This is a message from Martha Bonney.  I hope someone in the discussion has
some resources or suggestions for her.  We know that literacy is best
acquired in a language a person is fluent in and Ruth Colvin's life's work
has honored this wisdom.  How lucky for Martha to work in the organization
Ruth Colvin founded!

 

My only suggestion, which follows some of the posts today, is to make books
in Mzgua as a class.  You can make class big books, folded books as well as
picture books made with digital photos of students in the class or
recognizable places, activities, etc.  I'm almost certain that the solution
to lack of materials lies within the class, a literate helper and a few
basic tools such as a bilingual dictionary.  

 

One question:  Do the Somali Bantus you are working with speak Somali?  If
so there are probably more materials in Somali than Mzgua.  According to
this website, between 30 and 50% of Somali Bantus speak Somali:
http://www.ethnomed.org/cultures/somali/somali_bantu.html

I'm having trouble finding any info on the internet about those who speak
Mzgua.  Perhaps this is a minority group within a minority group.

____________

I'm looking for some resources for teaching mzgua literacy to Somali Bantus
who settled in Syracuse, New York, in the last five or six years.

 

I'm a volunteer with Literacy Volunteers of greater Syracuse. Ruth Colvin,
founder of Literacy Volunteers, has prepared an af Maay-based program to
teach first language literacy to these refugees, and I'm one of the four
trained tutors in this pilot project. We're just getting started and were
surprised to learn that about one-third of the refugees who signed up for
our classes don't speak af Maay. Instead, they speak mzgua. And they don't
want to be taught to read af Maay-it would be yet another language that's
not English.

 

The format of the af Maay-based course is two or three vocabulary words,
breaking the words into syllables, learning the basic vowel sounds, then
learning two or three consonant-vowel combinations out of the vocabulary.
So, for example, the first lesson begins with Bariida, mamaa and builds on
those consonant-vowel combinations. In that manner, all the consonants will
be covered over a period of several lessons. There will also be language
experience sections-I like corn, I like beans, I like milk..in af Maay.

 

It took Mrs. Colvin three years to develop the af Maay teaching materials,
and we don't have that kind of time to develop mzgua materials. We invited
them to learn NOW, and we need to keep our word.

 

Are there dictionaries, phrase lists, grammars, etc., for mzgua speakers?

 

I'd appreciate any help you can give me. Thank you.

 

Martha W. Bonney

Volunteer, Literacy Volunteers of Greater Syracuse

315-443-2703 (work), 315-345-3831 (cell), mwbonney at syr.edu

 

 

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of robinschwarz1 at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 9:58 AM
To: englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3608] Re: Working withlearners with
limitedliteracy - posted for Martha Bigelow

 

Steve's question about HOW learners may have learned other languages in
previous environments is an excellent one on several levels.   Though I have
no statistics on this, I contend that the majority of non-literate learners
are, in fact, multilingual already.  
Either they learned languages in their home environment or in other places
they have lived-- other countries, refugee camps etc.   I have interviewed
virtually hundreds of learners about what their REAL first language was and
after digging, found that there WAS a home/village language different from
the official one (Which means also that the often-asked intake question,
"Can you read or write in your first language?"  can be wrongly answered.),
or that they speak several languages already.   

Nonetheless, the simple question of HOW other languages have been learned
seems rarely if ever to be asked about so many of our learners.  Instead
they are approached as if they were mono-lingual Americans...!  From the
point of view of the brain, the fact of being bi-or multilingual is already
a huge advantage.  Neuroscience tells us clearly that the ability of the
brain to process language sounds decreases rapidly as one ages--
precipitously, in fact--but a brain that has been exposed to many different
language sounds remains more able to process new sounds than a mono-lingual
brain (Kuhl--U of WA).   Still, with the decrease in processing comes a
decrease in the brain's ability to translate sound into speech gestures
(pronunciation)--hence accents.   This, then is one reason--not the only--
why adult learners need to hear things over and over to be able to
understand--and then produce them.  It would seem to be a good argument,
too, for a llowing more time for input before requiring output, though as
many here have argued, many of our learners don't have that luxury, needing
English on their jobs and other critical places.   

