Showing papers on "Written language published in 1984"

The implications of literacy : written language and models of interpretation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries

Abstract: This book explores the influence of literacy on eleventh and twelfth-century life and though on social organization, on the criticism of ritual and symbol, on the rise of empirical attitudes, on the relationship between language and reality, and on the broad interaction between ideas and society. Medieval and early modern literacy, Brian Stock argues, did not simply supersede oral discourse but created a new type of interdependence between the oral and the written. If, on the surface, medieval culture was largely oral, texts nonetheless emerged as a reference system both for everyday activities and for giving shape to larger vehicles of interpretation. Even when texts were not actually present, people often acted and behaved as if they were. The book uses methods derived from anthropology, from literary theory, and from historical research, and is divided into five chapters. The first treats the growth and shape of medieval literacy itself. Theo other four look afresh at some of the period's major issues--heresy, reform, the Eucharistic controversy, the thought of Anselm, Abelard, and St. Bernard, together with the interpretation of contemporary experience--in the light of literacy's development. The study concludes that written language was the chief integrating instrument for diverse cultural achievements.

Writing and Reasoning

Abstract: What contribution, if any, does written language make to intellectual development? Why, if at all, should we be concerned with the role of writing in our culture in general, and in our schools in particular? To what extent should we strive, as a recent report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has urged, to make clear and effective writing a "central objective of the school" (Boyer, 1983, p. 91)? If we do, can we assume that we will also be helping students develop the "higher order" intellectual skills, the "skilled intelligence," demanded by the authors of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983)? Questions such as these provide the context for the present review. At one level, it is widely accepted that good writing and careful thinking go hand in hand. This assumption underlies the concerns of the Council on Basic Education in their critique of the role of writing in American schools (Fadiman & Howard, 1979). The same assumption plays a major role in the agenda for research on writing developed by the National Institute of Education (Whiteman & Hall, 1981) and in the curriculum suggestions offered by advocates of "writing across the curriculum" (Applebee, 1977; Fulwiler & Young, 1982; Martin, D'Arcy, Newton, & Parker, 1976; Marland, 1977; Newkirk & Atwell, 1982). The role of writing in thinking is usually attributed to some combination of four factors: (a) the permanence of the written word, allowing the writer to rethink and revise over an extended period; (b) the explicitness required in writing, if meaning is to remain constant beyond the context in which it was originally written; (c) the resources provided by the conventional forms of discourse for organizing and thinking through new ideas or experiences and for explicating the relationships among them; and (d) the active nature of writing, providing a medium for exploring implications entailed within otherwise unexamined assumptions. If writing is so closely related to thinking, we might expect to begin this review with studies of the contribution of writing to learning and instruction. Yet research on writing has been remarkably slow to examine the ways in which writing about a topic may be related to reasoning. (Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, & Schorer, 1963, provide a good review of the concerns that dominated early studies of writing.) Two different traditions contribute to this reluctance: The first treats the process of writing as the rhetorical problem of relating a predetermined message to an audience that must be persuaded to accept the author's point of view. In this tradition the writing problem is one of audience analysis rather than of thoughtful examination of the topic itself. The second tradition assumes that the process of writing will in some inevitable way lead to a better understanding of the topic under consideration, though how this comes about tends to be treated superficially and anecdotally.

Reading, Writing and Dyslexia: A Cognitive Analysis

Abstract: Written language reading by ear and by eye routes and options in word comprehension and naming the acquired dyslexias words in combinations spelling and writing learning to read and write developmental dyslexia and dysgraphia.

Language Processing/Word Processing: Written Expression, Computers and Learning Disabled Students.

