Children and Adults Written Language

8/9/2019 Children and Adults Written Language

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CHILDREN AND ADULTS LITERACY

Age

The age plays important factor in our decision about how and what to master

in literacy. People of different ages have different needs, competences, and cognitive

skills; we might expect children of primary age to acquire much of a foreign language

through play, for example, whereas for adults we can reasonably expect a greater use

of abstract thought.

There are a number of commonly held beliefs about age. Some people say that

children learn languages faster than adults do. They talk to childrenwho appear to pick

up new languages effortlessly. Perhaps this has something to do with the plasticity of

a young brain. Something, after all, must account for the fact that with language,

according to Steven Pinker,acquisition ..... is guaranteed for children up to the age of

six, is steadily comprimised from then until shortly after puberty, and is rare

thereafter (Pinker, 1994: 293), an that this applies not only to the acquisition of the

first language, but also to second or foreign language.

WRITTEN LANGUAGE

A literature person has the ability to talk, read and write, and the achievement

of early literacy involves learning how to talk , read and write in a competent manner.

There is always the view that spoken language precedes written language

developmentally, socio-historically and culturally.. In each case, the structure of

language must be learned and applied successfully so that mutual communication can


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be achieved amongst people, at least, speak the same language. The

interconnectedness of spoken and written language has been explored historically, and

so too should this reltionship be examined developmentally. The development of

written language is linked to the development of spoken language the former is

parasitic on the latter, it is a second order acquisition. Equally, the development of

written language skills influences spoken language ability, as new langauge structures

and functions are learned for writing which in turn are adopted for speaking.

While spoken language develops naturally, written language development

requires formal instruction. It is usually taught at school. Nonetheless, the learning of

writing depends very much on the prior learning of the spoken language.

The development of reading is also major to the development of writing. The

number of processes involved in reading helps understand the difficulty of acquiring

the alphabetic principle. Printed words gradually become invested with various

linguistics properties, which may be more or less saliant, depending on the stage of

development. These properties are derived from corresponding linguistic codes, which

are the abstract mental representations of different subsystems of language which

cover phonological codes, semantic codes, and syntactic/grammatical codes.

Writing Conventions

Written text has a number of conventions which seperate it out from speaking

and reading. According to Hammer there are issues of letter, word and text formation,

manifasted by handwriting, spelling, and lay out and punctuation ( 2001: p. 255).

Handwriting

Many students whose native language orthography is very different form

English have difficulty forming English letters. Such students should get special

training. This might involve practice in the formation of individual letters such as

Hh ... Bb and to greater extent like Good handwriting is precious.

Spelling

Although incorrect spelling does not often prevent the understanding of a

written language, it can adversely affect the readers judgement. All too often bad

spelling is perceived as a lack of education care.


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One of the reasons that spelling in English is difficult is that the corresponence

between the sound of a word and the way it is spelt is not always obvious. A single

(or more correctly, a single phoneme) may have many different spellings (paw, poor,

pore, pour, daughter, Sean), and the same spelling may have many different sounds

(or, word, information, worry, correspond).

An issue that makes spelling difficult is the fact that not all varieties of English

spell the same words in the same way. Which is correct; color or colour, and theater

or theatre? How do we decide between the use ofs and z in words like apologise and

customize. What position can we take about those Internet users who seem to enjoy

breaking spelling rules?

To help make things clear, we should get our students to focus on a particular

variety of English (British or American English, for example) as a spelling model to

aspire.

The following, are more conventions of writing the writer has tried to identify

1. Sentence Level

2. Sentence Parts and Functions

3. Skip to Verbs and Verbal Clauses

4. The Garden of Phrases

5. Rules for Comma Usage

6. Punctuation Marks Besides the Comma

7. Punctuation between Two Independent Clauses

8. Articles and Determiners

9. Noun Forms: Singular and Plurals

10. Pronouns Antecedent Agreement

11. Placement of Modifiers

12. Subject Verb Agreement

13. Tense Sequence among Verbs, Infinitives and Participles

14. Compound Nouns and Modifiers

15. Capitalization

16. Abrreviations

17. Using Italics and Underlining

18. Parallel Sructures

19. Vocabulary Builders

20. Lexicon


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21. Coherence and Transition

