The Importance of Literacy in the Home Language

Educational Advantages for the Child

Current research indicates that home-language-literacy acquisition provides a number of educational advantages to bilingual children. These include fostering the development of linguistic skills in the home language to high levels of proficiency, supporting the acquisition of literacy in the majority language, easing the transition into the school environment, and enhancing the child’s general academic achievement. We briefly discuss each of these issues in turn.

Affective Advantages

There is ample research on the positive affective outcomes that derive from literacy in the home language. Expanding the functions and usage of the home language increases the status of that language, which according to Baker (2006) is crucial for language maintenance. Baker further argues that, where oral communication is in the minority language and literacy in the majority language, the minority language has lower prestige and may have less chances of being maintained.

Wright and Taylor (1995), who studied the effect of education in the home language (i.e., Inuttitut) vis-à-vis education in a second language (i.e., English) in Canada, showed that early home-language education had a positive effect on the personal and collective self-esteem of minority-language students, while instruction in the second language did not have a positive effect. Bialystok (2001a) argues that “the language we speak is instrumental in forming our identity, and being required to speak a language that is not completely natural may interfere with the child’s construction of self” (p. 5) and may impinge on the child’s ability in establishing ethnic and cultural affiliations. Furthermore, literacy in the home language enables the home traditions and culture to be accessed, reproduced, and transmitted (Clyne, 1991; Fishman, 1991; Oriyama, 2011). It may thus encourage in-group affiliation, positive self-esteem, the vision and world-view of one’s heritage culture, self-identity, and intellectual empathy. High self-esteem may result in better performance in English in the long run. Studies have shown positive correlations between self-esteem and academic success (Makin et al., 1995; Wright & Taylor, 1995).

Researchers (e.g., Fishman, 1991; Rosenthal & Cichelloa, 1986) have noted that language shift can result in intergenerational conflict and alienation triggered by a clash of values between the newcomers and their offspring, and diminish feelings of belonging. ¹⁶ Conversely, allowing children to develop skills to maintain and expand the home language and to access the cultural heritage of their parents and grandparents may enhance community cohesion and may foster acceptance and understanding of cultural diversity.

Social Advantages

Supporters of a monolingual agenda often base their arguments on the myth of “one nation–one language,” or, in other terms, in the mistaken belief that monolingualism is a crucial prerequisite to social cohesion (Hobsbawm, 1996; Lo Bianco, 2003). They argue that if groups retain their cultures and languages, they will be less likely to identify with the mainstream culture and thus will become disengaged from the society and state. As many have noted, however, minority language oracy without literacy can disempower students and lead to language shift and assimilation. Assimilation, in addition to eliminating cultural richness in society, “can result in lowered self-esteem, poor self-concept and cultural alienation” (Olivier, 2011, p. 22), not only from the in-group but also from the community at large. While the exact mix of contributing factors is still unclear, Barrett, Sonderegger, and Sonderegger (2002) have shown that "Australian adolescents exhibit greater overall self-esteem than young migrants” (p. 229). They discuss the need for culture-specific early-intervention and prevention programs. The support of literacy in the home language could be trialed as a part of such programs.

Advantages for the Nation

While advanced foreign-language proficiency is seen as a valuable resource to the nation and as an imperative in the age of globalization, foreign language studies in Australia are mostly relegated to the Higher Education level (Clyne, 2005; Martín, 2005). As a result of the late start, very few learners acquire languages to a level at which they can operate effectively across languages and cultures. Paradoxically, children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, who could potentially fill Australia’s linguistic needs, are ignored, thus lost to the system. Clyne (2005) refers to this process as a “squandering” of language resources. As many of these children shift into the dominant language, their home language deteriorates to a stage where only passive comprehension and minimal production skills are retained (Clyne, 2005; Oriyama, 2011). Cummins (2005) poignantly characterizes the current situation as a “bizarre scenario of schools successfully transforming fluent speakers of foreign languages into monolingual English speakers, at the same time as they struggle, largely unsuccessfully, to transform English monolingual students into foreign language speakers” (p. 586). In light of this, it suggests itself that fostering the home language and its literacy development would not only be hugely beneficial to the children and families involved but also result in an invaluable gain for the nation and society as a whole.

The “Book Flood” and “Shared Book” Approaches

This approach, initially developed in the South Pacific in the 1970s, was used in a number of developing countries to improve the acquisition of English as a foreign language by children who have already developed literacy skills in their home language. The “Book Flood” approach (Elley, 2000) involves making available in the classroom a “flood” of about 100 high-interest books that children can access independently. The basic hypothesis underlying this approach is that, if children have an abundant supply of engaging books in class (principle i), it would increase their exposure to the language and thus expand their lexical and grammatical acquisition. Good quality books that appeal to their interests would also increase reading time and motivation, both good predictors of academic success. Thus, the books are not seen as supplementary materials but as the central pedagogical tools, which allow children to proceed autonomously and learn the language directly by reading.

Recognizing that not all cultures engage in similar reading practices (conf. Heath, 1982), the “Shared Book” approach—developed independently of the “Book Flood”—is used as a preparation step and to avoid early frustration (principle ii). Here, the teacher shares a good book with a class of pupils over several days until they become familiar with the language of the book (Elley, 2000). The teacher introduces the stories, discusses the title and illustrations, and encourages children to make predictions about the content. This builds up children’s confidence in their abilities to work out meanings from illustrations and/or context later on. The stories are discussed and reread until children are familiar and can join in. The process is meant not only to introduce children to particular stories but also to ensure that children interact constructively with books on a daily basis and to provide modeling and guidance on how to engage with books, thus preparing children for independent reading.

