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