Mind the Gap?: Children's Domestic Writings and Their Implications for Educational Practice

This study, situated in the field of sociocultural research, investigates how the home supports the writing development of my multilingual daughter, Pia, between the ages of 3-9 years old. Using ethnographic methods, data is gathered at Pia's home, where approximately eight hundred unsolicited texts written in English, French and German are supplemented by fieldnotes, conversational and photographic data. Data is also collected at Pia's bilingual, French-German school in order to assess institutional contributions to Pia's writing development during reception class and Year One. As a final measure, data is also gathered on the domestic literacy practices of Pia's classmates and their families so that we may put the findings on a single child into perspective. The findings confirm that homes and schools place different emphasis on the physical, social and psychological features inherent in literacy-related interactions. The result is a gap between the messages homes and schools transmit about the purposes of writing. At home, literacy is used rather than explicitly taught. The implicit, holistic nature of family dynamics fosters Pia's experience of writing as socially embedded practice, driven by her very real need to communicate with family members and friends in her environment. At school, by contrast, the child is positioned as an apprentice, who experiences writing more as an abstract cognitive skill. Significantly, Pia's domestic writing is in advance of curricular expectations. This seems to suggest that implicit teaching strategies, coupled to a re-evaluation of the physical, social and psychological aspects of classroom literacy, may be useful in enhancing writing activities within schools. The implicit character of domestic literacy, however, taking place on the margins of awareness, not only largely accounts for why children may find it hard to talk about their domestic literacy practices, but also explains why such practices remain unseen, and, consequently, unacknowledged

Speaking on the record

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-273).Reading and writing have become the predominant way of acquiring and expressing intellect in Western culture. Somewhere along the way, the ability to write has become completely identified with intellectual power, creating a graphocentric myopia concerning the very nature and transfer of knowledge. One of the effects of graphocentrism is a conflation of concepts proper to knowledge in general with concepts specific to written expression. The words 'literate' and 'literacy' themselves are a simple case: their connotations sometimes focus on the process of reading text and sometimes on the kinds of knowledge that happen to be associated in our culture with people who read many books. This thesis has a conceptual and an empirical component. On the conceptual side a central task is to disengage certain concepts that have become conflated by defining new terms. Our vocabulary is insufficient to describe alternatives that serve some or all of the functions of writing and reading in a different modality. As a first step, I introduce a new word to provide a counterpart to writing in a spoken modality: speak + write = sprite. Spriting in its general form is the activity of speaking 'on the record' that yields a technologically-supported representation of oral speech with essential properties of writing such as permanence of record, possibilities of editing, indexing, and scanning, but without the difficult transition to a deeply different form of representation such as writing itself. This thesis considers a particular (still primitive compared with might come in the future) version of spriting in the form of two technology-supported representations of speech: (1) the speech ·in audible form, and (2) the speech in visible form.(cont.) The product of spriting is a kind of 'spoken' document, or talkument. As one reads a text, one may likewise aude a talkument. In contrast, I use the word writing for the manual activity of making marks, while text refers to the marks made. Making these distinctions is a small step towards envisioning a deep change in the world that might go beyond graphocentrism and come to appreciate spriting as the first step--but just the first--towards developing ways of manipulating spoken language, exemplified by turning it into a permanent record, permitting editing, indexing, searching and more. The empirical side of the thesis is confined to exploring implications of spriting in educational settings. I study one group of urban adults who are at elementary levels of reading and writing, and two groups of urban elementary school children who are of different ages, cultures and socioeconomic status, and who have appropriated writing as a tool for thought and expression to greater or lesser extents. One effect of graphocentrism in our culture is the very limited and constrained developmental path of literacy and learning. This has not always been the case. And it does not need to be so in the future. This thesis discusses some small ways in which we might re-value modes of expression in education closer to oral language than to writing. This thesis recognizes three ways in which spriting is relevant to education: (1) spriting can serve as a stepping stone to writing skills, (2) it can in some circumstances serve as a substitute for writing, and (3) it provides a window onto cognitive processes that are present but less apparent in the context of producing text.Tara Michelle Rosenberger Shankar.Ph.D

