Bilingual Post - Billet Bilingue
Je me promenais au WalMart, à la recherche de jouets lumineux et musicaux pour nos clients autistes qui ont des besoins sensoriels importants, lorsque j'ai vu ce jeu de Learning
Resource, Skill Builders Kindergarten Reading| Bilingual Version.
In English, this resource looks great - it targets CVC words like "bat", "cat", "hat", it uses science of reading based practices like sound boxes (Helkonin Boxes), manipulatives, a dice with different graphemes, and it even has different colours for consonants (blue) and vowels(red) - which are all Science of Reading best practices.
In French however, it's a total FAIL!
Le problème est que la langue française a une différente structure que l'anglais, possède un lexique unique, une morphologie différente, une grammaire complexe, etc.
It's imperative to remember that written language is a code. A code that was invented, in both languages, to represent oral language. Each code is unique even though it uses the same alphabet. In fact, both languages uses the same number of letters but use a distinct phonics' system.
Reprenons l'exemple du mot "bat" en anglais et faisons-en une analyse:
syllabe = monosyllabique à l'oral et à l'écrit
structure syllabique = CVC
alphabétique = 3 lettres, dont deux consonnes, une voyelle
graphies = trois graphèmes simples (b-a-t)
En français, le mot se traduit par chauve-souris:
When we look more closely at the words being used in this resource, we can now see how a resource that is amazing in English, and that is aligned with scientific findings in the area of decoding, is epically OFF when translated in French!
Now imagine a 5-year old child learning to decode words. We give him the word 'bat" and with a bit of help sounding it out, is able to do it and is super proud of himself! It's pretty easy: b-a-t. He'll be motivated and excited to decode the next word, "hat" = h-a-t.
Now lets give a French speaking beginning reader, same age, same intellectual capacity, the same card, and lets have her try to decode "chauve-souris". How do you think she'll do? She's faced with decoding a written 4 syllable, complex hyphened word comprised of contextual phonological rules instead of a simple CVC word! Does she need to pronounce the "s" at the end of "souris"? How about the "e"? "ou" makes which sound again? What about "au"? And "ch"? And why is there a line in the middle of the word?
The bar is so much higher for this beginning reader than it is for our English reader. How motivated will she be to read the next word, "chapeau"? Which again is a word that has a way more complex syllable and phonics' structure than "hat" in English!
Scientific findings and best practice strategies are basically the same in both languages since they both use the same code - the alphabet. However, how the code works is different.
By companies and authors doing a direct translation of English material, and teachers and parents using those material and resources to teach reading in French, we are setting up children to struggle and even possibly to fail in learning to read.
Les compagnies de publication de resources, de matériel, de livres dits "décodables" comme GB+, doivent s'assurer de prendre en considération la singularité de la langue française et de ne pas simplement publier une traduction du matériel qui existe en anglais.
Not all words are created equally : bat x chauve-souris
Sharon