L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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Listening comprehension tests in Germany and Austria: Research report and critical review
Get PDFThis article focuses on listening comprehension in large-scale assessments in Austria and Germany. L1 listening comprehension tests for elementary school students are part of the national educational as-sessment in both countries. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the similarities and differences of these listening comprehension tests in Austria and Germany. Thus, we describe the educational poli-cies and the underlying construct for the assessments. We will show that although both assessments are based on the same theoretical frameworks, test developers and policy makers made some different decisions for example about test procedures, statistical models and performance level descriptions (PLDs). Moreover, we illustrate that the choice of an appropriate statistical model is driven by empirical as well as didactical needs, which are difficult to reconcile with each other. These insights are illustrated by exemplary tasks and empirical examples. We use data from large-scale assessments (LSAs) from both countries, the BIST-Ü pilot study conducted by the BIFIE in Austria (N=2,798) and the VERA-study con-ducted by the IQB in Germany (N=3,107). We then draw conclusions primarily focusing on improving future tests and possible joint studies
Pedagogic Literary Narration in theory and action
Get PDFShared reading is an international convention of literary study where students have powerful formative encounters with narratives, shaping attitudes to the novel form and to reading. While narratology theorises narration in texts and speech, we lack an empirical account of teachers\u27 narrative work around study texts purposed to literary study goals. This article introduces the term Pedagogic Literary Narration (PLN) to conceptualise teachers\u27 exposition around narrative prose and its relationship with students\u27 talk. Methodology adapts Conversation Analysis to account for the introduction of quoted text to literary study interaction, embedding Bruner\u27s explorations of narrative meaning and Bakhtin\u27s concept of heteroglossia. Elaborating transcript data, discussion outlines the constituent practices of a distinctive pedagogy built around interplay of text and teacher narrations. PLN extends Rosenblatt\u27s seminal conceptualisation of reading transactions according to aesthetic and efferent stances. Findings identify teachers\u27 complex, highly efficient and specialised exposition where unique new narrations derive from dual purposes to a) present text narratives and b) orient to them for literary analysis. PLN gives literary study a theoretical framework to assert its specialist pedagogy and enrich students\u27 encounters with narrative prose
A review of the current empirical research on grammar instruction in the francophone regions
Get PDFThis paper presents the main trends and results of the empirical research on grammar instruction across the “francophonie” for the 2005-2016 period. In addition to fostering writing and reading abilities in pupils, grammar instruction in the francophone world aims at giving pupils a metalinguistic knowledge of the working of the French language. From a methodological point of view, one key feature of recent research is the importance of direct observations in the classroom, both for the teachers\u27 and the pupils\u27 work. The research topics reveal a new interest in the teachers\u27 work, notably the beginning teachers and a focus on everyday practices. Grammar instruction is very present in the francophonie and some of its notable features include the presence of mixed contents (traditional and new grammar), notional economy, and a strong separation between the study of grammatical “rules” and their applications in exercises or texts. While insisting on the fact that grammatical knowledge learned by pupils first will be partial, transitory and instable before it is more complete and stable, the experimentation of innovative teaching methods has shown promising results for the acquisition of new knowledge (heuristic approach) and for the stabilization of knowledge (innovative dictations). The fragility of both experienced and beginning teachers\u27 grammatical knowledge, notably in syntax, is a recurrent finding. On the pupils\u27 side, there is a renewed interest in the pupils\u27 ordinary work and their ability to do grammar. Recent research has shown a correlation between explicit grammatical knowledge and successful grammatical spelling; performances in writing are declining, and the use of more detailed criteria for the analysis of pupils\u27 text reveal that a large part of the errors are linked to syntax
Silencing children\u27s power of self-expression: An examination of coercive relations of power in English-medium schools in Pakistan
No full textThis paper analyses how English-medium policy in schools silences children\u27s power of self-expression in Pakistan, and how linguistic deficiencies and disadvantages in school language minimize their potential for meaningful cognitive/academic engagement. The study focuses on the degree of inclusion children enjoy linguistically, culturally, emotionally and cognitively. Conducted within 11 low-fee English-medium schools, it uses multiple data sources such as a questionnaire survey, interviews and non-participant observations. Theoretically, it draws on Jim Cummins\u27 (2000) concepts of ‘coercive relations of power/collaborative relations of power\u27 to illustrate how educators as powerful individuals exercise coercive powers to glorify English-only policy, legitimize and normalize erroneous assumptions about students\u27 linguistic/cultural resources. We also find that theoretically inspired by foreign concepts of TESOL/EFL/ESL, educators explicitly devalue and abandon children\u27s native languages as pedagogical resources in English teaching. Pedagogically, being deficient in the English language, English-only policy excludes children from maximum cognitive/academic engagement as they are coerced to rely on copy-ing, and rote memorization during reading, writing and examination. Towards the end, the study calls for a paradigm shift and proposes educators to create collaborative relations of power that affirms children\u27s identities, and invests on their languages/cultures as valuable pedagogical resources. This could make education more participatory, liberatory and empowering
Learners\u27 approaches to poetic metaphor: A think aloud study with secondary school students in Grade 6 and 9
Get PDFThis article investigates the challenges of understanding poetic metaphor for lower secondary students. It draws on a think aloud study that was carried out with 69 students from Grade 6 (mean age 12) and 9 (mean age 15) in Germany (higher academic track and middle schools) who thought aloud on three different poems. A coding system was developed deductively and inductively and applied to the protocols. Also, a procedure of global assessment was applied on the basis of the codings. For selected cases a sequential analysis was carried out. The results were analysed with regard to levels of understanding and to the strategies students apply when approaching the metaphorical poems. Results show that metaphorical understanding of poetic metaphor is still difficult for students even in Grade 9. Furthermore, results indicate that some poems and their metaphors are processed more easily than others, depending on relations between vehicle- and tenor-domain and the degree of metaphorical tension. With regard to the strategies, the analysis of two contrastive cases of sixth-graders shows that an initial experience of tension seems crucial for achieving metaphorical understanding and that strong students show affective and evaluative responses as well as flexibility in generating meaning. Besides, they monitor their reading process. An aesthetic reading mode can already be traced with some sixth graders. Results indicate that teaching should provide students with opportunities to focus on poetic metaphor, and introduce ways of imagining and analogising on and around metaphor. Also, room should be provided for realising and articulating affective and evaluative response
