L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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The role of teachers in the academic English literacy acquisition experiences of deaf college students
Get PDFThe purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe deaf college students’ perceptions of their experiences learning academic English literacy vis à vis their teachers. The study examined the narrated academic English literacy acquisition experiences and practices of 11 deaf and hard-of-hearing students at a hearing university with a large deaf student population. Through paradigmatic analysis of narrative data, the study located common themes, which revealed students’ perceptions of academic English literacy acquisition, particularly with regard to their teachers. Methods employed in the study were phenomenological interviewing and recursive analysis. The primary data sources were participant interviews and a focus group. Analysis was conducted through recursive interaction with the data, in which repeated reviews served to first elicit themes and meanings and then confirm interpretation of same. The study resulted in the following findings: Participants’ experiences resulted in a preference for instructors who are highly competent communicators, and these tended to be deaf instructors. Participants encountered communication challenges, including the inability of instructors to sign clearly or to understand what their students were saying to them, that restricted their learning. They also perceived instructors to hold expectations that were either too low, unclear, or rigid, which created internal contradictions between challenge and remediation. The study concluded by showing how understanding deaf college students’ perceptions of academic English literacy acquisition may inform and improve teaching practices with this population
Empirical studies on verbal interaction and literary understanding: An annotated list of references
Get PDFThe following list of publications was initially compiled in preparation of the symposium, “Verbal interaction and literary understanding”, held at the 6th IAIMTE-conference, in Exeter (England), March 27-29, 2007. The list is based on a search of several digital databases, such as the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsycINFO, and the Web of Science. Publications were selected which contained reports of empirical studies - quantitative as well as qualitative - of verbal interaction in the literature classroom, the theme of this special issue of L1. The studies were published between 1985 and 2008. Our search terms were; ‘empirical’, ‘(case)study’, ‘research’, ‘experiment’, combined with ‘literature discussion(s)’, ‘literature conversation(s)’, ‘classroom talk’, ‘book talk’, ‘interaction’ or ‘literature dialogue(s)’. Only publications written in English were included. Although the resulting list undoubtedly is incomplete, we believe that it may be of interest and useful to researchers, teacher-trainers, and teachers in the field of literature education
An examination of the history of deaf education in Greece and in Cyprus: Determining factors for its development.
Get PDFThe history of deaf education worldwide has mainly focused on the oral versus sign language debate. Only minor attention has been paid to the historical context and background in which educational ideas and methods for teaching deaf children developed. Significant historical information about deaf education in Greece and in Cyprus began relatively late with the founding of the first schools for the deaf in the twentieth century. This paper will provide a comparative examination of the history of deaf education in Greece and in Cyprus by highlighting the most important events that have contributed to the development of the education of deaf people in both countries. Data for this paper were drawn from “official” sources (written documents), as well as from interviews with informants (teachers, parents, and deaf people) of Greece and Cyprus. The study has revealed that the history of deaf education in both countries has been eventful, and it has developed through major shortcomings and debates. Despite the fact that Greece and Cyprus are in close geographical proximity and the fact that their educational policies on various issues are quite similar, the main findings of this study show that a number of factors have led to the development of different provisions for deaf children in these two countries. Specifically, parents\u27 lobbying, Deaf Community empowerment, various legal measures, available technology, and teachers\u27 training backgrounds seem to be the major contributing factors for the establishment of a) bilingual education, and special units and schools for the deaf in Greece and b) oral education and inclusion in Cyprus
Orthographic performances in a Portuguese primary school: A longitudinal study in third and fourth grades
Get PDFThis study aims to understand if children\u27s spelling errors vary according to their orthographic perfor-mances and their grade level. It also aims to understand the way in which children\u27s awareness of orthography rules relates to their performance. The participants were forty-three children (24 boys and 19 girls) attending the third grade and, the following year, the fourth grade in a Lisbon public school. They were given a spelling task in third grade and again in fourth grade and their spelling errors were compared. In fourth grade, the types of error of good and poor spellers were compared. Interviews were conducted to determine if the level of awareness of orthographic rules differed according to the children\u27s orthographic performance. The results show that the number of errors decreased from the third to the fourth grade and that there are differences in the types of error made by participants with higher and lower orthographic performances. There were no statistically significant differences be-tween these two groups concerning their awareness of orthographic rules
The development of reading skills in a sample of Portuguese normal readers and dyslexic children: The development of reading skills in a sample of Portuguese normal readers and dyslexic children