Another thought on this and relevant to a few other comments here about
one's view of oneself as a competent learner.  There was an interesting
qualitative study done in Canada on adult ESOL learners with little
literacy.  This researcher found that outside of the classroom, the learners
navigated quite successfully with BICS needed for everyday communication,
but in the classroom they viewed themselves as arch-beginners who knew
nothing and who measured their progress--or lack thereof--by failure to
master the grammar concepts presented in the ESOL class.   The researcher
proposed that their class/teacher's failure to acknowledge these learners'
already considerable survival English skills contributed to their view of
themselves as poor/unsuccessful learners.   I saw this for myself in a class
I observed over several weeks.  The teacher had very little idea at all of
how much English the students actually knew and in fact confessed so
publicly when faced with evidence of their vast store of English, Instead
she treated them as arch beginners, when in fact they were not.   

Thus exploring what other languages adults know, how they have learned them
and how they learn survival English outside of the classroom would be
helpful to our instruction. I know for myself that when I learned a
non-written, non-Romance language, I still approched the process the way I
had learned Romance languages, and then had to resort of contrastive
analysis--only orally!  VERY difficult!    There is a whole field of third
or multiple language learning which we could tap more deeply to understand
what is happening with many of our learners, I feel.   Robin Lovrien Schwarz


 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com>
To: kramerjill at sbcglobal.net; The Adult English Language Learners Discussion
List <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Sent: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:05 pm
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3599] Re: Working withlearners with
limitedliteracy - posted for Martha Bigelow

There is no doubt that illiterate or low literate learners cannot use
reading as a tool for learning another language. Grammar concepts will
probably be particularly difficult to get across. 

I have a question about these Somalis and Ethiopians. There are apparently
84 living languages in Ethiopia and 13 in Somalia. Do these learners speak
more than one language from their home land? If so, how did they learn these
languages?

Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Jill Kramer <kramerjill at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:


Here is Columbus Ohio, we have a large population of Somalis and also
Ethiopians and others with little or no literacy in their first language nor
in English.  Ideally, preliterate learners should be in a separate class
with an experienced teacher. However this doesn't always happen and they are
often put in the same level one class with literate (and sometimes highly
literate) students.  

 


>From a practical teaching stance, I have found that the textbooks for low

literacy students move far too quickly.  When I taught pre and low literate
students, I used my own materials - lots of visuals, colorful flashcards,
movement, chants and so on.  I planned lessons with lots of repetition and
recycled concepts over and over in subsequent lessons.  Since the students
couldn't write notes to help them remember new vocab, they needed to review
the material over and over. Each lesson covered just a few concepts - a
couple of letters (names and sounds), a couple of sight words, a few vocab
words around a theme (body parts, days of the week, community places etc),
and some useful phrases.  The students I worked with developed oral skills
more quickly as they had an oral tradition.  I used a combo of whole word
and phonics.  Students could remember whole words with sufficient exposure.
But they need phonics too.  I focused on things like filling out forms, and
reading signs.

 

It was a slow process but there were many successes.  Students got jobs.
Some became citizens.  Some dropped out but came back a year or more later
and continued their studies.  It was rewarding and fun to teach this level.


 

Jill Kramer

Columbus Literacy Council

--- On Mon, 1/26/09, Elaine Tarone <etarone at umn.edu> wrote:

From: Elaine Tarone <etarone at umn.edu>
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3590] Re: Working withlearners with
limitedliteracy - posted for Martha Bigelow
To: "The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List"
<englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Date: Monday, January 26, 2009, 7:59 PM

Learning a first language as a child is a very different process from
learning a second language as an adult.  An obvious difference is the
influence of the native language on the adult's second language, something
that doesn't occur in first language acquisition. And, children acquiring a
first language have at least 4 years to listen to and speak their first
language before they have to start reading and writing it.  Immigrant adults
with major funding deadlines do not have that luxury; they have to learn to
read and write at the same time they are learning the oral second language.
And *if* they don't already know how to read their native language using an
alphabetic script, then their learning process has to be very very different
from that of literate adults acquiring a second language.