Four classrooms – four approaches to reading: Examples of disciplinary reading in social science subjects in years five and twelve
Get PDFIn this paper, we aim to explore and exemplify what opportunities to develop disciplinary reading literacy students are given access to in particular types of classroom reading environments in social science subjects. The investigation focuses on how the teacher organizes activities around reading, on what content is approached in text-related discussions and on whose perspectives are allowed space in the classroom discourse. The empirical data consists of classroom observations from two classes in year five and two classes in the Swedish upper secondary school, using different approaches to teaching reading, one being Reading to Learn. With a theoretical base in systemic functional linguistics (SFL), dialogism and reception theory, the classroom discourse was analysed in terms of sequential reading stages, text movability and dialogicality. The findings reveal how differently organized reading environments provide different support structures for students\u27 disciplinary reading. For example, the findings indicate that text activities that support the reading process in several stages bring about a larger potential for the development of reading literacy. However, the picture changes depending on to what extent students are given room to express their reception of the text, and thereby contribute to an active understanding of text in a dialogical classroom
High-quality writing instruction in Dutch primary education: A framework for national assessment
Get PDFIn the Netherlands, nationwide assessments are periodically executed to evaluate the quality of teachers\u27 writing instruction and students\u27 writing in primary schools. These assessments provide an empirical basis for the societal debate about the content and level of writing education, and enable the Inspectorate of Education to monitor the quality of teaching practices However, educational quality is a complex, multidimensional construct. In this literature review we discuss the question which domain-specific and more general teaching variables at the classroom level could be incorporated in nationwide assessment instruments, such as teacher questionnaires and classroom observation instruments. Based on theoretical and empirical studies on writing education, we propose a framework of variables which appear to be relevant, in the sense that they have been found to be characteristic of high-quality writing instruction. This framework can be used for the development of assessment instruments, and can also be a valuable resource for writing researchers, curriculum designers, and teachers
Beyond publication: Social action as the ultimate stage of a writing process
Get PDFThis article reports on the activities undertaken in a U. S. high school through which students produced video texts designed to address key social problems. The authors argue against conventional “writing process” models that assert a single set of stages for all writing and that position “publication” as the final stage of “the writing process.” In contrast, they illustrate how teaching grounded in critical literacy theory and informed by principles of connected learning requires instruction in task-specific procedures for interrogating information, imagining alternatives, and taking social action as the ultimate goal of composition. The authors detail one teacher\u27s instruction and illustrate its effects with examples from students\u27 work to demonstrate the shortcomings of conventional “writing process” conceptions and offer an alternative that advances the citizenship potential of youth in addressing societal inequities
When teachers compare argumentative texts: Decisions informed by multiple complex aspects of text quality
Get PDFInsight into aspects that guide teachers\u27 decisions when assessing student text quality is crucial to an understanding of the validity of text scores. Such research has been lacking in the context of comparative methods which are, however, increasingly being used for text assessment purposes. This study reports on the aspects of argumentative texts that guide Flemish teachers\u27 decisions when using the comparative judgement method. In using this method, teachers indicate which text of a pair is of higher quality. 27 teachers explained 23 comparative judgements in a decision statement, when comparing randomly selected texts written by 135 students in their fifth year of general secondary education. This resulted in 596 statements referring to 2054 segments of aspects of text quality. Firstly, an inductive analysis revealed that teachers consider a wide range of aspects with regard to text quality when making comparison decisions. Secondly, the deductive aggregation of these aspects showed that most decisions are informed by the organisation and argumentation of the texts. Lastly, almost all statements reported complex aspects of text quality, whereas half of the decision statements also showed a reflection on the rule-applying aspects of text quality. We conclude that comparative judgement encourages teachers to make decisions on complex and multiple aspects of text quality. Further research should elaborate on whether the aspects that informed teachers\u27 decisions are related to the text they choose, and whether teachers differ in the aspects to which they refer
The effect of the language of testing on second language learners\u27 academic performance in Social Studies: The case of Kreol Seselwa and English in the Seychelles classrooms
Get PDFThis study examines the use of Seychelles Creole (hereafter, Kreol Seselwa), and English as languages for testing knowledge in the Social Studies classroom of the Seychelles. The objective of the study was to ascertain whether the languages used in the test affected the pupils\u27 academic performance. The paper is theoretically influenced by the Social Practice approach to writing (Street, 1984), challenging a monolingual (autonomous) approach in favour of a more multilingual (ideological) model which takes into account all the learners\u27 language repertoires. A within groups experimental design was implemented, and 151 primary six pupils (11-12 years) from three different schools wrote a short test, in a counterbalanced design, in two languages. The topic of the test was fishing, mostly local contextual knowledge, taught in English. The tests were marked for content in both languages. The results showed that the scores on both languages highly correlated, indicating that both tests captured the same knowledge constructs. However, pupils achieved significantly higher marks in the tests written in Kreol Seselwa than in English. The study has implications for policymakers, teachers and most importantly learners in other multilingual settings, particularly in post-colonial countries like the Seychelles, where the mother tongue is undervalued in the classroom