word concept of illiterates and low- literates: worlds apart? liesbeth onderdelinden...
TRANSCRIPT
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Word Concept of Illiterates and Low-literates:
Worlds Apart?
Liesbeth [email protected] University Nijmegen
The Netherlands
Sponsored by SNUF (Nijmegen University Fund)
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Word concept
• Awareness of the word as a linguistic unit demonstrated by the ability to isolate words in a stream of spoken language
Tests: - sentence segmentatione.g. Where is mother?
- listen to a story and repeat the last word when the narrator pauses
e.g. There is not enough food … anymore.
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Results of previous research among children
• Developmental progression (Karpova; Papandropoulou & Sinclair; Downing & Oliver; Fox & Routh; Edwards & Kirkpatrick)
• Children under 7 generally no clear word concept (Karpova; Holden & MacGinitie; Downing & Oliver; Ehri; Edwards & Kirkpatrick)
• Increase in metalinguistic knowledge around 7 or 8 years (Papandropoulou & Sinclair; Edwards & Kirkpatrick)
• Open class words (e.g. nouns and verbs) were better recognized as individual words than closed class words (e.g. prepositions and articles)
(Papandropoulou & Sinclair; Ehri; Holden & MacGinitie)
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Two studies among 4- and 5-year-old children compared
Karmiloff-Smith et al. (1996)
introduced an on-line task
Results:- 4-year-olds scored 75.3 %
correct- 5-year-olds scored 96.2 %
correct
Conclusion:
even young children of 4 and 5 years old are able to isolate words in a meaningful context
This study was replicated by Kurvers & Uri (2006)
Results:- 4-year olds scored 26.6%
correct- 5-year-olds scored 26.6%
correct
Conclusion: literacy may play a role in the development of a child’s word concept
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Hypotheses of the present study
• Low-literates perform better than illiterates
• Open class words (e.g. nouns and verbs) are better recognized than closed class words (e.g. articles and prepositions)
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Participants: 30 adult L2 learners
15 illiterates:
• No education in native country
• Not able to read and write• Speaking skills at least
A1 (CEF)
15 low-literates:
• No education in native
country• Became literate in NL• Speaking skills at least
A1 (CEF)• Approx. 2 years DL2
education in NL
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Language background
– L1: different languages, but mostly:
» Moroccan Arabic (6) » Berber (7)» Somali (8)
– L2: Dutch
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Instruments
Reading task:
– illiterates: a few easy words– low-literates: a small text about which two questions were asked
Word awareness task:
listen to a story and repeat the last word when the narrator paused
• 32 target words: • 16 open class words (e.g. verbs, nouns and adjectives)• 16 closed class words (e.g. articles and prepositions)
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Procedure word awareness task
A short practice story with 6 open class target words:
– no explanation of what a word is– feedback on an incorrect answer– no explanatory details
This task was administered to 14 illiterates and 15 low-literates
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Berber folk story about a man and his seven daughters
One day his new … wife said:
‘There is not enough food … any more.’
Then she told everything … to her son.
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% correct by group and word classWord class Group Mean (sd) % correct
Open Illiterates 8.79(4.64)
54.9
Low-literates 12.4(4.63)
77.5
Closed Illiterates 6.00(3.40)
37.5
Low-literates 8.93(3.90)
55.8
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Test difference between both groups
Group t df p
Illiterates /Low-literates -2.208 27 0.018
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% correct by group and word type
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
open closed mono di
Illiterates
Low-literates
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Comparison of word types
t df p
Open/closed class
6.869 28 0.000
Mono- /disyllabic
-5.188 28 0.000
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Answer categories (1) :
Correct answer: e.g. nieuwe (new) in the sentence: “Op een dag zei zijn nieuwe …” (One day his new …”)
Incorrect:• Multiword answer: e.g. niet genoeg eten not enough food
• Anticipation: e.g. vrouw instead of nieuwe wife instead of new
in the sentence: “Op een dag zei zijn nieuwe …” “One day said his new …”
• Single syllable: e.g. leen (instead of alleen) lone (instead of alone)
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Answer categories (2):
• Elision (resyllabification): adding the last consonant of the preceding word to the target worde.g. in the sentence: Hij nam ook… giving “mook” as target word instead of “ook”
He took also…
• Non-target single word: e.g. genoeg instead of hout enough instead of wood
in the sentence: “Toen ze genoeg hout…” “When they enough wood...”
• No response: I don’t know
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Error types
Group Multiword Anticipation Non-target single word
Else
Dutch(Onderdelinden)
Illiterates 41.5 4.7 5.1 2.5
Low-literates
24.4 1.7 5.0 2.3
Dutch(Kurvers)
4-year 52.0 15.4 2.0 5.9
5-year 54.8 12.1 1.5 6.5
Norwegian(Uri)
4-year 46.3 15.1 3.7 6.0
5-year 50.9 12.5 3.1 4.6
English(Karmiloff)
4-year 17.5 2.9 2.3 0.8
5-year 0.8 0.0 1.0 2.1
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Study Word Class Group % Correct
Netherlands(Onderdelinden)
Open
Closed
Illiterates
Illiterates
54.9
37.5
Netherlands(Kurvers, 2006)
Open
Closed
4-/5-year olds 4-/5-year olds
24.4
25.5
Norway(Uri, 2006)
Open
Closed
4-/5-year olds
4-/5-year olds
29.4
27.1
England(Karmiloff-Smith et al., 1996)
Open
Closed
4-/5-year olds
4-/5-year olds
87.0
84.5
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Comparison Karmiloff-Smith et al. and Kurvers & Uri
• The illiterates were not nearly as good as the English children
• The illiterates performed better than the 4- and 5-year-old Dutch and Norwegian children
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Possible reason for gap in performance between English children and adult L2 learners
• (Lower) middle class background of the children and hence their familiarity with printed materials
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Reasons for difference between the Dutch and Norwegian children and the illiterates
– the illiterates are proficient L1 speakers – the illiterates had learnt an L2 – the illiterates participated in an L2 course and
were therefore probably more focused on language
– maybe the teacher had just discussed one or more of the target words (hence better recognized)
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Comparison with Karmiloff et al. and Kurvers & Uri as to open and closed
class words
Present study shows significant difference in
performance on open and closed class words
(open class words were better isolated)
Possible reasons: • L2 learners first focus on open class words• Ceiling effect among English children• Poor performance of Dutch and Norw. children
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Conclusions
• On all categories low-literates perform significantly better than illiterates
• Two years of literacy education cause an increase in performance of 20%
• Literacy is an important stimulating factor in the development of word awareness
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References
• Karmiloff-Smith, A., Grant, J., Sims, K., Jones, M. & Cuckle, P. (1996). Rethinking metalinguistic awareness: representing and accessing knowledge about what counts as a word. Cognition, 58, 197-219.
• Kurvers, J. & Uri, H. (2006) Metalexical Awareness: Development, Methodology or Written Language? A Cross-linguistic Comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 4, 353-367.
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