EAPSI:Investigating How Australian Kriol Speaking Children Learn the Sounds of English

Bell Elise A, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Aboriginal Australian children face an educational achievement gap as broad as that faced by African American children in the United States (Bradley et al. 2007; Beresford & Grey 2008). The results of this project will provide critical information about the learning process that children who speak Kriol (a language which is often not even recognized as distinct from English) go through when learning English, which can contribute to eliminating the education gap they face. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Brett Baker of the University of Melbourne, whose work on the sound systems of Kriol and other native Australian languages is supported by a prestigious Discovery Projects grant from the Australian Research Council. The focus of this research consists of presenting experimental participants with sound discrimination tasks conducted on a tablet computer or similar device. Participants will hear an English word (ex: ?pat? [phæt]), and then choose which of two following repetitions is the same as the initial word (ex: ?pat? [phæt] vs. ?bat? [bæt]). By testing the English sound discrimination abilities of first language Kriol speaking children at different levels of English medium schooling, this project will shed light on whether English immersion education is successful in helping Kriol speaking children acquire English sound contrasts. It will provide concrete information about the difficulties that Kriol speaking children may face in learning English phonology that can be used to create learner-centered pedagogical materials and teaching strategies to begin to eliminate the educational gap faced by Australian Kriol speaking children. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Australian Academy of Science.