Assessment and accreditation of prior learning systems are now widely used in colleges to open up access for potential students by harnessing their prior learning, knowledge and skills. But one major issue, language and literacy, has not yet been adequately addressed, and our education system still presents many barriers for non-native speakers of English. "APL and the Bilingual Learner" focuses on practical and pro-active ways of approaching these problems.
Meena Wood explores both ways of resourcing APL systems and also how to integrate them into the college's organizational structures. The central chapters look in detail at model systems for assessing prior linguistic ability, accrediting evidence from overseas qualifications, and also explore the role of the guidance advocate worker. There is a strong focus on teaching and learning skills, and case studies and examples illustrate how APL systems can be of benefit to all students.

The goal of this text is to help teachers in diverse classrooms understand the importance of students' culture, languages, and schooling experiences to curriculum, assessment, and student achievement. Readers will learn about aspects of specific cultures and languages that are important to their understanding of their students, and they will discover that cultures that are often considered similar may not be so (and why they aren't). Finally, the text focuses on how teachers can integrate languages and cultures into classrooms and how to account for students' backgrounds and funds of knowledge when devising tasks. The text starts with an introduction to language and culture that presents a research?based explanation of why these concepts are important for teachers to understand (Chapter 1). Then, the middle 28 chapters each address one country/culture. Each chapter starts with a school scenario in the US. Part 2 of each chapter includes evidence?based demographic and background data on the country, including historical events that may have an impact on our students and their families. Part 3 includes a look at education, schooling, and culture, including famous people, contributions to the world, personal characteristics, important religious information, focal customs, and other aspects that are important to cultural insiders. Part 4 is about language and literacy traditions and how they relate to the culture, a number of words that teachers can learn (e.g., yes, no, thank you, please, hello), how the language is different from and similar to English, and what those differences and similarities might mean for English language learners from that culture. Part 5 comprises advice, resources, and ideas for teachers (for example, if it is an oral culture, the teacher might consider working with students on oral storytelling before transitioning to written stories, or incorporate both using technology). Each chapter also contains recommended readings and resources and short exercises that extend the chapter information. The final chapter presents parting notes for teachers and additional suggestions for addressing diversity.

According to UNESCO's statistics, the number of illiterates in the world is verging on one million. A conservative estimate of the number of children who have no access to schooling brings that figure to more than one hundred million. School failure, brought about by overcrowding, poor facilities, unqualified teachers, and lack of materials only adds to the problem. The authors in this volume cover the many facets of the fight for literacy.

Every day in classrooms, teachers and students think about and with text. Their beliefs about what text is, who created it, and how to evaluate it are an influence, often a profoundly important one, on how they use text. This book brings together research on epistemology, belief systems, teacher beliefs, and text -- research that is usually presented separately, and in different disciplines. The editors illustrate what a cross-disciplinary body of work looks like, what varied insights are possible, and when the central concerns are beliefs and text.
Written by respected researchers in the fields of psychology and education, the chapters are clustered thematically into three sections:
* childrens' and adults' beliefs about text.
* beliefs about what should be taught and how particular content should be taught and assessed in classrooms.
* commentary on knowing versus believing, on the literatures that inform this body of work, and on belief systems.
The first to address this important topic in a single volume, this book provides an essential synthesis of current research in an active area of inquiry. The chapters are pieces framed in a time and place with particular intentions -- one of those intentions is that they separately and as a whole stimulate discussion about beliefs and text.

The role of social context in the various stages of learning to read and write is an important key to understanding literacy, and is the chief organizing theme of this book. 12 of the world's leading experts on the development of reading and writing skills present a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the plethora of research and theoretical work in the field, with an emphasis on the comparison between cognitive psychological scholarship and the socio-historical perspective.

The concepts of the past, centered more narrowly on traditional ways of learning to read and write, no longer suffice in a society that requires higher level skills from an increasingly diverse student population. Providing a new direction in literacy education, the chapters in this volume offer a revitalized perspective of literacy. They focus on the forms that literacy will take in the future, the influence of changing technologies and multimedia on curriculum and instructional practices, and on effective learning environments. These chapters incorporate the insights of researchers in several disciplines to examine ways of helping students develop the broad-based literacy skills they will need in order to participate fully in American society.
Teachers, teacher educators, and others concerned with the future of nurturing and schooling will find challenging ideas for redefining instruction in literacy in this book.

