Children’s understandings of text in a multilingual nursery
Language and Education, 13 (1):
1-16 (1999)Abstract
This paper discusses the results of a one-year research project in a South London
nursery class which included three- and four-year-olds from a variety of linguistic and
cultural backgrounds. Children were given the opportunity to engage with a wide
range of home literacy materials in the classroom, in English and in other languages.
Through their use of these materials as part of purposeful social interaction, and
through production of their own writing, the children displayed a knowledge of
different genres, and an awareness of the kinds of symbol used within each type of
text. The work of 30 children was collected and analysed during the year, and a case
study was also made of one child, a four-year-old from a Gujarati-speaking family. The
paper comments on the general response within the class, and then draws on the case
study to illustrate the findings in detail. The results suggest that classroom literacy
work needs to be expanded in order to capitalise on the full extent of young children’s
knowledge about written language.