Bilingual children's story book

BILINGUAL CHILDREN STORY BOOK : A FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE OF LEARNING ENGLISH Agnes Widyaningrum, SE, M. Pd Abstract Indonesian children are born as bilingual even multilingual children because Indonesia is a rich country having many different cultures. As one of cultural products, language can be learnt through various ways, one example is by reading children storybook. Language use is always socially and culturally situated. Learning English is a process of tranforming linguistics entities into knowledge implanted in children’s brain. It is through language that school subjects are taught and through language that students’ understanding of concept is displayed and evaluated in school context. Keyword : bilingual, multilingual, learning, socially and culturally situated. I. INTRODUCTION Children will experience many new things in school. School offers many interesting activities for them to do in the classroom and outside of classroom. For many chidren, schooling presents a new situation, new ways of interacting, and new types of texts, as they are expected to read and write genres that construe new kinds of disciplinary knowledge (Mary J Schleppegrell, 2004: 3). They will gain their knowledge when they learn something new in school. They learn school subjects by language therefore they can share their understanding about the same knowledge in the school context. Learning language and learning through language are simultaneous (Haliday, 1993). It means that by recognizing the ways that language construes different kinds of meanings, we see how the sociocultural knowledge needed for success at school includes learning the ways of using language that enable students to develop and display new knowledge. Language is also known as one of social structures while social structures are abstract entities (Fairclough, 2004: 226). One can think of a social structure as defining a potential or a set of possibilities. In broader sense we can think of the relationship between what is structurally possible and what actually happens, between structures and events, is a complex one. School has its own structure as well as language of schooling. Fairclough (2004) stated that learning and teaching are social practices mediated by structures and events and are networked in particular ways of through orders of discourse. Orders of discourse are comprised of genres, discourse and styles or ‘ ways of interacting’, ‘ ways of representing’ and ‘ ways of being’. In this sense learning is performativity of texts, both spoken and written. Reading is one of English skills that can be learnt through English subject. Reading lesson can be carried out through spoken and written text as well. The form of reading texts will be displayed in such away to help children learn linguistics elements realized in text. II. PROBLEM STATEMENTS This paper attempts to offer solution to teachers of English to use biligual children storybook to help children learn English and learn to use English naturally. The problems are: a) How do children learn English through bilingual children storybook? b) What are functional linguistics perspectivse applied in bilingual children storybook? III. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The basic idea is that knowledge is construed in the language of schooling. As what Halliday stated that language is the essensial condition of knowing, the process by which experience becomes knowledge (1993, 94). The outlines underlied the idea are: A. Children’s Language a. 1 Benefits of bilingualism a. 2 How to start learning a second language B. Language of schooling b. 1 Characterising language of schooling b. 2 Language and context b. 3 Linguistic Features of academic registers C. Discussion D. Conclusion A. Children’s Language a. 1 Benefits of bilingualism The children who are born in multicultural country are inherited being multilingual children. They have ability to use more than one languages in their daily life. They can understand to what their people around them use different language as their grew up within this cultural context situation. How can they be bilingual or multilingual? People define bilingualism as 1) the use of more than one language and 2) the ability to communicate naturally and fluently in more than one language in all area of life (ESL Pro, 2005). Bilingual children have some characteristics that they are able to: 1) speak, read and write in two languages; 2) be open-minded to other cultures; 3) actively seek multicutural frienships; 4) form stronger problem-solving skills; 5) have enhanced cognitive development; 6) express greater creativity; 7) easily learn a third and fourth langguage and 8) embrace differences in people. Most children enter school with basic language skills, in English or other languages, already in place, it is up to qualified teachers to use those skills to help them develop the academic skills they need to succeed in life. Children learm more effectively if they learn English through the use of their native language, which provide a contextual basis for learning and allow them to keep pace with their peer group while acquiring the language they will need to learn in order to interact effectively in today’s society. (ESL Pro, 2005) Most researchers agree that bilingual learners develop more skills in cognitive area. They said that the earlier a child begins to learn a second language, the better will be. Younger students tend to be less fearful of making mistakes and are more willing to go with the flow of communicating in another language. This condition shows that the bilingual children will gain their knowledge in learning another language. Bilingualism is a process, it doesn’t simply happen. But we can work at it. A. 2 How to start learning a second language Most linguists recommended that we can start as early as possible or when a child is