Transliteration as a bridge to learning for bilingual children

This paper examines how transliteration can be used as a bridge to learning for children who are studying more than one script. The focus is on second and third generation British Bangladeshi children aged seven to eleven, attending London primary schools and learning to write in Bengali at community-run after-school classes. An action research project explored how Bengali could be used as well as English to enhance learning at mainstream school. Transliteration of Bengali into Roman script was found to aid this process in the following ways: as a communicative bridge between children, parents and teachers; as a conceptual bridge, promoting reflection on meanings and metalinguistic awareness; as a bridge to the Bengali script itself, mediating between oral and written representation; and as a bridge to new learner identities, enabling expression of ideas and building children’s confidence as bilingual writers.