Literacy Events Research Articles

Designing and Implementing Interactive, Collaborative Family Literacy Events

Shared experiences through school-hosted events, such as family literacy events, can afford opportunities to support and extend academic learning while fostering positive home–school relationships. This article describes the importance of developing primary-grade students’ literacy skills through a talent development lens and explains several ways to nurture students’ literacy skills and recognize potential, gifts, and talents during family literacy events. This article features one of the activities from the family literacy events, Environmental Print Bingo, a modification of I-Spy and Bingo which uses rich and varied environmental print resources. A description of this activity, necessary resources, and implementation tips are provided. Options for differentiating this learning activity to provide more challenge for gifted learners are suggested. Throughout the article, the application of a pedagogy for early childhood gifted education and Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence as a framework are discussed; these approaches informed the design of all family literacy activities. A brief overview of nine additional family literacy event activities is also shared. Welcoming and involving families of English learners is an important consideration in many communities, and therefore, preparation tips and considerations for facilitators that will help maximize the participation of all families are included. Finally, reflections and helpful advice for implementing family literacy events in your school communities are presented, including advice for implementing online family literacy events. Ultimately, this article should help readers conceptualize, plan, and implement family literacy events in their school communities.

Gig Expectations: Literacy Practices, Events, and Texts in the Gig Economy

This article explores the writing and reading requirements of the literacy practices, events, and texts characteristic of work mediated by the online labor platforms of the gig economy, such as Airtasker and Freelancer, which bring together people needing a job done with those willing to do it. These emerging platform-based discourse communities and their associated literacies are a new domain of social activity. Based on an examination of seven gig economy platforms, the present article examines the core literacy event in the gig economy, the posting and bidding for tasks, together with the texts that enhance and support this process. While some tasks require written texts as the outcome or product, all tasks involve the creation of some form of written text as part of doing the work. These texts are both interactional and interpersonal. As well as being a part of negotiating and then getting a task done, they relate to the complexities of building the identities, knowledge, and relationships required of those working in a virtual work space rather than a traditional workplace. While most of these texts reflect familiar text types, the core text cycle is argued to be an “emergent” genre. Implications for education are presented.

Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities by Andrew Newman (review)

