adult emergent writers: building bridges to literacy julia reimer / meled conference / nov. 15, 2014
Post on 24-Dec-2015
217 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
ADULT EMERGENT WRITERS: BUILDING BRIDGES TO LITERACYJulia Reimer / MELEd Conference / Nov. 15, 2014
Session Overview
Brief writing task! Elements of writing What we know about adult emergent
writers from the literature Current study Implications for practice
Writing task
Imagine that you are renting an apartment. Your toilet leaks, and the window in the kitchen doesn’t close properly.
Write a letter in your L2 to your landlord.
Pair / small group task
What did you need to know in order to complete this writing task?
Elements of writing
Knowing about culture …
What is the purpose of my text? (persuade, inform, request, etc.) What are culturally-appropriate ways to carry out that purpose?
What do I need to know about cultural institutions, customs, etc. in order to convey my meaning appropriately?
How do I vary what I write based on who I’m writing to, what I’m writing about, and the type of writing I’m doing?
Knowing about texts …
How is this type of text organized in this language?
How can I create a logical flow in my text?
What language resources do I use to link ideas together throughout my text?
How do I distribute information across paragraphs?
Knowing about words…
What nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc. should I use?
How technical or common should my words be?
How formal or informal should my words and phrases be?
Knowing about grammar …
How do I create well-formed sentences? Should I use statements, questions, or
imperatives to get my point across? How varied should my sentences be:
simple, compound, complex? What grammar structures can help me
to connect my ideas logically at the sentence-level?
How do I show tense in verbs? Plurality in nouns?
Knowing about mechanics … How do I spell this word? How do I form this letter? How do I use punctuation and
capitalization?
Knowing about strategies
How do I plan out my writing? How do I generate ideas? How do I get a sense of whether people
understand what I’m trying to convey? How do I know that I’ve written things
correctly?
Systemic Functional Linguistics Together, these elements help us to
convey information, interact with our audience, and create cohesive texts.
We make purposeful choices in the language we use to adjust to audience, purpose, genre.
The issue
“Despite the capacity of writing to facilitate reading development and the need for adults to be able to write for work, education, and other purposes, writing has not been included in major surveys of adult learners, nor have writing skills been a focus of adult literacy research.” - Gillespie (2001), as cited in Lesgold & Welch-Ross (2012)
Research Questions
What language resources do low literacy adult writers use to convey information, interact with their audience, and create cohesive texts?
What writing prompts and scaffolding activities are teachers using to support the these learners’ writing?
What do we know about the emergent writing of …
L1 children? more “spoken” > more “written”
simple clauses, simple words, pronouns, simple clause relations > more complexity, subordination
lower lexical density > higher lexical density declaration > elaboration translation > transformation
What do we know about the emergent writing of …
Adult literacy learners (ABE; both L1 & L2)?
spelling is less accurate and inconsistent more non-phonetic and morphological
errors
What do we know about the emergent writing of …
L2 adult literacy learners? L1 literacy has + impact on L2 literacy Age makes a difference!
generational conflicts; erosion of status of elders Learners make less progress in writing than in
reading. Literacy viewed as a community- / family-held
resource rather than an individually-held skill Spelling: developmental patterns and
strategies used by L2 adult literacy learners are similar to those of L1 children.
Current study
Research Questions: What language resources do low literacy adult writers use to
convey information, interact with their audience, and create cohesive texts?
What writing prompts and scaffolding activities are teachers using to support the these learners’ writing?
Participants 10 local teachers approximately 60 texts from approximately 40 students CASAS scores range from 180s to 220s; years of prior formal
education range from 0-8 years Data Collection & Analysis
Collected texts as part of regular classroom tasks; analyze using UAM Corpus Tool
Teaching practices survey; reading group; workshops
Sample texts
FH & SH: Genre: description Sequence: read Chai Lor story, answer
comprehension questions, write description
EA, AS, LA: Genre: recount Weekly journal: life history
DF: Genre: response Sequence: read Call of the Wild, prompt: “How are
you and Buck similar and not similar?”, Venn diagram, write
Sample text analysis: cohesion Lexical cohesion:
repetition of words, or words from the same word family (e.g. coherent, cohesive, cohesion) or use of synonyms
use of general words (like the place, the girl, the facility) to refer to something more specific that is mentioned elsewhere
use of words from the same thematic field (e.g. texts, readers, written)
substitution of previously mentioned words with one/ones
ellipsis of previously mentioned words (i.e. leaving a word out because it can be recovered from the previous text)
Cohesion, continued
Grammatical cohesion reference devices, especially pronouns (it
may help…) and some determiners (e.g. this, that)
substitution of previously mentioned clause elements, with do/does, or so/not
ellipsis of clause elements linkers, such as therefore, what’s more, then parallelism, i.e. sentences that “echo” the
structure of previous sentences
Sample text analysis: logic
Extending Meanings:Addition (ex: and)Replacing / contrast (ex: but, yet, or, etc.)
Enhancing Meanings:Sequence (before, after, etc.)Time (when, as soon as, etc.)Manner (by, as if, etc.)Cause (so, because, causes, etc.)Condition (if, unless, etc.)Concession (yet, but, although, etc.)
Elaborating Meanings:
Restating (that is, etc.)ReformulatingDescribingExemplifyingApposition
Scaffolding all levels of language for emergent writers
Implications for Practice
+Culture / text level
Discussions about the culture, topic and text-typeo In the US, my family is
usually my husband / wife and children. In your family, who is your family?
o In your country, how do you say “Hello” to a friend? to your mother? to a teacher? In the US, we say …
Expose learners to a variety of text types.
Listen to a situation and write an appropriate short note on a card.
Happy birthday!
With sympathy.
Thank you.
Word level
Word webs Identify synonyms
+Sentence level Sentence combining
Use and, but or because:
1. I am busy _____ I have two jobs and three children.
2. I used to live in Somalia _____ now I live in Minneapolis.
Sentence frames
Cut up sentences / paragraphs
+Mechanics level
Use “punctuation frames” Work on manual dexterityo “air writing”o cut things with scissors
to strengthen muscleso form letters in sand,
playdougho use “fat” pencilso draw shapes
Work on spelling
Use “letter frames”
+Strategies level
Peer supporto collaborative writingo peer feedback
(underline a good sentence; circle a word you don’t understand)
Prepare for writingo read model texts,
answer comprehension questions
o class conversation about the topic (to develop vocabulary, concepts, ideas for what to write)
o word webo students talk about
pictures with each other
Teacher feedbacko mini-conferences with
individual studentso whole-class error
correction on board / ELMO
top related