Word Concept of Illiterates and Low-literates:

Worlds Apart?

Liesbeth Onderdelindenepm.onderdelinden@inter.nl.netRadboud University Nijmegen

The Netherlands

Sponsored by SNUF (Nijmegen University Fund)

Word concept

• Awareness of the word as a linguistic unit demonstrated by the ability to isolate words in a stream of spoken language

Tests: - sentence segmentatione.g. Where is mother?

- listen to a story and repeat the last word when the narrator pauses

e.g. There is not enough food … anymore.

Results of previous research among children

• Developmental progression (Karpova; Papandropoulou & Sinclair; Downing & Oliver; Fox & Routh; Edwards & Kirkpatrick)

• Children under 7 generally no clear word concept (Karpova; Holden & MacGinitie; Downing & Oliver; Ehri; Edwards & Kirkpatrick)

• Increase in metalinguistic knowledge around 7 or 8 years (Papandropoulou & Sinclair; Edwards & Kirkpatrick)

• Open class words (e.g. nouns and verbs) were better recognized as individual words than closed class words (e.g. prepositions and articles)

(Papandropoulou & Sinclair; Ehri; Holden & MacGinitie)

Two studies among 4- and 5-year-old children compared

Karmiloff-Smith et al. (1996)

introduced an on-line task

Results:- 4-year-olds scored 75.3 %

correct- 5-year-olds scored 96.2 %

correct

Conclusion:

even young children of 4 and 5 years old are able to isolate words in a meaningful context

This study was replicated by Kurvers & Uri (2006)

Results:- 4-year olds scored 26.6%

correct- 5-year-olds scored 26.6%

correct

Conclusion: literacy may play a role in the development of a child’s word concept

Hypotheses of the present study

• Low-literates perform better than illiterates

• Open class words (e.g. nouns and verbs) are better recognized than closed class words (e.g. articles and prepositions)

Participants: 30 adult L2 learners

15 illiterates:

• No education in native country

• Not able to read and write• Speaking skills at least

A1 (CEF)

15 low-literates:

• No education in native

country• Became literate in NL• Speaking skills at least

A1 (CEF)• Approx. 2 years DL2

education in NL

Language background

– L1: different languages, but mostly:

» Moroccan Arabic (6) » Berber (7)» Somali (8)

– L2: Dutch

Instruments

Reading task:

– illiterates: a few easy words– low-literates: a small text about which two questions were asked

Word awareness task:

listen to a story and repeat the last word when the narrator paused

• 32 target words: • 16 open class words (e.g. verbs, nouns and adjectives)• 16 closed class words (e.g. articles and prepositions)

Procedure word awareness task

A short practice story with 6 open class target words:

– no explanation of what a word is– feedback on an incorrect answer– no explanatory details

This task was administered to 14 illiterates and 15 low-literates

Berber folk story about a man and his seven daughters

One day his new … wife said:

‘There is not enough food … any more.’

Then she told everything … to her son.

% correct by group and word classWord class Group Mean (sd) % correct

Open Illiterates 8.79(4.64)

54.9

Low-literates 12.4(4.63)

77.5

Closed Illiterates 6.00(3.40)

37.5

Low-literates 8.93(3.90)

55.8

Test difference between both groups

Group t df p

Illiterates /Low-literates -2.208 27 0.018

% correct by group and word type

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

open closed mono di

Illiterates

Low-literates

Comparison of word types

t df p

Open/closed class

6.869 28 0.000

Mono- /disyllabic

-5.188 28 0.000

Answer categories (1) :

Correct answer: e.g. nieuwe (new) in the sentence: “Op een dag zei zijn nieuwe …” (One day his new …”)

Incorrect:• Multiword answer: e.g. niet genoeg eten not enough food

• Anticipation: e.g. vrouw instead of nieuwe wife instead of new

in the sentence: “Op een dag zei zijn nieuwe …” “One day said his new …”

• Single syllable: e.g. leen (instead of alleen) lone (instead of alone)

Answer categories (2):

• Elision (resyllabification): adding the last consonant of the preceding word to the target worde.g. in the sentence: Hij nam ook… giving “mook” as target word instead of “ook”

He took also…

• Non-target single word: e.g. genoeg instead of hout enough instead of wood

in the sentence: “Toen ze genoeg hout…” “When they enough wood...”

• No response: I don’t know

Error types

Group Multiword Anticipation Non-target single word

Else

Dutch(Onderdelinden)

Illiterates 41.5 4.7 5.1 2.5

Low-literates

24.4 1.7 5.0 2.3

Dutch(Kurvers)

4-year 52.0 15.4 2.0 5.9

5-year 54.8 12.1 1.5 6.5

Norwegian(Uri)

4-year 46.3 15.1 3.7 6.0

5-year 50.9 12.5 3.1 4.6

English(Karmiloff)

4-year 17.5 2.9 2.3 0.8

5-year 0.8 0.0 1.0 2.1

Study Word Class Group % Correct

Netherlands(Onderdelinden)

Open

Closed

Illiterates

Illiterates

54.9

37.5

Netherlands(Kurvers, 2006)

Open

Closed

4-/5-year olds 4-/5-year olds

24.4

25.5

Norway(Uri, 2006)

Open

Closed

4-/5-year olds

4-/5-year olds

29.4

27.1

England(Karmiloff-Smith et al., 1996)

Open

Closed

4-/5-year olds

4-/5-year olds

87.0

84.5

Comparison Karmiloff-Smith et al. and Kurvers & Uri

• The illiterates were not nearly as good as the English children

• The illiterates performed better than the 4- and 5-year-old Dutch and Norwegian children

Possible reason for gap in performance between English children and adult L2 learners

• (Lower) middle class background of the children and hence their familiarity with printed materials

Reasons for difference between the Dutch and Norwegian children and the illiterates

– the illiterates are proficient L1 speakers – the illiterates had learnt an L2 – the illiterates participated in an L2 course and

were therefore probably more focused on language

– maybe the teacher had just discussed one or more of the target words (hence better recognized)

Comparison with Karmiloff et al. and Kurvers & Uri as to open and closed

class words

Present study shows significant difference in

performance on open and closed class words

(open class words were better isolated)

Possible reasons: • L2 learners first focus on open class words• Ceiling effect among English children• Poor performance of Dutch and Norw. children

Conclusions

• On all categories low-literates perform significantly better than illiterates

• Two years of literacy education cause an increase in performance of 20%

• Literacy is an important stimulating factor in the development of word awareness

References

• Karmiloff-Smith, A., Grant, J., Sims, K., Jones, M. & Cuckle, P. (1996). Rethinking metalinguistic awareness: representing and accessing knowledge about what counts as a word. Cognition, 58, 197-219.

• Kurvers, J. & Uri, H. (2006) Metalexical Awareness: Development, Methodology or Written Language? A Cross-linguistic Comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 4, 353-367.