 

Most ESL teachers  probably learned to represent the phonemes of their
native language with visual symbols ('letters') so long ago that they no
longer remember how they perceived oral language before, whether they
noticed phonemes, etc.  It's easy for them to assume that their students
notice the same aspects of oral language that they do.  But, there is now
evidence that having a visual sign to represent, for example, the 's' at the
end of a word helps us to notice that ending in oral input. There's also
evidence that alphabetic literacy helps us to notice changes in word order
that don't affect meaning. R. Schmidt presents evidence that if we don't
notice something in the second language input, we don't acquire it. 

 

There are several research studies in cognitive psych (with monolingual
adults) showing that if they do not have alphabetic literacy -- that is, if
they do not represent sound segments with visual symbols -- they don't do as
well as literate counterparts in their native language on certain oral tasks
requiring awareness of linguistic units.   (By the way, illiterate adults do
just as well on rhyming tasks and oral word meaning tasks.  And there's a
great study done by Read at Madison showing that well educated Chinese
adults who are logographically literate but not alphabetically literate in
Chinese don't do well on phonological awareness tasks. That's important,
because they are not only schooled but well educated, middle class,
successful professionals who clearly process oral Chinese just fine -- but
they don't have alphabetic literacy, and they don't seem to need
phonological awareness. They process oral Chinese some other way. )

 

It seems clear that given these findings, teaching an illiterate or low
literate adult an oral second language has to be different from teaching an
oral L2 to someone who has alphabetic literacy. We need to learn what works
with low literate and illiterate adults, from the ground up ... what makes
things stick in their memory when they hear oral second language input? what
gets noticed? word order? content words? function words?  what helps these
words get retained? does rhyme and rhythm help?  Does whole body  movement
help? 

 

And that's just about learning to process *oral*l second language -- what
about learning to *read* a second language? Is it better to learn to read
the native language first?  does reading instruction start out better as a
whole word approach with this population? how then does one transition to
acquiring sound-symbol correspondence?  does rhyme help?   This is where we
need perceptive teachers to tell us what they see going on. 

 

 

 

On Jan 26, 2009, at 4:06 PM, Lorz, Angela wrote:





My question for S Krashen is then, when a student has no clue about
how-language-works in his native tongue, how can that student be best
introduced to a language rich environment.  I have tried the post-it note
method with the target language on top & the native language on the back, so
that at least the object is identifiable with some squiggly lines on a paper
indicating the word.  I have used pictures in class when the objects are not
available. Anything else?  especially for getting the 'sound' of the new
word in the learner's brain?
We have a series that can be used with a DVD player, but it's less natural
than targeting the "object (or phrase) of interest".

 

----------------------------------------------------


  


  
National Institute for Literacy


  


  
Adult English Language Learners mailing list


  


  
EnglishLanguage at nifl.gov


  


  
To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to


  


  
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/englishlanguage


  


  
Email delivered to kramerjill at sbcglobal.net


----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Adult English Language Learners mailing list
EnglishLanguage at nifl.gov
To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/englishlanguage
Email delivered to steve at thelinguist.com

 

----------------------------------------------------






National Institute for Literacy






Adult English Language Learners mailing list






EnglishLanguage at nifl.gov






To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to 






http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/englishlanguage






Email delivered to robinschwarz1 at aol.com







 

  _____  

Get instant access to the latest & most popular FREE games while you browse
with the Games Toolbar - Download
<http://toolbar.aol.com/games/download.html?ncid=emlweusdown00000026>  Now! 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/englishlanguage/attachments/20090127/b7c5f5d4/attachment.html