Practice, Pleasure and Persistence: Collaborative Learning in Turkish

This chapter provides an example of the author’s research and observation into the development of reading skills in bilingual children. It focuses on a small group of children in London who had encountered dual language books in English and Turkish in the course of sessions designed to support their reading in English. It particularly concentrates on an observational visit to the school where the author is read to in both Turkish and English by two boys. The author found that being a non-Turkish speaker helped the progress of this research because the children did not see her as a teacher and instead gained confidence in performing translations of the text for her. The transcript of the children reading together also reveals the interesting strategies these particular bilingual children have adopted for dealing with words difficult to explain in English.

Citation:
Sneddon, R. (2009) ‘Practice, Pleasure and Persistence Collaborative Learning in Turkish’ in Sneddon, R. Bilingual Books - Biliterate Children: learning to read through dual language books, Staffordshire: Trentham Books Limited pp 99-112.