L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature
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A study of invented spelling and developing orthographic concepts in Japanese
Get PDFThis study examines the developmental stages of spelling ability focusing on the learning process of the Japanese orthographic system for native speakers of Japanese. After first providing a basic explanation of the Japanese orthographic system, issues regarding the acquisition of Japanese spelling are discussed. Next, in order to clarify the acquisition of writing skills in the introductory stage of Japanese spelling, data from prior case studies and this investigation are examined. From these results, a new proposal for developmental stages of orthographic concepts is suggested. This study also examines strategies of invented spelling and the relationship between developmental stages and learning ages. Children had learned a considerable amount of hiragana spelling before entering first grade, and by the end of first grade (late March) had reached the point where they were mostly able to write phrases in both hiragana and katakana. The developmental stages were as follows:
Stage1: Hiragana spelling not yet acquired
Stage2: Hiragana spelling acquisition (unvoiced, voiced, semi-voiced)
Stage3: Hiragana spelling acquisition (special syllable markers)
Stage4: Katakana spelling acquisition (unvoiced, voiced, semi-voiced)
Stage5: Katakana spelling acquisition (special syllable markers)
Stage6: Combined usage of hiragana and katakana acquisition
Stage7: Kanji spelling not yet acquired (includes kanji learning stages)
Constructing English in New Zealand: A report on a decade of reform
Get PDFIn 1991, the newly elected National Government of New Zealand set in train a major reform of the New Zealand national curriculum and, a little later, a major reform of the New Zealand qualifications system. These reforms have had a major impact on the construction of English as a subject in New Zealand secondary schools, and the work and professional identity of teachers. This article uses as a basis for analysis a framework which posits four paradigms for subject English and proceeds to examine the current national English curriculum in New Zealand for its underlying discourses. In specific terms, it explores questions of partition and progression, and terminology. In respect of progression, it argues that the current curriculum has imposed a flawed model on teachers and students, in part because of its commitment to the assignment of decontextualised outcomes statements (‘achievement objects\u27) to staged levels of student development (levels). It also argues that much of the terminology used by the document has had a negative impact on metalinguistic classroom practice. Finally, while it views the national English curriculum as a discursively mixed bag, it notes an absence of critical discourses and a tendency, in recent qualifications reforms, to construct English teachers as technicians and the subject as skills-based
The teaching of writing in the upper secondary school in the age of the internet and mass media culture
Get PDFThis article considers the impact on the teaching of writing and the curriculum, of changes in culture associated with mass media and new means of communication such as the internet. It specifically focuses on the implications these changes might have for the ways in which writing is taught and practised in schooling today. The article is based on interviews with three Swedish upper-secondary school mother-tongue teachers and presents their views on how the writing situation has changed for their students. According to the teachers, the curriculum faces challenges from students’ access to and use of mass media culture and computer-mediated communications. For example, the teachers reported that students currently are less interested in grammar and spelling, and more interested in images and layout. Students also use what teachers consider to be plagiarism in their methods of communication. The article draws on media ecology to understand these reported changes in the sense that students are seen to develop new media practices involving several media-specific competences (Mackey, 2002) which gives them access to new ways of meaning-making in their acts of reading or writing. It is tentatively claimed that students may thus develop alternative notions of authors as well as texts, which affect their own view of text production in school. Other theoretical frameworks drawn on in the article include Habermas’ discussion of how the public and private sphere fuse and Ziehe’s (1989) perceptions of teachers as ‘relation workers’ in increasingly intimate school environments
Invented orthography: The role of Maya speaking children in bilingual elementary education
Get PDFThis article addresses the conceptualizations of written language held by Mayan children who attend bilingual elementary school. The article’s attempt to show the results of psycholinguistic research carried out with Mayan children follows the conviction that school-age Maya speakers play an important role in generating knowledge of literacy proposals in the context of bilingual education. By being in contact with two languages (the native language and Spanish), the Mayan children make precise linguistic reflections on Spanish that allow them to infer principles of the graphic and orthographic system of their own language. This article explains those reflections
The teaching of literature at the crossroads: Means or goal?
