Lack of Exposure to Print in Pre-School Years: Implications for Children’s Literacy Learning

Children are constantly surrounded by adults who are engaged in various activities. A child observes and tries to imitate them as per his ability and understanding of the purpose of the activity. While there are some actions like crying, walking and eating which are instinctive and the child does not need systematic training for doing these, learning language is dependent on various factors such as the social interaction of the child with the language-using adults, his/her innate ability to acquire language as claimed by Chomsky and the several instances in day-to-day life which allow him to use language as a medium of communicating his thoughts. This is common for all children irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds. Children generally learn their mother-tongue first and then begin to learn other languages as they interact with people who speak language different from theirs or in school which requires them to learn a widely used language (e.g. English). They do not encounter much difficulty till they start to learn reading and writing the language.

From the time of birth itself, a child listens to people talking to him/her and generally begins to talk by the time he/she is one year old. But reading and writing ability develops later and varies according to the atmosphere he is living in. If a child is constantly surrounded by people who are literate and who effectively use print in their everyday lives, then it is easier for him to start reading and writing at an early age. Teale and Sulzby (1989) assert that children learn to read and write long before they enter kindergarten. This learning of literacy at pre-school phase is considered to be very important from the perspective of the concept called as emergent literacy. It can be defined as:

Emergent literacy consists  of  the  skills,  knowledge, and  attitudes  that are presumed to be developmental precursors to  conventional  forms  of reading and writing (Sulzby,  1989; Sulzby &  Teale, 1991; Teale &  Sulzby, 1986)  and the environments  that support  these  developments  (e.g.,  shared  book  reading; Lonigan, 1994;  Whitehurst  et  al., 1988). (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998, p.849)

Let us understand how the presence of print and literate adults affects a child’s emergent literacy. Children in a literate family are presented with a print-rich environment. Charts and toys having alphabets and pictures of corresponding objects on them, pictorial story-books with description in a simple language, etc. form part of its surrounding. Parents read them storybooks for few years and thus they get accustomed to the form of written text which is different from the oral speech. They are able to make meaning out of the stories (that they listen to often) while reading and do not just memorize them. They recognize the importance of literacy when they see the adults reading newspapers, books, doing accounts, writing letters, completing crossword puzzles in newspaper, etc. Parents involve the children in some of these activities thus helping them understand the purpose of the activity. Hence, they develop a view of literacy being a functional skill and not an abstract thing (Teale & Sulzby, 1989).

Children scribble and draw letters and pictures on papers which are initially not comprehensible for the literate adults but it is interesting that when asked the children can read out what they have written. The reading skills enhance their oral language by increasing vocabulary while writing skills improves their reading abilities. Thus, children who are brought up in a print-rich environment with opportunities to understand the utility of literacy, learn to read and write easily. It is also evident that child-adult interaction also plays a major role in the child’s emergent literacy. These children are literally ready to go to school having acquired the basic skills of using language. Here it is indispensable to understand the condition of a child who belongs to a background void of literacy, children whose parents are not literate, whose cultural and economic milieu is not exposed to the usage of print as much as the literate society.

Purcell-Gates (1995) maintains that existence of language environment and interaction with people is needed for learning written language just like for learning oral language. A child gets access to print only to the extent it is used by its socio-cultural group. As described above, children from literate backdrop are able to differentiate between oral and written language because they constantly come across written texts and also read to by parents. But, children who do not have the privilege of reading texts and whose family does not use print, hardly come to know about the fact that ‘written language is not simply oral language written down’ (Purcell-Gates, 1995, p.42). In school, the print resources like informative charts, news, morning message, etc. are one of the first written texts they encounter. Children from literate families grasp these easily while the unprivileged children struggle to read. Learning to read and write is not integrated into their lives; rather it is a separate skill which needs a lot of effort and time on their part. Thus social class difference is a major factor for the literacy level gap between children.

The standardized curriculum is developed keeping in mind the mainstream society which dominates the political and social issues. The structure and content of the text is unfamiliar to them which makes it even more difficult for them to decode the print. The language, the examples, the overall content of the subjects revolves around the upper class context. It reflects the social life, mannerism, interpersonal relationships and communication forms of the literate society but all these are unknown to the children from less educated background. In school, alphabets are taught by associating them to different objects like hat, watch, telephone, etc. Children from poor families are unable to grasp this as they have not seen these objects around them and it becomes out of context for them. Thus, along with the language problem, they go through tough times trying to get acquainted with the foreign society, its elements and rules.

Cultural stereotypes about people from poor, lower classes contribute to their miserable condition. Mostly school administrators and teachers believe that illiterate parents are not concerned about their child’s education and thus when the children fail to learn, the blame is put on the irresponsible parents. It is also assumed that these children will not be able to study well and sustain the education as their parents too are uneducated. These negative stereotypes deny them access to quality education. Thus the relation between cultural low-literacy and low literacy attainment is strengthened by such assumptions about the lower classes. Their failure to read and write is casually ignored by the educators thus giving them no possibility of improvement (Purcell-Gates, 1995).

Language is a marker of culture and thus both oral dialect and written style become parameters of distinguishing between children from literate and illiterate backgrounds (Purcell-Gates, 1995). Many tribes are forced to learn a different language as their dialect is not considered to be refined and sometimes it is totally excluded because of lack of written script. For example, in Karnataka, the Soliga tribe children are expected to speak and study in Kannadiga and not the language they speak as it does not have a written script. What they do not realize is that any language can be written in any script. The teachers humiliate them in school if they speak in their own dialect which they speak at home. Thus, their dialect marks them as unable and reluctant to learn by the mainstream society. If at all they learn to read the written texts, their pronunciations do not match with the phonological system of the language taught at school. This again becomes a reason for their segregation as teachers hardly understand the problems of these children who did not even know that such a language existed.

Written language poses a more difficult challenge for these children. The written language consists of literary vocabulary items which are not often used in oral speech. Children from literate families start using this vocabulary in oral language as they are accustomed to read them in print. Thus, the difference between oral and written language is not very huge for them. On the other hand, children from lower classes are not exposed to the kind of literary vocabulary associated with written text making it incomprehensible for them. Even the print material such as brochures, magazines, newspapers and religious books which are involved in day-to-day activities are written in a typical standard structure. This hinders their least scope of using literacy in a functional manner.

According to Purcell-Gates (1995), written language is decontextualized while oral language is contextualized because of the shared physical context between listeners and speaker. Use of long intonation units, specific order of these units, endophoric references constitute written language structure while it is not the same with oral speech. This is one of the main reasons for the difference between them and is hard to be understood by children who do not have vast experience of reading written text. The written language is academic and bureaucratic in nature (Purcell-Gates, 1995). It is difficult for children who have knowledge about a language distinct from that used in formal schooling, to understand the instructions in this language.

Scope of this paper does not allow me to write much about what measures can be implemented to help these children in learning to read and write, but the implications of lack of print for their literacy learning cannot be ignored. It is a very important responsibility of the educators (policy makers, curriculum designers, teachers, etc.) to make these children acquainted with the language in an interesting way so that they enjoy learning. Students from minority groups are indirectly forced to study in their mother-tongue or regional language and denied access to formal language education in the name of making it easier for them to learn (Delpit, 1988). This is nothing but a way to maintain the status quo of the literate society. Instead these children should be encouraged to learn the formal language as it is the language of power in the practical world but they should also be taught to value their own culture and language. Teachers should acknowledge the fact that each learner comes to school with his/her own representation of world encoded by a language and they should ensure that language and their background do not become barriers in learning.