The Relationship of Bilingual Children to Reading and to Books
Mária Belešová, University of Comenius, Faculty of Education, Institute of Educational sciences and studies, Department of Pre-Primary and Primary Education (Slovakia)
Lenka Szentesiová, University of Comenius, Faculty of Education, Institute of Educational sciences and studies, Department of Pre-Primary and Primary Education (Slovakia)
Abstract
In our article we draw attention to the literary culture of families and children with a bilingual background. This article characterizes multicultural education as a process in which one creates ways of positive perception and evaluation of other cultures and regulates his behavior to members of other cultures. It also presents multicultural education as educational program, which provides educational environment and contents adapted to the needs of pupils from other minorities. The article focuses on reading habits of pupils from multicultural environment and their relationship to reading and books. We find out which language pupils more prefer for reading, and how parents influence their reading interests in early childhood. The family has in determining the reading habits much more important than school. Quality support networks of family reading clearly shaping and stimulating the reading interests of the child. The issue of reading and reading literacy in pedagogy is hugely discussed topic at all levels of education and includes a majority of domestic and foreign researches including didactic topics (eg. Zápotočná 2001, 2012, 2013; Petrová, 2010; Lampartová, 2014; Židziková, 2014; Králiková, 2014; Gavora, 1992, and others). Researches of these authors do not examine primarily the phenomen on of bilingual reading receptions rather they focus on the development of children´s reading at all ages through methods based on a constructivist model of learning. This problem can be differentiated into two basic levels, both of which define the broader framework of multiculturalism actually cultural (Kaščák 2009; Kaščák-Pupala, 2009) and linguistic bipolarity of minority groups in society. The first one is watching the inclusion of children from different language settings into the majority society. Outcomes related to discultural process of children from ethnic minority families are the result of such research (eg. Gallová-Kriglerová-Kadlečíková et al., 2009). Multicultural families is increasing, so we will try based on case studies of three children refer to our stated objectives and provides insight into the research problems. We are dealing with, for example, as to whether children of multicultural environment rather prefer reading in the Slovak language or in a foreign language. The study we decided to include children whose mother tongue is in addition to their second language language of the country with which they have linked life. Children attend primary education and come from Slovakia-Italian family and Slovakia-Albanian family. The research data were collected through interviews with these children.
Keywords |
Reading, bilingual children, literary culture |