A Case Study of Norah, An Emergent Reader

  Author: Julie Johnson

I had the opportunity to conduct a case study of Norah, an emergent reader who attends my kindergarten. The following text details Norah’s background information, factors influencing her acquisition of reading skills, an assessment of her current reading level, and target areas and strategies for her improvement. I will also reflect on my assessment methods and how to motivate and engage Norah in her pursuit of literacy and education in the future.

Norah is a six-year-old kindergarten student at a bilingual kindergarten in Guangzhou, China. In terms of development, Norah is a fairly typical six-year-old. She has no apparent manifestations of physiological or neurological factors that would negatively affect her ability to learn to read. She has normal vision and hearing and shows no signs of speech disorders, ADD, or ADHD.

Norah is from an upper class family with two loving parents and grandparents who are committed to her education. Her parents and grandparents spend a lot of time and attention working with Norah to further her education. There is no shortage of books, conversation, and educational games in her house. Her interests and educational pursuits are encouraged and taken seriously by everyone in her household. Norah has been attending a bilingual “International” pre-school and Kindergarten program, where the primary language of instruction is English, since age 3. 

Norah is a smart girl and is currently at the top of her class in terms of learning achievement and behavior. She is well behaved in school and loves to learn through song and dance. She loves the movie ‘Frozen’ and likes to sing ‘Let it Go’. Norah prefers lessons that allow her to be creative and loves to create artwork. She is not shy to speak and communicates openly with her teachers and classmates. 

The most significant factor that will influence Norah’s ability to learn to read is Norah’s need to learn English. Norah is working to become tri-lingual. She can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and has been learning English at school from age 3. Though her school environment uses English as the language of instruction and Norah is rapidly acquiring English language ability, she is not yet fluent. Nobody in Norah’s family can speak English. Her parents speak to Norah in Mandarin, the national standard language in China and secondary language spoken at school, while her grandparents speak to her in Cantonese, the local language. School is also basically the only place where Norah is exposed to the English language. While Norah does have many English language books and watches some English language television programs at home, her parents read to her in Mandarin or Cantonese.

When assessing Norah’s pre-reading and literacy skills to determine target areas for instruction, I made several interesting discoveries. The first discovery I made is that Norah’s phonological and morphological awareness is well developed. This is consistent with findings from cross-linguistic research amongst Chinese and English speakers. Phonological awareness correlated not only to learning to read via the roman alphabet but also to the ability to read Chinese characters (Hu, C. c., 2013).  Norah is proficient at recognizing letters and associating them with sounds, however, she sometimes has difficulty separating the sounds associated with the English alphabet versus it’s corresponding pronunciation in pinyin, using roman letters to represent Mandarin sounds. I also discovered Norah had some difficulty segmenting words. Chinese characters are representative of morphemes, which are also syllables (Hu, 2013). When segmenting words, Norah was actually better at breaking the word into its individual sound components as opposed to syllables. The most significant realization that I made during the assessment was that the main thing Norah needs to focus on is building her English vocabulary. She has all the right building blocks for literacy, but learning to read English will be impossible if she can’t understand the English language. Thus, the three target areas for instruction I suggest for Norah are, (1) differentiating English alphabetic sounds from pinyin, (2) segmenting words into syllables, and (3) building her English vocabulary.

The first target area is letter/sound relationships. The more interaction Norah has with letters and the sounds they make in English, the less she will confuse them for the pinyin. This skill is significant to literacy in that it is important to spelling and decoding words when reading (Snow, et al., 1998). I think the following two strategies can be used to practice and further develop letter sound relationships. First, I think Norah should play a game like Picture Card Snap. To play this game, Norah would need a set of flash cards with images and text on them. She would choose one image out of the pile and identify the initial or final sound. She would then find all of the other flashcards beginning or ending in the same sound, paying careful attention to the corresponding text. If the cards use vocabulary that Norah is familiar with and pronouncing correctly this game will be effective in helping her differentiate English from Chinese sounds. In this way she will recognize the English b makes the sound /b/ like in ball, not /bo/ like in bōluó, (pineapple) in Mandarin (Essential Strategies for Teaching Phonemic Awareness, n.d.). Another strategy she can use to help her differentiate English from pinyin is by reading rhyming words aloud. She could play a rhyming word generation game by changing the initial sound of simple to read words that she already knows like cat, etc. For example, she could start with the word ‘bat’, and go through the alphabet trying to see what other words she could make just by changing the first letter, ie bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, rat, sat, etc, (Essential Strategies for Teaching Phonemic Awareness, n.d.). By reading the rhyming words aloud and matching the letters to the sounds, she would be correctly associating these letters with their English sounds, because a wrong pronunciation of the final sound wouldn’t rhyme.

