L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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Oracy in year one: A blind spot in Norwegian language and literacy education?
Get PDFThis paper focuses on opportunities for student talk in Year One of the Norwegian L1 subject, based on observations from six classrooms (24 lessons) with two teachers in each. The analysis of the data first identifies how the lessons are organised (plenary, individual work, station work and work in groups/pairs) and then focuses on student talk within each organisational frame. The results are discussed with reference to Wegerif\u27s (2007) concept of ‘dialogic space\u27 and Segal and Lefstein\u27s (2016) four-level model for understanding dialogic qualities. The data reported in this paper suggest a clear contrast between the established and well-developed oracy practices at Norwegian kindergartens, which involve a high level of student participation, and highly regulated and teacher-dominated practices in Year One of Norwegian L1, offering students little opportunity to engage in oral interaction or to explore matters in their own language. While having two teachers in the classroom could have stimulated dialogic interaction, which has been shown to be effective (Clarke, Resnick, Penstein Rosé, Corno & Anderman, 2016), it actually seems to produce more discipline, more control and more student silence. One important exception from this trend is circle time, which seems to be a promising space for dialogic activities
The role of literature in the classroom: How and for what purposes do teachers in lower secondary school use literary texts?
Get PDFThis study investigates the use of literary texts in 178 video-recorded LA lessons across 47 lower-secondary Norwegian classrooms. It offers a systematic overview of how literary texts are read, used, and discussed across classrooms and investigates instructional practices related to literary texts and functions of texts in instruction. The results reveal a strong genre discourse across classrooms; reading literary texts is strongly connected to students\u27 own writing, focusing on generic text features that are relevant for text across the same genre. With one exception, shared instruction did not include novels except as individual pleasure reading. Findings herein align with concerns raised by scholars about literature\u27s role in language arts. They surface a rather reductionist use of literature across classrooms. Despite strong arguments and empirical support for students reading literature in school, such practices are poorly reflected in classrooms in this study. Our main contribution lies in the exploration of the practices by which adolescents are socialized into literary reading. We provide an exhaustive look into the everyday practices related to literary texts in language arts lessons and the ways these texts are framed, read, and discussed in education
Finnish student language teachers reflecting on linguistic concepts related to sentence structures: Students recognising linguistic concepts in L1 and L2 textbooks
Get PDFIn this article, we report on a two-part qualitative case study on Finnish student language teachers\u27 views of linguistic concepts related to teaching sentence structures and their ability to recognise linguistic concepts in mother tongue and foreign language textbooks. In addition, our aim is to gain experience of collaboration between mother tongue and foreign language students. The current Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2014, translated 2016) emphasises language awareness, including linguistic and cross-linguistic awareness. Language education requires L1 and L2 teachers to co-operate, and it is important for teachers to gain experience of such co-operation already during their pedagogical studies The focus of our study is on student language teachers\u27 ability to recognise linguistic concepts in mother tongue and foreign language textbooks. The informants are mother tongue (Finnish) and foreign language students (studying English, Swedish, German, and Russian). The study found that the students were able to find syntactic and morphological concepts in particular. Overall, they understood language and defined “linguistic concepts” from a grammatical point of view; and a functional approach to learning a language stood out. In the textbooks, the students found both similarities and differences in using linguistic concepts related to sentence structures. Overall, co-operation between L1 and L2 teachers was considered important
A developmental study of L1 idiom comprehension in Farsi Language
Get PDFThis quantitative study investigated the comprehension of Farsi idioms with a developmental view and explored at what age, these idiomatic expressions are acquired. We also examined different categories of idiomatic expressions, embracing biological and cultural idioms to see whether they are acquired differently. To this end, three target age groups, including 6-year-olds (n = 20), 10-year-olds (n=20), and adults (n=20) were selected. To collect data, 40 most frequent Farsi idioms were selected as the material of the study and the participants were asked to orally provide a free explanation of the meaning of these idioms in their own words. To analyze data, descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and paired samples t-test were calculated. The findings indicated that around age 6 is almost the beginning of the idiom acquisition process and around age 10 children\u27s idiomatic comprehension starts approximating that of adults. It was also found that primarily, children exhibit knowledge of transparent biological idioms rather than idiosyncratic cultural idioms. The conclusions and implications of the study are discussed
A comparison of Hong Kong primary four students\u27 Chinese and English reading attainment in 2016
Get PDFThis study examines Hong Kong primary four (P4) students\u27 Chinese and English reading test performance in a bilingual reading proficiency study (BR) conducted in 2016, the fifth round in a series of studies monitoring the bilingual reading competence of primary school students in Hong Kong since 2004. It also compares students\u27 bilingual reading performance in 2016 with that in the 2013 round of testing. A total of 3,592 P4 students from 38 schools in Hong Kong participated in the study. Significant improvements were found both in the students\u27 Chinese and English reading test performance, with marked increases in the overall English reading test scores and in performance on literary and informational texts. Such improvements may be due to the implementation of the English Language Curriculum, support from the Hong Kong Language Committee and new medium of instruction (MOI) arrangements in Hong Kong primary schools. The students\u27 performance was significantly worse on Chinese literary texts overall and on the first three levels of reading comprehension processes in BR 2016. This may be a consequence of the increasing use of digital devices among young students and of low achievers\u27 poor test performance. Future studies need to examine whether there are causal relationships between the variables mentioned above and the bilingual reading test performance of P4 students in Hong Kong
