L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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The development of narrative ability in English-Chinese bilingual primary school students in Singapore
Get PDFThis study reports the comparative narrative ability of bilingual English- and Chinese-speaking primary school students in Singapore from a developmental perspective, an area attracting little research in the past. A total of 36 primary one, three and five students from mainstream schools narrated in Mandarin and in English whilst being shown accompanying pictures. The students\u27 narrative ability was then measured in terms of their grasp of narrative structure, temporality and the evaluative expressions. Analyses showed that the students\u27 English stories were more advanced than were their Chinese stories. Although similar developmental patterns were found in the children\u27s English and Chinese, there were many more connectives and evaluative expressions in their English than in their Chinese stories. The evidence suggests that the English and Chinese competence of the bilingual learners in Singapore schools do not develop in close parallel. The implications for bilingual teaching in Singapore schools are discussed, especially the finding that the children\u27s English ability was better than their Chinese language ability
Using video dubbing activities in primary Chinese classroom for creative writing: A case study of students with multilingual background
Get PDFThe multimodal approach of teaching and learning Chinese language is a new area to explore. Student do not only learn from reading, reproducing written Chinese words and listening to teachers\u27 explanations of the words, other modes of input and output also help students learn Chinese. In this case study, video dubbing activities are introduced in a primary 2 Chinese classroom with 19 children who have arrived to Hong Kong less than 6 months earlier. They speak different Chinese dialects and know very little traditional written Chinese. They have to immerse into Hong Kong society where Chinese language is composed of spoken Cantonese and written Modern Chinese; which is also within the mainstream curriculum of most local schools. The newly arrived children in the school would have school-based learning materials and lesson designs catering for their special needs. In this case study, promising learning behaviors were observed during the trial lessons and desirable learning outputs were noted in their worksheets of creative writing. Students were highly motivated and showed a high level of en-gagement in the learning process. The narrative writing showed their good effort in learning how to write in traditional Chinese. In spite of their new arrival to Hong Kong, it showed how the students improved in learning Chinese under a new school context
Effective literacy teaching practices in Portugal: A study in first grade
Get PDFThis article examines the effect of literacy teaching practices on the reading ability of first grade pupils in Portuguese, a semi-transparent orthography. First grade teachers (N = 267) self-reported their literacy teaching practices through a questionnaire. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed three groups with different practices—Language experience, Phonic and Balanced teachers. Eight teachers from each group were randomly selected for classroom observation (N = 24) to deepen the information concerning their practices namely to analyse classroom management procedures and materials used. The reading abilities of their pupils were assessed at the beginning and end of first grade (N =465) through two tasks: word reading and comprehension. Multivariate analysis of covariance, controlling for mother\u27s educational levels, showed that pupils under balanced teachers had better results than pupils under the other two groups which had equivalent performances. These results are in line with those described in the English literature, pointing out that the key word to describe successful literacy teaching practices is balance. Balance of classroom management procedures, from more teacher-centred to more pupils-centred; balance of different types of reading materials, from more authentic materials to materials designed to work specific skills; and balance of explicit instruction in grapheme-phoneme correspondences with reading and writing authentic texts
Validation of the Oral Interaction Strategy Scale for speakers of Chinese as the first language in elementary schools
Get PDFThis study validated the Oral Interaction Strategy Scale (OISS) for speakers of Chinese as a first language in elementary schools. The OISS measures students\u27 perceptions of how frequently they use interaction strategies of Chinese as a first language (L1 Chinese). The study involved two studies. In the first study, among 642 pupils, we identified seven categories of interaction strategies in Chinese communication. In the second study, among another 678 pupils, the seven-dimension structure was confirmed. Besides, a second-order factor of interaction strategies was established and the relative importance of each first-order factor to the second-order factor was also examined. The implications for further studies are discussed
Writing hypertexts: Proposed effects on writing processes and knowledge acquisition
Get PDFIn this paper we propose that hypertext writing at school could have beneficial effects on the acquisition of content knowledge and the acquisition of writing skills compared to linear writing. We view the effects of hypertext writing on writing skills from the perspective of “shared” cognitive activities in writing linear texts and hypertexts. In a pilot study we examined the effects of hypertext writing on writing processes and we related the occurrence of writing processes to the quality of the resulting writing products. We set up this study to identify students\u27 cognitive activities during hypertext and linear writing. We also tried to determine whether hypertext writing could facilitate linear writing. We focused on the most central, distinctive features of linear and hypertext writing. For linear writing, this is a linearization process: i.e., transforming elements of content into linear text. For hypertext writing, this is a hierarchicalization process: converting a linearly presented line of thought into a hierarchical structure. Students (N = 123) from Grades 8 and 9 performed two linearization tasks and two hierarchicalization tasks under think aloud conditions Results showed that Planning and Analyzing activities contributed to the final quality of hypertexts and linear texts, and that these activities were more often elicited in hypertext tasks than in linear writing. We argue that writing hypertexts stimulates the use of writing activities that are positively related to writing proficiency. Moreover, we speculate that creating hypertext writing conditions and optimizing these conditions for different writer/learner styles might be a theoretical and practical challenge for mother tongue teaching
Phonological processing and reading in a semi-transparent orthography (Polish)
Get PDFBackground: In the semi-transparent Polish orthography, children develop their reading skills from sound blending, through syllable and morpheme blending, to word and phrase recognition strategies (Awramiuk & Krasowicz-Kupis, 2015).