The second target area for Norah is segmenting words into syllables. Understanding syllables can help children learn to spell, read more fluently and accurately, and decode new words when reading (Snow, C., Burns, M., & Griffin, P., 1998). Two strategies that can be used to segment words are using a marker or token to count syllables in words and playing multisyllabic manipulation games (Syllable Games, n.d.). For Norah, using a token to count syllables in words might look like using a set of flash cards with the written vocabulary and several colorful tokens. She would identify each word by the photograph, say the words aloud, and count the syllables in the word, placing a token under each syllable as she hears it. Multisyllabic manipulation might look like using targeted vocabulary words divided into syllables by the teacher. Each syllable would be written on a separate flash card and mixed up. To complete the exercise, Norah would arrange the jumbled syllables to make the vocabulary words she is practicing. To familiarize herself with the game, the flashcards might include divided pictures. Once she is proficient with the flash card syllable set with pictures, she might move onto cards without photos to challenge herself (Syllable Games, n.d.). 

Finally for the third, and most important target area for Norah is building her English vocabulary. Obviously, Norah can’t learn how to read the English language without being able to understand it to some extent. One of the key challenges for ESL students is helping them to develop the oral language skills required to participate in lessons and develop the skills necessary for literacy. (Kim, Y., 2008). The most important thing Norah can do to set herself up to be a proficient reader in the future is to strengthen her English language ability. Two strategies that Norah can use to do this outside of school are play vocabulary building games and interact with more English language speakers and media at home. Playing vocabulary-building games is a good strategy to familiarize herself with as many English words as possible (Kim, 2008). Some example vocabulary building games are kung-fu and charades. Kung fu involves laying flashcards of new vocabulary on the ground. A teacher or parent can speak the vocabulary word and the child jumps to the corresponding flash card, shouting the word. This is an active way to learn new vocabulary and practice identifying words quickly. If played against a partner, it offers a competitive edge to see who can jump to the flashcard first and become the ‘Kung-fu Master’. Another good vocabulary building game is charades or Pictionary. The teacher or parent can draw or act out a word and the student will guess the vocabulary word. Then the parent and child can switch roles. This is an interactive and creative way to practice new vocabulary. Additionally, Norah may want to play as many vocabulary-building apps on her iPad as she can to build, practice, and reinforce vocabulary learned at school. 

The second strategy that Norah should use to build her English outside of school is to interact with as much English language media as possible (Kim, 2008). One good option for Norah, because her parents don’t speak English is narrated books. There are many video versions of books available that would allow Norah to see the picture and the text while listening to a fluent English speaker. She can follow along with the text just as she would if her mother was reading to her. Though it may sound silly, watching cartoons in English and English language films will also help Norah strengthen her vocabulary. Instead of watching Dora the Explorer or Frozen in Chinese, she should watch the English language versions. I would also ask Norah’s parents to encourage Norah to speak English as often as possible outside of school, perhaps with her friends from kindergarten during playtime,etc.

These strategies all support engagement and motivation for learners like Norah. Norah is very young and likes to learn through playing games. She is interested in learning and these strategies offer her the opportunity to learn by doing. These strategies are teach and practice critical literacy skills through games and play and will help Norah improve her English so she can become a skilled reader in the future. They are engaging because the involve a significant amount of interaction with the materials and can be tailored to topics that she is interested in. Norah is very self motivated, however, the more fun she is having, the more likely she is to practice and improve.

Assessing young learners for instructional purposes differs from assessing older students in many ways. My primary challenge in assessing Norah was an occasional barrier in understanding the directions of the task I wanted her to perform or the game I wanted her to play. While she may have be able to complete the task, the trouble was in understanding the instructions due to a lack of English vocabulary. Assessing younger learners also requires assessment tasks that produce results relatively quickly. The younger the learner, the shorter their attention span to a task; it’s best to design assessment that doesn’t require a lot of time to observe and assess the target skill. 

In conclusion, Norah is progressing quite well on her path to English literacy. At this point, I believe Norah should focus on English vocabulary building and language fluency. The higher her English language ability, the easier it will be for her to learn to read. She has all the right foundations in place and is making good progress in learning to read both English and Chinese.

 

 

References:

Adams, M., Foorman, B., Lundberg, I., & Beeler, T. (2004). Phonemic Activities for the Preschool or Elementary Classroom.

Essential Strategies for Teaching Phonemic Awareness. (n.d.) Retrieved April 17, 2016 from http://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/40626_1.pdf. 

Hu, C. c. (2013). Predictors of reading in children with Chinese as a first language: a developmental and cross-linguistic perspective. Reading & Writing, 26(2), 163-187. doi:10.1007/s11145-012-9360-0.

Kim, Y. (2008). The Effects of Integrated Language-Based Instruction in Elementary ESL Learning. Modern Language Journal, 92(3), 431-451. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2008.00756.x.

Snow, C., Burns, M., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Syllable Games. (n.d.) Retrieved May 7, 2016 from http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/syllable_games. 

Yeung, S. S., & Chan, C. K. (2013). Phonological awareness and oral language proficiency in learning to read English among Chinese kindergarten children in Hong Kong. British Journal Of Educational Psychology, 83(4), 550-568. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.2012.02082.x.