Reviewed by: Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities by Andrew Newman Steffi Dippold Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities. By Andrew Newman. Williamsburg, Va., and Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. 236 pages. Cloth, paper, ebook. What was a book? What was the role of reading in colonial America? In his absorbing Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities, Andrew Newman reconsiders these important questions by looking at the physicality of printed texts and the reception and circulation of books within seventeenth- and eighteenth-century captivity narratives. Newman challenges conventional approaches to early modern literacy and intertextual allusion by drawing attention to scenes in which captives engage with a spectrum of print practices and books as material objects—both their own and those of their Indigenous captors. His focus is on nonfictional stories of captives because he recognizes this genre—gestated from harrowing conditions of isolation, violence, and trauma—as a rare archive not only of Indigenous behavior and belief systems but also of colonial hermeneutic strategies that, because of their unfamiliarity and historical distance, require reconstruction. Breathing new life into American book studies and histories of reading, Newman’s ambitious work issues a riposte to the understanding of literacy and print culture as exclusively imperial. Its revelation of arresting and untracked colonial and Native uses of books joins exciting new scholarship by Lindsay DiCuirci, Phillip H. Round, Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein, and Kristina Bross and Hilary E. Wyss that complicate assumptions of how texts and literacy mattered across cultures in early America.1 As Newman’s title stresses, his work is both a study in allegory and an appeal for a better understanding of the complex lives of print and writing in the colonies. Many stories of captivity, he shows, brim with teasing metareflections about books (often gifted by Native captors), scattered material cultures of letters and notes, and scenes of reading and remembering other texts. To do justice to this rich spectrum of activities, Newman deliberately broadens the narrow concept of literacy defined as “the ability to read and write” and explores instead what he open-endedly calls “literacy events” (3). This shift is significant. It creates critical awareness for a [End Page 774] network of undertheorized practical, embodied, and imagined practices and anxieties of the period related but not limited to print. A case in point is the paranoid fantasy of the kidnapped James Smith, who panicked out of fear that “reading my books” might push his Iroquois captors into “puting [sic] me to death” (1).2 Why do captives imagine death by reading, Newman asks? What can such literacy events tell us about the understanding of books, self, community, and American cultures of reading at large? Much like a captivity narrative, Allegories of Encounter moves from familiar canonic materials to the increasingly unfamiliar and underexplored. The first four chapters discuss symbolic reading and consumption of texts, or how captives attributed “another sense” (13)—typically a secondary allegorical spiritual meaning—to their literal descriptions of capture and exile. Here Newman’s primary target of analysis is Christian typology, the hermeneutic heart of Puritan practical piety, as he shows how ordinary people recycled biblical scripts to articulate a sense of self in extraordinary circumstances. Guiding readers from Mary Rowlandson’s canonical The Soveraignty and Goodness of God in the first chapter, to captivity’s model master narrative Psalm 137 in the second, to accounts of capture by the Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues and the Puritan minister John Williams in the third, and to the narratives of the converted Mohawk saint Kateri Tekakwitha and the Puritan-abductee-turned-Native Marguerite Kanenstenhawi (also known as Eunice Williams) in the fourth, Newman’s detailed close-readings unpack messy multilayered textual cultures that linger in-between the spoken, the embodied, the handwritten, and the printed.3 Refusing to distinguish theory from practice or the symbolic from the experiential, Newman recovers how, not only in retrospective scribal practices but in their actual lives, captives lived allegory “like lucid dreamers, aware and motivated by the significance of the stories they were...

“Someone Is Watching Me While I Write”: Monolingual Ideologies and Multilingual Writers Behind the Scenes of L2 Writing Tutorials

AbstractIn the present study, I draw on Canagarajah’s (2019) negotiated‐literacy orientation and the systemic functional linguistic (SFL) approach to discourse analysis (Eggins & Slade, 1997) to demonstrate the varying degrees to which Fatima and Chow, two multilingual doctoral students, were able to question and negotiate normative literacy practices during L2 writing tutorials and how such negotiations may be impacted by the language ideologies internalized by the writers and/or their tutor. The main sources of evidence were interviews with the two doctoral students and excerpts from audio‐recorded writing tutorials, complemented with stimulated‐recall data contrasting tutor and writer interpretations of the same recorded literacy events. The results suggest that the variable degree to which the two multilingual writers are cognizant and resistant of monolingual ideologies impacted their orientation to negotiate literacy in the tutorials. In addition, some of the tutor’s interactional practices were seen to restrict the space for meaning negotiations and hamper the potential to reconcile the diverse literacy dispositions of the tutor and the two multilingual writers. By grounding aspects of negotiated literacy in specific discourse‐semantic moves, the study puts forth implications for a more critical tutoring pedagogy.

