Педагогика / 3. Методические основы

воспитательного процесса

Shastova I.V.

Educational centre “Greenly”

Toward Standardised English Alphabet

in Ukrainian Primary Schools

The necessity of having one simple and standardized scheme of alphabet letters in English textbooks for Ukrainian primary schoolchildren is urgent. As it was mentioned in our previous paper (Shatova, 2014) sometimes six-year-old learners are presented more than four different letter shapes of one letter even on the same page in a book. Seeing many symbols for presenting one letter, schoolchildren feel uncertain what letter shape they are supposed to remember and feel frustrated. Having analized possible difficulties while mastering Latin and Cyrillic scripts, we have found that there is an urgent need of offering a solution to this problem.

Teaching reading and writing skills in Ukrainian primary school is challenging. Six-year-old children start mastering two scripts in their mother-tongue. One is needed for teaching reading (see Figure 1a) and another one – for getting writing skills (see Figure 1b). By the end of the school year Ukrainian primary schoolchildren are supposed to produce nice handwriting and read a least 40 words per a minute.

a b

Figure 1. Ukrainian alphabet a) manuscript b) cursive

Thus, learning one more alphabet at this age can be very complicated, especially if it exploits Latin alphabet. In our research (Shastova, 2014) it is mentioned that there is a number of scripts which are implemented in primary schools of English-speaking countries: Nelson Thornes Handwriting Scheme, Handwriting Without Tears, Victotian Modern, etc. However, young learners need to be introduced to simple shapes and Nelson Thornes Handwriting Scheme (see Figure 2) can be more preferable then the others for teaching handwriting skills.

Figure 2. Nelson Thornes Handwriting Scheme

Ukrainian primary schoolchildren are supposed to have strong writing and reading skills in their first language by the end of the year. Likewise, it could be better to adapt some features of English letters while teaching English to Ukrainian primary schoolchildren. Taking into account that shapes of capital letters are simple and are used less often, thus only lower case letters need to be investigated.

Letters a, c, e, i, k, m, n, o, p, and u have the same shapes and order of writing in both languages, however Ukrainian primary schoolchildren may change the shapes of some others, especially b, g, j, l, p, q, t, x and y (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Possible example of English handwritten alphabet produced by Ukrainian schoolchildren

The shown above letters also differ because of some additional elements to join all the letters and, additionally, learners may write the letters with a right slope, as they are supposed to do this during Ukrainian handwriting lessons.

We believe that the shapes of letters g, j, p and x should not be changed as that can lead to creating new symbols, which would not be recognized by native speakers as Latin letters. Printed font for Ukrainian children should be chosen (or designed) to look like handwritten letters to avoid creating additional difficulties. In the case of choosing a font from those which are offered by set of Window XP fonts, Comic Sans MS is one of the best. Thus, shapes of English fonts, presented to Ukrainian schoolchildren may look the way it is presented in Figure 4.

a b

Figure 4. English alphabet for Ukrainian primary school: a) manuscript b) cursive

Further implementation of this research can be seen in English textbooks and handwriting workbooks in Ukrainian primary school.

References:

1.Шастова І.В. Оволодіння шестирічними першокласниками графікою англійської мови // Іноземні мови. – 2014. – № 3. – С. 8-14.