Over the last twenty years a major area of cognitive psychology has developed centred upon research into the issues of how visually presented words are processed so that they can be read and understood. The focus has been on how words are stored in the mental lexicon and retrieved during the reading process. If we possessed no mental lexicon, we would be unable to read. This book dedicates itself to a critical evaluation of the ideas that have emerged from this body of research. The text outlines the major models of lexical processing that have been put forward in the literature, and how they explain the basic empirical findings that have been reported. It then goes on to consider the possible influence that sentential context has on lexical processing, the impact of the pronunciation of a word on its visual processing, and the role played by internal word structure (i.e., syllables and morphemes) in the recognition of a word. A connectionist style model emerges during the course of the evaluation of these issues. This book is suitable for advanced students and researchers, and is intended to serve as a springboard for discussion and an inspiration for empirical research.

This open access book is a unique study of the impact of lived experience on literate life, exploring how children's reading development is affected by their home setting, and how this sense of place influences textual interpretation of the books they read. Based on qualitative research and structured around interviews with twelve participants, Space, Place and Children's Reading Development focuses on the digital maps and artistic renderings these readers were asked to create of a place (real or imagined) that they felt reflected their literate youth, and the discussions that followed about these maps and their evolution as readers. Analysing the participant's responses, Margaret Mackey looks at the rich insights offered about the impact on childhood stability after experiences such as migration; the "reading spaces" children make based on their social relationships and domestic spheres; the creation of "textual spaces" and the significance of the recurring motif of forests in the participants' maps; the importance of the Harry Potter novels; the basis of life-long reading habits; psychological spaces and whether readers visualize when they read. Blending theoretical perspectives on reading from many disciplines with the personal experiences of readers of diverse nationalities, languages, disciplinary interests, and life experiences, this is an enlightening account of the behaviors of readers, reading histories, and place-based reader responses to literature. By building greater understanding about the broad and subtle processes that enable people to read, this study refines the kind of questions we ask about reading and moves towards developing a multidisciplinary language for the study and discussion of reading practices in contemporary times. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

First published in 1982, this influential and classic text poses two questions: what is it that a child learns when he or she learns to write? What can we learn about children, society and ourselves, by looking at this process? The book is based on a close analysis of a series of written texts by primary school children and is written for student teachers with little or no knowledge of linguistics. In this new edition, Gunther Kress has made extensive revisions in the light of recent developments in linguistics and in education.
The theoretical focus is now a social semiotic one, which allows a fundamental rethinking of issues such as 'preliteracy' and broad social and cultural questions around the making of texts.

Through the years, research on reading has made enormous contributions to helping us understand how students learn to read and how teachers can best instruct them. Research continues to add to our fundamental knowledge of reading in significant ways, thus adding more pieces to the puzzle -- for example, finding answers to how students learn content in other school subjects through reading, and what strategies teachers can use to help their students do this more effectively.
"Reading Research into the Year 2000" describes the dynamic process that the Department of Education engages in to plan and execute a reading research agenda. It was written to inform a wide ranging public -- those who will benefit directly or indirectly, from reading research findings, including those who use research applications, as well as those who conduct the research.
Moreover, it was written to make public the process of establishing a national R&D Center. Few people outside the Department of Education are aware of the procedures that are undertaken. The editors believe that if more people are in the know, they will be more likely to participate in the entire process -- from generating research ideas to submitting applications -- and that this greater participation is essential if we are to garner divergent thinking about how to solve critical education research issues. They have made a significant step toward breaking down barriers to full participation, and paved the way for greater involvement of non-traditional players in competing for a national R&D Center award.

This volume investigates the interconnections between language and literacy in terms of the structures of language as well as the linguistic contexts of literacy. The work for this book was generated in order to focus on studies of the acquisition and impact of literacy on traditional assertions of linguistic analysts. The contributors show that claims regarding descriptions of the linguistic competence of native speakers contain phonemic, morphemic, and sentential constructs applicable only to literate language users. They also suggest that syntactic formalities -- elements lacking extensional reference -- are unlikely in the absence of literacy, and that the notions of "sentencehood" and syntactic well-formedness are functions of literacy. Finally, the book reviews the basic notions of literary relativity and the role of literacy in communication and civilization.