Literacy as part of professional knowing in a Swedish dental education

BackgroundAcademic reading and writing are seen as self-evident literacy competences in most contemporary higher educations, however, whether students also are introduced to professional literacy of relevance for dentistry during their education is a question. The purpose of this study is to analyze one of the Swedish dental programmes, with respect to its design, in relation to possible content of relevance for academic and professional literacy. Secondarily, to identify and analyze Swedish dental students’ writing in an academic setting, i.e. what these students are expected to read and write, and how they write.MethodsData, for this ethnographically inspired case-study, was produced by observations and audio-recordings of lectures, copies of teachers’ handouts and of volunteering students’ notes, and a multiple-choice-test. Data-analysis was made in five steps, starting with macro-level data, i.e. curriculum and syllabuses, followed by the syllabuses for the two observed modules, the teacher-provided material, analysis of the students’ notes, while in the fifth and final step, the results from the previous steps were compared, to find patterns of what students were expected to read and write, and what in the teacher-provided multimodal material that was emphasized in teachers’ talk.ResultsThis study showed that students were engaged in several types of literacy events, such as reading, finding and watching videos on their learning platform, writing, and following instructions. The study also showed that there is a recurrent academic content comprised of anatomy, physiology and pathology, while the professional content comprised of patient communication and anamnesis. Further, an integrated content was found and was initiated in teacher-constructed PowerPoints and by student-questions. Note-taking patterns varied between individual students, but the general pattern for this group of students were the use of complementary notes. This type of note-taking was used to make available further descriptions of the teacher-constructed text in PowerPoints, but also an independent text describing pictures shown on teachers’ PowerPoints or the blackboard.ConclusionFindings from the present study reveal that students either copy text from teachers’ PowerPoint-slides, re-formulate text from teachers’ PowerPoint-slides, or write complementing text to teachers’ PowerPoint-slides. Further, the students individually choses type of note-taking based on situation. The study also revealed that the academic literacy – in the two modules during the fifth and sixth semesters of a dental education analyzed – mainly has a professional basis for reading, writing, and communication purposes. The study also showed that academic and professional literacy are closely connected through recurrent integration.

Health Literacy-Related Safety Events: A Qualitative Study of Health Literacy Failures in Patient Safety Events.

Introduction:Communication failures are the leading root cause of safety events. Although much communication research focuses on the healthcare team, there is little focus on communication with patients and families. It is not known what deficits in health literate patient communication lead to patient safety events. We aimed to identify themes of health literacy–related safety events to describe the impact of health literate communication on patient safety.Methods:The safety events were entered into a system-wide self-reported safety event collection database. A patient safety specialist trained in health literacy prospectively tagged events for health literacy. The authors retrospectively queried the database for all health literacy tagged events during 9 months (September 2017–May 2018). The authors reviewed and independently coded health literacy-associated safety events. Qualitative content analysis of events facilitated by software (NVivo) was completed to identify the health literacy–related safety event themes.Results:Health literacy events comprised 4% (152/3911) of self-reported safety events during the 9 months. Main themes of the health literacy safety events related to (1) medication; (2) system processes; and (3) discharge/transition. Subthemes of each of the events further described the event types. Health literacy–associated safety events encompass all safety event outcomes (near miss, precursor, and serious safety events).Conclusions:Health literacy–related safety events occur in the healthcare environment. This review characterizing health literacy–related safety events prioritizes areas to implement health literate safety practices. Many opportunities exist to address communication-related safety events around medication, system processes, and discharge using health literate best practices.

Reimagining Isolated Literacy Classrooms as Interdependent Networks: Tracing Rituals, Repetitions, and Technologies

Recent literacy scholarship increasingly seeks to center and value the literacies of systematically marginalized youth in response to deficit-oriented narratives that locate oppressed communities as incompetent or delayed. Often, this reframing leans on a contextualization of literacies as culturally, historically, and socially situated acts that people do. Located alongside recent literacy research combatting racism, homophobia, transphobia, linguicism, xenophobia, and the invisibilizing of indigenous peoples, this piece reimagines the active and rich literacies produced in an isolated (i.e., self-contained) special education literacy classroom. While theoretically utilizing situated literacies, this article also directly responds to critiques of situated literacies as too human-centric, an especially relevant criticism for classrooms with students who have complex support needs. Actor-network theory, as a theoretical and methodological lens, provides entry into the analysis of human and nonhuman actors collectively producing intricate literacy events during a curricular exploration of inclusive picturebooks (i.e., texts featuring main characters with lived dis/ability experiences). Findings presented trace two literacy events animated by actors such as students, technologies, rituals, and repetitions. Implications for this research argue for future theoretical and pedagogical framings of literacies as inherently interdependent productions, not just in isolated special education classrooms but all literacy classrooms. This shift moves away from illusive discourses of independence and autonomy and toward understandings of all literacies as interdependently shaped by endless network actors.

