Transcript Assessment for Reading Instruction

Emergent Biliteracy Assessment Procedures
used with a five-year old Chinese girl learning to read
English and Chinese
Ran Hu [胡冉]
Michelle Commeyras
University of Georgia
The 5th International Conference on ELT in
China & the 1st Congress of Chinese Applied
Linguistics, Beijing
May, 2007
Context
Ran Hu tutored a five-year-old Chinese
child (Chaochao) to to develop her
language and literacy in English and
Chinese.
The primary materials were wordless
picture books.
The tutoring occurred three times a week
for ten weeks (approximately 30 hours.)
Research Questions
(1) What developed with the child’s oral
language in English and Chinese?
(2) What developed with the child’s oral
vocabulary versus reading vocabulary in
English and Chinese?
(3) What developed with the child’s use of
graphophonic cues when writing in English?
Summary of Tutoring Chaochao
 Audiotape all the activities in each tutoring session, 3
times a week for 10 consecutive weeks.
Mondays
Wednesdays
Greeting (E)
Labeling (E&C)
Picture walk (E&C)
Storytelling (E&C)
Greeting (E)
Storytelling (E&C)
Reading word
Cards (E&C)
Reading Biliterate
Text (E & C)
Fridays
Greeting (E)
Storytelling (E&C)
Picture finding
(E&C)
Word finding (E&C)
Sentence making
(E&C)
Invented Spelling
(E&C)
Assessments
 Chaochao’s Wordless
Picture Book Stories
 Emergent Literacy
Concepts of Print
Directionality
 English
 Chinese
English Alphabet
Common Chinese
Characters
Common English
Words
English reading
vocabulary
Chinese reading
vocabulary
Dictated sentences invented spellings
Summary and
Recommendations
Concepts About Print (Clay, 1991)
•Holding the book
•Pointing to the front and the back
of the book
•Pointing to the beginning and the
end of the sentences
1) Reading from right to left:
Dian Dian see the egg is popped.
.popped is egg the see Dian Dian
2) Reading from bottom to top:
Jun Jun is very happy. Huang Huang and Jun
Jun walk away. And Dian Dian sad.
Dian Dian sad.
and Jun Jun walk away. And
Jun Jun is very happy. Huang Huang
Dian Dian walk away to see
is popping egg The .egg an
a turtle come out.
3) Reading left to right with a
reverse sweep (snaking):
Dian Dian walk away to see an egg. He is
happy. The egg popping is a turtle come out.
4) Reading vertically:
点点看见军军生鸡蛋.
点
点
看
见
军
军
生
鸡
蛋
。
English Alphabet Recognition
 From Assessment for
Reading Instruction
by Michael C.
McKenna and Steven
A. Stahl.
 Result – 100%
accuracy
Chinese Characters Recognition
 Result – unable to
read 3 characters
(88%)
English reading vocabulary
Word in an index card or word in isolation
assessment
balloon
Word in a sentence strip or word in context
assessment
Hong Hong get elephant balloon.
English Reading Vocabulary
– assessed twice in week 5 and two weeks after tutoring
 Sight word vocabulary: words the child could
read in isolation.
 54/166 words (33%) vs. 51/252 (20%)
 Context vocabulary: words the child could read
in sentences.
 60/166 (36%) vs. 123/252 (49%)
 Oral-only vocabulary: words the child could use
in storytelling but failed to read from index cards
or from sentence strips.
 52/166 (31%) vs. 78/252 (31%)
Chinese Reading Vocabulary
- assessed once at the end of tutoring in week 10
 Characters in index cards or characters in
isolation assessment – Sight 183/300 (61%)
气
球
 Characters in a sentence strip or characters in
context assessment – Context 69/300 (23%)
红红有了一个红颜色的大象的气球 。
 Oral- only Vocabulary - 48/300 (16%)
Dolch/Fry Combined High Frequency
Words
 Dolch word lists
 220 "service words" (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions,
conjunctions, and verbs) and 95 nouns which occurred again and again in
children's books by Edward William Dolch.
 Fry word lists
 Edward Fry compiled another list of 1,000 words of frequently occurring
words in English texts to be taught to students. The first 300 Fry words make
up 65% of all written material contained in newspaper articles, magazines,
textbooks, children's stories, novels, etc.
 Dolch/Fry Combined words




157 words that are shared by both Dolch and Fry first 300 words.
Ran wrote each word on an index card and asked the child to read.
28/157 – sight vocabulary (18%)
Compare 18% with 33% (week 5) and 20% (end) - indicated that more sight
vocabulary was known from Chaochao’s storytelling for wordless picture
books than from the Dolch/Fry list.
Invented Spelling
 Chaochao had difficulty distinguishing the pronunciation of
letters when they varied across words.
 up – rp; eye – ai; all – oo; table – taboo; dance – dns; hill – heo
 The child changed the voiced and unvoiced pronunciation of
“th”, into /de/ and /s/.
 them – dm; they – da; three – sre; thing – sing.
 The child developed an understanding that the letter “c” and
letter “k” both make the hard /c/ sound in some words. (2nd
week, 6th week)
 Can – kn – cn; car – kr – cr; come – komn – com; clean – kln – clln.
Summary
 Assessments linked to Wordless Picture Books:
English/Chinese reading vocabularies &
English invented spellings
Assessments Basics: Concepts of Print,
Directionality; Alphabet, Characters &
Common Words/Characters
Classroom Possibilities with Wordless Picture
Books
Classroom Assessment
Wordless Picture Books
 Students collaborate in making up the story
 Teacher writes story in English and Chinese for
students to copy in notebooks.
Students do repeated readings of biliteracy text.
Teacher assesses with dictated sentences in
English and Chinese.
Teacher calls on individual students to read
aloud sentences.