Exploring Storybook Illustrations in Learning Word Meanings

This study explores storybook illustrations in learning word meanings among English learners in a university intensive language program. The impact of children’s literature on the comprehension and vocabulary development of second language children is well-documented. However, the use of the literature with adults still needs to be researched. Therefore, a mixed-method study was designed (1) to investigate whether readers who read an authentic illustrated story differed from those who read the same story without illustrations; and (2) to learn more about the readers’ process of learning words from storybook illustrations. Results suggest that illustrations play an important role in both comprehending the text and learning individual words, however issues related to the accessibility of the text and readers’ ability to use context should also be taken into consideration. The findings support prior research that the benefits of learning from context take time to become robust. The study suggests that illustrated storybooks provide a rich context for adults to infer word meanings and recommends children’s literature as an alternative source of reading in programs serving adult English learners

Exploring Storybook Illustrations in Learning Word Meanings

This study explores storybook illustrations in learning word meanings among English learners in a university intensive language program. The impact of children’s literature on the comprehension and vocabulary development of second language children is well-documented. However, the use of the literature with adults still needs to be researched. Therefore, a mixed-method study was designed (1) to investigate whether readers who read an authentic illustrated story differed from those who read the same story without illustrations; and (2) to learn more about the readers’ process of learning words from storybook illustrations. Results suggest that illustrations play an important role in both comprehending the text and learning individual words, however issues related to the accessibility of the text and readers’ ability to use context should also be taken into consideration. The findings support prior research that the benefits of learning from context take time to become robust. The study suggests that illustrated storybooks provide a rich context for adults to infer word meanings and recommends children’s literature as an alternative source of reading in programs serving adult English learners

Need for learning management systems in higher education in subject that involve programming languages

Subjects that are teaching programming languages may contain different approaches\ud to learning, depending on the level of preparedness of students and the methodology used by\ud the teaching staff in the lectures and exercises. Because of the need for practical work in\ud programming, the introduction of e-learning support system for students can be as useful as it\ud is for them and for teachers. Attaching the materials to a local system (intranet) and the\ud possibility of accessing them and the program codes of classes, lessons and ancillary\ud materials for exercises can bring increased efficiency and increased degree of control of the\ud organization and behavior of students in class.\ud With the ability to simultaneous usage of necessary materials from the system,\ud explanations of the professor and the opportunity for practical work, students very quickly\ud can recognize the effects of learning and become more motivated for learning more content\ud during class. The professor, who had previously set the material to the system has a feedback\ud of student achievements in class, the problems that occurred and the way they were solved,\ud and the time they spent to solve the problem. Students themselves have the opportunity to see\ud whether they learned and can evaluate their knowledge through questions that are posed at\ud the end the lesson

Visual Deficits in Dyslexia: Examination of stress patterns and the impact of emotions on students’ reading performance

The present study investigates the presence of visual deficits in students with developmental dyslexia as well as their emotions in relation to their reading performance. Dyslexia occurs in approximately 4% of the population (Simmons & Singleton, 2000) and concerns difficulties in reading and spelling for both L1 and L2 learning. One of the most common difficulties of dyslexic individuals has been noticed in stress errors (Paizi, Zoccolotti & Burani, 2011). However, the Greek and English language present differences regarding the visual information that entails stress pattern (such as the diacritic mark in Greek language). Additionally, emotions significantly affect students’ performance whether they are positive or negative (Pekrun et al., 2017). In this mixed-method research, 110 Greek students with dyslexia participated in a training program with pre- and post-phase. The training was assessed through visual and auditory stimuli to observe differences between these two sensory abilities. Moreover, questionnaire, interview and observational data were collected to examine the emotional impact. Results indicated an improvement in the stress pattern assignment of the Greek language after visual training while no improvement was observed in the English language since the stress pattern is not marked. The evidence supports the findings that visual impairments do play a role in the reading performance for both L1 and L2 learning. In addition, both positive and negative emotions were found to play a particular role in students’ performance but the extent of which positive emotions would lead to a positive outcome and negative emotions to a bad outcome was questioned. Nevertheless, anxiety was found to play a crucial role in students’ overall performance