Get PDFIn France, literature has been for a long time the basis for the teaching of French as mother tongue. Today, however, its role and position are being questioned because of both empirical difficulties linked with its daily teaching and disciplinary changes in French didactics. Its formerly obvious use is now giving way to doubts. While some firmly stick to their old positions, as expressed in press pamphlets and media discussions (« C\u27est la littérature qu\u27on assassine rue de Grenelle », Le Monde, 4 March, 2000), others try to « remodel » the teaching of French in redefining the functions of its various components (literature ranging at the top) and in finding new ways to link them. These are the issues at stake in the current debate that we hope to clarify through an analysis of the Education Ministry\u27s new instructions on secondary teaching
Writing, digital culture and English curriculum
Get PDFIn their out-of-school lives, young people are immersed in rich and complex digital worlds, characterised by image and multimodality. Computer games in particular present young people with specific narrative genres and textual forms: contexts in which meaning is constructed interactively and drawing explicitly on a wide range of design elements including sound, image, gesture, symbol, colour and so on. As English curriculum seeks to address the changing nature of literacy, challenges are raised, particularly with respect to the ways in which multimodal texts might be incorporated alongside print based forms of literacy. Questions focus both on the ways in which such texts might be created, studied and assessed, and on the implications of the introduction of such texts for print based literacies. This paper explores intersections between writing and computer games within the English classroom, from a number of junior secondary examples. In particular it considers tensions that arise when young people use writing to recreate or respond to multimodal forms. It explores ways in which writing is stretched and challenged by enterprises such as these, ways in which students utilise and adapt print based modes to represent multimodal forms of narrative, and how teachers and curriculum might respond. Consideration is given to the challenges posed to teaching and assessment by bringing writing to bear as the medium of analysis of, and response to, multimodal texts
Linguistic factors and invented spelling in children: The case of French beginners in children
Get PDFMost studies in the field of first writing experiences in kindergarten have focused on the behaviour of young English-language writers (Treiman & Bourassa, 2000). By considering increasingly acknowledged linguistic factors in spelling development (Seymour, Aro & Erskine, 2003), the present study seeks to contribute to existing studies of young French-language children in Europe by examining the case of young French-Canadian writers (North America). Drawing on 202 kindergarten children, this study seeks to provide a better understanding of the impact of linguistic characteristics on the production of graphemes in an invented spelling task involving the writing of six words. Firstly, it analyzes the “word” effect on the participants’ capacity to produce the appropriate graphemes to represent the phonological information of words (exhaustiveness of the graphemes). Secondly, there is an analysis of unconventional graphemes in order to identify the causes of the deviation from the expected norm. Generally speaking, the findings support the relevance of taking into account the particularities of written French in the spelling development of young French-language children as well as the constructivist view that deviations from the norm are often indicative of difficulties arising from the nature of the writing system to be learned
Invented spelling in the Greek context
Get PDFThis paper attempts to present an overview of studies that have been conducted in Greece during recent years on the subject of emergent literacy and, more precisely, on preschoolers’ acquisition of writing. Its aim is to present the studies focusing on the subject from an “invented spelling” perspective and to discuss the results obtained. Results seem to be in accordance with the results obtained by similar studies in other countries and in different languages, thus supporting the idea of the existence of a universal character to the ways preschool children conceptualise writing
Turkish Cypriot literature course in emerging cultural and educational policies
Get PDFIn recent years, certain political changes have occurred in the Turkish Cypriot community with the accession of Cyprus to the European Union. Policies and parties in favor of this accession accepted the idea of a united Cyprus; the majority of the Turkish Cypriots (65%) voted in favor of a Cypriot identity. Such political transformations affected education as well. As one of the results of these new policies, a course entitled “Turkish Cypriot Literature” was introduced in schools. In this article we report a study on the ideology, content and instruction of the TCL course. In this study a questionnaire was given to high school teachers and students in order to find out their views about the ideology, content and instruction of the course. In addition, the authors of the TCL literary history were interviewed to gather their views on the content and ideology of the course. This study shows that a new ideology has been accepted by teachers, students and the authors of literary history. According to them the TCL course helps to contribute to the Turkish Cypriot culture and its values. In regard to the content of the TCL course it can be noted that the content of TCL is accepted by both the teachers and the students. However, the authors of the TCL literary history point to the fact that there are deficiencies and irrelevant subjects in the content of the TCL courses. The other research question of the study is to determine the views of the teachers and the students on the way TCL is taught. The teachers and the students are hesitant about the effectiveness of such instruction
Starting points: Paradigms in mother tongue education
Get PDFMother-tongue education curriculum is in a constant state of debate. Indeed, the field may be accurately characterised as polyparadigmatic. We use three specific sets of analyses to discuss the curriculum variety of the field: ten Brinke\u27s classification of dimensions, Matthijssen\u27s rationality theory and Englund\u27s concept of competing meta-discourses. We then conceptualise the field in terms of paradigm competition, specifically discussing academic, developmental, communicative and utilitarian paradigms. We finish with a case study of the historiography of curriculum paradigms in English