two features which
come into play are:

1 The amount of pressure exerted

32 2 The use of space.
Some Handwriting Conventions Classroom Language
and Literacy
In handwriting or penmanship instruction, the main concern is the legibility and
efficient production of written symbols. It is important that we develop the skill
of handwriting to the point where the very process of writing does not detract
from the thinking process of the writer. A child who has difficulty with the
mechanics of writing often avoids writing tasks. Some important writing
conventions that children need to follow are:

a) Letters formed correctly: It has been found that errors in the formation
of certain letters account for a large proportion of illegibility. These
letters are e, n, d, t, r, i, a, h and b. Special attention needs to be given to
see that all letters are correctly formed. The school needs to make a
decision on the formation of letters and see that there is consistency,
particularly letters such as f, z, x, g. It is important that all the teachers
form these letters in the same way.
b) Letter sizing: It is customary to teach large writing in class I, and to
reduce the size gradually in the following classes. The use of the four
lined copy with red and blue lines is recommended as it assists the
children in the formation of tall letters, small letters as well as letters that
touch the bottom line such as y or g.
c) Slant of letters: Letters should slant in the same direction.
d) Spacing between words: The most common errors in spacing are either
crowding of lines or crowding of words in a line. It is important to ensure
the right amount of space between words and between lines. Initially
children can be asked to leave one finger space between words.
e) Legibility: The first essential feature of good handwriting is legibility.
This depends upon the formation of individual letters, although words can
often be recognized even if some individual letters are not perfect. If,
however, wrongly formed letters are detected before they have become
habits, they can be easily corrected.
f) Spacing of letters within a word: Children need to appreciate the fact
that each letter needs to occupy a certain space within a word, so that the
word is a readable unit. Sometimes children crowd in a few letters and
give too much space to others. This is also connected to the fact that
there should be uniformity in the size of letters.
g) Alignment: Children need to be aware of writing along lines or between
lines. They need to also be able to appreciate the slant of each line in
relation to the page.

Spelling
Learning to spell is a developmental process. Like learning to speak it unfolds
over time. A typical view is to look at spelling as rote memorization with
spelling books and word lists to be assigned, tested and marked. Research
evidence has clearly indicated that children don‘t learn to spell by memorizing
word lists. It is a much more complex process. In order to be able to represent
language in a visual form with the use of graphic symbols i.e. letters of the
alphabet, a child needs to use the written language. The child needs to explore
the various patterns that form spelling in his/her mother tongue or second
language and develop an understanding of spelling in these languages. This can
only come about if children are actively involved in the process of learning a
language. This means children should feel free to experiment with form, format,
spelling and punctuation. They should make mistakes and learn to correct them
as a process of refinement. Expecting a child to produce exact, correct language
33
 Language Acquisition places a great pressure on him/her, and makes the writing tasks awesome and
and Language daunting.
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
Spelling is not considered a passive process. It is dynamic and complex.
Purposeful writing is considered to be an important key to learning to spell. As a
child engages in more and more meaningful writing activity s/he begins to invent
spelling. In order to invent spelling the child uses what s/he already knows. The
child thinks about words and generates new words. The child is actively
involved in the process of spelling.

Some Guidelines for Teaching Spelling

 Teach spelling as a part of the whole curriculum. Capitalize on

opportunities to have children write and spell in other situations than the
writing class i.e. in math or science lessons.

 Have children write frequently. Children invent and refine spelling using
the skills they acquire when they write. Spelling practice occurs through
free writing when children write labels, lists, stories, songs or recipes.
The important thing is to make the writing activity purposeful.

 Encourage children to invent spelling for words they may not have
learned to spell. Inventing spelling allows children to engage in thinking
about how a word sounds, and learning to transfer those sounds into
letters. As they progress with these skills they begin to include vowel
blends such as ea, ee, oa, ou and so on. They also begin to look at
consonant blends such as br, cl, st, etc., as well as diagraphs th, wh, ch, sh
etc., which represent a single sound. They begin to demonstrate their
acquired skills, of processing sounds in the words they write.

 De-emphasize correctness, memorization and writing mechanics. Adjust

your expectations for correctness to fit the child‘s level of development
and make allowances for inexperience and mistakes.

 Respond to children‘s writings in ways that help them discover more

about spelling. In your response build interest in words, make word study
fun, play spelling games, answer questions about spelling and teach
spelling skills. Help young writers develop a positive spelling
consciousness. Poor spellers need to be provided with a broad repertoire
of spelling strategies. Among these are:

- Being able to learn to sense when words are misspelled.

- Being able to use a beginner‘s dictionary.
- Making lists for high-frequency words that are often misspelled.
- Seeking adult help.
- Being able to use the context and meaning to determine the spelling.

The following practices create problems for poor spellers.