This book examines the materiality of writing. It adopts a multimodal approach to argue that writing as we know it is only a small part of the myriad gestures we make, practices we engage in, and media we use in the process of trace-making. Taking a broad view of the act of writing, the volume features contributions from both established and up-and-coming scholars from around the world and incorporates a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives, from fields such as linguistics, philosophy, psychology of perception, design, and semiotics. This interdisciplinary framework allows readers to see the relationships between writing and other forms of "trace-making", including architectural drawings, graphic shapes, and commercial logos, and between writing and reading, with a number of illustrations highlighting the visual data used in the forms and studies discussed. The book also looks forward to the future, discussing digital media and new technology and their implications for trace-making. This pioneering volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers in multimodality, literacy, cognitive neuroscience, design theory, discourse analysis, and applied linguistics.

This volume unites spelling and word recognition -- two areas that have largely remained theoretically and empirically distinct. Despite considerable advances in the investigation of processes underlying word perception and the acknowledgement of the seminal importance of lexical access in the reading and writing processes, to date the development and functioning of orthographic knowledge across both encoding and decoding contexts has rarely been explored. The book begins to fill this void by offering a coherent and unified articulation of the perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive features that characterize an individual's advancing word/orthographic knowledge, providing evidence for a common knowledge base underlying spelling in writing and word recognition in reading. From a developmental perspective, the studies and syntheses presented in this volume blend insights from psychology and language study with those from clinical and classroom observations. These insights help explain how individuals, from preschool through adolescence, develop knowledge of the orthographic system underlying word structure in English and how they apply this knowledge in actual writing and reading contexts. Implications are drawn for the assessment and teaching of spelling, vocabulary, and word analysis from primary through middle grades.

"Talking About Literacy" re-examines dominant notions of what literacy is and challenges the reactive solution to the issue of simply teaching the illiterate basic reading and writing skills. The subject of literacy contains enormous emotional and political associations, and the job of literacy educator often involves changing attitudes and challenging prejudices. Adult literacy education means not only teaching courses in "basic skills," or "language support," but also designing strategies which encourage people to see that these courses may meet their own interests--and educating them and others to rethink their own negative attitudes toward "illiteracy."
This book looks in detail at five principles which Jane Mace suggests are central to the education of people who often can read, but wish they could read better; or who can technically write, but have a desire to do so with more expression and coherence. These principles focus on five themes: "context, inquiry, authorship, equality" and "community," which take seriously the view that adult students are writers as well as readers, and that they have an entitlement to be read, as well as to read others.
"Talking About Literacy" relates a set of ideas about literacy and learning to a range of examples from adult education and training, addressing the social contexts in which people read and write, whether for recreation or for academic and vocational purposes. While addressed primarily to those educating adults in the critical and confident use of reading and writing, this book will also be of interest to anyone who wishes to examine underlying assumptions about literacy and illiteracy.

Literacy for QTLS is written specifically with the needs of all those training to teach or currently working in the lifelong learning sector in mind. This highly practical and easy-to-use text will help you identify your areas of strength and weakness, develop your knowledge and skills in order to pass the national literacy test and adopt strategies that you can use to support the language and literacy skills of your own learners. Packed with test-your-knowledge questions, examples and recommendations for best practice, this book, closely linked to the QTLS standards, is essential reading for all those needing to ensure that their level of literacy and language is in line with the minimum core requirements.The text is accompanied by a Companion Website at www.pearsoned.co.uk/hickey, providing an electronic version of the self-audit sections, downloadable templates and additional resources.

In the words of Aldous Huxley, "Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting." Few people question the value of reading; in fact, most extol its virtues. As our culture becomes more complex, reading plays an increasingly greater role in satisfying personal needs and in promoting social awareness and growth. In the last 20 years, the teaching of this invaluable skill has focused so intensely on comprehension and prediction from context that it has lost sight of the significance of automaticity and fluency in the word-identification process. Reading is a synthesis of word recognition and comprehension; thus, this text is about these basic processes and their integration. A common plea from teachers today is that research and psychology be translated into teaching behavior. Therefore, the aim of this book is twofold: one, to identify, report, organize, and discuss those bits of data, research and theory that are most relevant to the teacher's understanding of the reading process; and two, to help educators to interpret and apply theory and research data to everyday classroom teaching, as well as to the problems encountered frequently in developmental and remedial teaching.

This work describes the author's experiences in both Spanish and English literacy development. It illustrates the bilingual/bicultural experience of acculturation and assimilation, a process of change, both culturally and linguistically. The Eagle and the Serpent does so in three levels: autobiographical narratives in bi-literacy acquisition, expository reflections from the viewpoint of a bilingual/bicultural Mexican-American adult, and finally an analysis of the process evident in the author's experience. Interspersed in the autobiographical elements, Palacios reflects on his spiritual journey of religious conversion, from Mexican Catholicism to American Evangelicalism. After discussing immigration, acculturation, and literacy, the story ends with an appended poem that reflects many immigrant children's lives of metamorphosis.

