[Xmca-l] FW: Special Issue L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature

[Peter Smagorinsky]

From: Rijlaarsdam, Gert [mailto:G.C.W.Rijlaarsdam@uva.nl]
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:23 PM
To: Peter Smagorinsky
Subject: Special Issue L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature


Dear L1-Educational Studies in Language & Literature user,



It is with great pleasure that we announce the publication of double issue, a special issue on Early Literacy Research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk & Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. It contains 9 research articles and an introduction that contextualize the studies in the new curricular developments in Poland, and the specific requirements of Polish language system for early literacy developments. Hereby we would like to thank both guest editors, reviewers and authors for their efforts to make this issue possible.



You will find the whole issue here: http://l1.publication-archive.com/show-issue/8



Below you will find a shortened introduction, and links to separate papers.



Kind regards,



Gert Rijlaarsdam

on behalf of the editorial team



Tanja Janssen

Isabel Martínez Álvarez

Nikolaj Frydensbjerg Elf

Shek Kam Tse







Early literacy Research in Poland - conditions, acquisition, contexts. Editorial

Elżbieta Awramiuk* & Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis**

*University of Bialystok, Poland
**Educational Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland

It is with great pleasure that we present the L1 readers with the first special issue devoted to teaching Polish as a native language.

In recent years, the Polish education system has been reformed. This includes i.e. changes in the school and preschool entrance age. The age at which children start a compulsory annual preschool education has been decreased to 5 years olds (before it was 6 years old), and compulsory school education starts now at the age of 6 (it was 7 previously). The changes are introduced gradually. They now mean an absolute preschool obligation for all five-year-olds, which can only be realized in kindergartens or special school units that are adapted to it in an appropriate way. When it comes to compulsory school education, until 2014, the decision on whether to send a six-year-old child to school is to be made by the parents. In such circumstances, in present first grades, there are both six-year-old children and seven-year-old children. The situation will change in September 2014, when all six-year-olds will have to start their school education in the first grade. The aim is that five-year-old children attend mandatorily an annual school preparation course, and then - at the age of six - continue their education at the first grade of primary school.

The results presented in the special issue of L1 Early literacy in Poland come both from the period of introducing the above-mentioned reform and from earlier time, which is clearly indicated in the texts.

The texts collected in the current issue relate to children attending preschool and the first level of education. The general aim of the preschool in Poland is to develop social skills of children by forming their ability to communicate with both the adults and children, fostering their development. The early school education is integrated. It combines the contents of particular elements of education in a way enabling children to gain knowledge and skills that form a whole and are not separate from one another. The primary aim is to foster the child's overall development.

Within the annual preschool course, apart from numerous social, emotional and cognitive skills, readiness for reading and writing is developed. The core curriculum assumes that during this time, reading, writing, letters etc. are not yet taught, but some exercises are introduced, and namely exercises improving the organization of perception field and eye-hand coordination (which is needed for drawing, cutting and learning to write). Also, the interest in reading and writing is developed, as well as the ability to construct sentences, segment sentences into words and isolate sounds in words of simple phonetic structure.

Within school education at the level of integrated teaching, the teaching of native language in the first grade includes verbal expression, the culture of language and initial reading and writing education. When it comes to reading and writing, the student finishing the first grade knows i.a. all the letters of alphabet, can read and write simple, short texts, cares for the esthetics and graphic correctness of writing, can use the following terms with understanding: word, sound, letter, syllable, sentence. At the end of the third grade of primary school, the student can read, understand, analyze and interpret texts for children at the first educational level, is sensitive to esthetics, broadens his/her vocabulary by contact with literary works and art for children. In addition he/she can write in a clear and esthetic manner, cares for grammatical and orthographical correctness and punctuation and does his/her homework on his/her own if possible.