- Too many red marks and corrections.

- When help is not given in context i.e. attention is not given to the
context or subject matter of the written task, but only spelling is
corrected.
- When the child does not get enough opportunity to do meaningful
writing.
34
This approach towards spelling is based on the premise that spelling is for Classroom Language
writing. Children may achieve high scores on phonic inventories or weekly and Literacy
spelling test, but the ultimate test is what the child does within the writing
process. If a child writes daily, the teacher can concentrate on the content and
once or twice a week, on spelling. But if the child writes only once a week then
spelling becomes the teachers‘ primary focus. More time for writing gives the
teacher more time to help children take responsibility for their writing. Children
are helped to refine their first drafts. The first draft should be looked upon only
for its context. It‘s in the final draft that spelling need to be emphasized because
by then the child is eager to share her/his writing with an audience and has a high
stake in his/her writing.

It is important to make parents observe children move through the developmental

stages of invented spelling. They should understand that invented spelling do not
lead to the formation of bad spelling habits. When children encounter new
information about standard spelling, they readily modify their hypotheses and
have no difficulty in adopting standard spelling. Ultimately the speller is able to
use information from visual memory, as well as the knowledge of phonetic,
contextual and meaning relationships to determine the correct spelling of a word.
But the process takes time. Important foundations of learning to spell are set
with the use of invented spelling.

6.10 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have seen that the most significant years in a child‘s career in
reading, writing and learning are the pre-school and the primary school years, the
experiences of which decide whether the child will be a good reader or writer. In
a multicultural society like ours it is possible that the child who enters school
does not have the necessary skills of an emergent reader due to various reasons.
The teacher can here play the role of a surrogate parent and through exposure to a
literacy rich environment in the classroom help to develop the literacy skills of
the child. It may also be remembered that this kind of literacy does not begin and
end in one‘s childhood alone it continues throughout life. In this Unit, we have
given you insights into the process of teaching learning LSRW.

6.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check your progress 1

1 The emergent readers would have already acquired the following skills
when they come to school:
 developed oral language and narrative skills
 a good repertoire of vocabulary
 print awareness and print motivation
 phonological awareness and phonemic awareness
 ability to understand stories, think and discuss
 ability to appreciate print in the environment
 invented spelling
 number knowledge

2 Home or school environment which provides the opportunity to:

 look at and decipher print around the child
 look at books, magazines, pictures and talk about them
 handle books 35
 Language Acquisition  listen to stories, look at pictures and discuss them
and Language
 chant and sing
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years  use sounds of the language in different forms through different
activities
 listen and talk about various topics
 fun activities that make the child aware of the language

3 The different ways in which a preschool child develops oral and narrative
skills are:

 through daily conversation

 through observing and listening to adults talk about the things
around at home or outside home
 by listening and retelling of stories
 by talking about things in the environment
 by listening to fine-tuned talk of adults around
 by interacting and engaging with a caring environment

4 The child acquires this vocabulary when parents or caregivers:

 constantly talk to the child and use vocabulary related to the

situation, like day to day activities
 point to things in the environment, name them and talk about them
 point to pictures in the books while reading aloud
 read aloud from both story and non-fiction books
 point to words as they read aloud
 answer the child‘s questions
 use literature which has predictable text and repetition

5 When a parent or caregiver reads aloud from a large picture book (story
or non-fiction), pointing to words and pictures as he or she reads:

 child looks at the print and the pictures and tries to understand the
basic plot
 child discovers more concepts based on the story in repeated
readings
 child asks questions about the things, characters or situation and is
given logical answers
 child learns to handle a book and get concepts about print and the
flow of ideas
 child learns that words are used to represent ideas

6 The knowledge of phonemes and phonology help the child develop

language skills in the following ways:

 child learns that language is made up of words which represent

ideas and words in turn are made up of individual sounds which
are combined in different ways
 child understands the letter-sound relationship of his/her own
language
 child can identify sounds and successfully do sound play ( by
substituting sounds, adding sounds, deleting sounds and later
segmenting the sounds of the word)
36
  these skills are useful when the child has to decode the words Classroom Language
while reading. and Literacy
 phonological awareness facilitates reading

Check your progress 2

1 Parents of a newborn need to:

 engage in conversation.
 provide opportunity to listen to language.
 surround the child with picture books, games and toys.
 read aloud to the child and talk about the stories.
 point to words and pictures in the books and talk about them.
 engage the child in word play or songs involving word play,
rhymes and symbols.
 take the child outdoors and point to print in the environment and
talk about them.
 answer queries of the child with respect.

