LITERACY-with-PURPOSE

A TEACHING FRAMEWORK AND LESSON-PLANNING TEMPLATE FOR ESOL ADULT LITERACY

INTRO

PRINCIPLES

OBSTACLES

SUPPORT

REFERENCES

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

In describing the shortcomings of ESOL pedagogy, leading authority on adult ESOL Literacy Heide Spruck Wrigley talks about how ESOL teaching tends to be driven by activities rather than by principles [24]. The Literacy-with-Purpose framework rests on a foundation of six basic principles drawn primarily from the domains of literacy studies and developmental psychology. Principles appear below in purple.

Literacy is a means to a variety of ends, not an end in itself.

-David Olson

What developmental psychologist David Olson calls the functional view of literacy emphasizes that literacy is embedded within meaningful social contexts [16]. Perhaps the most important aspect of this view of literacy is its focus on literacy as purposeful: we read the classifieds to try and find a job, road signs to get off at the right exit, instructions to put together the new gas grill, novels by Joyce to pass English Lit. classes and novels by Stephen King to pass the time. We write e-mails to share bad jokes with our friends, checks to pay outstanding credit card bills, lists to buy groceries and reminders to remember that his or her birthday is coming up. In short, we read and write “to get other things done” [1]. Reading the recipe for a lemon pie is incidental to making a delicious dessert [1].

In stark contrast to the contextualized nature of literacy in everyday life, in school, we often focus on literacy for literacy’s sake. Granted early literacy instruction will necessarily involve a certain amount of fine-grained targeted practice like mastering the “silent e” rule. However, too many artificial reading and writing activities can inspire dread in learners and create the misperception that we read and write in order to read and write some more rather than for the sake of a personally engaging purpose. At the forefront of adult ESOL Literacy instruction should be a focus on purpose. What is the value of a particular literacy skill? How is it useful? Where and when can it be used? As adult ESOL Literacy learners often lack knowledge of literacy-in-use, making the many uses of literacy explicit is absolutely crucial. This means incorporating real-life literacy practices into the classroom.

Private! No swimming allowed!

Private? No. Swimming allowed.

(taken from Egan, 2003)

Apart from the punctuation marks, these two sentences are identical. In order to get the different meanings of the two sentences, you must understand the exclamation point, the period and the question mark. Teaching punctuation requires what Olson calls metalanguage or language about language. According to Olson, an oral metalanguage for talking and thinking about texts’ structures and meanings is a necessary condition for literacy to flourish [16]. With the invention of writing, people needed new terms like punctuation as well as novel phrases like reading-between-the-lines. As Olson asserts, literacy introduces a whole new way of thinking about language. Most importantly, writing makes language into an object of reflection [14; 15].

According to Russian Psychologist Lev Vygotsky, thinking literally grows out of talking: all higher functions develop first between people on an interpsychological level and then through the process of internalization (“the internal reconstruction of an external operation,” [23]), higher functions become intrapsychological [13]. In plain language, talking aloud with others leads to the ability to think alone. If you really want to have a deep understanding of an idea, consider how valuable it can be to have to explain it to another person—by talking through, grappling with and answering questions about the idea, you come to think about it in different ways.

A well-developed oral metalanguage is necessary for two reasons: first, for adult ESOL Literacy students to grasp the why (purposes) and how (forms and conventions) of literacy, they must learn the requisite concepts and vocabulary. For educated people growing up in a literate culture, alphabetical order, punctuation, the nature and function of a list or a schedule may all seem second-nature—not so for many unschooled adult ESOL Literacy learners. Second, it is through discussion that literacy metalanguage becomes transformed into a mental language [16]; learners need ample opportunities to talk literacy in order to internalize literate habits of mind.

The importance of oral language in the adult literacy classroom (particularly in an ESOL classroom) can perhaps not be overstated. Many adult Literacy programs focus exclusively on reading and writing—these text-based programs suffer from the misconception that literacy is a wholly separate domain from orality (speaking and listening). Different, yes, but separate, no. As Olson claims, the development of literacy depends on an oral metalanguage. Moreover, decades of research on reading have shown that phonemic awareness (the ability to segment words into discrete sounds) is the best early predictor of reading acquisition [21]. In many literacy practices, there is a mixture of written and spoken language [1]. Literacy is not “something solely located in people’s heads as cognition” [1].