Literacy practices as social: relational-keys in literacy events

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to work toward more fully conceptualizing literacy practices as social by theorizing the combined relational and intellectual context for learning. This context is created through students’ and their teachers’ uses of language. In particular, the quality of language that creates this intellectual relational context is relational-keys that are inherent to any talk between people. Building upon Hymes (1974) conceptualization of key, relational-keys can be described as the emotional mood or spirit of a conversation, but they are much more than that per se. They are constitutive of the complex, multi-layered relationships that people have with each other, with themselves and with the material environment through their uses of language.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon a classroom ethnographic study in a first-grade classroom and using discourse analysis of classroom interactions, the author uses data from instructional conversations to illustrate how students and their teachers collaboratively perform relational-keys.FindingsFindings reveal that students and their teacher perform relational and intellectual stances toward reading and toward each other through relational-keys, that frame the act of reading and their experience of doing it together.Originality/valueThe concept of relational-key provides literacy researchers with another tool to analyze what happens in instructional conversations. It also provides teachers with a curricular resource to identify relational-keys that are enacted. Therefore, teachers are able move away from the enaction of relational-keys that contribute to subtractive schooling, and toward relational-keys that nurture empowering stances in students toward reading and their relationships.

Literacy, power, and affective (dis)encounter: An ethnographic study on a low-income community in Spain.

In areas of social exclusion, there are greater risks of facing discrimination at school. The teaching-learning processes may contribute toward the perpetuation of this inequality. This research analyzes a literacy event that takes place in a low-income school in Southern Spain. The new literacy studies have come to examine how power relationships and affective bonds work in such literacy practices. An ethnographic method was followed to facilitate a deeper understanding of multimodal literacy. Further, a social semiotics multimodal approach was adopted to analyze the meaning-making social process that takes place in the classroom. The participants comprised two teachers and 17 children, whose ages range from 5 to 7 years. Data were collected in the form of reports, audio recordings, video recordings, and photographs over a two-years period. The results obtained have revealed that the children have been taught writing and reading through a dominant orthodox model that fails to consider the community’s and families’ cultural capitals. They also show that the literacy process does not grant any affective quality. Neither is there an authentic dialogic space created between the school and the community. This lack of dialogue generates an inequality in the actual acquisition of comprehensive reading and writing skills at school, with instances of groups exclusion, owing to the anti-hegemonic practices of knowledge acquisition.

Attending to the Interactional Histories Behind Multilingual Writers’ Texts: New Directions in TESOL Teacher Education

AbstractDespite research attention to varied and nuanced social processes through which linguistically minoritized multilingual students create texts, writing instruction and assessment in schools continue to be dominated by a focus on students’ written products. Even formative assessment– arguably one of teachers’ most powerful tools in designing responsive instruction – tends to focus on careful analysis of students’ writing rather than the processes through which texts are created, or the rich histories of participation in previous literacy events that students bring to any such event. In this contribution, we answer Rose's (2019) call for a bidirectional flow between teachers and researchers by describing a multi‐layered inquiry we undertook, studying our teacher education practices as we asked in‐service teachers to undertake their own inquiry into students' writing. We describe our experiences adapting a methodological protocol for the observational study of multilingual writers for purposes of teacher education. Specifically, we reflect on our work engaging a set of in‐service teachers taking a graduate‐level TESOL course in conducting “interactional histories” analyses (Kibler, 2019). Through examples of in‐service teachers’ observations and their suggestions for future writing instruction, and our own reflections on the affordances and constraints of our approach, we explore the roles that interactional histories inquiry can play in teacher education. In particular, we describe its potential to help teachers build nuanced understandings of linguistically minoritized multilingual students’ development of writing expertise and identities, and teachers’ complex roles in this process.

