DOCOM101 EWE 171 113 IL 010 252 AUTHOR Burnaby, Bar barJ.;Anthony, Rotert TITL Orthography Cho ioe for Cree I,anguage E d cation. Worlcing N.pers artit rguali nt, 141x. 17.. INS' LTtT Ontario En st .for Stu dies in1 iduca tion, Ttronto., BlathguaL, Edur,7ation Pro lect. SPONS AQINCY Department of the Secretary cf.5 ta teOttawa (Ontarib) . PUB. DAn Apr 79 NOT 28p, A VAT LA at. FR O! Bilingual: taucation Project, The O ntric Initu for Studies in. 7,(11_1c.a ticn, 252Bloor _ W 4st, Toronto, ontar o, Canada 058 1V6(Aslong as supply lasts) t6RS, RlC F01/PCO 2 _s' poste. pT019$ *Alphabets; *Arai ican Indian ngu_ esBeginning D.ESCR Reading ;. Birigual .Education; *cree;Deco ding eading) ;G raphe Language lie e tch Language Skills; Clbw a; Orthographic Sy mtols; Phoneme Grapheme corgespon den ce: Phonemes;Phonemic Alphabets; ..Phonet ic Tra nsc ri'rtion; Psycholinguistic Reading Instruction; *Rsading Skills; o maniza tio_ Second Language le arni W tit ten 'L angua ge AESTRA This study examin sycho_ inguiit3..a implications of using either of two different t of orthography - - syllabic and roman_ - - -tn Ratice language programsfer c Tee children with rag ar 4 to readabi,lity0 learnanility, 'and shetransfer of reading -skills .to and from reading 'in an officiallaugUte(English:or Fretoh)..This gtu dy can also 14e' applied- to Obwe andontagnais languages, which share strutItural features and orthocraph protlems w ith,,C-ree.. Elementary bac kgrcund.. Were- Studied both . school Children in Ontario of Cree through .1114 ted research conductedona psychological leveland more broadly tlirougt reading in.5tructign Classes._ in bilingualeducation Trogxams. While theorthographies of t he official, languag.esrepresent. a 'mere :abstractlevel, tcth typet. of Cree, crthog isphies tend to represent the 'phonemic level. an. dgenerally-operate Regale- show the following cliff erence.s:(1)it may be easier for'. very young. children to manipulate. syllables rather thanphonemes;(2) .,.words written in syllabics may be short etand less corplox than ;those written in the roman script:. (3)certain grapheme reversals may.:.cau.se mote problemsforjearners of ayllabics than,.of the roman'systegqLand (4) if studa.nts are going from onorthography td .a different. type ,(Sylla.bics to official language- and viceversa) they will have to rn ne-'w !materials andco-noept:-s., However, if the transfer.,is made vi aNative roman orthography' to anofficial language or vice the risk confusion of the twc systeis is much greater. lications for further research arediscussed.(Mithor(miiP) ******444.** *** * ** ** * *** ****4,#***** 00**** ***** 'If*** Reptoduction s supplied by t1) RS are thebe st that be made I:, from the original document. *************4120****** 1:g*4 ******.******W*******## *-** 108 22:11122,212 'Choice for Cree Languagein_Education Barbara J. Burnaby and Robert J. A --n Ontario Institute for St6U1-eiin Education "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS VEf'AATA1ENtOP HEALTH. MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY EDucATIor4 vieLPARE hAnoNAL iNCTITUlf of EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT NANelecr.,RePco- r-1, oucEo EXACTLY As la ECtivEP FIKPA THE PERSON ON °ROAN IZAliON OD IN. IT POINtS DP view OR 0PiNIDPIS ATiN INTECT itCTION STATED 00 NOT NEcEssANILr RePRE, TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES r--.I)SENT 0FF icIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." The Tr al eed for the examination of Native (Amerindian) orthographies in an educational Light has grown dramatically in the last decade. Schools for Native children have begun to use Native languages in various ways in their programs.Almost inevitably the formal teaching of literacy skills in a Native language isinvolved. For the largest group of Amerindians in the province of Ontario,the Cree arid the Ojilwa,*two different rypep of orthography --syllabic and roman --are available forschool use. The purpose of this study is examine the psycholingUistic implicationsof using one or ether of t1iese types of orthography in various kinds of Nativelanguage programs fer Cree children. Two considerations are relevant for programs thatiivvolve literacy in any way. One is the relative learnability and of the Native orthographies to be_used. The second' is transfer of literacy skills to and from literacy in anofficial wage (English or French), since literacy in anofficial language always Tart of a Native school program. In some programs Native cy precedes official language literacyand in others it is begun ter official language literacy is established. Therefore, the potential for transfer of literacy skills in eitherdirection has to be considered. two types of evidence are used in this study. The first is evidence wtich can be broad') referred to as .psychologicel research. By this we mean research on cognitive functioning,psycholinguistic research, linguistic thenry`and theory of perception. Unfortunately for our present purposes, most o this kind" of information consistsof studies involving only one language and one orthography. Comparisons between radically different orthographies and between languages are rare. The second typd of-,evidence.is research on the teachingof reading in bilingual education prograin a qumber of contexts.This evidence isderived from a comparison of tlie-findings ofvaPiaus evaluations of such programs. The popula tion for this study is elementary ,schoolcbildeen-in_ Ontario of Cree background. Among the Cree speaking population oftke-- province, there are those who use a syllabic orthography to represent their language and those:M.10 use a roman orthography. Many speakers. do not write In their NatiVe language. Cree has many dialects andno- , 109 single diale4 is,.considered standard or preferred as.is thecase European languages.Although the Cree .arethe population considered 'here, and Qree examples are usedthroughoUt, the same characteristics hold for Ojibwa and Nontagnais which are closely relatedlanguage's- in Canada: These languages share with Croe, the strng,mral features and-otthographiC problems which are the.c6-67Cern of this study. We have aimited our considerations to the first six. or seven year of:formalischooling. It is during these years that the basic literacy skills are generally established. And it is far'these grades that the new or proposed Native languageprograms have been or are being,developed. However, many of the points'made here are relevant to olderlearners and' users of Native orthographies. In recent Years sever al aPProAches to the inclusion of theNative langlJges in education for Native children have been initiated. There are Lasically four types of NativelanguageTprogram which have been established. The two most common are prograbs which are inserted as- separate entities, i.e. subjects of instruction, intootherWise standard .pravintialschool curricula. For children who come to school speaking only or mainly an official language, there are Native language as a second language programs. For children who come to school speaking only or mainly a Native language, there-are Nativelanguage enrichment and Native language literacy programs. In both these types .of programs, use of the Native language.is highly restrictee. In the literature, such a limited use.of one of the languges.in'education is not usually, referred, to as 'bilingual education.' HoWever, for our purposes,.the examinatien of the teaching of reading, we will consider both,of the above types of program to be forms of bilingual educationprimarily because they share many relevant problems with other programsreferred to as bilingual- education in North America and elsewhere. The othet two types of Native language program., are much morerare. They involve a change in the mddiuM of instruction, fromthe child's first language. One is the vernacular transition, type of program in which a Native-speaking child- begine.his eduoatien in his mother tongue. :Men: gradually over a transition period-of usually three to-fiVeYears.the "school language Is switched to the official. language. neh a program for literacy has been developed inlManitobafor a transition from Cree and !Ojibwa to English. The fourth type of-program is the immersion approach. The official language speaking child receives all initial schoolingin Ithelative language and later receives part of his education in his mother tongue. At W764t Bay, Ontario, where many of thechildren do not know their traditional lafIguage, Ojibwa, an immersion approach-is being tried, where Ojibwa is the Ammersionjanguage-and instruction in Engli$h,,the pother tpngue: is introduced laterr-trwthe school program.' - ItqPagY2111S! There ate many varieties af both 'syllabic and roman systems cree orthography in use at the present. We have chosdn'a Version of each 'that is described In the published literature. In general, The differences among varieties in use minor-enough that the present . 110 discussion may be considered r elevant tcCr-ee roman 'and syllabic orthography varieties as whole, Syllabics IiistoricallTall the current syllabicorthographies for Canadian Native languages derive from thesYllabic,orthovaphy for Cre developgd Although the original by a Methodist missionary,'James Evans,in 1840. syllabary of Evans has undergone severalrelatively trivial changes over time, the extant Ctee syllabariesfully illustrate,the basic principles which are used in all the syllabic systemsderived from Evans' original. Figure l'shows the two main varieties ofsyllabic orthographies with some internal variations as well. Eastern and Western Sy Ilatlaries °Rio a/aa