born. Introducing a second language later is also possible, i. e. when the child was about 3-4 years oled. Monolingual children might be introducedd to a new language as a special thing gradually, starting with explaining words and songs, stories, books, using special occasions, making it a game with lots of fun and and no stress. We can introduce one or 2 words a day depending on the child’s age, stimulating the visual (pictures), hearing (songs), tactile (object itself) senses. To see if a chid if the child absorbed a word, let it choose or print at the object you name and as the last learning step the child will be able to repeat the word itself. For older children you can label objects in your home, such as door, table, shelf, and so on. (ESL Pro, 2005). B. Language of schooling b. 1 Characterizing the language of schooling School is a new place for children to learn many new things and knowledge. They can learn everything using language. It is through language that school subjects are taught and through language that students’ understanding of concept is displayed and evaluated in school context. While the knowledge about language itelf is part of the coontent of schooling, as children are asked to adopt the word-, sentence;, and rhetorical-level conventions of writing, to define words, the content, as well as the medium of schooling is, to a large extent, language. (Mary J Schleppegrell, 2004: 2). We can think of that schooling is a linguistic process, and language serves as an often unconscious means of evaluating and differentiating students Talking about school has a close relationship to literacy. In today’s complex world, literacy means far more than learning to read and write in order to accomplish particular discrete tasks. Instead, literacy is a form of social action where language and context co-participate in making meaning (Halliday, 1978; Lemke, 1989). Although much research has focused on the features of early reading and writing in school contexts, less work has been done related to the kinds of tasks that challenge students in middle school, high school, and post secondary education. These advanced literacy contexts (Schleppegrel and Colombi, 2002) call for a kind of meaning-making that is also required for participantion in many of the institutions of today’s world. An individual’s growth and development and ability to participate in society requires ever-expanding knowledge and control over meaning-making in new contexts and trhough new linguisitic resources. Students need to use language in particular ways in order to be successful in science, history, and other subjects; to develop interpretations, construct arguments, and critiques theories. Learning to use language in ways that meet the school’s expectations for advanced literacy task is a challenge for all students, but it is especially difficult for those who have little opportunity for exposure to and use of such language outside of school. Students whose cultural practices are similar to those of the school may be able to transfer those practices to the school setting, but students from other backgrounds may need to focus on the ways that language contributes to meaning-making as they engage in new social and cultural practices in order to succeed in ahieving advanced literacy. (Schleppegrell, 2004: 6) Moving to the relationhsip that students can build in school context is not an easy thing to do. School-based texts accomplish particular purposes in schooling by construing the kinds of exeprience and interpersonal relationhsip that are expexted in the schooling context, which itself has particular cultural purposes. By recognizing how different linguistic choices are functional for construing particular kinds of texts, we keep the focus on the role of language as a social force. This kind of perspective expands the teaching arena, enabling the teacher to be proactive in new ways in helping students learn the ways language is used to construe knowledge in different subject areas. b. 2 Language and context As we agree that for the majority of children, startinng school means confronting new ways of using language. These include using language to accomplish new types of tasks and new expectations for how they will structure what they say. Schooling brings new kinds of interaction, where students are often required to state information that in an everyday context could be taken for granted, and to specify relationhsips between concepts in some detail. In addition, students are expected to begin using language in a new mode, writing, which brings with it new ways of grammatical organization. These new ways of meaning-making enable participation in a wider range of tasks and contextx, so it is important that all students have opportunity to develop their language potential they progress in schooling. The students spend more of their time with their peer and it influences their language. The language students bring from their communities to school is the means through which they engage new “ schooled” knowledge. Some children’s way of making meaning with language enable them to readily respond to the school’s expectations, but the ways using language of other students do not. Based on this reason, it is important to value a wide range of ways using language at school, giving different languages, dialects, and ways of meaning more social value by having them shared in the schooling context. On the other hand, we should think of that it is also important to provide all students with access to academic ways of using English so they can participate in new kinds of learning at school. This occurred because all children enter school with language resources that have served them well in learning at home and that have enabled them to be interactive and successful members of their families and local communities. Since the children are coming from different cultural background, many children lack experience