22. Paragraph Development

23. Consistency of Tense and Pronoun Reference

Children Learning Writing

By the age of four or five years, most children have started to show an interest

in mark-making an are ready to learn conventional writing (letters, sounds, and

words). Mark-making is the precusor to emergent writing young children develop the

desire to communicate and naturally start to explore how symbols, pictures or pre-

writing shape can convey their ideas to other people. This intention to communicate

continious to develop and , with appropriate support, leads to conventional letters and

words in the form of recognisable writing.

Observational studies of childrens writing development reveal that their early

writing is usually accompanied by talking and drawing (Bissex, 1980; Dyson, 1988 a:

McLane, 1990). Children usually use their drawing and talk to support their early

exploration and use of print (Dyson, 1988 a). Children may initially regard writing

and drawing as the direct symbol systems in which meaning is embedded (Forreiro

and Toberosky, 1982). Therefore, as children write, they weave their drawing and

speech into their writing to convey meaning (Dyson, 1983; Gundlach, 1982).

In addition to speech and drawing, play characterizes childrens early writing

development (Dyson and Freedman, 1991; Hewman and Roskos, 1997). Clay (1975)

points out that when children explore with written language, they usually play with

graphic features, such as the linearity of the print (i.e. When playing with the

arrangement of words strings, the teacher spells Book B-O-O-K. Then, he asks them

to write B-O-O-K. Next, to write Look he changes on letter take away the B and add

an L).

Learning to Write in the Elementary School Years

As children advance in the elementary school, their writing undergo changes.

At this stage, children may just explore and experiment with different forms of

writing which focus on the mastery, competency, an control of writing(Clay, 1975;

Edelsky, 1986), or copy whole text/ stories (Dyson and Freedman, 1991). Gradually


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through exploration and experimentation, coupled with writing reading experinces at

home and at school, children elaborate and refine their old forms of writing diversity.

Their awareness of audience deveops accordingly. They tend to write for an

immediate or specific audience such as their parents, relatives or friends. As new

forms evolve from old forms, children apply both to achieve various purposes

(Bissex, 1980).

In addition to changes in form and audience awareness, childrens writing

becomes more coherent and internally cohesive during the school years (Dyson and

Freedman, 1991). Dyson and Freedman (1991) point out, children become less likely

to make reference outside the text themselves (e.g. to begin with This is) or to use

pronouns without references (e.g. to use He is when who he is is not clear).

Another chang appears in childrens global structure of their written text; their text

become longer and more complex over time (Beach, 1996; dyson and Freedman,

1991).

Studies on the development and the complexity in childrens writing,

especially their story writing, have shown that before they start school, most of them

already understand the underlying features of storytelling(Applebee, 1978; Martens,

1996). King and Rental (1982) investigated the development of complexity in

childrens story writing during the first two years of schooling. They found that as

childrens oral skill develops, the complexity of ther writing increases accordingly.

With coherence an internal connectedness, the development of writing continuous

through childrens school years into adulthood.

Children and Adult Written Language

At present, writing development remains ill-defined and difficult to assest. It is

confounded with language development more generally, as well as with the

development of content knowledge in particular domains. Indeed, performance on

most of the components of writing achievement varies with topic and type of writing:

vocabulary, syntactic patterns, fluency, organizing structures, and even writing

processes will all vary from one topic or typed writing to another.

Studies indicate that childrens ideas about words are quite different from

adults concepts of words. Because children construct their own knowledge, this

knowledge does not fully developed and is quite often different from that of an adult.


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Thus, there are differences between how an adult understands reading and writing and

how a child understands reading and writing, note McGee and Richgels (1996, p.7)

As children progress into conventional literacy, however, their concept of literacy

gradually change toward the more nventional adult conceptualizations.

In a spelling development study, children and adults showed various

comparison of errors. They showed similar mastery in recognizing single beginning

consonants and short vowel inclusions. Some notable differences between adults and

children were that adults had a much more difficult time marking syllabels in words,

and they showed an equally strong tendency to leave out vowels in their

spellings(Neva M. Niise, 1996; 574). Adults did not do as well as children in their use

of marked endings, primarily because of their tendency to leave off change simple

en, -er, -ed, and es endings.