Aim: The aim of the study was to examine reading proficiency and reading strategies of year 4, 11-year-old primary school students, and to investigate the relationship between the selected aspects of phonological processing and literacy skills. We aimed to confront the newly collected empirical data with the already developed model of reading acquisition to confirm the developmental path of reading strategies.
Methods: We used a set of tests measuring phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), working memory, short story reading, nonword reading, and reading comprehension.
Results: Most children achieved a global stage in reading, as the most frequent mistake was an entire word repetition, followed by a syllable blending, and a syllable and sound blending combined among word reading errors. Phonological awareness predicted the number of errors, and RAN - the accuracy and fluency of the short story reading.
Conclusions: Our results confirm the development of reading strategies from phonological-analytical to global in Polish. This model is consistent with other alphabetical orthographies
Writing and teaching literature: The role of hypertextual and metatextual writing activities on three school levels
Get PDFMetatextual (writing about texts) and hypertextual writing activities (writing using texts as a source) play different roles in teaching literature for the subject “French” in French-speaking countries both at different school levels and at different times in history. How do these differences show up today in daily practices? 30 teachers in French-speaking Switzerland working in primary, lower secondary and higher secondary schools (respectively grades 6, 8 and 12) were asked to teach a fable by La Fontaine and a short story by a contemporary Swiss author. The observations show that writing activities appeared in all classes either through the use of questionnaires or the production of hypertextual or metatextual texts. In the primary grades, hypertextual writing prepared for reading. In the higher secondary classes, students wrote different text genres that were then compared with the source text. More traditionally, in the lower secondary classes, hypertextual writing ends a teaching sequence allowing space for the students to produce a text. At all levels, metatextual writing was dedicated to expressing subjective responses. At the same time, traditional metatextual activities were practiced in primary classes for writing summaries, and in secondary classes for writing literary essays. Thus, new hypertextual and metatextual forms of writing have settled on traditional practices that have survived longstanding historical changes
Teaching heritage German and Russian through authentic material in Jyväskylä, Finland: A multiple case study design
Get PDFSince 2013, sixteen heritage language teachers in Jyväskylä, Finland, have been developing an Active Library (ActLib) method and an online cooperative learning forum designed to create and share authentic language learning material. The main objectives are twofold. Firstly, from the learner\u27s perspective, the aims are to enhance pupils\u27 language awareness while encouraging them to use their language repertoire as a resource in learning, to develop authentic activities, and to increase pupil agency. Secondly, from the teachers\u27 and education policy perspective, the aim is to prepare heritage language teachers to introduce in advance the new Finnish core curriculum. A further objective is to develop teachers\u27 pedagogical content knowledge in order to diversify their teaching practices. The ideology of ActLib is based on the cooperative learning of teachers. This case study focuses on possibilities for using authentic material in learning German and Russian as heritage languages. The data consists of ActLib assignments in German and Russian heritage languages and pupil interviews. The results show that the assignments develop pupils\u27 language awareness, but the linguistically authentic learning material was not sufficiently meaningful for pupils to develop their autonomy and acquisition
Understanding literary reading: The need for a scientific approach? Review essay
Get PDFThis is a review essay of Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments, edited by Olivia Fialho, Sonia Zyngier and Michael Burke (2016), a collection of essays that locate themselves within a philosophical framework that is different from my own. My aim in writing this essay is to reflect on how these essays speak to me, for all the differences between the ‘scientific\u27 standpoint advocated by these researchers and my own position, and to find points of intersection between my approach towards literature and the approaches presented in this collection
‘School? You go because you have to\u27: The linguistic worldview of ‘school\u27 in Polish and American teen Internet discourse
No full textThis cross-cultural project applies current theories in Cognitive Linguistics to the issue of youth (dis)engagement in the high school setting. Specifically, it analyses American and Polish youth speech from online forums and dictionaries according to five main categories: the institution of school, the place of school, the people of school, the activities of school and the emotions of school. The analysis presents these lexical expressions grouped according to metaphorical source domain in order to better understand how teenagers in each culture conceptualize SCHOOL. The discussion summarises the analysis for each country, whereas the conclusion compares the two and makes comments on the implication for theories of language and education. The aims of this paper are three-fold: to increase understanding of the ways in which youth view their time in the classroom, to provide a comparative analysis that will shed light on cultural differences in the conceptualization of SCHOOL and its linguistic expression, and to highlight examples of metaphors that value school and the educational process so that these conceptual mappings can receive more emphasis in both countries