in making the kinds of meanings that are expected at school, or with the kinds of written texts and spoken interaction that prepare some children for school-based language tasks. This lack of experience makes it difficult for these students to learn and to demonstrate their learning. (Schleppegrell, 2004: 22) b. 3 Linguistic features of academic registers Referring to the Hallliday’s statement that when chilren learn to read and write, they have to enter a new phase in their language development… In the process of becoming literate, they learn to reconstitute language itself into a new, more abstract mode… Reconstituting language means reconstituting reality: Children have to reinterpret their experience in the new mode of written language. This is not juts a matter of mastering a new medium… it is mastering a new form of knowledge: written educational knowledge as against the spoken knowledge of common sense (1993: 109). All children, normally will experience this phase in their schooling age. They construe knowledge using language and in order to be more literate they will pose some stages through the school’s tasks. There are lingusitics expectations for students’ language use at school, and that these expectations reflect the language practices of some social groups, but not others. If only certain kinds of socialization practices are reflected in the tasks that children face at shool, it is important to understand what the challenges of these practices might be for students without prior familiarity with them. It means that by having a framework of systemic functional grammar, it provides an overview of the linguistic features typical of the language expected at school. It examines differences between the registers of schooling and registers of informal interaction. The framework that we can offer is based on the work of Halliday and Hasan (1989). This table presents the particular grammatical features associated with realization of field through ideational choices, tenor through interpersonal choices, and mode through textual choices. These are features that can be analyzed in any text. Contextual Variable | Linguistic Realization | Field (Presenting ideas) | Ideational choicesNoun phrases/nominal groups(participants)Verbe (process types)Prepositional phrases, adverbial adjuncts, and other resources for information about time, place, manner, etc.(circumstances)Resources for making logical relationships | Tenor (Taking a stance) | Interpersonal ChoicesMood (statements, questions, demands)Modality (modal verbs and adverbs)IntonationOther resources for evaluative and attitudinal meaning (e. g. recources for appraisal) | Mode (Structuring a text) | Textual ChoicesCohesive devices, including conjunctions and connectorsClause-combining strategiesThematic organization | Table : Grammar and the Context of Situation (Halliday&Hasan, 1989, 1994) C. Discussion Based on the theories underlying the idea that bilingual children storybook is a resourceful source used in learning English can be imprpoved. The children can start learning a new language since the day they were born or later when they enter their school world. The school offers many new experiences for them to explore. One that is importnant is that they might come from different cultural backdgound therefore they have to share their understanding towards some phenomena by exploring their new world, and they can do this if they are exposed a lot by many new things. The students are able to absorp and digest everything when they are given the schemata so that at the end they can do it by themselves. Schooling offers many new knowledge for children. Learning is considered as social practice and children is a part of it. As social practices, the schooling itself has its own structures. The language use and the language of schooling will help children construe new knowledge. Schooling is a linguistic process, and language serves as an often unconscious means of evaluating and differentiating students. Again, it is through language that children learn school’s subjects so language has a pivotal role in helping the children learning many new things. Schooling is not just a matter of sharing knowledge but also giving school tasks for sudents. When the activity occurred, there are two types of texts applied known as spoken and written text. The texts are realized in certain linguistic features and meaningful. The students learn how to identify the text using functional grammar refers to Halliday’s theory. Halliday said that a functional grammar is not just concerned with labelling grammatical elements according to the syntactic category they represent (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) nor with identifying the role that these different elements play within a sentence or abstract entities, a functional approach identifies the configuration of grammatical structures which is typical of or expeted in different kinds of socially relevant tasks and links those linguistic choices with the social purposes and situation that the ‘ texts’ (spoken or written) participate in. It can therefore reveal how the context of schooling is realized in the language used in the texts and tasks that constitute classroom pratices. Learning language can be done through many ways, for instance through reading bilingual children storybook. Children can develop storytelling skills as they grew up and this development begins at home. The cognitive and linguistic development processes required to tell a story have been the focus of most studies; which have examined children’s narratives in one language (Bamberg, 1987; McCabe and Peterson, 1992; Peterson and McCabe, 1983) or cross-linguistically (Berman and Slobin, 1994; Hickman, 1995). Few studies have considered multilingual environments such as those found in much of Indigenous Australia. Form a socialization perspective, studies have shown that the way people talk to