2 The symptoms that indicate that the child is likely to develop difficulty in
reading, writing and remembering could be:

 low motivation to read

 poor letter knowledge
 inability to play sound based games
 lack of interest in books and listening to stories
 poor social skills
 not conscious of the print in the environment

3 To accelerate the emergent literacy of children in the early years of

schooling the teacher can:

 make the class environment literacy-rich with various kinds of

literature
 put up print and pictures on the classroom walls
 engage the children in sound- letter games
 engage them in singing, chanting and finger play
 read aloud stories from books and hold discussion on the stories
 allow children to handle books
 guide and support the parents in providing literacy
 make the classroom an active and fun place to attract the child

Check your progress 3

1 There are times when it is difficult to be a good listener. A speaker may

be uninteresting, or the audience may be restless and noisy, making it
difficult to concentrate. The following guidelines can help one to become
a good listener:

 Sit comfortably, where you can clearly hear and see the speaker.
 Do not allow yourself to be distracted.
 Be clear about the purpose of your listening.
 Listen for the main idea first, and then for supporting ideas.
37
 Language Acquisition
and Language
Learning: Pre-School
and Early Years
 Think, and try and understand what the speaker is saying as you
listen.
 Don't interrupt. Jot down any questions to ask or to look up later.
 If it is a continuous stretch of speech, take down notes.

Check your progress 4

Since it is estimated that children spend at least 50 percent of classroom time

listening, it makes sense to devote more explicit, systematic attention to listening
as a learned skill. Educators have begun to feel that listening should be developed
in all school children since it is a vital means of learning. The first step in
developing listening ability in schools is, to recognise its importance and
pervasiveness in learning. Listening skills can be developed through increased
attention to the ways in which children participate orally and the ways in which
they understand new information that is presented. We also need to know how
they retain information and how they respond to speakers. These skills can be
developed systematically and consistently through school curricula that
emphasize the use of language from audio-visual media, as well as, through
structured speaking and listening tasks.

Check your progress 5

The classroom presents endless opportunities for developing spoken language

skills informally or through specially planned activities. Basically it is up to the
teacher to realise the importance of giving children the opportunity to listen and
to speak in the classroom. Once the teacher realises the importance of this, she
needs to use every opportunity that crops up. Some activities would need to be
carefully planned and integrated into the curriculum. These could be:

a) Opportunities for vocabulary development through games, quizzes,

follow- up activities after reading, etc.
b) Opportunities for creative speech such as dramatisation, improvisations,
discussions, reporting sessions, debates, story building, creating poems or
songs, recitations.

c) Opportunities for verbal communication through planned group work or

pair work. This may include activities such as puzzles, problem solving
exercises, discussions, sharing experiences, show and tell, informal
conversations, collecting information and so on.
d) Opportunities for improving articulation, intonation and enunciation.
These would mainly be in the form of intensive listening experiences in
which the child experiences and hears the speech patterns and stress
patterns in English and is given activities for practising these. These
activities could include controlled recitations or read aloud sessions, as
well as special activities to reinforce correct pronunciation of particular
consonants which are being mispronounced.

Check your progress 6

Reading acquisition is different from language acquisition in three ways. First,

the reader must get accustomed to the idea that print is language, that it is not
marks on the paper. To do so, the reader must transform the printed code into
language. Second, while the motivation for language acquisition is natural, it is
not so as far as reading is concerned. It depends on how children have become
familiar with print i.e., whether they can decipher the marks on paper correctly,
38 without confusing the different shapes of these signs. But more importantly,
motivation to read depends on the functions of the printed word in the child's Classroom Language
personal, social and academic interests. Third, the interaction between speaker and Literacy
and hearer always occurs in an actual situation in which the non-verbal actions of
the speaker and the immediate surroundings assist in making any necessary
clarification of the utterances. But in reading there are no such extralinguistic
cues to make meaning clearer to the reader. Moreover, in reading, unlike speech,
it is always assumed that any lack of understanding is the problem of the reader
and not the writer.

6.12 SUGGESTED READINGS

Cameron. 2001. Routines, Narratives and Discourse, Teaching Languages to
Young Learners, Cambridge University Press

Chomsky. 1971. "Write Now, Read Later." Childhood Education 47:296–299.

Clay. 1966. "Emergent Reading Behaviour" Ph.D. diss., University of Auckland,

New Zealand.

Mason, M. and Sinha, J. 2007. Technical Report No. 561. Emergent Literacy in
the Early Childhood Years: applying Vygotskian Model of Learning and
Development. University of Illinois

Mowat, M. 1999. Marie Clay’s Reading Recovery: A Critical Review. Thesis.

University of Manitoba

Roth, P. and Paul, R. Ann–Mari Pierotti. 2006. Let’s Talk. For People with
Special Communication Needs. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Teale, W. and Sulzby, E. eds. 1986. Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Some Internet Sites

http://stayathomeeducator.com/encouraging-emergent-literacy
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/emergent-literacy.htm
www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/reading/li100.htm

39