"WHEN YOU WRITE 'FOUR' IN CHINESE, YOU WILL FIND TWO 'J'S' IN IT": A CASE STUDY OF FOUR CHILDREN LEARNING TO BE LITERATE IN ALPHABETIC AND NON-ALPHABETIC PRINT

Abstract

Framed within sociocultural, sociopsycholinguistic, and socio-semiotic views of language and literacy learning, I employed a qualitative case study approach to examine the nature of bilingual and biliteracy learning process of four young ethnic Chinese children living in a community where mainstream American culture and English predominated. I used observations, interviews, and analysis of documents to collect data over a 3.5-year period at a community-based, weekend mother tongue (Chinese) class where I was also the teacher of my research participants. A constant comparison approach was used to analyze and interpret the data gathered.

Because of their heritage and life experiences, these children had access to two sets of cultural and semiotic resources in both minority (home and the weekend mother tongue school) and dominant (community where they lived and school they attended daily) sociocultural contexts. Findings from this research revealed that meaning making began when these children responded to existing or created texts while involved in semiotic engagements, and through this process these young learners acquired culturally and semiotically specific knowledge. Experiences with and exposure to these two sets of specifics enabled children to transfer knowledge they acquired in one context to the other, as well as to transmediate between sign systems across sociocultural borders. Finally, within the context of the classroom, these children also experimented with different ways of meaning making, drawing knowledge they possessed from both contexts to create new meaning, from which new specifics were generated.