Abstract: queness, their coping strategies, their ability to elude precise definition; and yet, commonalities do emerge to form a composite picture of these students That portrait depicts a child awkwardly grasping a pencil and much-used eraser, attempting to fulfill an assignment by writing words on paper We might entitle this portrait "Personification of Frustration" As educators, we have added, albeit unwittingly, many of the brush strokes to create this portrait By subscribing to the theories that children must first learn to read, spell, and punctuate properly before attempting to write, we have expended our energies on these neverperfected tasks until the children have reached the normally self-conscious stage of adolescence, missing--perhaps forever--sequential developmental written language experiences Researchers who study language and composition skills of normally achieving students are recognizing that those students, as well as their learning disabled classmates, are being handicapped by our inattention or misdirected attention to written expression Inspired by Graves (1979) and the procedure used in his Writing Process Laboratory, the English-teacher equivalents of revolutionaries are making a few converts among the nation's writing teachers Nowhere is their presence more needed than in special education where we must compensate for years of neglect and where academic progress is usually only painstakingly achieved Hypothesis Our consciousness-raising regarding written expression is occurring at a time when technology may aid us in remediating the written language of learning disabled students By combining the process approach to writing with the word-processing capabilities of the microcomputer, we may enable our LD students to become proficient writers Results of an experimental classroom intervention utilizing such a treatment design are encouraging The proposed program is holistic, treating reading and language development, as well as written expression Relationship Between Needs and Research When PL 94-142 became law in 1975, special educators were in general agreement with Myklebust's theories of hierarchical language development That is, a child first had to understand spoken language, and then he spoke He had to read, and then he wrote (Myklebust, 1965) As a result, we never got to the writing stage with LD students in elementary school There were always isolated skills not yet mastered, words not yet read Having spent years training processes (eg, auditory memory, visual perception) and skills (eg, punctuation, capitalization) with little effect, special educators are now listening to different voices, expressing different views Mann, Goodman, and Wiederholt (1978) observed that lower performance measures at the secondary level can be explained by extensive exposure to remedial strategies, ignoring students' strengths Hence we may actually cause disabilities in strength areas through neglect Chomsky (1971) posited that the order of our

On differences between spoken and written language

Abstract: Considering various naturally occurring speaking and writing situations, Chafe (1982) suggested two dimensions along which spoken and written productions in English differ involvement against detachment, and fragmentation against integration. In order to control for the influence of variables that covary with the spoken/written distinction (e.g., topic, planning, formality, audience), an experiment was conducted where modality (speaking/writing) and topic were manipulated, holding the other relevant factors constant. Three of the scales (with the exception of “detachment”) showed excellent discrimination between the two modalities even in these strictly matched speaking and writing situations. The psychometric qualities of the scales are, however, rather problematic in that they lack internal consistency.

Hyperlexic children reading

Abstract: Eight hyperlexic children participated in the study. All had language delays, displayed difficulties in integrated behaviour and interpersonal relationships, and learned to read with little or no formal instruction (usually before the age of 5 years). Tests assessing cognitive and academic functioning were administered. In general, nonverbal skills were stronger than verbal skills. Reading ability was in the grade 4 to grade 6 range as based upon Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Reading Recognition scores. A wide variety of tests assessing phonological and lexical reading routes, as well as metalinguistic processing, were also administered. It appeared that the hyperlexic children were able to reach the lexicon via both the visualorthographic and phonological pathways. Error analysis indicated the former was preferred. Hyperlexic children had an organized, though limited, lexicon. Imagery had a significant effect on their reading. Further, they were able to comprehend single words and sentences, but not paragraphs. As only 3 of the 8 children seemed to have metalinguistic awareness, it becomes problematic whether the 'cognitive unconscious' is necessary for reading. Also, while the hyperlexic children might have acute visual registration mechanisms for written language, they have abstracted grapheme-phoneme transformation rules as indicated by their ability to read pseudowords.

Learning to talk and talking to learn

Abstract: (1984). Learning to talk and talking to learn. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 23, Access to Meaning: Spoken and Written Language, pp. 190-197.

Context in Text: The Development of Oral and Written Language in Two Genres.

