L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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The role of L2 reading instruction in intercultural pedagogy in Iranian multicultural EFL context
Get PDFIntercultural communication occurs when people impacted by various cultural groups talk about similar meanings in their social interactions. It is considered as both a means to and a goal of English language teaching. Despite the wide scope of literature on the subject, few studies have investigated intercultural communication in L2 reading in the Iranian context. This article explored the attitudes of Iranian English students, instructors, policy-makers, and textbook developers toward intercultural communication as reflected in L2 reading textbooks. To this end, library data, questionnaire, and corpora were applied in a mixed-method study. The findings revealed a gap between the attitudes of academicians and policy-makers regarding intercultural communication in English reading textbooks; a gap deeply reflected in the themes and contents of the reading textbooks developed in public and private sectors in Iran. Results are discussed and implications are provided for ELT instructors, students, policy-makers, and textbook developers
The assignment transformed: Building a disciplinary affinity space in student blogs
Get PDFSchool assignments traditionally represent a rigidly scripted social practice with limited opportunity space for student agency and engaged participation in disciplinary communities. The performance of school assignments very often involves the reproduction of knowledge rather than problem-solving and meaning production, and at the same time the reproduction of the established practice represented by the assignment. Research into digital literacy reflects an optimistic view of how technology in general, and blogs in particular, may help to change school practices on the basis of sharing and participation. This article is a case study of the use of blogs in a Norwegian high school, focusing on how a particular assignment set on four occasions during an academic year gradually changes conditions for student participation in the literacy practice of the subject concerned (Print and Photography) by transforming the assignment into an invitation to be part of an affinity space. Further, we analyze the students\u27 responses to this invitation, first in an overall analysis of all the student blogs and then in an in-depth analysis of one of the blogs, demonstrating how, over time, the assignment space comes across as a chain of transformations entailing increasing student influence. This transformation process is analyzed using Theo van Leeuwen\u27s concept of the recontextualization of social practices (van Leeuwen, 2008), supported by key categories from Systemic Functional Linguistics in the in-depth analysis of student texts
The graphabet and bujian approach at acquiring Hanzi (Chinese character) writing skill
Get PDFLearning how to write orthographically correct Hanzi (otherwise known as the Chinese character) is a major hurdle facing students studying Chinese. The difficulty arises from the visual complexity of Hanzi, the opaqueness, i.e. diminished correspondence of sound to orthography, and the traditional method of learning Hanzi, which is monopolized by rote repetitive copying, excessive demand on memory, and lacking of any means of creating an auditory memory of the structural organization of individual Hanzi. As a result, the novice student has to invest a great deal of time and effort trying to master Hanzi, and is often deterred from continuing study. Yet, despite the seriousness of the problem, very little research has been carried out on its solution. This paper proposes a new approach at improving the ability to write Hanzi, through understanding Hanzi as strings of subunits stacked in two-dimensional space, and composed from 21 high frequency recurring shapes herein called graphabets. The combined use of graphabets and bujian can provide a means of creating an auditory memory of the structural organization and significantly decrease the memory load through chunking, as well as facilitating the use of computer feedback for learning purpose
Working memory and reading ability in children: A psycholinguistic perspective
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to give an insight into the reading process and working memory as factor that affects this process at early stages of its development. The basic assumption of the psycholinguistic view is that reading is a linguistic, metalinguistic and metacognitive activity that requires conscious control of cognitive processes involved.
The study covered 1138 children from reception class as well as the 1st grade. The subjects were examined using the Reading Tests Battery that offers a comprehensive evaluation of various aspects of reading: letter recognition and naming, isolated words decoding and pseudowords decoding. Executive functions were measured with the use of the Working Memory Test. Each task of the test corresponds to one of the working memory functions highlighted by Klaus Oberauer: simultaneous storage and processing, supervision and coordination.