Twenty-five books a day: Literacy events in subsidized childcare

The purpose of this case study was to investigate a segment of a data set collected as part of a larger ethnographic study exploring the early language and literacy practices of one unique preschool programme, selected for its unusually high outcomes for children in typically underserved populations. The original study explored administrators’ literacy leadership within the context of system-level funding and oversight inequities and inadequate local, state, and federal support. Analysis from the original study showed that their lofty commitment to a ‘twenty-five books a day’ mindset guided them in supporting teachers as they made books, stories, and language play a universal occurrence throughout the school day. This article, reporting on an extension of this original study, explores how school administrators operationalized this ‘twenty-five books a day’ mindset: prioritizing ample and consistent (1) access to high quality, diverse books, (2) both structured and impromptu, responsive literacy interactions, and (3) professional support for teachers.

Literacy Events and Literacy Practices: A Critical Discourse Study of Intersection of Class, Gender and Literacy in Pakistan

This article attempts to examine some of the literacy practices in middle class youth of Pakistan over 18 years of age and determine the relationship between literacies, gender and particular middle class social practices. Young men and women of Pakistan acquire multiple literacies depending upon different social institutions they find themselves in and different discourses they are exposed to during course of their lives. These social institutions in turn shape their outlook and mould them into desired individuals. The literacies which have been identified in the current research include school literacies, home literacies, leisure time literacies, oral literacies, media literacies, religious literacies and communication channels related literacies. In order to achieve its ends, this research analyzes discourse samples of students of the Department of English, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan which were collected using qualitative methods of open-ended questionnaire and case studies. The questionnaire was conducted with 16 research participants (8 male and 8 female students). The findings have been discussed with case studies of two research participants (1 male and 1 female).

Learning to Present in English: Exploring the Voices of Preparatory-Year Female Undergraduates in Saudi Arabia

This study examines how a group of students enrolled in preparatory year program at a Saudi university describe their experiences while engaging with a specific literacy event, i.e. oral presentations in an English as a Foreign Language classroom. It adopts a case study methodology that relies on qualitative data-collection techniques, including reflections written by female undergraduates, informal conversations with these undergraduates, observational fieldnotes of classroom activities and a research journal. Relying on a social understanding of literacy, collected data are thematically analysed to examine how students view their experiences in this academic literacy event. Three major themes are highlighted in this study in relation to students’ experiences with this event: topic choice, fear and anxiety and the gains and losses associated with learning to prepare and make short presentations in English. Discussion sheds light on the impact of these experiences on the identity positions that learners develop and negotiate to participate in this event. It also highlights some of the challenges that mediate students’ experiences in this event and how they recognize and address these challenges. The study draws attention to the need for more in-depth, qualitative research to examine academic literacy events in tertiary education in which learners’ voices are brought to light to explore the situated nature of learning and its impact on learners.

Exploring Lenses Used in Case Study Research in Literacy Over Time

This study is a case study analysis where book length case studies were aggregated for review. The review focused on the lenses that researchers used to analyze their data. The results indicated most case studies used a neutral lens where careful description of a literacy event was the goal. A few researchers moved to a critical lens of positioning theory to describe their results. Historical shifts and issues were shared that included a focus on participants and lenses and views of teachers.

Using written task answer sheets as notes while speaking: changing task-report practices in a second language book club

AbstractThe current study extends upon recent Conversation Analysis research on literacy events in second language (L2) educational settings. The study investigates the use of task answers as notes in an L2 book club member’s task report practices, including how he looks for things to say, how he chooses to read aloud, and how his task-report practices change over time with explicit instruction. Specifically, this case study shows how a facilitator’s specific instruction to not use task answers as notes during second orientation works as a catalyst for the L2 student to move from heavy to less reliance on his written answers to complete his task report. The findings offer insights into the way the student uses his task answer sheets as an affordance for managing an L2 task and how his changing task-report practices with the textual resource better meet the institutional agenda, one of which is to provide a venue for members to practice English as a second language.