Moving to the characteristics of the Polish language, it is necessary to start with the indication that Polish belongs to the group of West Slavic Languages, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. According to the comparative typology it is described as morphophonemic, inflectional, consonantal language. This means that it is a language, in which numerous morphological alternations take place and consonants form over 70% of the whole phonological system. Graphic variability of words is the effect of morphological alternations, which has significant consequences for literacy education. In learning how to read and write, the global method is not very effective. Analytical-synthetic methods turn out to be much better and they are dominant in Polish schools. Writing cannot merely rely on auditory experience, because Polish spelling codes both phonological and morphological information. In addition, Polish inflection results in multifunctional grammatical word endings and allows for relatively free word order.

In order to code 37 phonemes, 44 graphemes are used in Polish, because apart from single letters, 12 complex graphemes are used (e.g. RZ, SI, DZI). Among Polish graphemes there are pairs which denote the same phonological unit (e.g. Ó - U, Ś - SI). Due to the fact that Polish orthography allows for relations among various phonic realizations of the same morpheme, almost each letter may correspond to two various phonemes and almost each letter may occur in a position, which is pronounced in accordance with the spelling. The Polish writing system is a system with average transparency. The relationship between grapheme and phoneme is not as clear as it is in Finnish, but it is not as irregular as in English.

This lack of transparency poses greater problems in writing, as in many cases the written representation of a word is not compatible with its pronunciation. This is connected to the phenomenon of devoicing that is a result of the phonetic neighborhood (e.g. in the word ławka 'bench' [v] becomes voiceless because of the neighborhood of [k] and the whole cluster is realized voiceless [fk]) and to the rule of voiceless final position (e.g. kot 'cat' - kod 'code' sound identical). The basic problem of a person speaking Polish is not how to read a word that he/she sees, but rather how to spell the word that he/she hears. Due to the transfer of morphological information by writing in the Polish language (as in many other alphabetical scripts), the relation grapheme - phoneme is more logical than the relation phoneme - grapheme, which means that knowing the basic rules, it is easier to read a given word than to write it.

The issue of Early literacy in Poland was aimed to form a research landscape on teaching and learning of reading and writing in Polish in kindergarten and at the first stage of education. Certainly, the presented texts cannot show the full picture of the Polish scientific activity in this area, however, they might give an idea of topics of the research conducted, methodologies used and show that Polish researchers conduct studies in international teams.


Articles in the double issue

Awramiuk, E., & Krasowicz-Kupis, G. (2014). Early literacy research in Poland - conditions, acquisition, contexts. Editorial. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 14, p. 1 - 5.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1493>



Kamykowska, J., Haman, E., Latvala J.-M., Richardson, U., Lyytinen, H. (2013). Developmental changes of early reading skills in six-year-old Polish children and GraphoGame as a computer-based intervention to support them. Contribution to a double special issue on Early Literacy Research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 13 , p. 1-17.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1467>



Uszyńska-Jarmoc, J. & Żak, M. (2013). The First Schoolbook - the Tool of Reproducing Culture by the Child or the Tool of Child's Participation in Culture? Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol.13 , p. 1-18.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1465>



Trysińska, M. (2013). Kind and unkind communicative behaviour of cartoon characters as a source of language competence for young children. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 13 , p. 1-15.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1466>



Guzy, A & Niesporek-Szamburska, B (2013). Relations between children's spatial thinking and their linguistic and communicative skills. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 13 , p. 1-28.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1462>



Jaszczyszyn, E. (2013). Initial learning to read in kindergarten - formal and research perspective. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol.13 , p. 1-16.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1461>





Jabłoński, S. (2013). Inhibitory control and literacy development among 3- to 5-year-old chil-dren. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol.13 , p. 1-25.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1470>



Sochacka, K. (2013). The stability of gender-related differences in early reading development in Polish children. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol.13 , p. 1-18.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1459>



Wiejak, K. (2014). Recognition of figurative language and reading ability in Polish school children. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol.14 , p. 1-14.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1471>


Awramiuk, E., & Krasowicz-Kupis, G. (2014). Reading and spelling acquisition in Polish: Educational and linguistic determinants. Contribution to a double special issue on Early literacy research in Poland, edited by Elżbieta Awramiuk and Grażyna Krasowicz-Kupis. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, vol.14 , p. 1-24.<http://l1.publication-archive.com/publication/1/1458>