Abstract: PELLEGRINI, A. D.; GALDA, LEE; and RUBIN, DONALD L. Context in Text: The Development of Oral and Written Language in Two Genres. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1549-1555. The intent of the study was to test Halliday's model of context/text relations and how these relations varied across the elementary school years. Children in grades 1, 3, and 5 were asked to produce messages in narrative and persuasive genres, in both the oral and written channels. Their texts were analyzed in terms of elements of linguistic cohesion and length of clausal themes. Significant multivariate effects on these measures were obtained for grade, channel, genre, channel x genre, and grade x channel. These results generally support the predicted effects for this model of discourse production: Text varied as a function of discourse context. Predicted age effects were partially supported. These results are significant in that they document age-related features of text production: organization of text with causal conjunctions improves across the elementary school years; the production of grammatically cohesive text improves through third grade. Furthermore, the data support previous research suggesting that oral text is less explicit than written text.

Learning to Attend to Sentence Structure: Links Between Metalinguistic Development and Reading

Abstract: Metalinguistic activity involves the ability to treat language objectively and to manipulate language structures deliberately. This ability to focus attention on language forms per se becomes possible for children only gradually as their cognitive development proceeds. In the understanding of spoken language, the focus of attention is typically on the meaning of the utterance, and little attention is paid to the particular acoustic forms of the message. Written language, on the other hand, requires analysis and manipulation of language forms in order to extract the meaning from them. According to Vygotsky (1934), Mattingly (1972), and Cazden (1972, 1974), the additional cognitive demands of this analysis and manipulation underly the observed discrepancy between the adequate speaking and listening abilities of the young, school-age child and his limited ability to deal with written language.

The Development of Metalinguistic Abilities in Children Learning to Read and Write

Abstract: In the preceding chapters different aspects of linguistic awareness regarding both functions and features of oral and written language have been referred to. In the existing literature the term “language awareness” is used with a still broader meaning. As Sinclair (1981) notes, this term “seems to include all the capacities and activities concerning language and language judgment which are not themselves a part of (or very closely tied to) production and comprehension processes. Any reflections, ideas, knowledge, or explicit formulation of underlying principles, rules, etc., concerning language structure, functions, or the rules for its use have been classified under the label ‘linguistic awareness’ or ‘metalinguistic activities’ ” (pp. 44–45). This already very broad picture of abilities becomes even more incoherent when further metalinguistic abilities related to written language are included under this topic. According to Weaver and Shonkoff (1979), linguistic awareness “includes knowing what reading is; knowing conventions of print …; and knowing the concepts of a letter, word, sentence, or a story” (p. 30).

Listening and responding: Hearing the logic in children's classroom narratives

Abstract: (1984). Listening and responding: Hearing the logic in children's classroom narratives. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 23, Access to Meaning: Spoken and Written Language, pp. 218-224.

