Ran Hu [ 胡冉 ] Michelle Commeyras University of Georgia

1. Emergent Biliteracy Assessment Procedures used with a five-year old Chinese girl learning to read English and Chinese Ran Hu [胡冉] Michelle Commeyras University of Georgia The 5th International Conference on ELT in China & the 1st Congress of Chinese Applied Linguistics, Beijing May, 2007

2. Context • Ran Hu tutored a five-year-old Chinese child (Chaochao) to to develop her language and literacy in English and Chinese. • The primary materials were wordless picture books. • The tutoring occurred three times a week for ten weeks (approximately 30 hours.)

3. Research Questions • (1) What developed with the child’s oral language in English and Chinese? • (2) What developed with the child’s oral vocabulary versus reading vocabulary in English and Chinese? • (3) What developed with the child’s use of graphophonic cues when writing in English?

4. Summary of Tutoring Chaochao • Audiotape all the activities in each tutoring session, 3 times a week for 10 consecutive weeks. Mondays Greeting (E) Labeling (E&C) Picture walk (E&C) Storytelling (E&C) Wednesdays Greeting (E) Storytelling (E&C) Reading word Cards (E&C) Reading Biliterate Text (E & C) Fridays Greeting (E) Storytelling (E&C) Picture finding (E&C) Word finding (E&C) Sentence making (E&C) Invented Spelling (E&C)

5. Emergent Literacy Concepts of Print Directionality English Chinese English Alphabet Common Chinese Characters Common English Words Chaochao’s Wordless Picture Book Stories English reading vocabulary Chinese reading vocabulary Dictated sentences - invented spellings Assessments Summary and Recommendations

6. Concepts About Print (Clay, 1991) • Holding the book • Pointing to the front and the back of the book • Pointing to the beginning and the end of the sentences

7. 1) Reading from right to left: Dian Dian see the egg is popped. • 2) Reading from bottom to top: Jun Jun is very happy. Huang Huang and Jun Jun walk away. And Dian Dian sad. .popped is egg the see Dian Dian Dian Dian sad. and Jun Jun walk away. And Jun Jun is very happy. Huang Huang

8. 3) Reading left to right with a reverse sweep (snaking): Dian Dian walk away to see an egg. He is happy. The egg popping is a turtle come out. 4) Reading vertically: 点点看见军军生鸡蛋. Dian Dian walk away to see is popping egg The .egg an a turtle come out. 点 点 看 见 军 军 生 鸡 蛋 。

9. From Assessment for Reading Instruction by Michael C. McKenna and Steven A. Stahl. Result – 100% accuracy English Alphabet Recognition

10. Result – unable to read 3 characters (88%) Chinese Characters Recognition

11. English reading vocabulary • Word in an index card or word in isolation assessment • Word in a sentence strip or word in context assessment balloon Hong Hong get elephant balloon.

12. English Reading Vocabulary – assessed twice in week 5 and two weeks after tutoring • Sight word vocabulary: words the child could read in isolation. • 54/166 words (33%) vs. 51/252 (20%) • Context vocabulary: words the child could read in sentences. • 60/166 (36%) vs. 123/252 (49%) • Oral-only vocabulary: words the child could use in storytelling but failed to read from index cards or from sentence strips. • 52/166 (31%) vs. 78/252 (31%)

13. Chinese Reading Vocabulary - assessed once at the end of tutoring in week 10 • Characters in index cards or characters in isolation assessment – Sight 183/300 (61%) • Characters in a sentence strip or characters in context assessment – Context 69/300 (23%) • Oral- only Vocabulary - 48/300 (16%) 气 球 红红有了一个红颜色的大象的气球 。

14. Dolch/Fry Combined High Frequency Words • Dolch word lists • 220 "service words" (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs) and 95 nouns which occurred again and again in children's books by Edward William Dolch. • Fry word lists • Edward Fry compiled another list of 1,000 words of frequently occurring words in English texts to be taught to students. The first 300 Fry words make up 65% of all written material contained in newspaper articles, magazines, textbooks, children's stories, novels, etc. • Dolch/Fry Combined words • 157 words that are shared by both Dolch and Fry first 300 words. • Ran wrote each word on an index card and asked the child to read. • 28/157 – sight vocabulary (18%) • Compare 18% with 33% (week 5) and 20% (end) - indicated that more sight vocabulary was known from Chaochao’s storytelling for wordless picture books than from the Dolch/Fry list.

15. Invented Spelling • Chaochao had difficulty distinguishing the pronunciation of letters when they varied across words. • up – rp; eye – ai; all – oo; table – taboo; dance – dns; hill – heo • The child changed the voiced and unvoiced pronunciation of “th”, into /de/ and /s/. • them – dm; they – da; three – sre; thing – sing. • The child developed an understanding that the letter “c” and letter “k” both make the hard /c/ sound in some words. (2nd week, 6th week) • Can – kn – cn; car – kr – cr; come – komn – com; clean – kln – clln.

16. Summary • Assessments linked to Wordless Picture Books: English/Chinese reading vocabularies & English invented spellings • Assessments Basics: Concepts of Print, Directionality; Alphabet, Characters & Common Words/Characters • Classroom Possibilities with Wordless Picture Books

17. Classroom Assessment • Wordless Picture Books • Students collaborate in making up the story • Teacher writes story in English and Chinese for students to copy in notebooks. • Students do repeated readings of biliteracy text. • Teacher assesses with dictated sentences in English and Chinese. • Teacher calls on individual students to read aloud sentences.