Children's Books and Curriculum Integration in K-12

Children's Books and Curriculum Integration in K-12 Antonio Causarano (bio) As a former special education teacher supporting students with disabilities in inclusive programs, and as a literacy instructor teaching literacy courses in an urban redesigned program, I have always seen picturebooks as paramount to designing an integrated literacy curriculum that can effectively support students' acquisition of foundational knowledge in content areas (Vučković). The importance of children's books as multimodal texts that scaffold reading comprehension by a balance between illustrations and narrative with content that presents cultural and racial variations is key to see student-centered instruction around the themes created by choosing quality children's books integrated across the curriculum (Zunshine). The overarching question here is how to create a student-centered curriculum using children's books across the curriculum that expose students to diversity in language, culture, and exceptionalities. One of the many possible answers is to see the learner at the center of the reading process and to provide teachers with the theory and the methodological tools to design effective curriculum integration using children's books as core texts in curriculum and instruction (Roger). The Reader at the Center of the Literacy Process Curriculum integration happens when students are placed at the center of the learning process by considering who they are in terms of culture, language, and exceptionalities. This means that the learner is the most important element that determines what texts will be used to design an integrated curriculum that will see students' diversity as the driving force to scaffold the literacy process across the curriculum. The theory that supports an integrated curriculum design is, in my experience, Rosenblatt's reader response theory (Literature; The Reader), which provides the theoretical framework to put the learner at the center of the reading process by choosing texts that mirror the learner's interests. Readers, according to reader response theory, come from different walks of life. The diversity and richness in the reader's background knowledge are key in looking at the processes that underlie the response to the same text and also, more importantly, indicate that the meaning is determined by the dynamic relationship between the reader and the text (Rosenblatt, Literature and The Reader). Reader response theory gives the learner a variety of possible ways in which he or she can contribute to the meaningmaking [End Page 83] process during the reading event. In turn, the reader is an active participant in literacy events across the curriculum, where the content of children's books acts as a cognitive stimulus to delve into the dynamics of the content of the text in relation to the learner's background knowledge. Rosenblatt's (Literature; The Reader) theory sees the reader, the text, and the context of reading as integrated. The three components cannot be separated in the meaning-making process and represent the blueprint for an effective design of integrated curriculum across content areas. The methodological processes that follow from reader response theory clearly point to assessing the background knowledge of the learners in a classroom to match the concepts of books to children and to create a virtuous cycle of learning where readers, texts, and contexts of learning are integrated across the curriculum. Assessment of children's background knowledge and interests represents the stepping stone for designing the curriculum from the bottom up (Columba et al.). I will lay out the components of effective assessment teachers can use to acquire a systematic knowledge of their learners and how to apply this knowledge to design integrated curriculum using children's books. Know Your Students in Depth The first step is to ask the crucial questions that drive your assessment design in an integrated curriculum using children's books. Columba et al. suggest the following questions to shape authentic assessment of learners' interest in the reading process and to differentiate texts to match them to each learner's ability and intrinsic motivation. (1) What is special about this student? (2) What is the student's background (sociocultural, economic, linguistic, etc.)? (3) What values does the learner hold (e.g., cultural or religious)? (4) What does the learner already know, and what can he or she do? (5...

Multilingual multiliteracies of Emergent Bilingual families: Transforming teacher’s perspectives on the “literacies” of family engagement

ABSTRACT Emergent Bilingual families interact with their children across their shared languages and resources, creating unique literacy activities. As a form of family engagement, teachers can observe these created literacies within Emergent Bilingual families, and attempt to transport such practices into classrooms. There is, however, a danger that the different dynamics of classrooms may constrain how Emergent Bilingual students express themselves, affecting how they are mis/understood by others. In this paper, teachers explore the family literacies of one Emergent Bilingual family from their classroom, identifying how families use print, media and school resources to create unique literacies or multilingual multiliteracies. Because teachers see themselves as literacy experts, they often translate what they learn from Emergent Bilingual families’ literacy practices into technical classroom strategies, intending to garner more connections across home and school. These family generated strategies, however, can foreclose on the curiosity and reciprocity between teachers and families that is central to family engagement. The discussion identifies different ways to conceptualize and plan for school literacy events, flipping expertise from teachers to Emergent Bilingual families.

