Secondary Research

Today I have made a start by looking in detail at the Oxford Reading Tree websites. It has been heavy going and at times I don't really understand what's being said - but I'm working on it! I'm beginning to gain a better understanding of the progression through the series from "Floppy Phonics" to "Decode and Develop" and how classroom activities can support children and expand upon these books. I expect we'll be set our next task of sourcing this secondary material later this week so hopefully I will be able to get started straight away!

Introduction Draft 2

Introduction

   For my English Language investigation, I will be looking at Children’s Language Acquisition, in particular, the developing language complexity of children’s books, specifically the Oxford Reading Tree graded reading scheme. Language becomes increasingly difficult as children progress through the reading schemes; therefore I will compare how language complexity occurs. I believe that I will find significant variety between the sentence and overall book length, grammar, vocabulary used and complexity of consonant clusters as the books progress.

Hypothesis

   I hypothesise that as the reading scheme books progress, there will be a gradual increase in the complexity of the following features:

·         Sentence length (as children become more familiar with sentence formation)

·         Overall book length (when their attention span increases)

·         Grammar (more complex, concrete nouns, adjectives and verb tenses)

·         Vocabulary (wider range of words used to broaden a child’s vocabulary)

·         Repetition of words (this will allow them to learn their meanings faster [1])

·         Consonant clusters (more difficult to develop the letter-sound relationship)

Methodology

   I have chosen a selection of books from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme because these books are used nationwide to teach children to read. I have selected the Magic Key book series as these books are iconic and well-known as they follow the adventures of Biff, Chip and Kipper. “These books were first published in 1985 and there are now over 300 stories which form part of an English language syllabus in line with the National Curriculum, designed to help children learn to speak and read Standard English.” [2]

   There are no ethical issues with gathering this data as it is part of a public domain and therefore already accessible to a wider audience. The books I have chosen will be a representative sample owing to them being a part of a nationwide reading scheme, used in over “80% of schools” [2]. I have chosen six books, three traditional Biff, Chip and Kipper books and three decode and develop Biff, Chip and Kipper books. There is one traditional and one contemporary book from each colour band, yellow, blue and green.

   For my secondary research, I will predominantly use search engines to research about how reading schemes become more complex in their formation to assist children’s reading progression within school. I will also use examples from relevant theories, such as imitation from Skinner’s behaviourist theory and the notion of language scaffolding from Vygotsky to explain hoe language gradually develops. Piaget’s use of stimulation will also be explored in the graphology of the book. I shall also access scholarly articles and books focusing on how language in children’s books becomes more complex as they learn to read. I will need this information to understand how reading schemes work and to understand why the progressions occur in that particular order, such as the length of sentences increasing before vocabulary. Once I have this secondary data, I will ensure that I have a sample of data from a variety of mediums and that I only include relevant details in my actual investigation. I plan to use the “method” structure for analysing my data, for example, I will analyse the sentence length each book before moving on to grammar. 

[1] Chard, D & Osborn, J. (2004)Word Recognition Instruction [online]. UK: WETA [16/10/14]

[2] Wikipedia (2014) The Magic Key [online]. UK: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License [06/10/14]

 

Introduction Draft 1

Introduction

   For my English Language investigation, I will be looking at Children’s Language Acquisition, in particular, the developing language complexity of children’s books. My secondary research will be obtained through search engines and information on reading schemes. Experience has shown that language becomes increasingly difficult as children progress through the reading schemes; therefore I will compare how language complexity occurs. I believe that I will find significant variety between the sentence and overall book length, grammar, vocabulary used and consonant clusters.

Hypothesis

   I hypothesise that as children progress through the reading scheme books, there will be a gradual increase in the complexity of the following features:

·         Sentence length (as children become more familiar with simple conjunctions)

·         Overall book length (when their attention span increases)

·         Grammar (more complex, concrete nouns, adjectives and verb tenses)

·         Vocabulary (wider range of words used to broaden a child’s vocabulary)

·         Repetition of words (children need between 4 – 14 exposures to recognise a word)

·         Consonant clusters (more difficult to develop the letter-sound relationship)

Methodology

   In order to obtain this data I shall contact a local infant school and ask to borrow a variety of Oxford Reading Tree scheme books for a short time. Once I have the books I will photocopy each book so I will have a hard copy to annotate and use. Furthermore, I will scan these paper copies onto my computer so I will be able to access, annotate and copy sections of text to use in my investigation.

   There are no ethical issues with gathering this data as it is part of a public domain and therefore already accessible to a wider audience. The books I have chosen will be a representative sample owing to them being a part of a nationwide reading scheme.

   For my secondary research, I will predominantly use search engines to research about how reading schemes help children to read and any theorists who have looked into the development of complexity within different books in a children’s reading scheme books. I shall also access scholarly articles and books focusing on how language in children’s books becomes more complex as they learn to read. I will need this information to understand how reading schemes work and to understand why the progressions occur in that particular order, such as the length of sentences increasing before vocabulary. Once I have this secondary data, I will ensure that I have a sample of data from a variety of mediums and that I only include relevant details in my actual investigation. I plan to use the “method” structure for analysing my data, for example, I will analyse the sentence length each book before moving on to grammar.

Introduction

   I've been quite lax with my posts so I thought with an impending deadline I'd keep you up to date. Last month we had a lesson in which we learnt the correct content for our introduction sections. This included detail on our investigation topic and what we would actually be looking at. For our hypothesis, and methodology sections we had to include relevant linking to theorists as well as stating how we were going to select a representative sample of data. Luckily Jill gave us an example sheet to fill in beforehand! 

   The next week we handed in our drafts and later that week we received them back with loads of feedback. Jill stressed the importance of stating that the project was language based but I had put this in my introduction so I didn't have to worry! However I still had plenty of improvements to make! My feedback included more specification on the type of books and theorists I had written about as well as needing to state why I had chosen to something. 

   I've made all my amendments and will post a copy of both my first and second drafts.

Action Plan notes

   During my meeting with Jill I wrote some notes and information about what I need to do an to look for within my coursework. I've included them below so you will have an idea of what I need to do in order to analyse my data:


Data collection:

• It's likely that I will use the 'Oxford Reading Tree' as my reading scheme.
• 1st formal year at school: Year 1 – start to finish
• 3/5 books at 3/5 different levels
• How many colours will children progress through

What I'll look for:

• Complexity
• Grammar
• Vocabulary
• Complexity of vocabulary
• Sentence length
• Phonics
• Recognise consonant clusters (BR – brick, brown, broken)

Data location:

• Allied reading for pleasure books – library
• Borrow books from first schools – can photocopy books at college

 Secondary research:

• Research development of children’s literacy
• How are children taught to read through teachers and the reading scheme
• How are skills scaffolded
• East Norfolk English Language Blog
• Secondary research – theory behind the books to help me analyse them more intelligently