In general, adults did seem to have a better understanding of prefixes and

suffixes, although this does not alter their pattern of spelling aquisition. Also, adults

had a higher rate than children of mastery of certain spelling creatures, including or,

-er, and ar endings, -ed and ing endings, and contractions. Further, adults a

better job of correctly spelling the syllable junctures of intact words, which mean

that they perform better than the children at seperating and spelling words such as

message and bottom (p. 574).

Loban (1976) focuses his analyses on syntactic structures in students writing

of grade 3 through 12. He found that the attempt to find a developmental sequence of

syntactic structures appropriate for the teaching of school writing eventually failed.

The syntactic structures study covered the use oflonger communication units

(sentences), greater elaboration of subject and predicate, more embedding (from

analyses of grammatical transformations), greater use of adjectival dependent

clauses, more use of dependent clauses of all kinds, and greater use of

tentativeness (i.e., supposition, hypotheses, conjecture, and conditional

statements).

In vocabulary choices, children prefer to use the high frequency words such as

we were happy ... instead of adults writing we were joyful.... , I dont like instead

of I dislike.

In writing their sentence, children tends to use direct speech. Punctuation

convention for direct speech is very much needed to present it. While doing that,

children seemed to forget the use of open and closing quotation , for instance, Daisy


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say to tom, go to the cow and have its kiss. At the same time, they forgot to use

capitalization to say name tom forTom, and Go after the use of open quotation.

There was a syntactic error in that sentence, too , the word say forsaid. Originally

the children wanted to write Daisy said to Tom, Go to the cow and have its kiss.

Chilrdren were also rather awkward with the writing of the first speaker. It is

commonly found they write One day my mother and i .... instead of writing One

day my mother and I ......

Furthermore children are still far from the ability to write abstract meaning.

For example, they wrote we were happy when father planned that we went to the zoo.

Whereas adults wrote refreshing our mind, we planned to go to the zoo.

Initial studies demonstrated that sentence combining practice did in fact to the

use of more complex syntax in that way to fulfil the ability to have cohesive and

coherent writing. The technical cues such as joining sentences using although was

unclearly used by children. For instance, he knew although he did not tell the

police.

Some Examples of Children and Adults Written Language

Writers original writing

For Children at the age of ten

At The Zoo

Last Saturday we were very happy. My father planned to bring us to the zoo

on Sunday. Then, on Sunday morning my mother woke up very early. She prepared

the food and drinks for the trip. My father checked up his car. We helped them

prepare everything. I helped my mother cook and put the meal into some basins. My


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brother helped my father clean his car. My younger brother did not do anything

because he was still too young. He only saw and asked this and that.

At 7.30, we were ready to go. My father told us that the zoo is around 15 km

far from our house. It opens at 9.00. I thought it was very early to go there at that

time. But father told us that it is better to go early because there is so much traffic jam

in this town, Medan. We arrived at the zoo at 8.25. There were no visitors. We werethe first. The name of the zoo is Gembira Loka. My father paid Rp 5000,. for each

ticket. After my father paid the tickets,we entered the zoo.

In the zoo, we saw many animals. There were some elephants. They were very

big. They had yellow trunks. Suddenly my younger brother cried out, Look. The

elephants are playing in the water. They are bathing. I answered, Yes, brother. It is

true. Then, we saw there were other animals. They were lions, tigers, monkeys and

wow... there were some giraffes and zebras. I had never seen those animals before.

The giraffes were very tall. They were eating some leaves. I did not know the name

of the leaves. My elder brother went nearer to the monkeys cage. He wanted to give

nuts and bananas to the monkeys. We followed him. We gave the monkeys nuts and

bananas in turn. They were very funny. They chattered and jumped here and there.We felt amused. After that, we went to see birds. There were not many kinds of birds

there. There were only some parrots, four ostriches, and five peacocks. The parrots

talked all the time. The ostriches had long feet and big body. They were so strange.