Programs using these approaches have been evaluated by Elley and her colleagues in a variety of cultural contexts, languages, and age levels. The results show that the “Book Flood” approach can double the rate of reading acquisition, improve writing, listening comprehension, and related language skills, and increase motivation and enthusiasm for reading. Moreover, students appear to transfer their enhanced skills to other subjects of the curriculum that depend heavily on reading (Elley, 2000).

Although the aim of the “Book Flood” approach is to improve linguistic proficiency in a foreign language, we believe that this model could be even more effective in promoting literacy in a language in which children are already fluent. Adapting such a model to the Australian context would also address one of the criticisms raised against the original implementation of the “Book Flood”, namely, the lack of cultural relevance and appropriateness (principle iii; Elley, 2000), given that the approach was based on books imported from abroad and developed for widely different cultural contexts. We propose that the community can contribute to the creation of texts and that texts can be shared within the community, thus also reducing overall costs. Moreover, members of the community could easily be trained to assist children in the initial stages of literacy development (see the two programs discussed in the section “Family Literacy Programs”), thus addressing potential shortages of community teachers fluent in particular languages. Furthermore, these resources could be digitized and made freely available online, thus overcoming the scarcity of resources and obstacles of accessibility.

A recent implementation based on similar principles is being conducted by Worldreader, a U.S. and European nonprofit organization, who is making digital books written by foreign and local authors and publishers available to children in the developing world. As of May 2013, they have distributed more than 609,000 e-books to 4,300 children in sub-Saharan Africa. Their initial evaluations, reported on their website (http://www.worldreader.org), indicate marked improvements in reading abilities and high levels of engagement. In the Australian context, where children have computers readily available through schools and public libraries if not at home, such initiatives could be easily implemented involving the different ethno-linguistic communities, and they could be expected to yield positive results in terms of motivating and engaging learners while meeting the design and implementation principles (i.e., principles iv-vii) listed above.

Family Literacy Programs

“Book Floods,” in the traditional and recent guises, have been implemented in child foreign-language-acquisition contexts in which all children in a class are learning the same foreign language. The situation of minority languages in Australia as described above involves a wide variety of languages, and this poses additional challenges, one of these being the scarcity of trained teachers. One way of addressing the linguistic diversity would be to make parents partners in the literacy-development process. We turn now to two programs or interventions originating in the United States in the late 1980s (Hannon, Brooks, & Bird, 2007) that support the idea that parents can be instrumental in helping children develop literacy (Hancock, 2002). Although these projects aimed at improving literacy in the mainstream language, the results hold promise in the Australian situation.

The idea that parents can assist children in developing literacy is not new. Andersson (1981), for instance, argues that reading is learned rather than taught and that the best teacher is the one who is intimately associated with the child and provides the environmental stimulation to learning through oracy and literacy experiences (Gilliam, Parten Gerla, & Wright, 2004). Furthermore, parents’ participation can empower children in English-dominant classrooms by fostering a closer alignment between home and school practices (Hancock, 2002; Krashen, 2000) that may enhance academic progress. A number of projects have been implemented following these tenets. Of those, two are summarized below.

Self-Directed Learning

The final model discussed in this paper was designed by Mackey (1991) in bilingual Acadia, Canada, to develop second-language acquisition through self-directed learning. The basic premise of this program was that learners can teach themselves a foreign language if sufficient stimulating materials in the target language are made available and provided that the learning process is scaffolded by organizing the materials according to learners’ proficiency levels. The materials used in this project were analyzed and coded for degree of difficulty, and menus were created to supply as much freedom of choice as possible according to the child’s level and interests.

Participants were young children, aged 8 and up who were provided with hundreds of books, audiotapes, videos, and software. Children selected books that seemed appealing. Because each book was linked to an audiotape, they could either listen as they read or opt for reading or listening only, for as long as they were interested in the task. The thorough evaluation of the program provided evidence that “children can learn a second language in the absence of trained specialized second language teaching staff or native speakers” (Mackey, 1991, p. 247), which led to its wide implementation. ¹⁹

What distinguishes this program from traditional language teaching is, first, the direct contact with the new language, bypassing teachers’ input. Second, it differs in its belief that learners this young can and should be responsible for their own learning. Children not only selected their materials but also kept track of the work done by completing individualized control sheets. And third, the program was innovative in its use of widespread and generally available technologies that handled the mechanical and repetitive tasks usually performed by teachers, while it catered for individual needs, interests, and proficiency levels of students.

The self-directed learning program differs from the focus of this paper in that its aim was to develop second-language proficiency—rather than literacy in a home language that the children already speak. Another distinctive feature relates to the participants’ abilities, because at age 8 and above they would already be literate, or at least could be expected to have developed basic reading and writing skills, while we are looking for models to develop literacy from scratch. However, of all the models discussed in this paper, the self-directed learning one seems to be the core and most important one for the Australian context, as it could fulfill all the principles required to promote autonomous learning while bypassing the need of trained teachers in many of the community languages: A wide variety of interesting materials (principle i) that are culturally and linguistically relevant (principle iii) could be created through community involvement, thus making it cost-effective (principle vi) and easy to maintain and expand (principle vii). Teachers who are native speakers of the languages could be recruited to grade and code materials according to levels of proficiency and ages (principle iv), thus scaffolding the learning process (principle ii). Moreover, because teachers would not be needed on location after the grading and coding are completed, schools and libraries could make these materials readily accessible (principle v).

Moreover, in the two decades since this model was initially introduced in Canada, the use of technology has grown exponentially. Computers are widely available and accessible from schools, public libraries, and homes in Australia, and software development and applications have become much more sophisticated and interactive. It would now be easy to supplement books (possibly even presented as e-books or online textual materials) with additional self-access materials and activities, such as games, which would be highly motivating for children. There are many reasons to believe that if a self-directed program is effective in teaching a second language, it would be at least as effective in teaching children to read in a language that they already speak fluently.