Feature Article
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Communication is an important life skill at every level of the educational process. For early language learners, oral proficiency proves critical in the development of a child’s academic success and selfesteem (Cregan, 2012). Although successful DLE programs promote communication skills, they often present many challenges. One of these challenges is in the area of ensuring more child talk than teacher talk in the classroom.
state that many Arabic-speaking children start school with limited knowledge about literacy strategies that are related to Arabic and English.This presents a further challenge to ensuring student success in speaking.
Purpose of the Study and Research Question
The purpose of this study is to explore the effect Talking Partners has on improving children’s speaking skills and self-confidence in speaking. It is an oral language intervention and teaching strategy designed to help children develop their speaking and listening skills and gain self-confidence. It is also an appropriate early childhood literacy strategy. This inquiry emphasizes the importance of collaboration and communication for children’s literacy development. Our primary research question, therefore, is: What effect does the literacy strategy called Talking Partners have on improving KG children’s collaboration and communication skills?
Literature Review
Lynne McCullagh (B.Ed.) works as a primary school teacher in Ireland. She was working as a KG2 teacher in Al Ain at the time of the study.
In the UAE, Arabic and English are taught using a dual language education (DLE) model with the aim of enhancing bi-literacy among learners. There is a dearth of literature regarding the bi-literate, team teaching model. Instruction is facilitated in a 50/50 model, and therefore children are learning within two phonological systems at the same time. They are developing simultaneous phonemic awareness in L1 and L2, constructing two sets of rules and indirectly learning that there are certain sounds in one language that are not present in the other (Barbre, 2003; Montague, Marroquin, & Lucido, 2002). DLE programs in many countries have produced many significant improvements in closing the achievement gap and markedly improving scores in math and English (Lindholm-Leary, 2012). Measured improvements in these subjects included performing at or above grade level on standardized reading and math tests. Baetens Beardsmore (2008) states that being plurilingual brings intellectual benefits and that there has been much evidence in the past of the connection between plurilingualism (including bilingual education) and creative thinking, communicative sensitivity, metalinguistic skills, self-regulating mechanisms and spatial skills. Based on a study conducted by Dillon, Salazar and Al Otaibi (2015), co-teacher working relationships and planning time are crucial to the success of bi-literacy. Volume 24
No. 2
June 2016
Cummins (1979) argues that “a cognitively and academically beneficial form of bilingualism can be achieved only on the basis of adequately developed first language skills” (p. 222). The children in ADEC KGs are in fact learning an additional L1 (Standard Arabic) and a new L2 (English) when they come to KG. Until that point, many children will have spoken only local Arabic. This places them in a rather unique situation where a positive transfer of skills has to be facilitated between local Arabic, standard Arabic and English as additional languages (Dillon, Salazar, & Al Otaibi, 2015). This highlights the need for teachers to be mindful of activating children’s prior knowledge because students, particularly English Language Learners (ELLs), learn and remember new information best when it is linked to relevant prior knowledge (Hill & Flynn, 2006). If this can be done in Arabic and English simultaneously in an interwoven co-constructed dialogue, it should have a positive impact on children’s understanding. The development of children’s comprehensible output is key in this situation (Lightbown & Spada, 2006; Pica, 2005). The use of English and Arabic during a literacy lesson provides a unique opportunity for teachers to use their professional knowledge of the child’s linguistic level to put them under developmentally appropriate communicative pressure under guidance, i.e. the use of context to elicit more information, which may result in the teacher supplying new words but within a frame the child understands (Dillon, 2014). Generally speaking, in a whole group setting, children may be afraid or sometimes too shy to communicate. In order to further help children overcome this shyness, it is important to develop strategies that encourage student to student communication. The use of talk and verbal means of
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