The mastery of verb agreement in French and its link to the complexity of NPs in students\u27 writing
Get PDFThis paper presents results related to subject-verb agreement errors made by 6th grade students (aged 10-11) and by 8th grade students (aged 13-14). Starting from the observation that 8th grade students do not perform better on verbal agreement than 6th grade students, we propose an explanation for the absence of a significant difference between the younger and the older students along the following line: the complexity of the syntactic contexts used by the two groups of students has a impact on verbal agreement. These contexts are: 1) the internal structure of subject NPs, and 2) the syntactic configuration. Our results show that the 8th grade students produce a greater proportion of complex subject NPs than the 6th grade students, and more constructions with a syntactic configuration and a complex NP. A mixed effects logistic regression indicates there is a significant effect of the NP type and of the agreement within the NP. Our study contributes to the studies relative to verb agreement in that it is based on data produced in an authentic writing situation. It also contributes to document and support the concept of syntactic maturity, which claims that older students use more complex syntactic structures than younger ones
Reading in order to teach reading: Processive literacy as a model for overcoming difficulties
Get PDFThis article focuses on the transition of preservice teachers from reading a novel to the stage of teaching it. The goal of this study was to map the difficulties that preservice teachers encounter in the learning stage and in the transition to teaching; based on the findings, we offer a model of processive literacy as the basis for a curriculum focused on how to overcome the challenges inherent to the reading of literary texts. The model consists of three branches under the umbrella of processive literacy: (1) generic literacy (2) disciplinary literacy (3) poetic literacy. Learning-teaching model for the genre of novel seeks to turn the learner-reader into a reading-learner
Key elements of L1-oral language teaching and learning in secondary education: A literature review
Get PDFIn order to inform the redesign of L1-oral language education in secondary schools, international literature was analyzed to deduce key elements, effective and practical ingredients, of good quality L1-oral language lessons. Thirteen articles were selected based on a systematic database search and analyzed with Van den Akker\u27s curricular spiderweb (Thijs & Van den Akker, 2009). From the most frequently mentioned codes we could extract five, empirical based, key elements which support student oral language learning in the classroom: 1) a clear oral language skills framework with criteria; 2) the exploration of students\u27 speaking potential by analysis and assessment of oracy skills; 3) self-, peer- and teacher-feedback on speaking; 4) observations of and discussions about videotaped speakers; and 5) regular practice with various speaking tasks. In addition L1-oral language curriculum should give students the chance to develop their oral language competence throughout the school year because this helps them 1. to build on their speaking experiences and 2. to let their confidence grow when speaking in public
Developing an interactive software application to support young children\u27s inference-making
Get PDFWe describe the design and development of a technology-based inference-making intervention system that includes a set of interactive learning modules, each of which engages students to (a) view age-appropriate children\u27s videos, (b) learn vocabulary words that are central to main ideas in each video, (c) respond to inferential questions, (d) receive scaffolding and specific feedback for each question, and (e) engage in a set of read-aloud lessons implemented by the classroom teacher and designed to promote transfer of inferencing from non-reading to reading contexts. First, we present the design principles that guided development, drawing on an integrated language comprehension framework. Next, we describe the design process, drawing on a field test of the usability and feasibility of the intervention system. Findings revealed that students and teachers found the system to be usable and helpful for support inference-making, and that it was feasible for classroom use. Then, we provide evidence from a field trial that showed that children who used the intervention system made gains in language comprehension, and that a version with ‘offline\u27 questioning (questions asked after viewing videos) was slightly superior to an ‘online\u27 version (questions asked during viewing). Finally, we highlight lessons learned that are informing additional development
Theory, design, and teacher experience in a literature-focused professional development
Get PDFThis study answers a call for more transparency in descriptions of literature interventions that might inform future work in professional development design as well as literary pedagogy. The study draws on design-based research models to describe how principles of literary pedagogy were enacted in two iterations of a professional development program for U.S. secondary Language Arts teachers. The first iteration of the PD focused on surfacing teachers\u27 beliefs about literature, helping them to leverage learners\u27 everyday interpretive practices, to use affective evaluation to build literary interpretations, and to ask questions born of genuine curiosity. The second iteration revised the enactment of some principles and integrated activities designed to build trust in the learning community and make time for reflection on and integration of new concepts into current practice. Along with description, the study presents a preliminary experimental finding: teachers in the second iteration reported greater satisfaction with their learning experience, and were more likely to implement professional development practices in their classrooms. The study hypothesizes that these gains result from the integration of time and trust into the learning design