And the peacocks, they were very wonderful. They had beautiful feathers.

At 12.00, my mother called us. She told us to sit down under a big tree.

She asked me to take out all the food utensils. I realized it was time to have lunch. We

had our lunch happily. We talked about the animals. We ate all the food up because

we felt very hungry. At 1.30, we went on seeing other animals such as pandas,

chimpanzees, kangoroos, and crocodiles. We went to the souvenier stalls, too. There

were many funny puppets of animals. My brother bought some dinosaurs. And I

bought a panda. At 4.00, we stopped our journey. We returned home. We felt very

tired but happy.

For adults

At The Zoo

Going to the zoo gives pleasure to our family. They will welcome us

cheerfully when we tell them that we are going to visit the zoo. The father and mother

will make some arrangements in accordance to the departure. The mother will get

busy preparing food and drinks for the whole family. Her daughter may help her do

the cooking and keeping the food in picnic pack. The father will get busy preparing

transportation. His son may give a hand to him. The youngest child may not help

anything because of his young age. He is only able to see and deliver questions about

this and that.

Entering the zoo, each member of the family must buy ticket from the counter.

It can be represented by only one person. The cost of the ticket is Rp 5000,. for each

visitor. We can see many kinds of animals in the zoo. Some of them are wild andprotected animals such as elephants, lions, tigers, and crocodiles. There are also rare


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and cute animals such as giraffes, zebras and pandas. We can see many activities that

those animals do. The lions are eating some chickens while in the next cage the tigers

just sit down under a tree scratching its head. The monkeys are chattering and

jumping happily when they have some bananas, cucumbers, or nuts from the visitors.

If we go farther, we will meet some birds. Some of them are almost extinct: the

ostriches and the peacocks. There are also some talkative birds that make us feelamused. These parrots sometimes say very amusing words to make us laugh.

There are some visitors who come to the zoo not to have pleasure for

themselves. Their coming is purposedly to make report for their school assignment.

Some of them go to the wild and protected animals, watching what they do, what they

eat, what their color is, how big they are (of course they are not allowed to come

closer to those animals, they can describe by saying a lion is about 1.3 m long and 1 m

tall). Some will go to birds section. They will notice how those nimals act, identify the

colors of a peacock, and guess how tall the ostriches are. Some other visitors like to

spend their time to to the souvenier stalls, looking or buying kinds of puppets or bags,

or t-shirts available there.

Having satisfied of visiting the zoo, the family and other visitors return home.Although their body is somewhat tired, their mind is full of joy and thanks.

An Original Childs Writing

At The Zoo

When Sally holliday, her father brought Sally to zoo. Sally saw many animals

in the zoo. There were have monkey, lion, butterflies, rabbit, crocodiles, cats, dogs,

etc. Sally was very happy. When Sally had the lunch in he zoo, Sally sat in the cat

chair and the table was very beautiful. After that, Sally saw the zookeeper gave the

elephant food. Sally also took picture with the animals. There were also have many

shop that sold souvenier and goods. Sally bought a bag from crocodiles skin for her

mother. Sally tried to feed the animals. When in the zoo, Sally saw many people

visited to the zoo. She also bought zebra doll for her brother. Sally was very happy.She will bring her brother next week to the zoo an she will tell her friends about at the

zoo in holiday. When afternoon, she went to home and gave the bag to her mother. At

that day, It was the happiest dy for Sally.

(This was written by a V-4 grade elementary school of Sutomo 2. The writer is almost

ten years in next May. She is Elfyra Tannia)

An Original Adults Writing


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At The Zoo

On last holliday My friends and I went to the zoo. We wante to refresh our

mind and after doing some activities at home, we went there erly in the morning.

Many people were there when we arrived. After parking the car we walked along the

zoo to see many kinds of animals. Some of them are funny like the monkey. It canjump to take some food that we throw to them The monkey were happy to eat. And

another animals like birds we gave them the food so they sing nicely. In the afternoon,

we returne home, we were very tired but happy because we had so much fun.

(This material was written by a friend whose job is a teacher)

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Children and Adults Written Language