TRANSFORMING PRACTICE THROUGH AN UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIO – CULTURAL CONDITIONS IN THE CLASSROOM

Much of the debate on the teaching and learning of English and academic writing occurs largely from Eurocentric or Western perspectives on local contexts. This paper explores the role of the local English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in transforming the way English for Academic Purposes is taught and learnt, particularly in higher education settings in Malaysia. In order to challenge Western notions, ESL teachers need to know their local contexts and students well enough in order to explain the complexities that arise within an education system that is continually shaped by historical and socio-political shifts in the country. The purpose of this paper is to inform ESL and academic writing teacher-researchers that it is possible to transform practice by paying close attention to the complexities of socio-cultural conditions. Using action research methodology, the case study presented here illuminates and exemplifies the recognition and explicit inclusion of socio-cultural conditions within academic literacies in a tertiary English language class for engineering, computing and business discipline students in a Malaysian university. Three narratives are critically selected using the Critical Incidents Technique and examined from a pool of qualitative data which comprised student letters, student interviews and teacher diaries. Green’s typology of operational, cultural and critical dimensions of literacy events is used to analyse how socio-cultural conditions within and beyond the classroom can affect the kinds of literacy which are identified by the teacher and used to improve student engagement and performance in the language besides enhancing the quality of teaching and learning academic writing. Findings reveal the need for greater leadership support for grass root level decision-making by the ESL teacher and a deeper understanding of the use of mediation as a tool to maximize social interaction. Even traditionally used teaching materials for language teaching can be brought into connection with broader genres and conceptual ideas by focusing on social interaction in classes. An extensive use of the English language through social interaction with explicit attention to social and cultural ESL contexts proves to be a highly significant means to aid the rapid development of students’ English language learning, so that students can be better prepared to meet global challenges.

Development of early literacy skills: A Comparison of two early literacy programmes

Abstract The aim of the present study is to monitor the effectiveness of a new conception of early literacy curriculum (in force since September 2016) which provides – unlike the previous one – a wide range of purposeful literacy practices and literacy events. The study compares graduates of previous early childhood literacy curriculum (tested in June 2016) with children who attended kindergarten in the years 2016-2019. Several indications of early literacy development were selected especially those that are culturally more sensitive, i.e. are significantly shaped by the social environment offering the broad spectrum of reading experiences. Results show statistically significant relationship of story listening comprehension with comprehension monitoring and narrative production, especially at the level of understanding the implicit meaning. The most profound group differences were found again in narratives and implicit meaning comprehension. On the other hand, no differences were found in indicators of phonemic awareness, comprehension monitoring and understanding the explicit meaning. The results are discussed in terms of their implications to educational practice.

CRITICAL LITERACY, RESIGNIFICATION OF READING IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND RESCUE OF CITIZENSHIP

This study is directed to describe and analyze two literacy events from the narratives in the university context to understand how literacy and resignification of reading in Foreign Language occur. Therefore, the objective is to provide literate practices based on the tales of local writers and to promote citizenship and rescue local culture. The scientific work was supported by a qualitative interpretive research of an ethnographic value that was configured in interventional action research and integrated a master's project in applied linguistics, and then a doctorate. The instruments were elaborated according to the researched context, in this section was the descriptive memorial. The research shows that events of critical literacy in English from a social perspective supported by the genre short stories can favor literate practices based on the tales of local writers and foster citizenship and rescue local culture.