ORAL METALANGUAGE: A ROUGH TAXONOMY

(adapted & expanded from Olson, 1995)

A skill is a capacity to act in an organized way in a specific context.

-Fischer & Bidell

As with the functional definition of literacy, at the core of the definition of skill above is a vision of people’s activities as contextualized, socially-situated and purposeful [7; 8]. In Harvard University developmental psychologist Kurt Fischer’s conception, defining a skill as an abstract underlying competence is an illusion. Skills develop unevenly—a superior performance may be followed by large variations before stabilizing. Fischer challenges us to think of skill development in the dynamic terms of a web with multiple strands and uneven growth rather than the static linear terms of a ladder [8].

The level of a person’s skill always depends on two factors: context and support [8; 17]. Consider how context can impact the skill of driving—a native Floridian (lifetime driver with no speeding tickets or points on his license) visits Vermont during February to learn how to ski. Unaccustomed to slick back roads and snowy driving conditions, our poor driver is tentative and unpredictable on the road, driving too fast at certain points and too slow at others. Although a perfectly fine driver in sunny Florida, our driver appears drunk on the slippery roads of central Vermont. In the case of support, there is a great difference in skill between driving through an unfamiliar city (especially if the city happens to be Boston) depending on whether you are alone or with a local acting as co-pilot. With a competent co-pilot, your driving will be more assured, fluid (and legal). On your own, you will slow down at inappropriate junctures, take wrong turns and quite possibly end up driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

Context and support are critical variables within the realm of education. It may be helpful to pause here to look at a concrete example: Melissa is an adult ESOL Literacy learner from Cape Verde. What follows are three sentences Melissa wrote in three successive classes:

Monday: My son plays basketball.

Tuesday: My son plays basketball.

Wednesday: My son pla baskitball.

What accounts for the variation in Melissa’s performance? How is that her spelling, grammar and punctuation appear to be getting worse? On Monday, Melissa wrote her sentence in the context of a highly structured grammar exercise. On Tuesday, Melissa wrote her sentence with some help from a classmate. On Wednesday, Melissa wrote her sentence on her own. Knowing the precise circumstances behind each sentence suggests that Melissa is a better writer when the writing context is structured or when she gets support from a classmate versus when she is writing alone.

Student performance must be expected to range greatly, with optimal levels possible only under supportive conditions with significant practice. The skillful construction of these conditions and practice mark the work of effective teachers.

-Parziale & Fischer

As skills develop unevenly with highly variable context-dependent performances [17], we need to move beyond two related assumptions: first, that individual successes represent mastery and second, that success in one context will automatically transfer to success in a different context. Learners need to be presented with multiple opportunities to practice a skill (with feedback) across multiple contexts [17]. Practice in and of itself is often not enough to stimulate learning. It is an unfortunate fact that learners spend a great deal of time practicing skills incorrectly with little-to-no feedback [18]. As we would expect, learners make more progress if they receive timely and constructive feedback [18].

Learners are more skillful when their learning is supported—providing learners with insightful and helpful feedback is one way to support them [18]. Fischer uses the term developmental range to characterize the gap between what a person can achieve alone and what a person can achieve with the help of a teacher or a more capable peer [8]. So with a teacher’s help decoding or a peer’s help with vocabulary, a text that would otherwise be beyond the reach of an emerging reader can be made accessible. Providing support (in the form of teacher models, individual tutoring, constructive feedback, work in pairs and small-groups, etc.) can transform dead ends into learning opportunities. Effective teaching, therefore, needs to incorporate thoughtful and targeted support from peers and teachers [18]. (If all of this sounds like Vygotsky to you, you are right—developmental range is quite similar to what Vygotsky called the zone of proximal development).

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© jeffrey a. snyder spring 2004 snyderje@gse.harvard.edu

HGSE: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT, EDUCATION, AND THE BRAIN