The main results confirm a significant relationship between general indicators of working memory and the results of reading tests. The highest correlations were obtained for the Letter Naming and Letter Recognition tests as well as all three working memory test measures. Monitoring function did not correlate with the reading measures, and the function of coordination featured a very low level of covariance
Introduction to L1 special issue \u27The Teaching and Learning of Reading and Writing in a Multilingual and Multicultural Context\u27
Get PDFThe relationship between the impressive and the expressive component of written speech and the level of executive functions in children aged 3-11 years
Get PDFFrom the perspective of Lev S. Vygotsky\u27s theory, literacy develops as a tool for executing the task of communicating with the use of script and this, in consequence, results in the development of a new higher mental function – written speech (WS). Both components of this function improve in parallel with acquisition of reading and writing: the impressive component (comprehending the meaning of a written text) and the expressive component (conveying meaning in a written form). These components reflect two directions of one process of communication and are like ‘two sides of the same coin\u27. Reading and writing demand not only written speech activity but also activity of other mental functions, especially those necessary for planning and controlling behavior which are known as executive functions (EF). Little is found about how EF and two components of WS interact between the age of 3 and 11 when they develop quickly. The main research hypotheses are that (1) the relative dominance of the impressive and the expressive component of written speech is different across age groups and that (2) the level of EF development is connected to patterns of dominance between the impressive and the expressive component of WS. A database from a previous cross-sectional study of 1103 healthy, Polish speaking children between the age of 3 and 11 was used for exploratory analysis of the EF-WS relationship. The subjects were examined with the use of the Literacy Assessment Battery, designed for assessing the development of WS. Also, the paradigm of dimensional change card sort was applied for the measurement of two EF: inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. The conducted analyses of the results confirmed both research hypotheses. Differences in the relative dominance of either the impressive or the expressive component of WS suggest that advances in the reading ability and in the writing ability cannot have the same dynamics. In turn, the level of EF development seems to predict the relation between both WS components most strongly in the age periods where the most dynamic progress in inhibitory control or cognitive flexibility takes place. Further longitudinal studies with a wider range of EF measures, which would give an opportunity to explore causal relations between EF and WS, could be promising, especially in view of identification of literacy development factors
Factual text comprehension tasks as a tool for stimulating executive functions in 9- to 10-year-old children
Get PDFThe qualitative analysis of the relationship of executive functions and text comprehension presented in this theoretical study provides a platform for its authors\u27 original approach to designing their domain-specific model for cognitive stimulation in teaching/learning L1. The model for the stimulation of executive functioning in 9- to 10-year-old children utilises text comprehension as a curricular area of Slovak Language (L1) in primary education. The reason for choosing the domain of pupils\u27 receptive competences with a focus on reading and comprehension of a factual text is in its complex, abstract and relational nature; a condition which activates executive functions. Executive functions (working memory, attentional control and cognitive planning) direct and control mental processes and metacognition organises working with acquired knowledge. Deficient executive functioning is a limiting factor for the higher level of text comprehension and knowledge integration. Enhancing pupils\u27 cognitive performance through the stimulation of their executive functioning increases the prospect of their literacy development. This article presents: a) review of basic theoretical approaches to researching the relationship of executive functions and the processes of text comprehension, b) design of the educational model for stimulating executive functions through the processes of text comprehension, c) description of the model\u27s application and the examples of stimulating tasks
Developmental patterns of relationships between inhibitory control and reading skill in early-school children
Get PDFInhibitory control is one of the most important components of executive functions, which allows to suppress or regulate prepotent attentional or behavioral responses. It was proved to be a crucial factor for school achievement, including math abilities and reading acquisition. In the present cross-sectional study Ober\u27s assumptions about the developmental patterns of relationships between inhibitory control and reading skill were examined. The sample consisted of 256 grade 1-3 primary school children. Decoding and comprehension, the two subcomponents of reading skill, were assessed using Prolexia Test, while cognitive inhibitory control was measured with the Color Word Stroop Task. Simple correlation analyses showed that comprehension ability was related to inhibitory control but only among boys from 1st and 2nd grades (but not among 3rd graders), and no relations between reading subcomponents and inhibitory control were found among girls. However, hierarchical regression analyses controlling for other reading subcomponent did not yield a significant effect of interaction. Instead, it was found that inhibitory control was related to reading only in the 1st graders. Also, some gender differences between 1st and 2nd graders in their reading ability were observed. Those findings suggest that although gender plays a significant role in reading skill development of early school children, it does not moderate the developmental links between inhibitory control and reading skill
Adolescent reading and the reproduction of literary judgement: What adolescent book reviews of self-selected texts reveal
Get PDFThis article reports on a qualitative pilot study that focussed on book reviews by adolescent readers in which they write about self-selected books and in which they provide information about the effects of reading as well as their literary judgements. A selection of 55 reviews from a corpus of 450 reviews on the Swiss internet site www.jugendbuchtipp.ch was analysed. After (1) initial considerations on literary reading, reading pleasure, and literary judgement, as well as an (2) introduction to the questions and the overall analytic approach, analyses are presented of the reviews that adolescent readers have written about “their” books. These analyses give clear indication of the coexistence of these adolescent readers\u27 (3) emotional engagement; (4) their willingness to take on the perspective of literary figures; and (5) their partly sensitive perception of the formal features of texts. In their reviews of these autonomously selected books (that in many cases are examples of undemanding literature) there are in fact traces of the ability to form literary judgement. The (6) brief considerations regarding literature didactics emphasise the significance of autonomously selected texts for the development of reading pleasure and the ability to deliver literary criticism. They also underline the knowledge that book reviews offer about reading processes and processes of literary judgement
The future of Afrikaans as university language within a multilingual environment: The language debate at Stellenbosch
Get PDFLanguage is of critical importance in curriculum delivery as it determines how knowledge is received, constructed and transmitted. The hegemony of English has led to a gradual decrease in the use of Afrikaans at the historically Afrikaans universities (HAUs). This article investigates the prevailing debate about the future of Afrikaans as university language. Based on the premise that South Africa is a multilingual country with 11 official languages where most students are not Afrikaans or English speaking, the research question we asked, is whether there is still a place for Afrikaans as university language. There is a strong correlation between mother-tongue instruction and success in academic performance (Alexander, 1997; De Varennes, 2010). Yet in most South African universities English is the default language of instruction which means most South African students have to study through their second language. The article will argue that many students are academically unsuccessful because the nature of second-language learning is extremely complex (Woolfolk, 2010: 43). Based on Vygotsky\u27s (1978) social constructivist theory and his description of language competency in a second language and the acquisition thereof, the research design will be in the form of a literature study with special focus on the language debate at Stellenbosch University. Against this background the article will motivate why a multilingual language policy is recommended