Learn how to teach multilingual students effectively and equitably with this practical and accessible resource. The authors share real-world examples from the classrooms of ESOL teachers, unpack the teachers' thinking about their instruction, and identify six core practices that are foundational to teaching multilingual students: knowing your multilingual students, building a positive learning environment, integrating content and language instruction, supporting language and literacy development, using assessment, and developing positive relationships and engaging in advocacy. The book focuses on how K-12 teachers can use these core practices in ways that humanize their instruction-positioning students as whole human beings, valuing the assets and resources they bring to the classroom, actively involving them in rigorous instruction that draws on their experiences and knowledge, responding to each unique learning context, and disrupting traditional power dynamics in education. This text will help pre- and in-service teachers of multilingual students to center equity and justice in their practice and understand how to move humanizing mindsets into action. Book Features: Identifies and describes core practices for teaching multilingual students. Offers opportunities to analyze teachers' instruction using core practices. Includes templates and additional resources that help teachers extend the use of core practices to their own planning. Supports teacher educators in preparing teachers to move humanizing mindsets to humanizing practices. Provides access to supplementary video clips depicting teachers as they engage in these practices and discuss their use.

How does a young child begin to make sense out of squiggles on a page? Is learning to read a process of extending already acquired language abilities to print? What comprises this extension? How children learn to read, and especially how children are taught to read, are problems of sustained scientific interest and enduring pedagogical controversy. This volume presents conceptual and theoretical analyses of learning to read, research on the very beginning processes of learning to read, as well as research on phonological abilities and on children who have problems learning to read. In so doing, it reflects the important discovery that learning to read requires mastering the system by which print encodes the language. The editors hope that some of the work offered in this text will influence future research questions and will make a difference in the way instructional issues are formulated.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This collection examines the significance of the ways in which writing was used in the Celtic countries between c.400 and c.1500. It is concerned with the amount and types of material committed to writing as well as with the social groups that promoted the use of literacy and had access to its products. Presenting the fruits of much new research, the book is intended as a contribution to the study both of medieval literacy generally and of the history and cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany in the Middle Ages.

Twelve chapters present a wide range of theory and method. Case examples throughout. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

This book undertakes a general framework within which to consider the complex nature of the writing task in English, both as a first, and as a second language. The volume explores varieties of writing, different purposes for learning to write extended text, and cross-cultural variation among second-language writers. The volume overviews textlinguistic research, explores process approaches to writing, discusses writing for professional purposes, and contrastive rhetoric. It proposes a model for text construction as well as a framework for a more general theory of writing. Later chapters, organised around seventy-five themes for writing instruction are devoted to the teaching of writing at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. Writing assessment and other means for responding to writing are also discussed. William Grabe and Robert Kaplan summarise various theoretical strands that have been recently explored by applied linguists and other writing researchers, and draw these strands together into a coherent overview of the nature of written text. Finally they suggest methods for the teaching of writing consistent with the nature, processes and social context of writing.

This volume foregrounds the disciplinary literacy approach to college teaching and learning with in-depth discussions of theory and research, as well as extensive classroom illustrations. Built upon the current work of READ (Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines), a disciplinary literacy program at New York City College of Technology, it presents a broad collection of methodologies, strategies, and best practices with discipline-specific considerations. It offers an overview of the program informed by evidence-based research and practices in college disciplinary learning, describing how its unique model addresses the literacy needs of students in STEM and professional studies. Chapter authors, including administrators, literacy specialists, and content experts discuss program design, professional development, and assessments. They also outline strategies to foster disciplinary literacy pedagogy and college success in five content areas, including Accounting, Architecture, Biology, Electromechanical Engineering, and Mathematics.

As a result of the convergence within the media environment, people are using media and technology in very different ways as compared to just a few years ago. Consider the experience of growing up today in a wireless broadband household, with easy access to cell phones and laptops, as compared with just a few years ago, when people used the Internet via a phone modem. Go even further back and remember how people viewed only the 500-channels available on the cable television lineup. So much has changed in the past 15 years. To thrive in a media-saturated society, people need to ask critical questions about what we watch, see, listen to, read and use. Covering topics from news and information to the internet to media consumption and addiction, this key textbook provides the tools to both empower and protect students as they navigate our increasingly complex media environment.