Language is amean of communicating and expressing thoughts and ideas. The need of a spokenlanguage emerged first by making sounds that represent pictures which addressthe auditory system, then letters and words that address the ophthalmic systemof the human being.
The necessity of a writing system aroused from the need torecord events and communicate it with different people across the differentperiod of time. Different writing systems were developed across the world whichvaries in its complexity.(Webster,1806) It relates, letters, syllables and sentenceto communicate language through speaking and writing.
- Thesis Statement
- Structure and Outline
- Voice and Grammar
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The child starts learning language byimitation and exploring through babbling, then he uses a one word sentence,next a two word sentence, and later a whole sentence where he begins to expandhis language which is not confined to speaking, but also to reading and writingskills too(ww.englanglanguage acquisition.weebly.com), so Speech is important in developing language skills,improving vocabulary, receiving and producing language, furthermore,understanding the connection between spoken and written language is essentialto organize and deliver the meaning of the message in a more efficient andcoherent way.(ww.lob.ca).
Orthography is “the accepted way of spelling andwriting.” (ww.cambridgedictionary.org)”The art of writing words with the proper letteraccording to standard use “(ww.meriam-webster.com) . The Englishlanguage is an alphabetic language that consists of twenty-six letters writtenfrom left to right side ways to bottom, it is a syllabic language whichconsists of five vowels and twenty-one consonants, letters are compound toconvey a more complex meaning(words) that could be broken into rime and onset andwords are brought together in a special manner to give a much more complexmeaning(sentences), which means that the alphabetical system is directlyrelated to meaning, grammar, and sounds that gives this language its features .
In a perfect language every letter corresponds to a sound, however, some ofthem correspond with more than one sound. (Webster, 1806).The inconsistenciesin the English orthography made English a challenging language to acquire evenfor children who are mono-lingual English native speakers, because manyinconsistencies were not just at the level of the letter and their presentationof more than one sound, but also at the level of words.
Historically the English language is a dialect;its position was elevated and became an international language spoken by manytongues as a mother language or second or foreign language, it came intocontact with English like Latin, German, French, Danish which brought manywords into the language and changing other words meaning pronunciation and use,For example: the word colonel has French and Italian origin, In French, it iscoronel, but in Italian it is colonello, now it is written in the Italian wayand spelled in the French way. Building on what is previously written thegrapheme-morpheme relationship in English is opaque due to the loan words,which were largely absorbed by the English language causing frozen spelling fora massive amount of word which makes the prediction of its pronunciation andwriting very hard.(ww.youtube.com) There are otherdifficulties that face not just children but adult too, for example some soundsstayed or disappeared ,the /f/ sound in words like: cough, enough, through orthought, other sounds were lost at the beginning of the words in words like:wrong and knee, some letters become silent when pronounced for e.g.
Psychology,Island. Daughter, furthermore words have swallowed syllables e.g. Vegetable ispronounced vegtable (ww.thought.com), and some English letters give many differentpronunciations for the same letter for e.
g. the words bear, ear and heart.The English orthography stabilized through thecenturies mostly because of the printing invention by Guttenberg, which helpedin the dissemination of English and the role lexicographer who document thepronunciation and writing of millions of word albeit the difference betweendifferent standard English like standard American, standard British …Etc.(ww.youtube.com)The English orthography has its positive sides, the spelling system help todifferentiate homophones in words, for example: alter and altar, morphemes likeinflections stay the same with different words e.g.
sides, derived. (allington,mayor,2012)Studies of the various aspects of the English languageled to the development of new methods of teaching the based on the differentperspectives that was adopted by many institutions and was pointed out for itsefficiency even among parents, one of those perspectives is social perspective,which depends on the need and the necessity for the child to express hisemotions, needs, and his social identity in the society, and since spoken andwritten language are closely related literacy becomes a part of a widercommunicative practice, using literacy in this sense involves exchangingknowledge with a social-network, parents or caregivers who have their essentialrole in the way children acquire language, getting involved in these practices willhelp the children to gain literacy in a more effective way like storybookreading which studies shown that it supports the child language development,and literacy practice later in life.(ww.2.sfasu.
edu)There are many other reasons that affecthow child literacy evolved, which involve the culture of his parents, thesociety that he is surrounded by and the economic status of his parents, thelevel of their education, the school’s environment, the quality of learning, socialclass, religion, the position of the child in the family, and how he deals withthe difficulties that he faces which is part of the child psychology.The literacy of the child at an early ageis strongly connected to learning the alphabet it is the first predictor to hisor her reading and writing accomplishments in his first formal schooling process that isintertwined with the parent’s role in involving their children in practices ona frequent basis with multiple genres of literacy like children’s fiction oradventurous stories, newspapers adds…etc, another key role in acquiring thelanguage in children is their relationship with their parents and their parentbeliefs about literacy.Many activities are used by parents at home or in schoolthat facilitate literacy practice as a social activity like engaging childrenin songs, hymen’s books, spelling contests, flash cards and interacting withchildren in conversation to see how they understand literacy and literarytexts, furthermore the need to encourage children emotionally and physically tolearn written and spoken language alter the child perspective toward learningand make it more appealing to him(ww.2.sfasu.
edu).The literacy practice of English also existed inbilingual communities which is also affected by religion, social class, schoolsparent’s educational level. The bilingual children may have in common impedimentswith native speakers or different problems in learning English for example iftheir other language is written from right to left, not from left to right theymay start writing English from right to left, or they may think about thesubject in one language and write it in another or they may code-switch duringwriting.Finally,there must be a collaboration of efforts between families, teachers and thesociety around him and trying to use the best practices that will allow thechild to have a good command over language, so he or she would be articulate inthe way he wants to express his emotions, needs, and pursue what he really wantsthrough education and life to convey the full potential of his persona