Two paragraphs on reading

From Tony Ross’s children’s book ‘I Want a Cat’

                Lineation is one way in which this book helps young children read, as the way that the words are thought through.  This is shown straight away in the first sentence as it is left on its on individual line. By doing this it helps the child understand that this is the end of that particularly sentence. If the next sentence had started on the first line there wouldn’t be a clear distinction between sentences and none of the words would stand out.  On the second line, it ends with the word ‘so’. Even though the next comma is on the third line, ending this line with so allows the reader to elongate the ‘oo’ sound which would interest the child but also give the child time for their eyes to move to the next line. This is useful to the child as it takes a microsecond for the child’s eye to move to the next line as if they don’t have this time they can often miss out lines. This especially happens when the child wants to find out the next part of the sentence, as seen in this text. The third clause of the second sentence is only found on the third line so the child doesn’t know yet what is going to happen.  Therefore by keeping the adverb ‘loudly’ on the third line it helps the transition to the next line as this is still part of the second clause.

               

Hairy Maclary from Donaldson Dairy 

                From this transcript you can hear that there are some miscues. One example of a miscue is when it is written ‘spots’ but she pronounces this as ‘spats’.  Even though the book is repetitive which would lead you to believe that she would be more likely to say this word correctly, but as towards the end when the amount she has to say in one go increases, is when she mispronounces. I feel that she may of made this miscue as she has more words she isn’t used to, so she focuses on these and makes a mistake on the ones she is used to as she isn’t focused on them as well. Another miscue that she makes is when the book says ‘scarface’ which is pronounced ‘ scare – face’ but she says ‘scar- face’. You can understand why she has said this as she has seen the two words ‘ scar’ and ‘face’ so she has just combined the pronunciation, as there was no ‘e’ in the word after the ‘r’ she hasn’t recognised the beginning of the word as scare.

Evie Plan

Overview

As Evie is guided by her grandmother in a known environment, Evie is comfortable to express and improve her zone of proximal development through local topics and the child direct speech techniques used by the grandmother. Through the virtuous errors, the grandmother can use scaffolding to improve her linguistic skills.

• The grandmother uses the camera in the task that they are doing to try and avoid the observer’s paradox affecting the way that Evie speaks. We also know that Evie has been before as there are other transcripts but whether this was the first isn’t known.

-In the transcript she is often asking ‘who else should we take a picture of’ so it’s part of the game they are playing.

•   The grandmother uses positive and negative reinforcement (Skinner) to inspire Evie so talk about what she likes.

-          Also uses this to encourage social skills as when Evie smiled she praises Evie and laughs which shows that it’s a positive thing to do.

-          Shows Evie understands that her appearance can have an effect on people.

-          ‘G-… picture haha of you smiling?  E- ha yes  G- yeah that’s good’

-          This subtly shows that the grandmother could have the some power throughout as she can correct and hint at what is right and wrong.

• Interrogatives are used by the grandmother to create open questions for Evie to respond.

-As they are open questions it allows Evie to respond in the way she wants leading to child led discourse.

- Appears that Evie is the powerful participant as she sets the agenda due to her being able to respond and say what she is interested in

- This also links to Bruner’s interaction theory as without the questions she wouldn’t be able to practise these questions.

- However the grandmother tries to bring the conversation on after he smiling but Evie carries on talking about the smiling again shows that Evie

•  The use of local topics (Nelson) help Evie stay engaged in the conversation.

-          Using topics that Evie likes and knows vocabulary for, in this case its animals.

-          As there are local topics Evie becomes very interested in the idea of putting the animals in the bath and engages in imaginative play. This is one of Haliday’s functions under Imaginative.

-          The grandmother goes along with the role play so Evie continues to talk.

• Multiple phonetic pronunciations of Kangaroo show that she is trying to change her pronunciation to match her grandmothers.

-          The grandmother scaffolds and pronounces kangaroo multiple times so Evie can hear it more often to help her make those sounds

-          The skill of saying kangaroo is in her ZPD due to multiply pronunciations which is also seen when she is asked to count ‘how many’

-          ‘ E- he’s kangaroo [kaeneru:]  G- hello kangaroo’ ‘[kaeniru]’