No full textThe aim of this article is to discuss the theoretical issues behind reading processes, the relation between this skill and dyslexia, and to present some results from a pseudowords reading test with Portuguese children. Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning disability characterized by difficulty in learning to read, and there is strong evidence that dyslexia is related to underlying deficiencies in phonological skills. Phonological deficits establish robust differences between dyslexic and normal readers and, according to the theoretical background, phonological awareness can be assessed with pseudowords tests. In this study, we applied the Pseudo words Reading Test, one of twenty tests of the Battery of Tests to Assess Developmental Dyslexia (BADD) constructed to assess dyslexia in Portuguese children between 7 and 12 years old. We gave the Pseudo words Reading Test to 555 Portuguese children, aged 8 to 12. Fifty-seven of these children had been previously assessed by other professionals as dyslexics. We tried to verify how factors like age, gender and learning disabilities influence the acuity in pseudo words reading and if this test can be used to assist in an early diagnosis of developmental dyslexia. The results prove that there are significant differences between dyslexic children and normal readers in reading pseudo words in Portuguese language
A genre teaching in different social environments: An experiment with the genre detective story
Get PDFThis article aims to reflect upon the use of teaching strategies to improve writing, in different social contexts, bearing in mind the students\u27 individual track, and their specific cultural-historical situations. The study was based on principles derived from the socio-discursive interactionist theory (Bronckart, 1999, 2006) and on the possibility of making genres teachable through didactic sequences (Schneuwly & Dolz, 2004). An applied comparative work was developed using a didactic sequence, related to the detective story genre, with two 5th grade classes in different elementary schools. Although the schools were located in the same geographical region, one was a local-government-run public school, with students belonging to a low socio-economic class, and the other was a private, religion-oriented school, with students belonging to a high socio-economic class. The study demonstrates that the work with didactic sequence has productive consequences in the students\u27 textual productions from both schools, independently of the social environment in which the work with genre was developed. If quantitative growth was more evident in the public school, qualitative growth between early and final productions in both schools was significant and reveals the importance of consistent work on genre teaching
Literacy beliefs and practices: Diagnoses and interventions that improve mother tongue education
Get PDFEmergent literacy beliefs in preschool and kindergarten contexts
Get PDFThis study aims to understand how a group of preschool/kindergarten teachers (N = 340) perceives and accomplishes linguistic and literacy oriented practices. Results show that, in a set of literacy and language tasks, teachers tend to value oral driven tasks and seldom engage in activities that relate to teaching the written language. This profile of educators is a reflection of prevalent views in pre-service teacher education and of some of the most common practices in Portuguese preschool and kindergarten classes (ages 3-6) and suggests that teachers have limited scientific knowledge of emergent literacy concepts. It seems that, despite being promoted to university training in the last 20 years, pre-service education does not yet reflect the state of the art in early childhood education. In a set of in-depth interviews (N = 8) we found a close association between the absence of literacy practices and the absence of pre-service specific knowledge about this subject. Participants that report consistent and regular linguistic and literacy oriented practices seem to perceive pre-service education as critical for their commitment to those practices. On the other hand, older teachers and teachers with lower training levels seem to undervalue specific literacy oriented tasks. The opposite seems to happen with younger and more educated teachers. Overall, our study suggests that the contents of pre-service and in-service education induce specific practices in preschool/kindergarten contexts, but it also suggests that this impact may be limited by socialization effects of dominant professional practices
Developing writing skills through the use of blogs
Get PDFThis paper aims at describing an empirical research carried out in a private school in Fortaleza, Brazil, in which the production of a blog was used as an opportunity to teach writing skills in Portuguese, based on the curricular parameters for Brazilian basic education, which postulate that the teaching of Portuguese has to be based on texts. The theoretical background for this study was extracted from Schneuwly and Dolz (2004), who developed the idea of the teaching dimensions of genres. In order to accomplish our research purposes, a group of teachers from a private school in Fortaleza was invited to take part in a set of activities focused on the use of blogs as teaching tools. The present study seeks to provide a view on the potential of digital writing as a pedagogical tool for the development of discursive skills, contributing to linguistic analysis practices in the classroom
Reading, annotation and production of an argumentative text written by higher education students in a blended-learning situation
Get PDFArgumentation has been acknowledged as increasingly important for both academic writing and on-line communication. This study combines some of the main results and conclusions of two different, yet complementary, research studies. Here, we aim at illustrating the contribution of the use of a plat-form (SCALE) conceived for the development of argumentative skills for Higher Education students in argumentative and negotiation on-line interactions and as well as written productions (opinion articles and taking notes). For the compilation and discussion of the results, we analyzed the students\u27 on-line argumentative diagrams and interactions, as well as their individual written productions. We also analyzed the questionnaires they answered before and after the experiment, regarding their attitudes towards Information Communication Technologies (ICT), reading, annotation and writing texts, including argumentative texts. Results suggest differences related to the type of interaction in free versus structured chats. The interactions are richer and more profound in the free chats. The annotation and the graphic representation of argumentative maps, in diagrams, seem to provide evidence of the students\u27 learning, especially as far as the argumentative structure is concerned. Also, students\u27 performance was more productive in the on-line environments in compari-son with the off-line situations