| Summary: | 碩士 === 臺北市立教育大學 === 幼兒教育學系碩士班 === 96 === From the angle of emergent literacy perspective, the researcher conducted a case study to investigate lower-grade pupils’ development of Mandarin reading and writing. The two subjects, with abundant experience of reading, drawing, writing, and speaking, graduated from kindergarten which adopted learning center approach and had not received formal instruction not only of reading and writing but also of Mandarin Phonetic Symbols until they entered elementary school. The purpose of the research was to understand the subjects’ characteristics and progress in reading and writing in elementary school and to explore the transitional process between preschool literacy experiences and literacy learning in primary education.
The methods included participant observation methods, field notes, video- and audio-recordings, interviews, collections of the pupils’ works and relevant documents as well as accomplishments in Mandarin courses. Fields of research contained the situations wherein cases participated in Mandarin courses and after-class reading and writing activities.
Research findings revealed the following information:
1）The progress of learning reading
Although those who had learned Mandarin Phonetic Symbols were less frustrated after enrolment, they still made commonly seen mistakes. Some of the rules could be absorbed through direct teaching and drills. While the two subjects met with setbacks at the beginning of learning Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, they ultimately can comprehend and employ the rules of pin-yin system. One of the subjects, Duo-Duo, learned Mandarin Phonetic Symbols with a certain amount of lexical acquisition which helped her reduce anxiety about learning Mandarin Phonetic Symbols and reading; meanwhile, it also accelerated reading performance.
In the aspect of reading strategies, the two subjects advanced from reading aloud to silent reading, and they could interchangeably apply the two strategies by utilizing fingers to assist in pointing, read word by word as well as correlate symbols with sounds. Reading comprehension was concerned with the subjects’ decoding speed, the amount of lexical acquisition, and real-life experiences.
2）The progress of learning writing
In the initial stage, the case who wrote Mandarin Phonetic Symbols would verbally write out based on the property of symbols. From a viewpoint of emergent literacy perspective, the phenomenon would not influence language competency and meaning conveyed. After being provided with formal instructions of characters, the subjects gradually replaced Mandarin Phonetic Symbols with characters.
As for written language, the patterns that two subjects mostly relied on were sounds and shapes in the task of word recognition whereas least were semantic meanings. Oral expression served as their important language experience related to background knowledge of organizing words and sentences. However, higher-level organizational abilities needed to be acquired by participating in more literacy activities. Furthermore, writing and reading were reciprocally associated with each other, and plentiful literacy experience would reflect in oral and writing competency.
3）Contextual factors that influenced learning of reading and writing
Literacy development would vary with individual differences. Attitudes and styles were cultivated through interactions with surroundings which further affected the subjects’ literacy learning. Moreover, family played a role in supporting their initial and life-long literacy experiences; preschool education provided learning and support suitable for their differences and age; primary education leaded the subjects to learn formal language forms. The connection of family and school education composed supportive system of literacy development. Lastly, enactment of language education policies and emphasis on literacy achievement in our cultural context also worked upon language experience of the subjects and all pupils. These above-mentioned systems interrelated to each other and influenced the subjects’ literacy development to different extents.
The findings showed that language education of preschool should supply the children with rich literacy context which included drawing, listening, storytelling, oral expression, and so on. In this way, even if traditional literacy skills were not specifically taught, these children still could have concept and abilities of reading and writing, by which would benefit their literacy development. The more important thing was that under the cultural context in Taiwan emphasizing formal language instructions, the two subjects developed interest in daily literacy practice during preschool stage and extended such an interest, which become parts of their life, to primary education. These cases learned reading and writing on the basis of their own specific strengths, and their disinterest of learning Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, recognizing words and writing did not affect language development. In their sophomore, one of the subjects, Jiang-Jiang, gradually revealed higher-level language ability mastering tips of reading and writing whose performance was related to personal attributes and experience at home and school.
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