children and tell stories to them model notions of ‘ a good story’ held by their speech community and this influences children’s development of this oral genre. Another researchers, Heath (1983) and Watson (2001) discuss this with respect to the kinds of narrative experiences African American children have in their homes, schools and communities. They document children’s skillful mastery of the oratory performaces valuedin their communities. And they consider how this affects the child’s performance in mainstream school settings, particularly in relation to learning to read and write. A few studies have examined more specifically the role of parental input and the differences in style that they might choose to use in narrations with children. These studeies have used experimental rather than ethnographic data and have generally considered one or two narratives events; how parents get children to tell stories about themselves, and how parents tell stories to children using books as prompts. They have sought to establish a link between how the parents talk to the child and how; later on, the child talks (Peterson et al., 1999; Peterson and McCabe, 1996). Interactions over book-prompted narrations often involve adults asking the children questions, and giving the children feedback on their contributions. Parents change the way they talk to children as the children grow up. Pellegrini et al. (1985) found that English-speaking parents adjusted their interactional styles to the child’s level of communicative competence in a book-reading activity. Senechal et al. (1995) reported a significantly higher proportion of utterances aimed at gaining and maintaning attention by English-speaking mothers of children aged 9 and 17 months, as compared with mothers of children aged 27 months. The mothers of the 27-month-old children asked more questions of these older children than the mothers of the younger children. Dickinson et al.(1992) found that in joint narrations with children between 3 and 4 years of age, mother made fewer contributions as children grew older, allowing the child to take on greater responsibility for shared reading. Wigglesworth and Stavans (2001) working with older children (3-7 years) found similar patters. D. Conclusion Having conceptual knowledge on the idea about using bilingual children storybook as a functional linguistic perspective, the writer tries to draw some conclusion to answer the problems as follows: 1) Children learn English through language. Prior to the bilingual children, they can learn another langauge through their native language. Theoretically, a child begins learning a new language as early as possible or later when they enter school world. They have ability to use more than one languages in their daily life. Learning a language takes time sometime until they master to use the language. Learning as a social practice can be done formally, at school or informllay, at home. Children in general say that shooling presents a new situation, new ways of interacting, and new types of texts, as they are expected to read and write genres that construe new kinds of disciplinary knowledge. As they write, the lexical and grammatical chioces they make, clause by clause, simultaneously construe social relationhsips and experience of the world. This functional persperstive is meant that the way students see language is not juts as a medium for communication, but it is about how language has function to help them understand new knowledge. There are lingusitics expectations for students’ language use at school, and that these expectations reflect the language practices of some social groups, but not others. If only certain kinds of socialization practices are reflected in the tasks that children face at shool, it is important to understand what the challenges of these practices might be for students without prior familiarity with them. It means that by having a framework of systemic functional grammar, it provides an overview of the linguistic features typical of the language expected at school. It examines differences between the registers of schooling and registers of informal interaction. Using bilingual children storybook will help them learn English as they will be easier in understanding the form and meaning, the text and the context using their onw cultural and natural context. The importance is that they can identify the linguistics features realiaed in the text and it will help them improve their understaning on the meaning. The form of the text supplied with pictures so that children will form their own understanding on the pictures as an aid for them. The role of teachers and parents are needed in order to help them to be able to give feedback on the texts that they have read. 2) The functional linguistic perspesctives applied in bilingual children storybook are different lingustics choices are functional for creating different types of texts. It implies the power of language in the development of what students learn. ‘ Learning language’ and ‘ learning through language’ are simultaneous (Halliday, 1993). By recognizing the ways that language construes different kinds of meanings, we see how sociocultural knowledge needed for success at school includes the ways of using langauge that enable students to develop and display new knowledge. With a functional linguistic perspective, we have a means of focusing on the forms through which knowledge is construed. This can inform pedagogical practice and enables teachers to make explicit ways that meanings are made thorugh language. Teachers need greater knowledge about the lingusitic basis of what they are teaching and tools for helping students achieve greater facility with the ways language is used in creating the kinds of texts that construe specilized knowledge at shool. IV. REFERENCES Bauer, Laurie. 2007. The linguistics student’s handbook. 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