"Because a Fire Was in My Head": Eudora Welty and the Dialogic Imagination

Abstract: W OMAN'S LANGUAGE has recently become the subject of a set of elaborate and contradictory mystifications. While a number of American feminist critics have begun to join French theorists in asserting that language is a patriarchal institution, French feminists like Helene Cixous, Marguerite Duras, and Luce Irigaray additionally insist that this institution can be transcended, that woman's writing is an ecstatic possibility, a labor of mystery that can take place in some fruitful void beyond man's experience.' "We the precocious, we the repressed of culture," says Cixous in "The Laugh of the Medusa." "Our lovely mouths gagged with pollen, our wind knocked out of us, we the labyrinths, the ladders, the trampled spaces, the bevies-" (248). If past repressions have become the source of woman's strength, the discovery of her secret and self-perpetuating language will give woman "access to her native strength; it will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories," delivering paradise and more (250).2 In a 1975 interview in Signs Marguerite Duras echoes and extends parts of Cixous' theory, arguing not only that woman can discover her own private and libidinal realm of connotation through writing but that men and women live in different linguistic cultures; they write from radically different perspectives. "Men . . . begin from a theoretical platform that is already in place, already elaborated," she says. "The writing of women is really translated from the unknown, like a new way of communicating rather than an already formed language. But to achieve that we have to turn away from plagiarism" (424). Plagiarism, as Duras defines it, is any complicity with masculine ideology, theatricality, or rhetorical style. "Feminine literature is a violent, direct literature," she insists. "To judge it we must not-and this is the main point I want to make-start all over again, take off from a theoretical platform" (424). "Translated" from subterreanean depths, women's writing must resist cooperation with the tradition, must avoid the temptation to be patrilineal. In this essay I wish to argue, however, that women's writing employs a useful form of "plagiarism." Women who write are not only capable of appropriating myths, genres, ideas, and images that are "populated" with patriarchal meaning, they are continually endowing a male mythos with their own intentions and meanings. According to this argument women write about their own lives by appropriating masculine traditions and transforming them, adapting what has been called "phallocentric" diction to fit the needs of "feminocentric" expression.3 While this view is necessarily controversial it will lead, I hope, to an interesting thesis: although the plots that women construct for their heroines continue to focus on, and therefore in a sense to privilege, the dominant sex/gender system, the language that women writers have begun to develop to subvert or deconstruct this system is at once traditional and f minocentric. Language is not a reductively patriarchal system but a somewhat flexible institution that not only reflects but may also address existing power structures, including those conditioned by gender. "Language," as Mikhail Bakhtin argues in his essay "Discourse in the Novel," "is never unitary. It is unitary only as an abstract grammatical system of normative forms, taken in isolation from the uninterrupted process of historical becoming that is characteristic of all living language" (Dialogic Imagination 288). Disruptive, emotional, nonhegemonic, language, according to Bakhtin, is open to intention and change. Moreover, both spoken and written language are dynamic and plural, and, as such, language resists all attempts to foster a unitary or absolute system of expression within its boundaries. This does not mean, however, that language itself is either nonpossessive or free from obsession. As Bakhtin explains, language is not "a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker's intentions; it is populated-overpopulated-with the intentions of others" (294).4 The process of its transformation is dialogic, that is, this process involves a dialectical interaction between words, between styles, between points of view. According to Bakhtin, this interaction is

Effects of Discourse Mode on the Syntactic Complexity of Learning Disabled Students' Written Expression:

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of discourse mode on the syntactic complexity of the written expression of learning disabled students at three grade levels. A film without narration was used to elicit written language samples in each of the two discourse modes, description and argumentation. Two measures of syntactic complexity — average length of T-unit and Syntactic Density Score — were employed to determine differences between the two modes. In addition, sentence types and syntactic patterns were examined as indices of syntactic complexity. Results of the investigation and implications of these results are discussed.

Developing Effective Study Skills and Self-Confidence in Academically Able Young Adolescents:

Abstract: In recent years, growing numbers of social commentators have expressed concern about the ability of potentially capable youth to perform at acceptable levels in school and on the job. A technologically advanced, complex society cannot afford to lose talent, a reality to which the recent report of the National Committee on Excellence in Education attests. In addressing the situation, colleges and businesses have already had to introduce costly remedial programs. Earlier identification and intervention might reduce the need for such programs, thereby reducing both financial and psychosocial costs. Hobbs and Robinson (1982) note that heavy investment in preventive early childhood programs in the 1960s and 1970s have yielded equivocal longitudinal results. Recognizing that adolescence is a time of rapid mental and physical development, they urged that efforts be made to enhance the academic and problem-solving skills of youth. A review of referrals to our clinics in the late 1970s revealed that about one-fourth of those with school-related problems (somatic complaints, behavior difficulties, and/or academic failure) were early adolescents who had done well in elementary school. Reviewing their records indicated that many lacked advanced written language and study skills and, in addition, had diminished self-concepts. Unable to do assignments efficiently or confidently, they tended to &dquo;drop out,&dquo; literally or figuratively. When we searched for

The Type-Token Ratio and Vocabulary Performance:

Abstract: Summary.-The Type-Token Ratio (?TR), a measure of lexical diversity, was correlated with four measures of vocabulary performance: the Peabody Piaure Vocabulary Test-Revised, the Oral and Picture subtests of the Test of Language Development, and the Test of Written Language. The vocabulary tests were administered to 21 6-, 7-, and 8-yr.-old children from whom language samples were obtained for the application of three Type Token Ratio measures: the TTR-Total for the whole language sample, the TTR-100 for language samples of 100 words, and the CTTR, a procedure intended to be independent of language sample size. One correlation of .45 (between the CTTR and the Oral-TOLD) was significant. More research on validity is necessary to clarify the measurement domain of the TTR, if it is to be useful clinically. Miller (1981) presented numerous experimental procedures for assessing language production by children. He stated that an analysis of semantics must be included as part of a language assessment. He pointed out that the literature on language development provides numerous semantic taxonomies, but few are applied as diagnostic tools in the assessment of clinical populations. One procedure chat Miller (1981, p. 22) recommended for experimental use "as a semantic analysis of referential meaning, a ratio which indexes diversity" (p. 41), was the type-token ratio. Johnson (1944) named the ratio of different words (types) to total words (tokens) the type-token ratio. He introduced it as an experimental measure to be investigated and described it as "a measure of vocabulary 'flexibility' or variability, designed to indicate certain aspects of language adequacy" (p. 1). The type-token ratio has also been described as a measure of "vocabulary diversity" (Cramblit & Siegel, 1977, p. 476), a measure of "vocabulary richness" ( Andolina, 1980, p. 373), and "a relatively simple, straight-forward measure of language deviance" (Manschreck, Maher, & Ader, 1981, p. 7). The type-token ratio has been utilized in various ways in research. It has been used as a measure of lexical diversity to determine developmental trends in the vocabulary performance of children (Templin, 1957; Bowerman, 1973; Andolina, 1980). Gibson, Gruner, Kibler, and Kelly (1966) utilized the 2TR to compare the vocabulary diversity of oral and written language samples. Siegel (1967) compared the TTRs of the language of adults speak

Analysis of written language of a language learning disabled (dyslexic) college student and instructional implications.

Abstract: This paper examines spontaneous writing of a college student with a history of language learning problems. Writing samples, collected from tests and papers in college courses, were analyzed for syntactic complexity, spelling, grammatical errors, semantic errors, and organization. Metacognitive factors were analyzed by examining student’s responses to questions about his perceptions about writing. Results showed: (a) the dyslexic student produced syntactically complex structures comparable to nondyslexic writers; (b) the student averaged 9% spelling errors per essay and 17 grammatical errors per essay; (c) primary semantic errors were inappropriate word choices, incorrect determiners, and overuse of “so” as a transition; (d) major problem with organization involved difficulties with expanding an idea beyond “saying the same thing in a different way;” (e) metacognitive strategies included difficulties with separating self from writing and recognizing ambiguity in writing. The paper then describes six instructional strategies to assist in remediation of the student’s writing problems.

Black-English Influences in the Writing of Third- and Sixth-Grade Black Students.

Abstract: This article presents an analysis of the errors found in a set of writing samples produced In third- and sixth-grade black children attending an inner city school in a low-income neighborhood. The analysis focuses on those errors that may be influenced by Black English oral usage. Hypercorrections are also noted. A few error types (primarily morphological) seem to be most influenced by Black English speech patterns.

Cognitive Development and Units of Print in Early Reading

Abstract: With the excitement of one who has made a major discovery, he pointed to his name, Peter,printed on the corner of his playgroup painting. Running his finger rather haphazardly across the letters, he pronounced, “Pe-ter Gor-don Mey-ers.” Peter, nearly four, had made significant progress towards an awareness of the functions and purposes of written language. He realized that print provides clues for reading and that components of his printed name in some way represent speech sounds. However, the nature of the units of which print is composed and the one-to-one correspondence of their visual and auditory elements were yet to be grasped. Understanding the units of print seems to be an aspect of the young child’s language awareness which is critical in learning to read. This chapter will review theory and research on attaining concepts of the units of print and will present evidence which tests a cognitive developmental view of this task.